1 And So It Begins!....Again

Year 2043 in Earth:

Skye, in most cases, is a typical 4th year university student studying Mechanical and Electronics Engineering. It was his last semester in university and his project report was due in 3 weeks. Like every graduate student he was also continually postponing his work, playing video games and binge-watching TV series. It was his routine. Even yesterday night, instead of starting on his report he started yet another TV series " Love by Chance "and binge watched it till 6 in the morning and slept after finishing season 1.

In the afternoon of next day Skye unenthusiastically woke up from his bed, emptied his tank, brushed his teeth and got naked for a shower. Just before he was going to turn on the tap for his shower, he was startled and jumped back. He jumped so hard he slammed himself into the back wall of his bathroom, slipped on the floor and fell flat on his bum. After a moment he slowly whimpered a little and twisted his torso to rub his back and his bum.

Few seconds later he looked up and there it was, the cause for his scare. There was a holographic screen in front of him appearing out of nowhere and it was just hovering in the air without connected to any source. It was simple and normal like any other holographic screen but it felt ethereal, like it was made by the heavens. It was sky blue in colour and radiating a warm glow, enough to lit up 2 meters around it. If it was showing itself in any street, everybody who could see it could feel that it was something divine, the devout might even prostrate and declare that god has sent his messenger.

But what scared Skye was that it was in his bathroom. For a brief moment he felt that some of his stupid friends might be pranking him, to record his reaction and post it on university social media page, or worse some weird psycho might be recording him bathing. But after a few seconds he dismissed those thoughts and looked at the screen. It was mostly blank with a timer at the bottom right corner counting down from 4:24. And only one line displaying on it

' Congratulations you are selected to participate in Game Of Divine Selection '

"Divine Selection, huh, such a grandiose name. But how did it pop up here?" Skye thought to himself.

He tried touching it, but his hand passed right through it. He was surprised, because it looked very solid to his eyes. His curiosity got kindled and he went around it, observing. He splashed some water on the screen, and as he thought the water went right through it. Even though he saw something like this in movies, it was all video graphics, and the current technology was not capable of producing such a good quality holographic screen. While he was curiously observing the screen and playing around, the timer unknowingly reached '0' . A spacial rift suddenly opened above him and he got sucked into it and transported into a different space.

After getting teleported, Skye found himself in an endless dark space, like a void. Since all you could see was black, you cannot even tell if it really was endless or not. Within the void he heard a deep voice calling out to him.

"Oye kid"

"What are you looking here and there for kid ? I am here behind you."

Looking towards his back, Skye saw a radiant glow. It was pulsating, albeit very slowly, like a human heart. In the middle of the divine glow there was a black orb, the darkest colour he has ever seen, even the void felt like it was grey after he looked at the orb. That's wasn't the only thing, he couldn't even make out what it was clearly. One moment it felt like it was there and the next moment it wasn't. One moment it felt like it existed since eternity and the next moment it felt ephemeral. It was the most mysterious thing he has ever seen. He only looked at it intently for a few seconds and suddenly he felt a severe headache, as if prompting him, that he lacked the mental energy to comprehend what really it was.

Thinking the orb was the source of the voice he replied, "Who the hell are you calling a kid, can't you see? I am not a teenager anymore. I am 21? "

" Ohh!...you are a hot-blooded one aren't you" the voice chuckled.

"Listen kid I don't have all day to play along with your antics, I got lots of things to manage. I am only going to say this once, so sit tight and listen right." the voice said in a serious tone.

" You might be wondering what is happening? What place is this? what am I doing here? etc, and lots of other things. You will get the answers to most of your questions, so listen carefully.

Each year God randomly selects a high intelligence life form of the planet, from each planet of all the universes and teleports them into his private world 'EDEN', to participate in the 'Game Of Divine Selection', until the rise of a winner to become his Divine Agent.

The Divine agent will be granted infinite powers and will be able to command me ' The Space-Time Orb' for a billion years, after which a new game begins and a new Divine Agent is selected.

Till now the G.O.D.S has been conducted 13 times and 13 Divine Agents have commanded me. It is now time to choose a new Divine Agent and so the 14th G.O.D.S has started and

Congratulations you are selected to participate in the Game Of Divine Selection.

G.O.D.S is a survival race. Survival because you will have to kill other participants to gain their life force, one of their skills and some of their attributes to live and develop your powers. Race because the first one to command me will be the winner and become a Divine Agent.

Later you will be teleported to a random location in EDEN and from there you will begin the game." saying up-to here, the voice became silent, as if it was giving time for Skye to process the information he was just given. It did so happen that Skye really needed time to process everything the voice just said.

Skye was just standing there, stiff like a rock with a dazed expression thinking " Game? G.O.D.S? Divine Agent? EDEN? What bull***t is this dream. It is so weird. Instead of dreaming some raunchy scenes, why am I dreaming this rubbish."

Just as he was thinking of waking up himself, the voice spoke again, but this time in a grave tone it said

" Kid, how dare you blaspheme the divine process. Say that again and you shall suffer a fate worse than death."

Skye immediately shrunk back in fear. He felt an immense killing intent radiating out of the orb. Never before has he felt so afraid and involuntarily his body was immediately drenched in sweat all over. Just by the killing intent the pressure surrounding him increased so much that his knees couldn't take it anymore, they buckled and he fell. His back and shoulders bent and his face touched the ground in the posture of kowtowing. Under that immense pressure he couldn't even move a muscle, let alone apologize.

Seeing his miserable state, the orb lessened the pressure a bit and then continued saying "Whether you believe it to be real or a dream, it doesn't matter to me. It is happening. "

"I am sorry to blaspheme, please forgive me. I thought I was still dreaming and spouted rubbish. Please forgive me." Skye said with utter sincerity as the pressure reduced. He was clear of one thing, this was no joke, it's all happening for real, because he realized he could never dream of feeling such a huge pressure and still not wake up.

After Skye apologized the Orb took back its killing intent and after a few moments Skye could stand normally like before, but he was still drenched in sweat. With his full focus he now listened to the orb. Suddenly the holographic screen popped up in front of Skye again and then the orb spoke.

"If you look at your left forearm, there is a number written on it. It represents the amount of Life force you have left. Each unit is a day of your life. You currently have 13512 days worth of life force left in your body, hence the number is 13512. After every day the count reduces by 1. Once the count reaches 0 you will die." Skye looked at his left forearm and as the orb said there were numbers written on it, in a tiny font, the number 13512.

"If you look in front of you, the screen you see is your personal information interface. You will find all the information about you in that, like your name, traits, attributes and other things. You can slowly explore it later on. But now it's time for you to teleport to EDEN. Wish you Luck." Skye vision slowly started becoming blurry soon after the orb finished speaking.

"Wait, wait, I have some questions, WAIT !!!!" Skye shouted in a hurry but there was no response and the next moment he got teleported into the middle of a grassland.