Jack Reynard trudged through the howling wind and rain towards More Bang for your Books, a new and slightly used book store. His walk was the perfect accompaniment to his miserable day. Jack was just off work where Penny in accounting called because her "monitor wouldn’t change channels back to her payroll software" after opening the link to that cat video her friend Claudia sent. She said she knew she shouldn’t be doing that at work, but Claudia sent it to everyone, and Penny refused to be left out. As Jack Googled and made angry sounds at Penny’s computer, his neighbor texted him to let him know that some random truck had skidded out in the rain and run over his little free library.

The rain had ruined all the books by the time Jack got home, and Jack had nothing to replace them. Who keeps actual books anymore? Not Jack. His books were a click away, and no reason to leave his house. But keeping the library was essential to his image. It kept him just this side of quirky rather than creepy. He wasn’t doing himself any favors as a 46-year-old bachelor living in his run-down, 3-bedroom bungalow across from a school. Sure, he had a girlfriend once, but she committed suicide. That was a pleasant 'dear John' letter. Plus, at the last community yard sale, Steve called him a furry. Jack was not a furry. I just dressed up the one time for that convention. I enjoy cosplaying. Why had Steve gone to the con anyway? The Canadians had played that day, and the city had not run out of beer.

Stepping into More Bang for your Books was a breath of fresh air. Well, it was a breath of musty air with just a hint of cat pee, but Jack would take it. At least the store was empty, quiet, and dry. Seriously, who keeps actual books anymore? Well, other than those people who do adult coloring books. Jack likes the ones with hidden swear words. Maybe I will get one while I'm here. Probably the only thing that is keeping this place open. First, to find some treasures to stock his little library. 

"Hello," he called out by habit only to be met with silence.

He hoped the owner hadn't offed themself. That would make this day just perfect. No body was behind the till, so maybe they were just out to grab a coffee.

Jack made his way to the back of the store. The newly bought old books lay in heaps in a mini stock room with a no entry sign. Jack hadn’t even seen the owner yet. As long as he bought something, why should they care? Randomly grabbing the fresh stock would be more convenient than walking all the aisles. 

Best to pick up a little bit of everything. Well, except religion and politics. I don't need the house vandalized again.

He took one of the 57 copies of last month’s reverse harem vampire romance and gave a side-eye to a fantasy book with a woman on the cover. Have to be careful there. Just one fantasy harem book and the little library would work against him. The girl on the cover didn’t look like she would cause him any trouble, but Jack had been fooled by more than one cover like that before. I'll leave that one behind to be safe. With my luck, that book will have the main character having sex with an anthropomorphized ant.

Later, after collecting a small pile of literary masterpieces, Jack was about ready to find a coloring book and wake the owner up. As he was getting ready to stop trespassing, he turned and saw the one organized shelf in the room. It had a group of softcover books all neatly arranged with a hardcover book sitting primly in the middle, giving the middle finger to his OCD. How could someone who works at a bookstore do that? Anyone willing to organize this mess would have to be just as upset as me. Curious, he grabbed the book. The shelf swung out to reveal a rickety stairway leading down. The book was Journey Through the Hidden Door by Kimberly Hartman. That's a bit on the nose. It was also a sign, and Jack had ignored the last one. He wasn't a complete anarchist, so he figured he ought to see where this one led.

Coming to the bottom of the stairway, Jack walked in on a little old lady in a blue sweater with a sunflower on it. She looked up from cutting crystal into baggies and yelled at him to stop. 

I knew it had to be something other than coloring books keeping this place open. Jack's last thought as grandma puts a bullet between his eyes and darkness smashes through his mind.

❖

Jack was standing in a line. It was a nice line as these things go. Less airport security and more waiting to get into the town church before mass. Except that there were at least a few thousand people before him, and he couldn't see the end. Not that he had anything better to do. Jack's books were gone. His thoughts were hazy, but he was pretty sure he hadn't even gotten to pick a coloring book.

What is going on? Jack was working up to working up the nerve to ask the elderly gentleman ahead of him. Social interaction was not his strong suit. It was a lovely day out anyway. He had some time before he needed to worry about it.

