Yun-Qi took a sip of tea and gave me a moment, studying me in silence.

“That was probably a little overwhelming,” I conceded, draining the rest of my teacup.

He shook his head, in bemusement rather than disappointment. “You are not what I was expecting.”

“Yes, it’s one of my many strengths,” I stated.

He lifted the teapot and poured a stream of fresh tea into both our cups. “I have spent my entire life chasing this moment,” he said. “Dreaming about this day for years since I was a small child. Diving from story to story, following hints and whispers where I could, through school and into university. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the influence of mythology on the modern world. Took a job here because it was where the trail led me. It’s no coincidence we met today, or that I was the one who answered your call.”

I threw him a skeptical look. “We have a list of approved third party contacts - which, as one of them, you should already know - and your hospital was geographically closest to the patient. It’s really less romantic than you think, unless you have some unconventional relationship with paperwork you’re not telling me about.”

“Nevertheless, I’m honoured to have the opportunity to meet.”

Despite my masterful ruination of a first impression, this was starting to get a little dangerously close to worship territory. Contrary to popular fictional theory, belief was not responsible for the existence of the gods, but it did have a number of other practical ramifications, and one of those was that it tended to get tickets added to someone’s particular task list. The system did tend to filter out repeated requests from the same person, but it was still irritating.

When it came right down to it, the concept of worship made me uncomfortable. I didn’t have a history of it, and hardly needed other people to tell me I was amazing (or any of the other creative adjectives often applied). No, I did my own thing, the rest of the world did their own thing, and that was a decent state of affairs.

“People don’t spend their lives chasing unlikely obsessions without some sort of underlying motivation,” I said, redirecting the conversation. “What’s yours? What do you hope to gain from this meeting?”

He shook his head. “That you need to ask speaks volumes. I seek what countless others do. Knowledge, enlightenment, and truth.”

Sure you do, I thought. About something specific.

I tried again. “A good friend of mine -” Lucy, but he didn’t need to know that, “- is fond of saying that lack of effective communication is the best way to guarantee something goes wrong. I can tell you a lot about the universe, but we’ve only got fifteen minutes left. So you’re going to have to start prioritising.”

“Then… tell me about the nature of life after death.”

Oh. In the end, not so original after all.

“Everyone’s souls are put into an endless void,” I explained, “where they’re left alone with their thoughts for eternity.”

Yun-Qi waited politely, but I was done.

“…that’s it?” he asked eventually. “There’s no judgment? No reincarnation? No transition to a higher state of being?”

I spread my hands. “And have to manage all that upkeep? It’s the afterlife. No one cares about dead people in a void. It’s not as if they’ll generate bad PR. It’s a garbage disposal for souls, and since the void doesn’t have an environment to pollute, we don’t need to implement a recycling program.”

“But that’s monstrous,” he protested.

“Yes it is.”

I was half-expecting Shitface to turn up at any moment, especially after Tez had forewarned me of the second test opportunity. However, while unofficially discouraged, there were no real consequences to spilling the secrets of the universe to one’s heart’s content. Probably because it caused people to plaster polite smiles on their faces while their eyes betrayed a sudden frantic search for a way to leave the conversation without being rude or tipping the obviously crazy person over the edge into the kind of madness that ended with a knife in the kidney.

“Then why do you instigate Ragnarok?” he asked, pressing me. “What possible reason could you have to cause a deliberate event resulting in the end of all things, if the void is all that awaits?”

Of course he had to ask about Ragnarok. One bad decision apparently destined to haunt me to the end of time, made all the worse by the fact it hadn’t even been my decision, but was attributed to me anyway through no fault of my own. He could have asked about anything, and he chose this.

I held up a hand in warning, and he fell silent. I gave myself a moment, then spoke. “If you want to make this personal, get your facts right. Having a PhD in a subject doesn’t mean squat if you base it on a foundation of inaccuracies and rumours, not to mention data that’s over seven hundred years out of date.” Yun-Qi couldn’t have known it was a sore point, so I tried not to let my anger get the better of me. “Ragnarok isn’t happening. No apocalypse, no great battle, no end of humanity. All that long-term prophecy crap got wiped a long time ago when the seers started interfering in each others’ work, and now we’re lucky if we can get an accurate prediction even a month in advance.”

Providence had been through a number of major corporate restructures, and was responsible for quite a few employees being moved out of their favoured fields. It was why it no longer had a Death department – the jobs had all been simplified and automated, and the whole process was now overseen by a small group of staff wedged awkwardly under the banner of Operations.

Fate had been on the way out even before Providence started trying to interfere, but the impacts of all those old tales were still being felt.

