This is an eclectic short story I wrote from stream-of-consciousness one morning in a sleepless and overcaffeinated state while waiting to be called up for jury duty (sometime in 2020, I think). It is extremely Reddit, obnoxiously insincere, a bit LOLrandom, and it rips off The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I Wrote This Light Novel In Like A Day a little too explicitely for my taste. But I am still vaguely proud of it, so here it is. Enjoy, or don't.
Jeremy Shmeremy was 4 years old when his parents first kicked him out of the house. "Get a job!" they said. "Uh huh, alright," Jeremy said, "I guess I have to do this '''getting a job''' business now." He rolled his eyes and groaned. "I guesssssssssss."
Secretly, though, Jeremy had been waiting eagerly for this day to come. He was simply feigning disinterest for the sake of his public image. No self-respecting 4-year-old would be caught DEAD wanting to do a job. Either way, he had everything lined up. His best friend's great aunt's penpal had offered him a job before, which he had begrudgingly turned down to conform to the tasteless expectations of his pathetic peers. Now it was finally his time to show the world that he could perform menial labour in exchange for wages.
It was at that moment that a meteor crashed down at 99.9% the speed of light, obliterating the Earth in its entirety. Jeremy was immediately sent to Hell for the sin of failing to meet his required productivity threshold, one of the 13 deadly sins among the ranks of murder (#7), blasphemy against the king (#2), and watching a video on your phone at full volume near other people (#11).
As Shmeremy was being lowered into Hell in his personal Hellevator, he looked directly into the camera and said, "Rut-roe! How am I gonna get out of THIS mess?" as the theme song faded in from the background.
The entrance to Hell is divided into 3 sectors. There's the initial inspection, to make sure you aren't carrying any nonnative diseases, the formal registration center, where you're officially registered into the electronic management system as a citizen of Hell, receiving your ID and paperwork, and finally, the gates of Hell, where all remaining tests are done and everyone is funneled into their stations. Shmeremy was a particularly unique case, being only the 842,593rd that year to be held back due to complications in all 3 sectors. In sector I, he was found to be carrying a rare alien virus originating from a planet 8.28 gigalightyears away from Earth. The demons and dark angels working at sector 1's station were thrown into a slight panic as they flipped through their official handbooks, desperately trying to figure out how to handle such a crisis.
In sector II, it was found that for unknown reasons, Shmeremy was actually already registered as a citizen. Usually this is the result of either identity theft or time travel antics, but both possibilities seemed unlikely given the lack of value to Shmeremy's name and the embarrassingly poor state of his Kardashev 0 civilization. All the angels in the room giggled when it was discovered that humans still use the number 4.
Having finally made it through the first 2 sectors, J-Shman entered the 3rd, only to be told that his ID was invalid and that he'd need to go to the back of the line and start from the very beginning. This did not bother Jeremy in the slightest, due to his incredible captivation with unrewarding busywork. He was nearly squealing with excitement as he was told he'd have to redo the past 7 hours of tests and paperwork.
All good things must come to an end, though, and eventually all of the issues were resolved, and he was granted access to Hell proper.
An amazing realization hit Jeremy as he watched the mandatory introductory tape titled "So you've died and gone to Hell, eh? An introduction to the dos and don'ts of working with Satan". Hell was everything he'd ever wanted. He was going to be chained up, mining away at the molten metals for an eternity or two. Now THIS was the kind of back-breaking yet fruitless labour he could get behind.
It was Jeremy's 3rd month on the job. As he briefly stopped chipping away at the ground with his pickaxe to wipe the sweat off his brow, the manager whispered into his ear that he wanted to have a word with him in private. "Ugh," Jeremy groaned. He already knew where this was going. 4 times already he'd been brought aside and offered a promotion due to his great output and work ethic. Each time he'd turned them down. He much preferred the grueling grind of his entry-level labour over whatever cushy higher-up position they had in store for him. He followed the manager into their private office, dragging his feet along the way.
Things quickly changed, however, when upon entering the office he saw none other than a cleaner looking copy of himself awaiting him. The poor manager was lying unconscious with a long cartoonish pink lump on his head.
"I don't have much time. I'm you from another timeline. I'm here to rescue you from Hell."
The "original" Shmeremy, henceforth referred to as "Shmeremy proper", or "Shmoper" for short, was predictably appalled. But before he could clear up this misunderstanding, alternate Shmeremy, henceforth "Shmeremy two", or "Shmwo", grabbed his arm and pulled him into the closet.
"But first, we're gonna have to go BACK IN TIME!"
Shmwo pressed some buttons on his wristwatch, making "beep-beep-boop" noises, and suddenly the two of them were falling through a massive white tunnel, surrounded by giant swirling clocks and scifi noises.
