At some point in time and space, something extraordinary occured. This, multiplanar, omni-cosmological, event mimicked a simple conversation between two people and layered within the words and actions of the involved parties, a cataclysmic storm brewed. As a simple author, I can only interpret this conversation as I understand it, and can only describe what I have been made privy to in words that I know how to use. Thus, the "Game" to end all games started with a simple feeling... boredom…
"Hey. ~Halloo. Don't ignore me!"
"What do you want?"
"Do you wanna take over my work for a bit? I want to play a game with a smart little guy from Reality's newest little project."
"We no longer have anything to learn from donning the namesake of your post, as We have told you countless times before. As for those individuals that you are so excited to play with, they are going to expire in eight dozen cycles. Approximately."
"Stop telling me when people die, let them have fun. And why not? It's just for a little bit!"
"Surely, you jest Life. You know how much We have told you that there is only detestation for your lack of sobriety in regards to the mortality of natural creatures. Don't stick out your tongue like a child. It's unbecoming of someone of your status. Besides, we both know that it's because the little ones know that things end so that they can truly live. It is their blessing and our curse to be reminders of such cruelty."
In what could only be a cosmic joke, two shapeless things, be they unformed people, conscious places, or personified concepts, frowned and smiled for their own reasons at the grand nature of the cosmos that seemed mundane in this moment of interaction. As an example of life's frailty and paradoxical unyielding spirit, a distant planet ruptured in a nuclear hellfire as these two abstractions observed the lives of billions that came to an unexpected moment of transition. In a minor display of rebellion against divine manifestation, innumerable metallic objects escaped from the planet's surface before the flames and radiation could settle. The satellites, stations, and spaceships that made their exodus had their navigations hijacked as an armada of unmarked ships entered the region around the small blue planet. What could only be described as flaming pillars of a god's wrath descended upon the escaping ships. Only a single flagship vessel managed to avoid catastrophe; It slipped into a massive ring of flickering light, which collapsed soon after as the satellites that generated the dark tunnel exploded or shorted out.
"No, We, as much as it is a delight to interact with mortals personally, are busy. We suggest that you get back to your own work. Your presence here has already allowed all of the vessels but one to perish. It will now require one of those Demon's miracles to reverse the tide of extinction. You inconsistent fool."
"Hey! That's mean!"
"..."
"HEY. Don't just ignore me!"
"..."
"Tch. You are so boring Death. At least think about it, it'll be good for you to learn something new."
"We have learned all that is required to understand the faults in your newest mortal creations. By that logic, we have already experienced every facet of your namesake, Life."
"What're you talking about? What I have in mind is an all new, fresh, and sparkly learning experience, something that can't be measured by your knowledge. There's always something new happening inside of there. Conscious Life is infinitely vast and complex, as much as you would see that it is not, you dreadful bore."
"We shall enlighten you just this once, as a courtesy for our longstanding acquaintanceship. There is nothing left for us to learn considering, as you've said, the number of times we have done this back and forth. Life may be of infinite variations, but that only applies for a certain amount of time, as Reality has ensured. Everything repeats sooner or later, and we've already observed this recursion thrice before, much to that Demon's disapproval. Now, we have jobs to return to if you don't mind returning to your post. And, as a matter of personal interest, you should also pay more attention to your work, perhaps you would have noticed this trend as well if you weren't so invested in their well-being."
The savaged planet of blue, green, and glowing lights, submerged under clouds of dust and storms. Though, as the two incorporeal observers spoke, the earth slowly but surely, recovered from a waterless desert into a lush paradise where decrepit but towering concrete, glass, and metal structures grew and lit up their surroundings. A small red sphere in the same solar system, not too far off, erupted with the same flush of greenery and towering structures. For a moment, the stars and celestial bodies swirled, until all of it came to a sudden and unexpected pause.
"Maybe. Actually, you know what, you are right! There probably is nothing left for 'you' to 'learn'. I should 'pay more attention' to the fact that 'life constantly changes despite being continuously pushed to its very limit'. Something that you would 'know' all about in your 'infinite wisdom' and observations. You know, since you have seen all that life has to offer," the more focused of the two things waved its arm and glared at the repetitious world in front of it.
As if civilization was doomed to repeat the same mistakes, the once barren and red, now lush and green, planet shattered like glass due to an orbital weapon that unleashed a lance of cosmic energy. The planet imploded, then vanished into the vacuum of space in all but one instant. The destruction of an entire planet should've sent the solar system into peril but, instead, the cosmic bodies rearranged themselves as explosions nearly on par with supernovas (not really but that's what it felt like) tore through the entire system. Once the radiation settled to manageable levels, the original blue planet erupted with the lights of war as space faring vessels closed in from every conceivable direction once again. War, unlike anything seen before erupted and consumed everything in its wake. An armada of ships escaped from the surface of the planet once more as history repeated itself. Devices charged with energy as bright as stars lit up the atmosphere just outside of the planet's ozone, ready to spear through anything that was leaving the planet's gravitational pull.
