The abrupt cessation of existence. That's what it was. A hard stop, like a record needle scratching to silence. I, or what remained of me, was adrift in a sea of… nothingness? A profound, unsettling lack of sensation, yet paradoxically, a hyper-awareness of thought. It was a cruel joke, really.

  All those aspirations, those carefully constructed fantasies of a life well-lived, now scattered fragments of a shattered mirror. The warm weight of a loving hand, the triumphant clink of a champagne glass celebrating a hard-won promotion, the joyous chaos of children's laughter echoing through a sunlit home – all vaporized, replaced by this chilling, disembodied consciousness.

  "Did I…?" The thought echoed, a fragile whisper in the vast, silent expanse. "Did I actually die?" The very question felt absurd, yet it clawed at the edges of my perception, a persistent, gnawing doubt. It wasn't a dream, surely. The visceral memory of the impact, the sickening crunch of metal, the sudden, blinding flash of pain – these weren't the ephemeral phantoms of slumber.

  And then, there was the dog. The small, trembling creature, its rough fur brushing against my hand as I shoved it out of harm's way. That sensation, the frantic urgency, the desperate surge of adrenaline, felt too real, too raw, to be a mere figment of imagination.

  "Hello?" My voice, or the phantom echo of it, was swallowed by the void. "Is anyone there? Universe? God? Anyone?" A desperate plea, a futile attempt to pierce the impenetrable darkness. I’d always been a skeptic, a pragmatic soul who found solace in logic and reason.

  The concept of an afterlife, of divine intervention, had always seemed like a comforting fairy tale for the weak-minded. But now, faced with the stark reality of my own non-existence, I found myself grasping at straws, yearning for a sign, a glimmer of hope.

  "Jesus?" The name escaped my lips, a hesitant, almost fearful invocation. The irony wasn't lost on me. I, the staunch atheist, was now calling upon the very deity I had dismissed for so long.

  The silence that followed was deafening, a crushing weight that pressed down on my non-existent chest. A strange sense of dread mingled with a perverse relief. What would I have done if someone had answered? Would it be a comforting voice, or a terrifying entity?

  My mind, a frantic, trapped animal, raced in circles, desperately seeking an escape. "This is impossible," I muttered, the words a hollow echo in the emptiness. "I can't be dead. I'm still thinking, still aware. How can I be dead?"

  The contradictions warred within me, a chaotic symphony of denial and disbelief. One moment, the memory of the truck's impact was crystal clear, a brutal, undeniable truth. The next, a flicker of hope, a desperate clinging to the possibility of a mistake, a misinterpretation.

  "Maybe… maybe I'm in a coma," I whispered, the idea a fragile lifeline in the swirling chaos. "Maybe my body survived, even if my head took a hit. Maybe I'm lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines, my brain struggling to process the trauma." It was a flimsy theory, a desperate attempt to rationalize the impossible. But it offered a sliver of hope, a way to cling to the illusion of control.

  "But the dog…" The image of the trembling creature, its wide, frightened eyes, flashed before me. "I remember pushing it out of the way. I felt its fur, the frantic energy of its escape. How could that be a dream?" The memory was too vivid, too real, to be dismissed as a mere hallucination.

  The denial was a thick, suffocating blanket, a desperate attempt to ward off the cold, hard truth. But who could blame me? Who could readily accept the abrupt, premature end of their existence? I was young, or at least, I had been. I had plans, dreams, aspirations. I wasn't ready to fade into oblivion, to become a forgotten footnote in the grand, indifferent narrative of the universe.

  "I don't want to be dead," I cried out, the words a raw, primal scream in the silent void. "I don't want to be gone. Please, anything but this." The plea was a desperate, futile attempt to bargain with the universe, to rewrite the unchangeable. But in the face of the ultimate unknown, all that remained was the raw, unadulterated terror of non-existence.