I coughed a little. “I have been unfairly maligned by the furore surrounding Ragnarok. At no point have I ever sat down and said: ‘Oh, let’s make a concerted effort to destroy the world. That sounds like a good plan.’”

This was, technically, a lie. Destroying the world was not only a valid plan, in my opinion, but the one most likely to have a genuine chance of success, however low. After Providence took over, I’d put quite a lot of thought into how one might accomplish a successful apocalypse, both as a thought experiment and a practical solution. An extreme idea, yes, but the morass of problems it would fix was worse, and it was nowhere near as unsavoury as the fuddy-duddies with a more conservative bent made it out to be. The keys were making the transition painless and what you did afterwards. Lucy and I had debated the hypothetical ethics of such a scenario over many occasions. He favoured a more gradual rollout offering people an individual choice, which was a nice thought. I favoured a faster approach. Frankly, I didn’t have the patience to wait for mortal culture to catch up to the point where it could accept the necessity of a practical solution. You couldn’t wait for the critics to come around, because you'd be waiting forever. Laggards needed to be dragged into a new era kicking and screaming.

Crucially, however, these conversations had all happened in the true, verified timeline long after some seer’s actions had shunted the Ragnarok events off into a doomed secondary offshoot. But the damage to my public reputation had been done, and it had never been great to start with. All well before it had ever even occurred to me the global situation could be bad enough to warrant a cataclysm.

“Ragnarok was leaked to the public by some idiots because of a grudge,” I continued. “It was only one of many possibilities which might have happened under condition of a specific sequence of events, and the only reason it attracted any notice at all was because it became part of the primary timeline for a while.”

Yun-Qi’s hand holding the teacup paused halfway to his lips, and a few extra creases appeared in his forehead. I’d gone too heavy on the prophecy jargon. Doing so was hard to avoid.

I waved a dismissive hand. “The important thing is, it’s not happening and none of it is my fault.”

Opposite me, my acquaintance’s arm lowered the cup back onto the table, where he maintained hold of the ceramic shell. “What if it could happen?” he asked. His knuckles were slightly white.

“Well, nothing’s ever completely impossible,” I replied warily. “But this is as good as. For Ragnarok to happen now, you’d need multiple top-level changes made from a number of people who would never agree to it. They’d probably have to reverse time, or first rewrite reality into a less rigid structure, and then make changes. None of which I’m capable of doing, by the way, before you start re-apportioning blame.”

Yun-Qi hadn’t moved. “Please allow me to rephrase,” he said. “What if you could bring about a new Ragnarok -”

“Don’t call it Ragnarok.”

“Extinction, then,” he amended. “And what if I told you I wanted to help?”

I set down my own cup, hard, and watched as some of the tea splashed over the side. It made a loud ‘clink’ lost somewhat in the greater ambience of the room. “Are we still talking hypotheticals here? Or – no, there is no ‘or’. So,” I paused, “Hypothetically speaking, first, I would be very surprised. And then I would ask: Why? On the scale of smart ideas, this is not a great move for you.”

I had just told him not to expect to deal with literal gods. But planning to enact an extinction scenario? That was how you got to deal with the real literal gods, the ones who could rend a person limb from limb in the blink of an eye, or any number of other unpleasant things it was better not to dwell on.

Every alarm bell in the universe felt like it was ringing in my head. This had to be it – the second test Tez had predicted. He and I needed to have some words. If this was his idea of a ‘good opportunity’, he’d either completely lost it or I’d badly misinterpreted his grip on reality. Trying to get my powers back was a serious enough offence with severe repercussions, but it was nothing compared to attempting to initiate what we in the business called an Armageddon event. In what would surprise no one, management tended to take a dim view of attempts to destroy creation to varying degrees, though their reasons for doing so were less altruistic than one might imagine.

Security wouldn’t arrive unless the threat severity and follow-through was strong enough to make a plot show up on their radar, but if they did, the fallout would be quick and brutal. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Right now, I had no intention of following through with anything, but once again Yun-Qi had shown a discomfiting degree of insight into what made me tick. It was knowledge he could have figured out on his own, given a history of study, and perhaps I was reading too much into it. But there were too many little markers that jumped out over the course of our meeting pointing towards kept secrets and missing information.

Yun-Qi closed his eyes for a long moment. “If I may be frank,” he said, opening them again, “I work in an industry whose entire purpose is designed to ease human suffering. Every year, we improve our ability to do so. But improvement is not success. Every day there are hundreds of people in pain we can’t cure, and many more where we don’t even know how to help alleviate symptoms.”