With a bit of hesitation, the lazier of the two Observers looked away from the world on the brink of ruin, which made the focused thing shutter out of pure shock. Death turned toward its long standing acquaintance and blinked more than a few times before speaking.
"Thank you for removing your presence from this civilization. Though we are surprised since you rarely show any form of improvement or even any basic understanding of our roles when it comes to things that don't involve your wants," Death waved an appendage and made a grasping motion. Souls, intangible and priceless, coalesced into several thimble sized bottles based on their color and saturation. Much to its chagrin, some of the freefloating thimbles had their flows cut off as the wrathful engines of death circling the nearby space turned and fired upon themselves, cutting a hole in the net that served only as a reminder that death was a prudent and unforgiving mistress that saw all equally. Unlike in history, all of the ships that escaped the grasp of the blue pearl vanished into bright rings of light that they created. Each being much quicker and efficient than their predecessors by an impossibly wide margin.
"No. Thank you for remembering that life is weird, haha," Life grabbed a handful of the thimbles and laughed as the souls broke through the crystalline casings through a little crack. With a casual toss, the spilled souls trailed after the rest of their physical civilization. Some of the thimbles spilled over and contrary to following the life that escaped, the souls clung onto the once again ravaged blue pearl.
"I will take your advice and get back to work. The lives of those 'creative' and 'new' little guys need to be monitored at all times after all. They come up with the most, 'interesting' plans. I mean honestly, how many times have you tried to annihilate them and how many times have they chosen this path of 'coexsistence'? Honestly, it's almost as if they can see right through your plans," and with that, the second Observer called Life simply vanished.
"Goodbye Lie," Death, the second of the first two people to make an appearance in this story, turned back to the world at its back and murmured to no one in particular.
"Life that is natural but inorganic, where death is but simply another state of life. Hm. It is a marvel. Should I allow this? These lifeforms aren't new, per se, but it is a rather unconventional spin on normal conventions," A moment, or the equivalent of it for timeless being, passed by. Death observed, at its own casual pace, the passage of time as it stood for mortal creatures. Things were going exactly as it envisioned until one day, the words that Life said just struck a cord deep within Death's nonexistent heart.
"Lie," Death spoke out after who knows how long as it silently and fastidiously observed the life that made a home on the blue planet.
"Yeah Det?"
"Let's make it interesting."
"Seriously?"
"The usual arrangement?"
"Alright. Let me know when you have two fresh ones. I'm so excited. It's been way too long since we last did this…"
"For good reason if you have conveniently forgotten."
"Bah, don't worry about it. This will be fun."
Now, it's not very obvious what just happened and that's how it is supposed to be. I'll start by shedding some light on who these two observers are and why the conversation that they held was and is so important to the rest of this story. The "second" person to speak of, the "focused," observer as we will call Det, is a purely conceptual being that managed to, through effort, time, and grit, gain a physical body to help facilitate its own growth and understanding. Lie, the "first" observer to speak in this story, is a similarly displaced amalgam or entity of un placable origin. Death is Det's full name, but even that is more of a playful title used to describe someone so boring, it could kill anyone's mood or desire to interact. Lie, is a nickname that Death gave to the nameless being that existed purely, to their understanding, to serve as its dreadful opposite. It has, is, and will continue to find every opportunity to liven up any situation for the sake of self-interest and fun. As an aside, Life was chosen as a self-appointed name that doubled as a title equivalent to being annoyingly lively, noisy, and pest-like. According to Death.
These two observers are not things that live or die, rather, they are sentient forces, energies, and concepts that just are... not of their namesake but of existence and creation and destruction as a whole. Cute representations of ideas that exist outside of time/space/ thought/ Etc. You get the point, there's no need to reiterate the same thing a third time. Now that you know who they are and what they represent, you should know what it is they do. They, if put into human terms, have a job that needs their full attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 plus one extra days a year, every year, for all eternity, which eventually repeats when forever, to mortal beings, comes to a slow and peaceful end or goes out with a glorious bang. In this context, Life just wanted a break from the monotonous work and asked Death to cover for it. Death, having been duped into doing the work for free several times before, willingly and not, immediately declined. Death even came up with an excuse that worked, the truth about its distaste for Life's antics. The problem was that Death used its excuse on the wrong thing. Lie knew what made Det tick and planted a seed of doubt, which was the survival of living beings in a sure death scenario. The small arrangement stayed in the back of Death's mind until enough time passed, which could've been a second or trillions of years for a normal living creature. Basically, Life tricked Death, once again.
For everyone's sake and as a tangent, I should introduce the situation of the afterlife to give a better framework on how this is going to work:
Most Myths of Gods and Heroes exist- sort of...