When was the last time I was this calm? No perky Penny, no Steve skidding out his tires and rolling coal in his truck while coming home half an hour after I just managed to get to sleep, no mind-numbing ennui from the utter pointlessness of my existence. Wait. Shouldn't there at least be some mind-numbing ennui?

"Hi Jack," said the large cat man? Being? 

...

"You with me, Jack?" said the substantial cat being that had snuck up by walking over straightforwardly while Jack was thinking.

"Wah? AHHHH, um, oh. Hi?" said Jack. Are his eyes made out of swirling fire? That has to hurt. It's a good thing it's so nice today. He'd be screaming if they burned. Maybe they are just like a nice warm hug next to his brain. That seems right.

"That will be the second hand God high," said the broad-shouldered eight-foot-tall steel-grey furred cat-being with liquid-fire eyes. 

"God high?"

"Pure aerosolized love. Nothing else in existence like it. Just blissed out by His presence, you know? Most people think they are waiting on the pearly gates or something, but why bother? The more people stand in line, the more users He gets. The more users He has, the more love He can push. He'll have you up to a full dose in a century or so, and then nothing else will matter. Why would you do anything when nothing can make things better than they are? It's the perfect system. Well, other than lack of fear response when something like me walks up to you. Nothing's perfect, I guess. Except, well, you get it."

"That sounds good. I do like bliss. Well, not the terror part, maybe. If you were going to eat me, you probably would have. Are you going to eat me?"

"What! Fuck no, Jack. I have better things to do than play with my food, and it's not like there is any substance behind you anyway. Look, this is not why I came by."

"Wait, did you drop an f-bomb in God's love cloud? Are we fucked? Fuck!"

"It's fine, Jack. It's pure love. Nothing can make it better, and because of that, it can't be made worse. That's what keeps the bliss flowing. Now try to keep up here. You can think of me as The Tinkerer. I'm one of the lesser Gods. I'm here because you owe me. Do you remember that time you took apart a CRT monitor in 4th grade and didn't die? That was me. Or when you used a magnetized screwdriver to put together your first gaming PC after spending two month's wages on parts, and it didn't fry. I had your back."

"Oh man, that computer was sweet. Wait, is it cool if I call you a man? Anyway, the point is the original Duke Nukem was awesome."

"It was. It got a surprising amount of playtime around these parts. And yeah, we're cool, I get it. But look, let's get back to me. I don't need much here. I only want to know what happens when I try something. You hardly have to do anything at all. I want to know what happens when you divide a soul by zero."

"Look, The Tinkerer, I may be super high right now, like, so high I won't even mention how pretentious giving yourself a name title is. I'm fairly certain that you can't divide a soul by zero. Doing the math on not math things doesn't add up."

"Ok, so you aren't wrong, Jack. Do you want me to try to explain this? Of course, you do. Ugh, code monkeys. So your soul is mostly an n-dimensional array, or is it a vector? It doesn't matter. We will sort it out. The point is it needs to be smashed into a package so the simulation can keep track. That gets encoded down into a string so that it's easier to pass your reference around. We grab that string and convert it to an integer, then divide you by zero. Easy. Probably. It's not like I've tried this before. I'm at least fifty percent sure it will work. And think how exciting the result could be! Do you become a God yourself? Does the universe implode into a singularity? Nobody knows Jack! Don't you kind of want to find out?"

Well, if the universe collapses down to a singularity, it will shorten this line and condense the love. I suppose that's not much of a risk. It is a beautiful day today, and I have the time. Let's do this thing. Jack gets thrown outside of reality as the universe collapses into a point behind him. Wait, He only divided my reference by zero. Once again, darkness smashes through his mind.

❖

Had Haipo, God of that which does not exist, existed, Ze would have woken to a crack in reality. It could have been a problem, but there wasn't usually any reality to crack. There also wasn't any usually for the reality that wasn't there to crack in. Haipo was used to dealing with this kind of nonsense. Ever since that darn kids of Zirs Kuwepo Na Kipindi came to be, there had been a whole lot of everything spinning around. That good for nothing can deal with this. Haipo metaphorically kicked Jack's soul at the spinning wave of everything that surrounded Zir nothing. Get off my lawn.

