ISEKAI

Jin

Hi, I'm Jin. Typically, I don't do much as a Reaper, short of maybe tell Adolf Hitler that there are other options besides killing a bunch of Jews, Romani gypsies, gays, and the like. You can see how that went. But then again, I also convinced a bunch of other people to stand up to him, so it kinda all worked out.  I mainly act when people use their free will to strip others of their free will. Or when people are at a crossroads, and need good advice. My words aren't always welcome, but they are honest.

Atarashi Chikyu

I'm a university student in America in a Sociology course with a minor in Women's Studies. I am male, but I've always felt like I should have been born female. White males have always been the oppressors of women and blacks, I mean, People of Color, throughout history. As for my country, I do not understand why such a racist evil country should be allowed to exist. I am thankful only that I am Japanese-American, and thus not guilty of some of the atrocities done by this country.  At least, not on my mother's side. I am convinced that my father's people probably had been slaveowners somewhere in their past. 

After a heated discussion with some racist who somehow made it into my school (such people shouldn't have the right to breathe the same air as me), I stormed off in a huff. Where did those people crawl out from, and how dare they think they can tell me that I'm the racist one? I angrily replayed their words in my head. "You think that you're helping out minorities, right? So why is it that all these courses, these 'studies' keep women and blacks in a culture of victimhood? People who actually work for a living generally break any past injustice within their own generation, but you as an Asian-American, who typically is one of the more successful minorities... You have instead chosen a field of study that will qualify you for working at Starbucks and collecting welfare." I kept thinking about their words, looking for a snappy comeback, and walking ahead without looking. Pretty soon, I was in an intersection looking up arguments in response on my cellphone while holding a venti iced skinny hazelnut macchiato with extra cinnamon, when a large horn sounded. An oncoming truck was heading my way.

My field of vision faded for a moment. A tall blond woman in a rainbow-colored robe stood in front of me. It wasn't the LGBT Pride rainbow, but it had a calming effect on me nonetheless. Although she carried a sharp weapon (weapons are evil), she had a kind face, and eyes that convinced me that she would be a sympathetic party to my plight. "Maybe you might wanna get out of the way," she advised, shortly before the truck presumably slammed into me hard. I closed my eyes bracing for the impact.

The next thing I knew, I was in some kind of swirling empty space, staring her in the face. Hey, maybe this was that isekai thing that I'd heard so much about! It was probably my time to be rewarded for my commitment to social justice. Maybe I'd be given incredible magical powers, a new body, and a harem of my own. I'd get to fight against leaders, and convince ancient cultures to treat minorities better and embrace globalism and diversity. All while attracting a catgirl, an angel, and a martial artist lady. Plus, I'd turn into a girl myself, since I'd always imagined being a lesbian woman instead of a mostly white male.

"So, what do I get?" I asked the tall woman. She looked at me with a confused look on her face, "What do you get? I don't..." I explained, "You're a deity here to send me to another world, right? I get to keep a cellphone, or I get special powers, or maybe I get a large harem of powerful women to fight for me. Or maybe I get to choose how I look, and what gender I get to be." A dawning realization showed up on her face, followed by disgust. "Oh, not another one," she said.

Uh oh. Maybe this wasn't what I thought? "Then, are you one of those conservative Christian deities here to send me off to Hell?"

She chuckled, "I'm not a demon! Do I look like I'd do that?" She did not.  She continued,"Also, if you're not a believer in that, why are you concerned with such a thing? I mean, you could believe in basically any Afterlife, why would you choose one you hated?" I was confused, because what she was saying seemed different from what I expected. "So," I said, "if this isn't an isekai, and I'm not going to Hell, what's going on?"

She shook her head, "Let me finish. Let us assume you are dead, and that you're going to be reincarnated in a new world. You mind if I brutally trash any and all of your assumptions?" I sighed, "No, not at all."

"First of all, why do you want a cellphone? Any new world that I could send you to that even had cellphone reception, you'd just have a regular cellphone. I'm not a deity, just a Reaper, so I can't make artifacts. Either it's a mundane cellphone, in which case it has no bars in a magical world, or it's some sort of magical item which is subject to all the same limits as regular magic. Anyway, would you really be happy living in a world where you had to cheat in order to make it through? I suspect this genre is popular because of slackers who want life to be handed to them."

I didn't really have an answer to that one, so I let it go. She continued, "As for powers, you realize that in a magical world, everyone else has powers too, right? Even if I made you the most powerful person around, there would still be things like a feudal system. You'd spend all your time fighting people, because ultimately, your modern sensibilities leave you unable to survive in the ancient world without substantially changing it. Ancient people with magic and survival skills like hunting, fishing, farming, and crafting would do far more good in a modern world with a few computer classes than someone from the modern period back then. You'd be too secular to understand supernatural powers, and too overspecialized from how most businesses are set up.  You wouldn't be even make a simple item. What trade would hire you? You can't even fight properly!" 

"Third, it sounds like you're transgender. I could probably do that one if you wanted," she said. I nodded vigorously. She continued, "But again, you'd find that ancient women get a rather raw deal. Do you realize that women now have the right to inherit property, something not present in society for centuries? That they get the right to work, and in some cases are the head of their household, they have right to vote, and even to be great scientists or engineers? Yet, they instead waste their opportunities and their parents' fortunes by choosing nonsense courses like sociology or women's studies, learning about how oppressed they are instead of doing something to better themselves." I suddenly felt sheepish about my own choice of major.

"Also, do you even know what a harem is?!? The early harems were about sex slaves. The harem danced and otherwise pleasured the people who owned them. That you ignorantly use this term for more or less the same concept shows your true mindset. You want a woman to be loyal to you without question, along with three or five or whatever women, while you in turn are not at all loyal to them. That is a slave." I started getting irritated at this point, yet she continued lecturing me.

