Chapter 1 – The End

In what felt like a splitting headache Ray woke up from the nightmare. He had dreamed that today of all days the world would come to an end. With recent tensions between the nations of earth, the nuclear holocaust had begun, much to Ray’s surprise, instead of immediately dying when the bombs went off, he had woken up in another reality. He had been given a single item, a pistol and nothing else. Luckily this did not seem to be the case.

Ray had awoken normally, in his apartment in Sydney Australia on a sunny day in the middle of March. The news reports had spoken of blue skies with no rainfall. He ate his usual breakfast; bacon, 2 eggs sunny side up and a slice of toast for each egg, dressed into his black suit with silver tie and got ready for work as usual. Ray hated his job. He was a 28-year-old accountant for a small firm. He had risen to the rank of senior extremely quickly but quickly found that his prospects were diminished by the size of his firm, there just wasn’t any further room to progress.

Today, he hoped to change his prospects. He had applied for new jobs online and he had an interview booked in during his lunch break. It was for a random job; he had noticed a Director of Finance position appear at a mysterious company that had been making the rounds on the media recently. The company was simply called System Tech Limited.

The company had appeared and expanded rapidly; the owners must have had deep pockets as some large stock listed companies had been snapped up extremely quickly by them. All companies relating to Information or Data Systems were targeted. Ray was excited, a finance position in a large corporation? Yes please, the pay alone would probably be triple or quadruple what he was on now. He hadn’t expected to get an interview opportunity, he had just put his name out because it sounded cool.

Ray went to work as per usual, seeing his best friend Sarah who had known all about the move always put a highlight on his day. Sarah was by Rays standards, a beautiful woman. A year younger than he was, she was 5’8” with blue eyes, European skin and fiery red hair, a genetic statistical anomaly among anomalies. It was like she had inherited all of the recessive genes in her family that were possible. He thought her body was nothing but perfect either, petite and perfectly proportioned.

Ray on the other hand was never quite satisfied with how he had looked. At 5’10” with slightly messy short black hair, he seemed pretty average but unfortunately, he liked to eat just a little too much. He had recently hit the 100kg mark. Without going to the gym, he admittedly was pudgy. He looked back up at Sarah who was clicking her tongue.

“You ready?” Sarah asked, lightly punching Ray in the arm

“… As much as I can be, I know nothing about the company though, so I could be going completely blind” Ray replied. He clearly looked nervous, “do I look ok?”

Sarah laughed. “Relax, you’ll do fine, from all the stories we’ve shared, isn’t it you who has never failed a job interview and seems to be able to talk his way out of any problem with the clients” she said.

It was true, even with the way Ray had looked, he always had a decent charismatic effect on people. He was usually able to say just the right thing when needed. Sarah and Ray exchanged Jibes and conversation throughout the day while they worked.

Lunchtime quickly approached and Ray left the office, he took the block and a half city walk to the System Tech building. The outside of the building looked extremely old, as did a lot of buildings in the heart of Sydney, however, Ray could tell the building was a technological marvel. Upon walking inside, it was like a completely different world. The computers at reception seemed more like holograms. Ray couldn’t put his finger on it, but something seemed slightly off about the people working as well. For lunch period, they seemed to be on the ball, not slouching, completely efficient, almost like a well-oiled machine.

He stepped up to the front desk. “Hi, welcome to System Tech, how may I help you today?” The receptionist said.

“Hi, my names Ray Atton; I have a meeting with Mr Amata regarding the director of finance position” Ray said confidently.

“Certainly sir, I’ll just call him up now, please have a seat behind you”

“Thanks” Ray said. He turned around, sure there wasn’t a seat there before, now there was an entire set, with coffee table in the middle. Ray sat down and waited. He continued to watch the comings and goings of people in the building but failed to notice anything else strange.

Around 5 minutes had passed when Mr Amata appeared from the elevators. As Ray was standing Mr Amata introduced himself “Hi Ray, I’m the person you’ve been waiting for, Mr Amata, but please call me Sonny”.

Ray took stock of the man that may soon be his boss. He looked like a very straightforward Japanese businessman, black hair, standard height and build. To be honest, nothing really stood out about the man. It was almost like he was the exact definition of average.

“Hi Sonny, it’s good to meet you” Ray said.

“Come this way. I’ll be honest with you. When I saw your Resume I thought you would be perfect for the position, so this is more of a tour than anything else”.

Ray was dumbfounded. He had thought he would be a token interview, simply there to fill a number or make another candidate look better in front of a board, he hadn’t expected to be told that he probably already had the position. Ray simply followed Sonny around as he showed him different levels of the building.

It was quickly apparent that the company was into some real high-tech stuff. He saw prototype items such as virtual reality machines and even what looked like some futuristic weapon. In all honesty Ray was extremely excited, he loved things like this. He had been a gamer growing up and seeing these kinds of things made him feel like a kid again.

They were halfway through the tour of the building when Sonny suddenly said “Oh shit, sorry, I have to cut this meeting short. You are definitely hired though. Could we please get a copy of your drivers license on the way out. We’ll send full details of your contract to your email within the hour”.

Before Ray could say anything, Sonny had run off, leaving Ray back at the reception area. Ray simply did as was told. He had a quick chat with the receptionist who scanned his license and smiled at him as he left the building.

As Ray stepped out of the building, it was like he had gone from order to chaos. There were fires on the street, car accidents and broken windows littered the place. People in cars were doing anything to try and get away. People on the street were clearly fleeing in a panic. Ray tried to shout and ask someone what was happening but no one was responding.

Ray decided it was best to stay calm and try and get back to his car in the office. Before he could even take a single step however, the sirens came. These were old war sirens like he had often heard in movies or games which alerted to air raids. No sooner had Ray taken a step when he saw a bright flash in the distance followed by a huge fiery cloud.

Armageddon was here, Ray had nowhere to go. He simply sat down on a nearby bench and watched. He knew it was the end. Ray saw a second mushroom cloud hit before the blast from the first reached him. He was sent flying back towards the System Tech building. The last thing Ray saw before his death was the System Tech sign above the entrance which he hit at full force to the face.