  The green, not a color but a texture of wind, writhed across the absolute black. It wasn't merely dark; it was a void that swallowed light, a cavernous absence that pressed against the edges of my… whatever I was. Had there been a body, the terror would have been a physical scream. But there was only the wind, a spectral caress that, paradoxically, soothed the gnawing, unseen anxieties that clawed at the edges of my awareness.

  Then, the dance began. Not of the wind, but of me. Or, rather, a shimmering, distorted echo of what I might have been. A figure outlined in the same spectral green, a phantom silhouette that moved with a fluid, unsettling grace, like a reflection in a disturbed pool of mercury. It was a mirror held up to nothing, and yet, it revealed something… wrong.

  The realization hit like a physical blow. Sight, a concept utterly divorced from eyes, flowed into me. It was a raw, unfiltered perception, a direct translation of the void into… understanding. And what I understood was horrifying. My "body," or the space I occupied, was a swirling, translucent sphere, a nebula of condensed, whispering clouds. Each cloud, a fragment of thought, a wisp of memory, a phantom echo of emotion.

  This was not a dream. Dreams had rules, however twisted. This was a violation of reality, a dismantling of the fundamental laws of existence. The inner cacophony erupted, a chorus of screaming questions without answers. Doubt, a venomous serpent, coiled around the phantom core of my being.

  "Am I dead? Insane? Trapped in some cosmic glitch?"

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The logical part of me, a flickering candle in the overwhelming darkness, tried to grasp at reason. Coping mechanism, it whispered. A desperate attempt to process trauma. But the attempt felt feeble, a flimsy barricade against the rising tide of existential dread.

  Denial, I decided, a desperate mantra. "This is a dream. A very, very bad dream. I’ll wake up. I have to wake up."

  But the waiting was a torture. Time, a concept as fluid and distorted as my form, stretched and warped, each moment an eternity of silent, swirling dread. The wind continued its dance, a mocking reminder of a reality I no longer understood, or perhaps, had never truly known.

  The unending expanse of the void, a canvas of perpetual nothingness, had become my prison. The tinted wind, a phantom dancer, swirled around my form, an eternal, monotonous ballet. Days, or perhaps eons, had bled into one another, each indistinguishable from the last. The initial, faint hope that this was a bizarre, prolonged dream had withered and died, replaced by a chilling certainty. This was reality, or its twisted, post-mortem facsimile.

  "Maybe I am dead," I whispered, the soundless thought echoing in the emptiness. "If this is the afterlife, though, then what's the point?"

  Then, a tremor. A subtle, almost imperceptible shift in the fabric of the void. A flicker of excitement, a desperate, fragile bloom of hope, ignited within me. But the flicker was extinguished as quickly as it had appeared, consumed by a wave of agonizing, all-consuming pain. It was a psychic assault, a violation of my very essence. My non-corporeal mind, defenseless, was flooded with a torrent of memories, a forced, brutal retrospective of my life.

  The first scene was a jarring, alien experience: my own birth, a moment I had never consciously known. It was followed by a rapid-fire montage of childhood, a blur of playgrounds, classrooms, and awkward social interactions. Elementary school, junior high, high school – each phase of my life played out before me, a dispassionate, detached observer.

  Then, the abrupt, violent culmination: the blinding glare of headlights, the metallic crunch of impact, the sudden, irrevocable cessation of existence. Tony Truk, they called him. A drunk driver, a fleeting encounter that ended everything.

  The psychic intrusion receded, leaving me gasping for nonexistent air, my mind reeling. The forced replay of my life, especially its abrupt and violent conclusion, left a bitter, metallic taste in my soul. Why so young? Why this brutal, intrusive review? It felt like a violation, a surgical dissection of my memories without anesthetic. I imagined my brain, exposed and vulnerable, subjected to unseen, agonizing procedures.

  "Wait," I thought, a cold dread creeping into my awareness, "What if that's what's actually happening to me? Oh shit!"

