2nd February, 2005
First Day
Wednesday, 3:09 pm in Corner
Non-Crossover stuff I thought of when writing about the nine realms for *sfaj. I can’t help thinking of modern Asgard as something of a cross between the Zork series and Myst; that kind of semi-technological, semi-fantastical, all wondrous scenery. The mundane and the magic.
Lisa Hannity woke up the morning after the crash to a sky bluer than any she had ever seen. Birds called out joyously from all corners, and the grass beneath her was sily soft and fragrant in a way no grass had a reason to be.
“Am I dead?” she wondered aloud.
“I’m afraid so,” said a voice to her left. She sat up, groves of trees and bubbling streams and prancing forest animals entered her vision.
Lisa looked at the speaker; a young man with tousled brown hair of a particularly nondescript colour. He wore glasses, and an expression that managed to be somehow good natured and apologetic at the same time. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass and – impossibly – eating sushi from a plastic bento with a pair of disposable chopsticks. There was a can of apple cider sitting on the grass beside him.
He saw her looking at the food and held out the bento. “Want some?”
Lisa suddenly realised how hungry she was – dead people weren’t supposed to get hungry, were they? – but there was only one roll left. “Oh, no I couldn’t,” she said.
“It’s okay,” said the boy. “There’s enough. There’s always enough, here.”
Hesitantly, she took the last roll. So did the boy. There was, she realised, indeed enough.
“Where is… here exactly?” She looked around. “It seems a bit too, uh, wooded to be heaven.” There was also something that looked suspriciously like a large hall made from logs off in the distance. “It’s just that, uh, if this is Heaven, there must be some mistake. I don’t believe in God. not that one, anyhow…”
The boy nodded. “This is Idavoll. In Asgard.”
Lisa had been Asatru since age fifteen – all of two years ago, she thought ruefully. It has seemed like a lark at the time, everyone was getting into Wicca and the Celts and praising the Mother Goddess. It seemed like fun, but Lisa always had to be different – even when being different. So she had called herself Asatru, told people she worshipped the old Norse gods, had bought a pewter valknutr pendant from a new age shop for $20, and a bag of cowbone-carved runes for $50. She’d bought a book, and knew where to put her accents. She’d read American Gods and listened to all three days of the Ring Cycle. Somehow, now, it all seemed so petty.
“I can’t be here,” she said. “I… I was a crappy Asatru! I don’t even know any of the sacrifies or when ot do them or…”
The boy just laughed, patted her on the knee. “At least you tried,” he offered. “Look, you were interested. You knew all the stories, even if – in your heart of hearts – you didn’t really think they were true. You believed your pendant gave you luck and strength, even if logically you knew it didn’t. You bought stuff; that’s important nowadays, you know. And, most of all, you believed in this”– he gestured around him –“more than you believed in anything else. That counts as well.” He smiled again, stood up, collecting the remains of their lunch. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
Impossibly, there was a rubbish bin not too far away from where they had been sitting. It looked like a rubbish bin might look if it had been designed by elves, Lisa thought. The boy took one last swing at the can before depositing everything inside. They began walking across the plain – Idavoll, the boy had called it.
“I died in a bus crash,” she said, slowly. “Not in battle. I thought you had to die in battle to wind up in Asgard?”
The boy shrugged. “They changed it.”
“Oh. Can they do that?”
“It’s the twenty first century,” the boy pointed out. “Gods, on the whole, don’t like doing things differently; but no-one wants to die in battle and spend eternity feasting on roast boar and mead anymore. They’ve had to adapt.”
“Do a lot of people come here when they die, then?”
“Probably more than you’d expect. Not so many as used to come though, mind, but there are a lot more people around now than there used to be. And people write a lot more books than they used to. It’s funny what people believe in.” He stopped at the entrance to the hall Lisa had noticed earlier; up close she thought it looked something a little like a Viking hall and something a little like something out of a videogame. A weird amalgamation of the ancient and the modern.
“This is Gimle,” the boy said. “It used to be Valhall, but that was destroyed. This is where you’ll live until you get your own place built.” He pressed a glowing blue button on the doors, and they slid open with a mechanical hiss. Inside was a large room Lisa could only think of as a ‘rec’ area. Several other people were lounging around on exotic-looking furniature, reading books or talking. One boy was even playing what looked suspiciously like a GameBoy. They all waved at her cheerfuly as she walked past.
Towards the back of the room a group of people Lisa could swear were elves and dwarves stood around having an argument. They all worse variations on outfits that unmistakably screamed ‘council worker’.
“… says he wants us to put in some kind of magic, magic fridge at this end! Can you believe it? Says no-one eats roast boar anymore. Hump, if it was good enough in my grandpa’s day…”
“Well, we’re supposed to be working on picking up TV signals from Midgard. That’s insane! We may as well build our own studios…”
They walked out of earshot, up a set of winding stairs to a second level of long coridors and more of strange-looking doors. The boy opened one, gestured her inside; it was a bedroom with a small ensuite bathroom. Everything had an elegantly fantastical art deco feel about it. “You can stay here,” he said. “Some people stay in Gimle, others build their own homes around Idavol; there’s a real little town springing up, people are starting to open shops and everything.” He seemed very proud of this fact.
Lisa sat down on the large, round, gauze-draped bed. “It’s all so very… different.”
“You’re dead now,” the boy said. “Just think of it as like life, without all the bad bits. You have all the time in the world to do whatever it is you want. And if you ever get bored, you can always try reincarnation.” He seemed to notice her uncertainly, and said, “What did you enjoy doing back in Midgard?”
She chewed her lip. “Walking,” she said finally. “I like walking. You know, through forests. Just… looking at stuff.”
“Great! That’s easy. You’ve got eight whole worlds worth of exploring then. Moutains and forests and deserts and oceans like you’ve never imagined. I’ve only seen some of them, but it’s all very beautiful.”
“And… are there gods around?”
“Oh yes. Nor so many as there used to be, but they’re around. They spend most of their time in Sindri, on Nidafjoll – that’s just beyond the forest, follow the path and you can’t miss it.”
Lisa studied the boy intently. She was about to ask whether he was a god, when something abruptly began playing a muzak version of Darth Vader’s march.
The boy pulled a mobile out of his pocket, flipped it open. “You done?” he asked it. “Alright. Meet you back at the car? Oh, did you remember to pick up that sword… Oh good. She’ll just drop dead when she sees it. Okay, see you in five.” He flipped the phone shut with a snap, turned to smile at Lisa apologetically. “Sorry, I have to go. I’ll send Jimmy downstairs to come check on you in a bit if you like. Good guy, he’ll get you up and running in no time.”
“Thank you,” Lisa told the boy, who said goodbye with a cheerful wave and hurried out.
After he was gone, Lisa sat on the bed. She thought of her mother, her father and her little brother. She supposed she should miss them, but they seemed so far away in this place. Instead, she thought of rolling green plains punctuated with steely standing stones. Of forests of trees so big she couldn’t seven see their first branches, not to mention their tops. Of elves and dwarves worred about fridges and TV stations. Very slowly, she started to smile.
“Well Lisa,” she told the room, “welcome to the first day of the rest of your death.”
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