Chapter 1 Side Story

The manager was bored, though he was often bored. Raften the Overseer was his name. Overseer just being a fancy way of manager; it was his job to send human souls to the afterlife they earned and to deal with the ones who win the Afterlife Lottery.

Raften didn’t have a face. His body was like a ghost, with his torso in clear definition while his head was faded away into nothing. He legs also faded the further you went from his torso with his legs below the knees being in the same situation as his head: with nothing there.

For his first job he didn’t have to do much beyond reading. He never met the souls he routed to their afterlife. Here is how it looks for him:

The soul “Jason Smith” has been judged!!!

Jason Smith was a plumber in his life. He worked hard at his job. He was very honest about his practices and always tried his best to help others even his rude customers. He had a Wife that he was faithful to and three kids that he doted on. Cause of death: old age. Due to his behavior and character in life it has been determined that ‘James Smith’ has earned a place in Heaven.

Send to Heaven? |Yes| |No|

See? First job: easy. It was always a quick summary of the person and he was required to read all of it. It was a job with a lot o' reading but Raften didn’t mind. His second job was way more interesting though. He had to meet with mortals that won the Afterlife Lottery.

The Afterlife Lottery was an interesting little thing; every mortal is entered into it the second they are born. There are two factors that determine if you win or not. The first is how you die. Every death is classified in different ways for example being the victim of a double murder suicide as a result of your ex-father’s drunken rampage is determined to be a ‘Tragic’ death.

The classification of your death depends on two things. The emotions felt during the death and the rarity of the type of death. A car accident is only ‘Semi-Tragic’ because they are often very quick, not allowing you to feel many emotions before they happen and because they are a very, common type of death.

The second factor determining whether you win is your ‘Time of Death’ (ToD). Your death qualifies you for a specific category like ‘Tragic’ once you qualify your ToD determines if you win or not. It’s essentially a window of time where if you die while qualifying for that category: you win the lottery. The higher rarity of classification the bigger the window of time for ToD is open and how often it shows up.

Based of these two categories you have a 1 in 100 chance of winning the ‘Martyr’ category but, only 1 in 42 million chance of winning the ‘Semi-Tragic’ category. People who die peaceful deaths don’t have any chance of winning. Literally, there is no ‘Peaceful’ category; the lowest category is that of ‘Semi-Tragic.’

There are a few more things to know about the Afterlife Lottery: If you have earned ‘Hell’ as your eternal punishment in your life time you will not be allowed to win the lottery regardless of circumstances. The second thing is a special clause that was implemented a few hundred years ago that if people who are closely connected die at the same time and place of the the same thing they will all win. For example in a double murder suicide if the two people murdered are a mother and child and the mother wins the child will automatically be included too.

Raften’s job when meeting with these people who win is to ensure they get to reincarnate in another place of their choosing. If they want to keep the memories of their previous life then they have to be sent to another, non-earth, world. This prevents people from using the knowledge in their previous life in ways they shouldn’t. The last person who did something like that ended up as an Oracle in Greece.

When winners are sent to the other worlds it is also Raften’s job to grant them one gift to take with them. It is almost always one gift but, there was a past case where somebody asked for something so small they were able to be grated a second one.

While there are limitations on the power of the gift itself which prevent stuff like invincibility or immortality. It can be more or less anything: A skill, an object, a person, etc. There have been some creative people in the past but most ask for super powerful weapons or skills or something similar. It’s never anything interesting.

Raften glance at the alert that appeared in front of him. It appears that someone won the ‘Semi-Tragic’ Lottery for the first time since world war two; and not just ‘someone,’ it was three ‘someones.’ A married couple and their child.