Falling is an unpleasant way to wake up.
There's something uniquely humiliating about gaining consciousness thirty feet above the ground and realizing that gravity is already in progress. It means the decision has been made for you. Your input is no longer required.
So, when I opened my eyes, saw the clouds beneath me, and had just enough time to think, this doesn't look like my ceiling, I knew the situation was already out of my hands—literally.
I hit the floor with enough force to dislocate my understanding of reality.
Not a forest floor. Not a field. Not glowing grass or sacred marble steps.
No.
I slammed face-first into an aluminum filing cabinet.
It made the sound of a dinner tray losing an argument.
Papers scattered into the air. A clipboard ricocheted off my shoulder. Something that looked suspiciously like a timecard fluttered into my open mouth.
There was a scream. Not mine.
"OH NO. OH NO. OH—uh. Please remain still while we resolve this summoning alignment error!"
I did not remain still.
I rolled onto my side and let out the kind of groan that implied something metaphysical had shifted. My cheek was going to have drawer impressions for a week.
"Why did I—where am I—what—" I stammered in perfect nonsense.
"Divine Registry Office, fifth layer subdivision, mortal induction cubicle F12!" the voice replied, fast, nervous, too cheerful. "Don't panic! You've been successfully summoned! Er—sort of! Mostly!"
A figure ducked into view. He wore a badge, half a robe, and an expression I'd describe as "desperately improvising."
Intern. Had to be. He looked too young and too sweaty to be in charge of anything.
His name tag read: TAMORI (Provisional, Probationary, Not Yet Liable).
He offered a clipboard. I stared at it like it might bite me.
"This is your intake form," he said. "You're our—ah—newly inducted Auditor of Faith Compliance! Congratulations!"
"No," I said, flatly.
"I—I understand this may be confusing, but everything's fine! This is all very standard. Routine. I have orientation pamphlets!"
"Nope."
He blinked. "You—You're refusing the position?"
"No, I'm refusing this reality."
I sat up slowly, brushing off paperwork that included words like "Doctrine Variance Violation" and "Soul Transfer Routing Error: M-Class." The room around me looked like an airport check-in desk fused with a DMV and then had an out-of-body experience. Desks floated at awkward angles. Filing cabinets rearranged themselves when no one was looking. The ceiling wasn't a ceiling—it was a vast scroll that kept slowly unfurling, line by line, in unreadable celestial script.
I'd been summoned.
By accident.
To a place that looked like God outsourced creation to a discount administrative agency.
"Look," I said, trying to stay calm, "I didn't sign up for this. I didn't do any rituals. No scrolls. No blood circles. The only thing I've summoned lately is a hangover."
Tamori flipped through a stack of paper and frowned. "Yes, well… that's the problem. You're not on the approved summon queue."
"You think?"
"But you did post a divine query on FaithCrash."
"That was a post. A joke. At three in the morning."
"Well, according to our interpretation metrics," he said, holding up a glowing tablet, "you expressed intent, invoked result-based theological preference, and closed with an implicit offering."
"I didn't offer anything."
"You closed the tab. That counts as a symbolic ritual of surrender."
I stared at him.
"You're making this up."
"I am," he admitted. "But no one upstairs checks the mortal processing backlog anyway."
He coughed. Looked down at his robe. Looked back at me.
Then sighed.
"I'm gonna level with you. We're… behind. On quotas. And the gods are kind of… not super solvent right now. So, if we don't fill certain mortal-facing roles fast, we risk 'interdomain destabilization via faith redundancy.'"
"Was that a real sentence?"
"Mostly nouns. But the point is—we can't send you back until someone signs the return requisition. And that takes at least twelve approval stamps."
"And no one here has a stamp?"
"No one who likes me," Tamori muttered.
I stared at the blinking badge in my hand, which looked like a rejected USB drive wearing a name tag.
Auditor.
I hadn't worked in years.
I hadn't even wanted to work. If work was oxygen, I would've asphyxiated by choice.
And yet, somehow, against my will and better judgment, I had been promoted—without qualifications, without a resume, without a single interview—to God's Tax Man.
I mean, what even was an audit of faith? Was I supposed to knock on temple doors and ask if they'd filled out their W-2s for divine intervention?
Did I have to arrest monks for over-praying?
Was there a quota?
Was I allowed to smite people? If I was going to be a bureaucratic pawn, I at least wanted a smite button. One that made a good noise. Something satisfying. Bwoom. Pew. You have been administratively obliterated.
But I digress.
The thing is, when you've spent most of your adult life successfully dodging commitment, expectations, and social accountability—only to get teleported into a celestial office because of a sarcastic forum post—it's hard not to feel like the universe has gone out of its way to spite you.
Not in the fire-and-brimstone sense. Not in a "hell is real and you're going there" sense. More like:
"You didn't care about anything? Great. Now you're responsible for everything."—God, probably
Which is fine.
It's fine.
I'll just find the complaint department, fill out a grievance report, and go wait for death to reboot in a proper timeline.
Or I'll get assigned to a collapsing shrine full of grifters and miracle bootlegs.
I didn't know it yet, but I already knew it.
Tamori handed me a badge. It shimmered with divine code and had a blinking red "PENDING" label at the top.
"Your official title is 'Provisional Auditor of Faith Compliance: Mortal-Adaptive Interface Division.' You'll be responsible for low-risk shrines, miracle scam inspections, unauthorized god-branch investigations—"
"Stop."
He stopped.
"I'm going to need you to explain literally all of that."
He smiled, far too wide.
"That's what orientation is for!"