"Lastly, why do you even want to go to another world? Your world will enter an age of prosperity, but for entitled rich kids like Greta... Thornberry, was it? Kids who live with every advantage, yet blame the country that gave it to them. You live in America, right? America abolished slavery, did away with sexual inequality, and gave women the right to vote. Now, if you asked a woman on the street if she'd like to sign a paper to end women's suffrage, most of them would be dumb enough to sign it. "

At this, I finally had enough. How dare she criticize famed environmentalist, Greta Thunberg. I said, "Hey you, ummmm, you..." She interjected, "I'm the Reaper of Free Will." I continued, "Where do you get off telling me how bad a person I am? I live in a country that may have abolished slavery, but it is still so far behind the rest of the world. America hasn't embraced globalism, environmentalism, free medicine, or anything that other countries do? They don't have the metric system. They don't have socialized medicine. Why can't I wish that I was living in another world? What's wrong with that?!?"

She sighed, "The problem with living in another world is that you are content to let your own world fail. Let me show you what I have seen." She touched my forehead, and suddenly, I saw how everyone from the Chinese to the Romans to many others had slaves. How not only were whites enslaved, from everything from galley workers to field workers to sex slaves, but blacks in Africa often enslaved other blacks. How many priests advocated for their release of slaves and for the abolition of slavery. How Europeans modeled their societies on American actions, and in turn abolished it in their own countries. How globalism by contrast created open borders that resulted in Hispanics being exploited for wage slavery, prostitution, and child abuse. How most environmentalism caused problems of its own, such as wind turbines that chopped up birds or solar panels that polluted the water with graphene. How "free" medicine created higher taxes and more dependence on government, along with more people living in slum housing. And how all of these things created society that was less free, less happy, and less prosperous than simply acknowledging the actions of generations that had come before.  "You have a choice," she said, "you can continue to hate your native land. I can send you to one with catgirls and magic, and you can see how powerless you are in such a world. Or you can learn to love the land you were born in. And I will give you what help I can."

"I think I'll try again. I'll be reborn, but I'll make another go of it in this world," I suggested. She chuckled, "Remember, I said, 'Let us assume you are dead.' You just have to wake up..." I heard her sweet voice giggling as it trailed off...

I awoke from a coma with a start. "You were out for a couple of years!" a voice to my right explained.  I turned to see a blond woman with a familiar face, likely the doctor. "A couple of years? What year is it? ...Wait, what's wrong with my voice?!?" I looked felt my throat, and found no Adam's apple. Confused, I looked at my body. Where a man's chest once were, instead I saw large breasts, wide hips, and narrow waist. I noticed my hair had grown as well. She answered, "You got electrocuted in 2014. You were in a coma for nearly seven years. Since then, Trump got elected, and then Joe Biden. There's more..." Trump? The real estate agent turned reality TV show star? What was this world coming to? I heard snippets of the rest of her explanation on current events, "...So because of this, everyone has to wear a mask." I thought about what I'd felt earlier.  Such people shouldn't have the right to breathe the same air as me, I had believed. It was funny how easily my wish had been granted, and how little I appreciated it now. Before, I would have fully embraced the idea that we had to have government keep us safe, now I saw these things as actions of a monstrous police state. But oh, she hadn't answered my question. "Nevermind that!" I roared, "Tell me why I'm suddenly a girl!" She showed me a few pieces of paper. You see, before my unfortunate accident, I'd done more than simply muse about being the opposite sex. I had talked with a therapist and gotten consent to identify as female. It was her professional opinion that if I ever got in a disastrous accident with a long-term coma, I was okay for any surgeon to give me a sex change. Funny, I don't really remember spending all that time with a therapist or having that kind of strangely specific form being signed, but I guess I must have.

"When we operated, we found a surprise. You actually have a working vagina and ovaries. They were blocked off by your penis and testes, so they couldn't initially be seen, but once those were gone, your body was quickly able to replace its hormones. It's like someone altered reality or something to make sure that you were able to live life as a woman, and even become pregnant if you chose." She smiled as if she had told some kind of joke that went over my head.

But something wasn't right, "I wasn't electrocuted! I was hit by a truck." She explained, "You were holding some sort of pretentious coffee drink while typing on a cellphone. The truck swerved, but the coffee tipped and your cellphone shocked you and put you into a coma.  Anyway, I need to check on other patients..." I called out before she left, "Doctor?" She turned, "Yes? Anything else?"

"Thank you," I said. She smiled, "In this life, we always have choices. Remember that." To less of my shock than I should have felt, she vanished before my eyes. I didn't know what this year or the next would bring, but I made a choice. A choice to live, and to live a full life. Maybe people would tell me in the future what I could and couldn't do, but I didn't have to listen anymore.

bulmabriefs144

Sorry, this one is kinda preachy. Honestly, it's a "write what you know." I used to be a lot more liberal, but again and again, I found that my assumptions about the world were wrong. It's heavy-handed as hell, but I wouldn't write it if it weren't true to me. I used to even be okay with the idea that border security was wrong, but then I saw just how exploited these immigrants could get, and how the very people in favor of them were not great friends of minorities but rather those who saw an opportunity to exploit outsiders while our own workers struggled to find decent jobs. The part about "not breathing the same air" is particularly telling. Much of the rationale for continuing many of the COVID restrictions is a sort of elitism, where people don't care to sit in the same spaces as those they disagree with. I honestly think this world could stand to be a bit more moderate. But anyway, yeah this chapter sucks. I prefer the one after it.