“I could see how you might think killing everyone would eliminate their suffering, in a very warped sense, if I hadn’t just told you otherwise,” I said, glancing out the window. It was getting darker outside and more of the lamps had come on, sending red and gold reflections shining out across the placid surface of the water.

He paused. “No, that would be foolish. Life contains a bounty of joy and meaning despite suffering, and I have no wish to destroy it.”

“Might want to rethink that if you’re serious about heading down this path,” I said. “There’s already a way to remove the suffering without the joy, and it’s called a lobotomy. Otherwise, you have to take the good and the bad together.”

“I have spent a good portion of my life studying the gods,” he said. “You, and others like you. I know something about how Providence operates, which is more than most people. I don’t profess to know the gods, but there are few people among us mere mortals who have put in the years of hard work I have. Something interesting happens when you look at tales and myths through the lens of the gods being real. Walking among us. They don’t make sense. Why, for instance, would you, Loki, want to end life on earth despite being doomed to die along with it?”

“As I said, not a decision I ever actually made,” I pointed out.

“You understand my point, though. In some version of the universe, you would have. Yet it isn’t a logical move.”

I looked at him with renewed interest, but said nothing – I wanted to see where he was going with this.

“If what you say about the afterlife is true, your story in particular makes me think,” he continued. “Because it suddenly makes even less sense to condemn all life to oblivion.”

“Perhaps I had a really bad day,” I suggested, throwing him an obvious red herring.

“No, I don’t think so. From everything I’ve read, and everything I’m seeing now, in person, I doubt that’s your style. You’re unlikely to overlook obvious consequences, and not malicious enough to take such drastic action out of spite.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “One of my favourite past-times is spiting annoying people. It’s quite fun; I recommend it.”

“But to the extent of ending the world to everyone’s detriment, including your own? No. Which says to me there must be more to it; some benefit even greater than the detriment caused by the single greatest crime it is possible to commit. Whatever it is, I want in on it.”

Oh, there were greater crimes than destroying the world. Not many, granted. Destroying multiple worlds, creating new ones, unauthorised interference with other dimensions, giving mortals access en masse to things they weren’t supposed to have, dethroning the tyrant, and breaking Themis’ alphabetisation rule (at least judging by the way she reacted whenever anyone raised the possibility).

As for the rest of it, he wasn’t wrong. Destroy the world and you crippled the tyrant, the single worst thing to happen to humanity since smallpox. It was a backdoor, roundabout way of bypassing the many protections he surrounded himself with; the equivalent of committing treason by bombing a national security asset instead of putting a bullet through the skull of the head of state. Difficult, risky, and carrying severe consequences, but nevertheless easier than the alternative. And then you could start to fix things.

Whether Yun-Qi was motivated by greed or altruism or a bit of both wasn’t clear, but chasing a benefit made more sense. That he didn’t know what it was, less so.

“Just so we’re clear, because calling this unorthodox is a tragic understatement – you want to help me usher in the literal apocalypse. Death of mankind. Without even understanding what that means. Are we on the same page?”

“We are.”

“Then frankly, you must have been dropped on the head as a small child. The answer’s no,” I ruled.

Toppling the tyrant from his gilded throne was a nice thought, and maybe something I’d put my energy into one day – though no doubt Lucifer would attempt something first – but that was something to worry about after getting my powers back, if I could even do that. A long while after.

A sudden and severe headache blossomed at my temples, signalling the meeting’s imminent end. It was only going to get worse the more I delayed. Between Hangzhou and the day’s earlier excursions, I’d used up my hour’s allotment of break time. Using headaches to enforce schedules was the brainchild of some genius in HR who clearly would have been well-employed in Hell, if such a place had actually existed.

“Time’s up,” I said, rising to my feet. “I hope you used it wisely, because this won’t happen again.”

Yun-Qi spluttered a little across the table. “We still have time,” he said, pulling back the cuff of his shirt to reveal an expensive-looking watch. Not many people wore watches anymore; I wondered if it was a status thing. “You can’t walk away.”

I resisted the urge to start massaging my forehead. “Can’t I? I’m doing you a favour being here at all, and I don’t think you realise just how many sob stories I’ve heard. Everyone has a justification for why they’re special. And you haven’t even tried to make a convincing case for why I should take anything you say seriously.”

“You must want something,” he offered. “Whatever it is, name it. I shall do everything within my power to make it happen.”