  As the psychic pressure released, the void underwent a dramatic transformation. The oppressive darkness was banished, replaced by a radiant, sky-blue light. It was a sudden, jarring shift, like emerging from a pitch-black cave into the blinding midday sun. Wisps of emerald green, like ethereal ribbons, danced across the azure expanse. Still, there was nothing tangible, no form, no substance, just the vast, empty sky.

  "So... I'm definitely dead then?" I murmured, the words heavy with a reluctant acceptance. "What a bummer. Although, if this is the afterlife, where is everything, and why am I still surrounded by nothing?"

  As if in direct response to my unspoken question, the light intensified, escalating into a searing, blinding radiance. It was a million-watt assault on my non-existent retinas. I had no eyelids to shield myself, no physical form to turn away. I was forced to endure the agonizing brilliance, a silent scream trapped within my formless essence.

  The light eventually receded, leaving behind a lingering afterimage, a ghostly imprint on the inner canvas of my mind. "Damn, that hurt! Or did it?" I pondered, the question echoing in the vast emptiness. "Argh, I'm so confused."

  Once my senses returned, I surveyed my surroundings, expecting some grand revelation, some tangible manifestation of the afterlife. Pearly gates, celestial beings, a comforting, familiar presence – anything would have been preferable to this unending, featureless expanse. But nothing had changed, except for the color of the void. It was still nothing, just a blue nothing instead of a black nothing.

  "What was the point in blinding me then?" I wondered, a sense of weary frustration creeping in. "Do they think I'm happy that it's now blue instead of black? Well... Whoever's doing this isn't wrong, but this is not how I want to spend the rest of my existence."

  A chilling thought struck me. "What if this is what those fanatics call limbo?" I shuddered. "I really hope it isn't. This place sucks donkey balls. It's so boring, and there's nothing to do. I can't move myself, there's nothing to eat, and I haven't slept in days. Maybe I'm going mad?"

  "What's a guy gotta do to get noticed out here in the middle of nowhere?" I asked, my voice a silent, desperate plea. "Is it going to be like this forever? Hello!? Hey, Assholes!"

  And then, a change. A subtle, almost imperceptible shift in the fabric of reality. A soft, white light outlined a rectangular form, a box appearing directly in front of me. It was translucent, like my own form, but undeniably present, a physical object in this otherwise ethereal realm.

  "What the hell is that?" I whispered, my attention riveted on the strange apparition. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was an information box from old-school RPGs. Before they added voice features into games."

  "Why do you look like a text box?" I asked, the thought slipping out unbidden. "Was I expecting an answer?"

  The appearance of the box, the first tangible thing I had encountered since my death, triggered a wave of existential dread. "This must be it then," I thought, a heavy sense of finality settling over me. "How it ends. No afterlife and no second chances."

  The cogs that represent my brain are about to cease turning forever, marking the inevitable end of my short-lived existence. "I should have done more. I should have traveled and experienced more cultures. I should have loved and been loved in return. There was so much more that I wanted to see and do!"

  "Okay, maybe I dramatized that a little too much," I admitted to myself.

  Then, a flicker of movement within the box. Words, glowing with a soft, white light, materialized on its surface.

  "You still could."

  "Huh?" I breathed, my attention snapping back to the box.

  "Fucking go me," I thought, a surge of adrenaline coursing through my formless being. "I knew it was a text box. Who are you? Are you God? Or at least the creator of this place? Why am I still here? What's going on?"

  I waited, my non-existent heart pounding with anticipation. The words vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving me in a state of heightened anxiety. "Maybe I annoyed them?" I thought, a cold dread creeping into my awareness. "Shit. What if it doesn't answer back?" Then an even worse thought washed over me. The words disappeared just as fast as they had appeared, once I'd finished reading them. "What if I imagined that it answered me?"

  I took a deep, silent breath, steeling my nerves. "All or nothing," I thought. "The moment of truth. Here we go. Who are you?"

  A few agonizing seconds passed before I was given a response.

  "I am The System."