Ding. Ding. Ding.
The sound was sharp, rhythmic, and piercing—like a high-priority alert on a server that refused to be ignored.
"What... what is that noise?" Mike muttered.
His own voice sounded strange to him, echoing as if he were speaking inside a vacuum. He tried to rub his eyes, but he couldn't feel his hands. In fact, he couldn't feel the hard Formica table, the humid air of the restaurant, or even the crushing weight in his chest. The pain was gone, replaced by a terrifying, hollow lightness.
He opened his eyes, but there was no restaurant. No Helena. No city.
He was suspended in an endless, absolute blackness. It wasn't the darkness of a room with the lights off; it was a total void.
Floating in the center of the nothingness was a single, glowing focal point: a translucent screen, shimmering with a soft golden hue. It pulsed in time with the noise.
[Initialization Complete][System Link Established...]
Mike stared at the golden lines of text. As a developer, he'd spent half his life looking at interfaces, but this one didn't look like code. The font was elegant, almost calligraphic, yet it hovered with a precision that felt more advanced than any OLED display he'd ever seen.
"Is this... a hallucination?" he whispered.
The screen flickered, the golden light reflecting off the "nothing" around him. A new window popped up, sliding into view with a smooth, frictionless animation.
[User Identity: Mike Harrison] [Status: Dead] [Task: Initializing Life-Cycle Assessment...]
Mike stared at the word 'Dead'. It was a blunt, ugly word. It didn't feel like a mistake or a dream; it felt like a cold fact. The memories of the restaurant, the smell of tea and the panic in Helena's eyes flickered in his mind like a dying flame.
"Dead..." he whispered, his voice sounding thin in the vast emptiness. "So that was it. Just a quiet afternoon lunch, and then nothing."
He reached out to touch the golden screen, but his hand passed straight through the light as if he were trying to grab a shadow. There was no warmth, no texture. He wasn't even sure if he had a body anymore, or if he was just a lingering thought in the dark.
The golden light shifted, the letters dissolving and reforming into a new message.
[The test will begin now.][The test is simple: you must answer every question correctly.][If you lie, there will be punishment.][After you answer all the questions, you may ask three questions of your own.]
Mike took a shaky breath. In his old life, lying had been a survival mechanism, a way to keep people at a distance and avoid the discomfort of real connection. He had lied so often, even to himself, that the truth felt like a foreign language. He wondered if he was even capable of being honest, or if his mind would reflexively pivot to a lie just to maintain the wall he'd built around his heart.
As he stood there, wondering if he would trigger a punishment before the first minute was up, the golden words on the screen dissolved. The air remained silent, but the letters reformed with a sharp, undeniable clarity.
[What is your name?]
Mike hesitated. It was the simplest question possible, yet his throat felt tight. "Mike Harrison," he said.
The screen pulsed once, the gold light brightening for a second before the text shifted.
[Age at time of death?]
"Thirty-eight," Mike replied. It felt strange to say it out loud. Thirty-eight years spent mostly behind a desk, waiting for a life that never quite started.
[Occupation?]
"Senior Software Developer." He felt a small pang of bitterness. All those years of work, and it boiled down to a single line of text in a void.
[Number of romantic partners?]
Mike looked away from the screen, his mind drifting back to the faces he had tried to forget. He'd never been the type for many flings; he preferred the safety of his own company. "Two," he whispered. "Only two and have No family or kid"
[What was your primary ambition in your previous life?]
The question hung in the air, glowing with an expectant light. Mike opened his mouth to say something about "career growth" or "financial security," the kind of things people usually said in interviews. But the rule about punishment flashed in his mind. He looked at the vast, empty blackness around him and realized there was no point in pretending anymore.
"I didn't have one," Mike said, his voice dropping to a low murmur. "I just wanted to be comfortable. I wanted to be left alone."
The screen remained still for a long heartbeat. Then, without warning, a white-hot agony tore through his entire being. It wasn't like a physical blow; it felt like every nerve he possessed was being threaded with jagged glass and electrified. Mike screamed, a raw, guttural sound that tore at his lungs until he was gasping for air in the vacuum of the void.
He collapsed forward, though there was no floor to catch him, clutching at his chest as the tremors subsided.
[Warning: This is partially correct, but it was not your primary ambition.]
"Motherfucker!" Mike wheezed, his eyes watering from the lingering sting. "It... it fucking hurt! What do you mean partially correct? How the hell do you know what my ambition was better than I do, you piece of shit?"
He shouted into the darkness, his voice cracking with a mix of rage and genuine terror. He had spent his whole life avoiding pain, avoiding conflict, and now this thing was reaching into his soul and judging his very thoughts.
The system remained indifferent to his outburst. It didn't argue or explain. It simply cleared the screen and flashed the exact same words, glowing brighter than before, as if demanding he look deeper.
[What was your primary ambition in your previous life?]
Mike stared at the letters, his breath coming in ragged hitches. He wanted to lie, he wanted to say he wanted to be rich, or famous, or a hero, but the memory of that soul-shredding pain kept his tongue tied. He thought back to the long nights in his quiet apartment, the books on his shelf, the way he watched the world from behind a screen.
He realized "comfort" was just the excuse he used to hide.
"I..." He stopped, his voice trembling as he forced the words out. "I wanted to be indispensable. and feel significant."
He closed his eyes tight, bracing for another surge of that agonizing white-hot light. "I wanted to be the one who knew everything. I wanted to feel like I mattered so much that people had to depend on me. I wanted them to look at me and see someone they couldn't live without. I wanted the praise. I wanted to be... someone."
He waited for the pain. He waited for the scream to tear out of his throat again. But the shock didn't come. Instead, the golden light softened, shifting into a steady, rhythmic pulse that felt like a heartbeat.
The words on the screen dissolved and reformed, the new question appearing with a slow, deliberate grace.
[If this was your desire, why did you not try to achieve it before you died?]