Shmoper awoke to the sound of horse hooves clopping on gravelly molten roads. He opened his eyes. He was laying on a hay bale in the back of a horse-pulled carriage. Beside him was Shmwo and two men with bowler hats and handle-bar mustaches. He gave a panicked look to Shmwo, who put a finger to his lips in a "shhh" gesture and winked. The voice of an old-fashioned sounding lady spoke up from the front seat.
"Has the boy awoken yet, dearies?"
"Why, he sure has, Mama Joe," said one of the hatted mustache men, immediately taking his hat off, bowing, and then spitting into a nearby spittoon.
"Splendid!"
Shmoper wasn't sure what was going on.
"W-Where am I?"
Hatted spittoon mustache man gave a massive grin.
"Why, you're in Ye Olde Helle, of course! Where else couldja be? My name's George, and this here's Cal. Say hi, Cal."
Hatted mustache man #2 gave a wooden-toothy grin and waved.
"Cal here doesn't talk much, but he's still down to clown around town with a frown and a brown crayon (pronounced: "crown"), if you know what I'm sayin'."
"I definitely don't," said Shmoper.
Shmwo spoke up. "Excuse me, this is our stop."
"Alright sonnies, I'll let you off here then," said Mama Joe, whoaing down the demon horses pulling their Helle carriage. Shmwo pulled Shmoper onto a nearby dirt path as a tumbleweed drifted by.
"Hey, what's the big deal!?" asked Shmoper.
"What do you mean? I'm getting you out of there!"
"I loved it there you idiot! Take me back right now!"
"Shush, we're almost there." He pulled him into a telephone booth, pressed some beep-boop-buttons, and the booth sank into the ground, revealing a massive technological underground hideout.
The Ancient Network of Underground Spacetime Surveyors, or ANUSS for short, is an age-old secret society of Spacetime travelers working against the machiavellian machinations of Satan. They've spent the last 13.2 billion years (Earth time) working undercover toward the inevitable goal of preventing Satan's upcoming apocalypse.
However, due to their time-traveling ability to peak ahead at the future, they've already foreseen that Satan will be successfully vanquished in due time. It's for this reason that ANUSS members are generally very lazy, and don't actually put in much effort toward their supposed goal. In fact, Shmwo, in his passion for unrewarding labour, is the only one who actually gets anything done. The members are as follows.
#1: The old God, Thotheus. After a miserably unsuccessful reelection campaign, Thotheus was kicked out of their position as God after only one term. They had made many starry-eyed promises leading up to their initial election, such as raising the speed of light limit, legalizing perpetual motion machines, and bringing the world back under the reign of classical mechanics after the previous God Quantareus had made the laws too unintuitive for common angels to understand. However, due to a lack of experience with the position, they could never get any of their proposed laws through the Senate. After being voted out of office, Thotheus fell into a severe depression for half a billion years, before finally pulling themself together and deciding that if they wanted serious change, they'd have to work for it. They founded the ANUSS, and the rest is history.
#2: Three beavers in a trenchcoat. The beavers are a cunning bunch, and they've had everyone fooled they were a regular person for millennia. They sometimes tag along on important missions, secretly hoping to one day betray everyone to build the largest dam in the multiverse. If they were upfront about their intentions, nobody would actually care. In fact, the others might want to help build the dam, considering they've got nothing better to do. The beavers don't know this, however, and have opted to instead play 5D chess with everyone to slowly work toward their goal in secret. Their cover name is Agent B, and when nobody is listening they mumble to themselves about logs and rub their 6 hands together villainously.
#3: Shmwo. Shmwo is an alternate version of Jeremy from a part of the universal wavefunction which branched off from Shmoper's before he was kicked out of the house. Being the most easily overworked and underpaid entity in the multiverse, he was the first person Thotheus came to when creating ANUSS. He's been officially pardoned from death, and is therefore immortal.
#4 and 5: Yuko and Niko. The happiest members of the group, Yuko and her girlfriend Niko are two versions of the same person from branching universes. Their wholesome affection for one another lifts the mood of everyone around them. They mostly stay at headquarters and play games, but occasionally they drag everyone to the beach or the movies for a good time. They like to wear matching outfits and hairstyles, and then tease everybody for getting the two of them mixed up. Twice a week they convince everyone to cuddle up and watch a movie or play a game together.
There are many other agents of ANUSS, but these five form the elite LEAGUE OF ANUSS, the highest class of members ruling over the secret network of caverns and tunnels.