❖

The Twin God of existence, Kuwepo Na Kipindi, thought it was all kind of a drag. Kuwepo did not have the time to deal with everything, and Kipindi did not have the space to work it all out. Overall They decided that They did not want to be a micromanager. They had better things to do. Who else is going to keep this whole thing spinning? Someone else could figure out the details. They'd let the shit roll downhill. They took one look at Jack as he came by, and that's just what They let him do.

❖

>> Critical Alert: Unbound Soul Error (145)

Uchawi Na Ajabu, God of magic and wonder, was busy transmuting Her empty tea mug into a pastry when the alert came in. It was beyond Her why the system decided it needed Her administrative approval to encapsulate this guy. I might as well have a look before I turn this error into a new cup of tea. 

"What! No Magic class! Who are you to think you can eschew me, little soul!"

Uchawi knew she was not the best system programmer, but She would kluge something together to fix this atrocity. She'd forward her work over to Her sister Mantiki when She was done. She can make sure it doesn't break anything too bad.

❖

Mantiki Na Sababu, God of logic and reason, just got the message from Her sister that She was trying to code something again. Her request had to be good for a laugh anyway. I hope all the semicolons exist in this reality this time. At least She sent it before trying to compile it. Maybe She learned something from the incident.

"This is just...what was She...oh for the love of void."

Fixing Her sister's projects always turned into a monumental mess that was more headache than Mantiki could account for. Some of these references were turning themselves into ice cream before her eyes. It's not even vanilla. I do not know what that girl was thinking. At least the guy under all this understood recursion. That makes all this effort a little less galling. I should scrap this and rewrite it from scratch. Uchawi will pitch a fit, though. I do not need any universal truths being turned into glitter today. Sure it stays everywhere, but it is impossible to get out. And I'm done. I should pass this on to Asili to make sure this poor guy is ok after all these changes.

❖

Asili Ya Milele, God of eternal nature, hated coding. She found it soul-crushing. Though She supposed, in this case, that was why her sisters had forwarded Her this mess. 

"Let's have a look at you. Show me on the doll where the bad Gods touched you."

All the stuff that should grow seemed to be growing, and none of the fiddly bits seemed bruised too bad. I may get off easy this time. Chakras are ok. The spinny thing is spinning. Wait, what's this bit about furries. Well, I suppose we can fix you up. You may as well get something out of all this.

Asili tossed Jack's soul at the closest group of sticks when She was done. Eventually, he would filter his way through the world tree and rejoin the river of reincarnation.

❖

Kuchachusha, God of fermentation and leavening, was finishing his latest round of testing. His processes were running fine, which meant that He was running three sheets to the wind. He was out of the inn and halfway home when the urge hit Him. How many liters of that stuff did I drink? He stumbled down the bank of the river of reincarnation so that he could get some privacy and sweet relief.

"Woah! Ha! Sorry about that little soul! It was an emergency! I'll..blech..I'll make it up to you in the morning. Yeah. Definitely in the morning."

Having done his duty, Kuchachusha passed out and spent a peaceful night under the stars.

❖

As Jack snaps into consciousness, there is an eternal instant where he experiences everything that happened since his last thought. He stands atop a mountain of void and watches as everyone and everything collapses into a point of pure love. He feels the void slam him through a crushing wave of everything. He enters the surge of existence, and it finds him wanting. He shatters as clawing thoughts and feathered hands complete their work.

She isn’t sure what it is, but it is different now. Mouthless, she screams as an amber wave slams into her. She feels woozy as the amber fluid seeps into the cracks of her soul, offering her healing and depression in equal measure. Her consciousness is woozy as she stumbles along its brink. She isn’t sure if she is trying to laugh or weep as the darkness comes for her again. She understands that this is her last chance to know its comforts even as she staggers away from it towards a new light.

>> Initializing Spawn. Please Wait.