I felt a stab of pity for him, just a little. “You can’t,” I said gently. “And your faith in any ability or desire I have to usher in the end times is misplaced. No religion can solve your problems, because Providence is the only true religion left. And here’s a truth for you: Providence doesn’t care about you, because Providence doesn’t care about anyone. It’s a one-man show built on lies and conquest. The gods have become irrelevant because they no longer provide a meaningful service, whether through incompetence, inability or disinterest. Trust me, you’re better off abandoning whatever insane quest you’ve dreamt up and focusing on making yourself happy while you still can.”

I left him there to mull over that tidbit of advice and deal with the bill, not bothering to look back through the sea of small clinks and obfuscated conversation.

During our chat, the sky had darkened somewhat with only a sliver of daylight remaining, and the snowfall had intensified. Snowflakes clung to my hair and clothes like fools clinging to hope, doomed to melt away in the end. It was beautiful, and I felt a little melancholy looking out at the view. Yun-Qi had chosen the venue well.

The tether in my head was already worsening, ensuring I couldn’t linger. I fished my access card out of a pocket and looped the lanyard over my neck, wincing as the door to Providence appeared in a blinding rectangle of fluorescent light.

Moments later, West Lake was but a memory and I stood blinking in the harsh office light of the travel station, snow turning to water and seeping into my clothes. My coat in particular was already exuding the ‘wet sheep’ smell I associated with being caught unaware in the rain. Relief from the headache was immediate, almost passive-aggressive in how quickly it faded – a not-so-subtle reminder that life was easier when you chose to abide by the rules.

There was a lot to unpack here, not least of which was what Tez had been thinking in setting up an Armageddon scenario as a potential test case for the final run.

I fished out my phone just in time to catch Tez’s incoming call.

“Don’t get shirty with me,” he said, before I could say anything. “This scenario you describe has nothing to do with the test I had planned.”

“You could have warned me,” I grumbled.

“Pfft, you were always going to say no,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have had much time to warn you, anyway. This wasn’t part of the primary line when we spoke earlier. It’s new.”

Well, that answered one question. But it seemed off.

“Tez, I -”

“- Already had this meeting planned when we met earlier, I know. I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what caused things to change. All I can tell you is that it wasn’t my doing. It’s odd, but it must have been one of the others.”

This was concerning, because the other seers would have no reason to interfere with what on the surface looked like a run-of-the-mill supplier meeting. Had someone foreseen something down the track about the Armageddon event? In which case, why steer the conversation towards it? Or was this about my existing plan to get my powers back? In which case that wasn’t any better – if the wrong person found out about either, I was screwed.

Tez could of course be lying to me. Although that would seem to point to some elaborate multiple-point plan I couldn’t envisage him having the interest or concentration to form. Shitface had no reason to be subtle – he would have jumped in, metaphorical guns blazing. The other seers I knew of seemed to have no connection to anything. Nanshe? Imagination of a sock. Odin? I could see him getting involved in something like this just to spite me, but he and I weren’t allowed to have anything to do with each other precisely because of the Ragnarok scandal. A rule I actually agreed with for once. Though if either of us were going to meddle in the other’s life, it should by rights be me. I was owed it.

“Will any trouble come up as a result of this conversation?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he replied. “If it was serious, I’d let you know. Well, probably. Don’t forget, my head is also on the line here.”

I could work with that for now. “Something’s up, mark my words,” I warned him. “I need you to stay sharp.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Go and pretend to do your job.”

Further from an answer than before, I grimaced to myself as he hung up. If Tez wasn’t involved, it opened up a number of new possibilities ranging from benign to jaw-droppingly dangerous, and despite lacking any evidence for it so far I had a feeling this wasn’t going to end up on the safer end of the scale. Problems had a way of finding their way to me with disturbing regularity, not all of which were entirely my fault, to the point I sometimes wondered if it was a power as opposed to a natural consequence of being my charming self. It wasn’t always obvious.

If so, it was possible this could actually be a good sign. Sometimes when things got weirder than usual, it could be due to contortions with fate, time or both, and if I had a power that attracted trouble – which would honestly explain a lot – the early signs of trouble brewing could be a sign I was about to get my powers back. Which would mean success. Though I supposed getting involved with fate/time contortions could be construed as a bad thing.

Another possibility, one I was reluctant to entertain, was that I’d been out-bluffed from the beginning. That somehow, against all the odds, I had been expected in China tonight. And not just any old employee on Helpdesk, either, but specifically me. For that to be the case, Yun-Qi could have come into contact with a seer, even if their influence was only indirect. It bore looking into.

A somewhat bedraggled employee ran into me as she emerged from the travel station where I’d been dawdling and gave me the stink eye.

“Love you too,” I called after her.

Lucy would have some ideas, I was sure. He always did.