A White Space
Slowly, Arnold started to regain his senses. Everything felt strangely murky, as if he was underwater. His arms felt weird, everything in front of him was blurry, and he could hear a garbled noise coming from who knows where. "Ugh, where I am I" Arnold said as he shook himself awake.
"GET UP" a voice hollered.
Surprised, Arnold got up and looked around. Everything was a pure blank white, but not completely flat. There were white hills, white valley, white buildings. Heck, there was even a giant white mountain in the distance. Around there features, semi-transparent people just idling around. They were doing whatever you could think of. Standing around, fighting, building some weird white machines, playing music, staring aimlessly into space, among other things. However, most were just sitting around. In fact, there was one right in front of him. A old man with with a long flowing beard was trying to get his attention.
HEY, I'M TALKING TO YOU" the face in front of him yelled.
"H-Huh, wha iz it?" Arnold managed to force some incoherent words out of his mouth as he struggled to understand what was happening.
"C'mon, focus here. You died, and now you're stuck with the rest of us. And by the way, my name's Li Wei. "
"What, that can't be right, if I died then where am I…" Arnold's voice trailed off as he finally registered the fact that he was in a completely white space as far as the eye could see. No matter what, he couldn't think of a place on Earth that was like this. Even still, he had a hard time accepting the fact that he was dead when everything felt so.. Real. He looked at his hand to pinch himself and make sure everything was real, when he realized that like everyone else, he was transparent. He asked the person in front of him "So, can you explain to me what exactly is going on?'
"Sure" Li Wei replied. "After anyone in any world dies, they end up here."
"Wait, any world" Arnold interrupted.
"Hush child, be quiet while I explain. Yes, there are millions of worlds other than the one you lived in, something that few other than the powerful know. And as I was starting to explain before, when a person dies they always come here. The only way to prevent this is to become strong enough to prevent your soul from being taken. However, seeing as you ended up here, you obviously didn't meet that requirement."
"Wait, so is there any way to ever escape this place? Am I stuck here forever?
"Since you're new here, I will magnanimously answer your questions, but don't expect this to be the case with everyone. The only way to escape is if some sort of spatial fluctuation occurs. If that happens, a rip, hole, vortex, or some other kind of oddity will appear. Then you can jump into that fluctuation and try your best to escape. In the various worlds this kind of event would be extremely rare, but since so many souls come over from so many different worlds, this space is more unstable than your average world. But even then, these sort of chances only appear every hundred or so years. And when they appear, they can last from anywhere between a second or a few minutes. Even when they appear, not many people choose to go through them as spatial fluctuations can be extremely dangerous and unstable. Once I saw a poor soul leap into a black vortex that appeared, and he was ripped to shreds in front of my very eyes."
"Alright, so we're pretty much stuck here for all of eternity. From what you're saying, there's not really any way to get out of here, am I right?"
"Yep, you're going to be stuck here for a long time. But here's one rule to never forget unless you want to disappear, remember who you are."
"What do you mean?" Arnold asked
"Well, I've mentioned that there's only one way to escape and that it's infrequent and unreliable. Yet despite that, there are not that many people around considering how many people day every seconds across all the worlds. There's two reasons for this, the first being that this space is infinite, or at least nobody's ever found the boundary, even with millions of years available to try. However, the bigger concern is that over time, souls start to fade away. We're not really sure why, but we think it's because they forget who they are. Fading away isn't a slow process by any means, it can take millennia if people are able to retain their sense of self. Your soul is who you are, and if you forget that, tiny particles of your soul start to float away making you more transparent. And when you lose that last bit of yourself, you simply scatter into small soul particles. I've heard that that's the reason why this space is so white and why it's never ending. As soul particles float around, they can stick to other soul particles. After a few thousand years without any disruption, the particles become so clumped together that they become solid, and you can walk on them. Underground where the pressure is greater, you can even have soul crystals forming. Look around you and you can see how some people are fading away. Li Wei explained
Prompted by Li Wei, Arnold looked around at all the other souls who were doing various activities. While many were talking amongst themselves, most were aimlessly wandering about. Those who were just walking around tended to be more transparent than the rest. If an ordinary soul was like a could of white dust, these souls were more like clouds of fog moving about. Their features blurred the more transparent they became, and the most transparent ones were like mannequins. Of course, there were also really solid souls just wandering about aimlessly and sleeping, and really blurry souls talking with others, but they were rare. As he looked around and realized that he too could become like that, Arnold shivered. When he had died, he hadn't had much time to really process what was happening, the shock made him not even feel any fear. But looking at the spirits around him, he realized what a horrible way it would be to go, slowly losing yourself, your memories, who you were, until one day, you just disappeared, and nobody would even realize. Before dying on earth, Arnold had a faint hope, as many people do, that there was an afterlife. But here, there was no other place to go. This was it, and once you were gone, Arnold seriously doubted there was another place like this. After all, if you forgot who you were and dissipated into nothingness, how would there be another chance. And even if there was another world to go to, what point would it have if you didn't remember who you once were. Quickly shaking his head to disperse those depressing thoughts, Arnold asked Li Wei,"So uhh, how do I make sure that I don't ever disappear."
"Well from what I've seen the best way is to talk to others. If you talk to others, even if you can't remember details about yourself, they can. I've seen souls that were about to disappear suddenly become more solid because someone reminded them of who they were. Another thing to survive is to make new memories of yourself. Some souls can't remember most of when they were alive because they've been here so long, but their memories in this place keep them grounded. Of course there are some things you don't want to forget, like your name, your family, important memories, your hobbies and personal preferences, and other things. It's not like if you forget about that one time you kicked a rock that you'll start to fade away. You disappear when you lose the true essence of yourself. I've personally been here for over a ten thousand years and I'm still going strong. No way I'm going to disappear anytime soon."
"Dang! That's a long time. What do you guys do around here during all that time? Just chat and chill?"
"Not necessarily. Even though we are stuck here with nothing, that doesn't mean there's nothing to do. You can try gathering energy from around the space to gain more power. Of course, nobody really care too much about this since even with more energy and power, you can't harm others since no matter how terrible the injuries, they disappear after a few seconds. Even if you're ripped into shreds or disintegrated, the your consciousness will bring together the pieces of your soul and you'll be fine again within minutes. Additionally, you can tear apart pieces of you soul to create things like weapons, houses, tools, vehicles, whatever you want. If you don't like that, you can use the bits of soul floating around from the people who've passed away. There are tons of things to do. In fact, there are various tournaments held every so often to bring some excitement to this place. There's fighting tournaments, crafting tournaments, art tournaments, sports tournaments, musical tournaments, all kinds of tournaments are held."
Hearing about all he could do and learn, Arnold snapped out of his sad state and was filled with excitement. He excitedly asked "So, how can I learn these things."
"Whoa, calm down there buddy. You have plenty of time to learn.Here, let me show you around." Li Wei replied.
After saying this, Li Wei started walking in a certain direction. Arnold quickly followed, eager to learn. Of course, there wasn't a real need for him to rush. After all, Arnold was going to be stuck in the world for a very, very, long time.