Eternal Paradise and the everlasting torment of any Hell adjacent afterlife exist- sort of…
Reincarnation and any other after or near-death processes like regression, transmigration, transportation, etc. exist and are used as a teaching tool sort of…
At the end of the day, with an untold number of beliefs and ideals, the true purpose of life is for a soul to find meaning for themselves. I mean, really, truly, wholeheartedly, believe in something until it's ingrained in the fabric of one's existence. That meaning may be found in God, Gods, gods, yourself, others, nature, Spirits, spirits, love, hate, murder, evil or any number of things. The crux of it all is finding something to believe more than anything else. That said, most don't get to find out what they truly believe in no matter how long they live or however many restarts they get. Hence, once someone dies, their soul splits and grows a near infinite number of times so they can learn about themself from a different angle under the watchful eye and guidance of beings that have already found their core belief and were fully beyond such things. Thus, everything exists but not everything is experienced.
Sort of like a Schrodinger's cat situation, but for belief. That said, for fairness and general acceptance, living beings who fail to find their core identity are required to get the same belief 51% of the total time that they have been around in any form, regardless of however many times they've split and grown. As a gross understatement, once a mortal dies, Death takes care of the afterservice provided to those that found their belief while Life places the split variations into vastly different situations until every possible life is lived by that soul, even if the difference is only marginally. One of them could do the whole job by themself but it always ends poorly from what I could gather. I didn't attempt to see into the details of all the messy situations since I knew before I even tried that it would just reflect unadulterated chaos and lunacy so I chose not to pursue that type of story. I didn't want that kind of crazy in the back of my head.
Back to exposition...
Those that achieve a belief rating of 51% of the time at minimum, get to live out whatever most sought out fantasies they had in any of their lives or most cherished life, I.E. Aftercare. These fantasies would create a paradise specifically tailored to them, hence why I said everything exists. The closer someone gets to finding their core, the more their soul comes together, eventually. Anyone, through this process, can become little godlings and have their own adventures creating and destroying and interacting with people that are in similar conditions or worlds. It's actually very horrifying and cute. It's like watching children stumble through life, some fall behind and need a little help, others flourish and shine like stars.
On that high note, those that can't find their belief are thrown into what feels like eternal torture: They are sent off to live in countless worlds with different personalities, beginnings, endings, or entirely different states of being for that matter. Some end up as extras in the paradise of others and are forced to live lives that are for other people's enjoyment. In other words, they are the random characters in any story or in any world that you know exist but are never able to see because they are even less important than any of the on-screen side characters or outside of your sphere of influence. They are put into lives where factors are completely random and can only make the best of what they have just to find themselves. In other- other words, the split parts or echoes of a soul are the people in a story, show, or movie that you don't see or interact with. Or they are the people that you know populate the cities all over the world while an action hero defeats or ends the [Enter pressing threat here] that threatens civilization or while the main character has to get [Enter mcguffin here] before the bad guy or villain.
As for the two "fresh" ones, Life talked about. They are meant to be a fresh pair of souls that have discovered their beliefs and sense of self on their first time through life. Basically, they are regret-less and content, or absolutely broken people who died without a serious care alongside their undiluted beliefs. They are souls that didn't need help finding their core belief or sense of identity and remained unsplit in death.
As of this moment, for the first and only time in understandable existence, (Trust me on that), four such souls have shown up at the exact same time... I mean... down to the very definition of same time. There have been historical moments where trillions of souls have passed their first life with perfect beliefs but there was always some line of demarcation making their entrance different from the others. This. Something like this will never happen again. A moment where the two observers responsible for the transition of mortal souls missed two said transients in their inescapable networks. That said, conditions for Life and Death's "arrangement" had to be perfect. Requiring two passing souls of the same pedigree otherwise, any resulting outcome of their game would be seen as improper. Lie and Det wanted souls that found their core beliefs and lived by rules and guidelines that they had set for themselves, people that walked the walk and didn't just superficially embrace what they talked about or believed.
"Would you like to pick or have one of the two be randomly assigned," physiology aside, Death's eyes shone like floating lanterns as a subtle nod to emotion crawled onto its face. Not only were the available cast members a matching pair, dying at the exact same time, one of the individuals possessed a trait Death found very pleasing.
"Ah. The matter seems to be settled before either of us could even choose. The souls are very fitting this time around. We suggest maintaining some distance with your chosen. It's more likely that We will win," Death spoke into the endless dark space beside it and slightly nodded as a small white orb broke through the void with an effortless flash.
"Don't tell me what to do," Life winked out of existence beside Death, turning the little orb into a line that vanished off into the distance. Det remained in the dark, accompanied only by a glimmering mass of fog that constantly alternated between different shades of blue, green, and gold. A glowing body floated in the fog.