As Shmwo and Shmoper rode their phone booth elevator down into the cavernous ANUSS headquarters, Shmoper knew that if he wanted to get back to Hell, he'd have to act fast. Thinking on his feet, he snatched the high-tech watch off of Shmwo's wrist, quickly noticing the big red button. Much to Shmwo's panic, he pressed it, and immediately the entire ANUSS base of operations was destroyed in a massive explosion, killing everyone inside except for Shmwo, since he's immortal.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Shmwo cried out.
"ALL THAT EXPOSITION, FOR NOTHING!"
Shmoper opened his eyes. He was back in his Hellevator, exactly as planned.
As he approached the gates of Hell, he was surprised by the lack of bureaucratic hassle. There was no 3-sector registration system to be found, only a lady in a booth steadily handing out papers to a line of people, and then letting them inside. Shmoper got in line and patiently waited his turn, trying to at least enjoy it while it lasted.
"Name and species?"
"Uh, Jeremy Shmeremy, human."
"Alrighty then. Here's your identification, enjoy your stay!"
The ID was made of cheap paper, with the text, "Jeremy Shmeremy, Human. Official Citizene of Ye Olde Helle, PIN = LMNOP8675309," written half in permanent marker and half in typewriter print. "Oh no!" Shmoper realized, "I'm still in the past!"
Luckily, he still had Shmwo's wristwatch. If he wanted to get back to his status-quo life as a Hellstone miner, he'd have to master all of its beep-boop-buttons and dk-dk-dk-dials. He twisted a knob, clicked a button, and pulled the trigger, just to see what would happen. Again, he found himself falling through a massive scifi time-travel tunnel, before waking up for a fourth time.
He was in a forest, an alien one. He could tell it was alien, because despite being generally identical to an Earth forest, all of the foliage was colored like a pile of Skittles. The trunks were blue, the leaves were yellow, the grass was red, and the sky was a pale green. For a brief moment, Shmoper was fascinated by the idea that the flora of this world, despite having no relation to Earth, had nonetheless evolved to look and act exactly like the plants at home, with only a palette swap. If this were a scifi story, he'd think it was incredibly lazy design.
He quickly regained his focus. "Better get out of here before I contract some kind of rare alien disease," he thought. He took the watch, pulled a lever, spun the steering wheel, and typed in his credit card number, and immediately he was pulled back into the swirling clock pit.
But what's this!? Amongst the distant clocks, Shmoper noticed a group of silhouettes. Could it be... the LEAGUE OF ANUSS!?
"HEY YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHMIT!" Thotheus shouted from afar. "We're the LEAGUE OF ANUSS from a branching universe in which we were slightly more attentive toward the future, and were thus able to easily determine and counteract your attempt on our lives! Though we couldn't save your branch's LEAGUE, and their death was entirely preventable had it not been for their complete incompetence, we're still very mad at you! Now we intend to engage in HIGHLY CONVOLUTED SCIFI BATTLE with you for an INTENSE ACTION CLIMAX!"
The Beavers ready their Telefragger NEO, which creates a new branching universe and then teleports every bit of matter within it simultaneously directly onto the target's position. Yuko and Niko engage their Targeted Vacuum-Decaydiator, kickstarting a fundamental reconfiguration of all atomic structures which virally spreads itself in all directions at lightspeed. Thotheus prepares their Minkowski Metric Homogenizer special move, which makes the timelike dimension identical to the spacelike ones, therefore causing the worldline of every particle in one's body to suddenly take on a wildly different geometry as the entire past and future become plainly visible surrounding you in timeless 4D euclidean space. Shmwo presses some beep-boop-buttons on his wristwatch, triggering a countdown which, when complete, will scramble the properties of each quantum field, therefore entirely rewriting the physics of one's universe into a chaotic entropic mess where no kind of coherent form or structure will ever be possible again.
Just before any of those attacks begin, Shmoper escapes to his time destination.
Jeremy Shmeremy wakes up for his fifth and final time. He opens his eyes and looks around.
It's all dark. He's surrounded by void, an emptiness deeper than anything he could imagine.
Then, there's lights. They scatter around his vision formlessly.
Then, eyes. Massive eyes, bright eyes, brighter than anything he'd seen in his life. They stare into him with cosmic, unknowable intention, surrounding him on all sides, entirely filling the deep emptiness with their intense light, brighter than all the light in the universe, no, the multiverse, no, brighter than any mathematical conception of brightness could possibly begin to describe.
They see through him completely.
His mind expands, and he understands that him and the eyes are of the same form. More than that, him and the eyes are completely inseparable, identical, sharing one mind, one structure, one self.
Earth, the cosmos, Heaven, Hell, the universe's wavefunction. Not only does he completely understand it, but he also completely embodies it.
Suddenly, even those things seem small. Even the light of the eyes feels frail. Everything fades from mind.
The light subsides, and Jeremy Shmeremy takes his final rest.