A boring man will die a boring death

Asher heard a crunch as his neck snapped to an angle that had his chin pressed against his spine and he braced for whatever the afterlife would feel like. The one thing Asher was not expecting was for the afterlife to feel like a crick in his neck from sitting too long.

The next thing Asher noticed was that it was far too quiet for the back of a crashing bus, in fact there was no noise at all. He extracted his head from between the seats, after gently pushing his chin around his shoulder he grabbed his neck and cracked it until his vision was approximately level with the ground before finally looking around the bus.

The inside of the bus was roughly similar to before, sticking his head out the window Asher confirmed that other then the one shattered window and a bit of scorching the bus was fine, the only thing that was unusual was the silence and the fact that the glass from the window was floating suspended in the air just as it was the moment his head slammed against the seat.

He took another look around the bus before climbing out of his seat while attempting (and failing utterly) to edge around the floating chunks of glass. Just as he managed to reach the walkway he heard something. a sound that normally would barely even be audible but in the frozen world rang out clear as day, footsteps.

Asher looked out through one of the unbroken windows to see a man walking peacefully along the sidewalk, drinking occasionally from a cheap disposable cup of coffee. He was dressed in a suit, one of the old style black pinstripes that some people liked to think epitomize class and others think are the peak of self importance. This particular suit on this particular man with his long gray beard and well built figure had the effect of looking like the butler from a boys love novel had outgrown his hotness. The man had an umbrella over one arm, his coffee in the other, and between drinks was scanning every inch of the area around him.

The man paused a moment upon seeing Asher watching him through the window of the bus before abruptly changing direction and cutting in front of it. Asher, still in shellshock from the previous minute of activity simply watched him as he pushed aside the folding door of the bus and walked inside.

The man stepped into the otherwise empty bus and began weaving his way gracefully through the shards of suspended glass, stopping briefly near one of the suspended shards he pressed on it with his finger to test the stability before placing his coffee on top of it like a coaster.

"Hello Mr. Smith, I want to apologize for interrupting your day, and for the fact that it took me so long to realize what was going on." he spoke formally, nobody had called me Mr. anything since my last job interview which made me vaguely uncomfortable but there wasn't anything about this situation that wouldn't make me uncomfortable if I had given it more then about five seconds of thought.

"What exactly do you mean what was going on?" I managed to mumble, while that probably wasn't the best question at the time it was the most recent and that was enough to push it out of my mouth.

"Oh, I never introduced myself, I am the God of death, the afterlife, and reincarnation. I facilite the process of sorting the dead. those souls with deep seated regrets, unfulfilled ambitions, or who had been unable to experience certain aspects of a normal life are reincarnated until they fulfill them and those who have finished checking those proverbial boxes go to heaven or hell." the man explained, I absorbed the information without comprehending it "I designed the system to counter the fact that the increase in the complexity and amount of decision making in the modern world has caused the amount of reincarnated souls to increase dramatically. The system and quests are both designed to point people towards finishing what their past lives started and allowing them to pass on"

I nodded, still trying to parse all the information laid on my lap, the old man continued to outlay information on the purpose of the system and the exact mechanics and the processes of its creation. I tried to take in all the info but once he started taking about the "programming of the universe" it all started going so far over my head that my brain shut down my ears to protect itself.

a few minutes later I had finished sorting through most of the information at a basic level as the man, God, whatever, continued to talk about a subject that he was clearly deeply passionate about. he was launching into the explanation of the AI that generated quests when I raised my hand. "I'm sorry but I'm having trouble comprehending a lot of this. can you please keep it... simple?"

The man looked stunned for a second before realizing what was going on. "I must apologize for the third time, I think you have more information then you would ever need." he couldn't keep the dissipointment out of his voice that he hadn't found a kindred soul, I made a mental note to introduce him to some of my nerd friends, God or not he was a sad lonely old man who wanted someone to talk about his passion with. "on a basic level what's going on is that the ai controlling the majority of quests got confused with you." he told me "your past few reincarnations have had a string of hard knocks, normally when you hit 18 the system assigns you a class that will best help you achieve what you couldn't in past lives. unfortunately you basically couldn't achieve anything and I never added a fall back for someone who had so much dissatisfaction that every specific class would push them away from at least one of their unresolved issues."

"Jesus he is just like Kevin" I thought to myself (Kevin was a nerdy programmer friend, int through the roof, the first rule of Kevin was "do not let him talk about programming").

I raised my hand again "simple, please".

the old man scratched his head sheepishly. "the system doesn't know what to do with you so you never got a class" he answered after a short delay.

"thank you" I replied "my int is still like" I checked my status screen "12, please keep it simple"

the God, man, thing looked around the bus angrily before waving his hand. I gasped, my int had changed, instead of INT: 12(+0) it now said INT: 12(+9999).

the old man nodded "I can't let you use this outside of paused time, but this should make it easier for you temporarily, check your skills".

I scrolled down, I wasn't used to having any real skills, my child quests didn't give skill rewards and other then the "childs play" basic skill that granted protection from fatal wounds and basic magic access I had never had any skills, but I now had one. "on the level" was a new skill, a simple description of "undetectable skill: grants (+9999) int while in paused time".

I gaped as it finally hit me that I was actually chatting with the creator of the system, the 9999 int gave me the ability to comprehend what I was seeing and feeling, but not to truly understand it because my wisdom was still a measly 13 leaving my emotional maturity around normal human levels. The problem with minmax stats hit me immediately, I may have had enough wis to deal with the amount of information a normal human can process but not the amount a max int person could handle... it was like suddenly acquiring savant syndrome, my emotions began to trail my logical brain.

"good" The old man said "that should make it easier" .