Karolina Grant was unhappy with her life. That was the thought that kept bouncing around inside her head on her drive into work. This wasn’t the result of a sudden epiphany, but rather the culmination of thoughts that she had been having for years. The world, she felt, was steadily getting worse and there was absolutely nothing that she could do about it. There were big problems facing the world, and she could do nothing about them: climate change, the rising power and influence of corporations, political corruption—the list went on and on. She felt helpless to help fix all of these issues that she saw in the world every day, and there was something about her that refused to let her ignore them as it seemed everyone else did.

Her life wasn’t bad, necessarily. She worked as a corporate mediator for a large legal firm. She made good money helping people resolve conflicts, and the work wasn’t as difficult as her colleagues seemed to find it. Helping people come to amicable solutions wasn’t easy, by any means, but she had always had a special knack for figuring out what people wanted. The hard part was arranging compromises that had just enough of what each party wanted so that both could be satisfied.

She had a loving family, with two parents whom she called every Saturday and visited on holidays. While she didn’t currently have a boyfriend, it wasn’t for lack of options; she was attractive enough and was never wanting for male attention whenever she went out.

She got along well with her colleagues, and had made some shallow friendships with them, but didn’t have any real friends. It was hard to form deeper connections with them because they didn’t seem to care about the same things.

She didn’t care about how the game went or who so-and-so was dating, and pretending to care seemed insulting somehow, or even arrogant, as if she thought that she was better than them because she cared about different things. Sometimes she wanted to be more normal, but something inside of her just never let her forget the fact that the world seemed to be getting worse every day.

So, yes, her life wasn’t bad, especially compared to the lives of others, and yet she was unhappy. When she was younger she had been a real firebrand, attending protests and marches, writing letters to elected officials, and was once even caught up in a riot. And yet, nothing that she did seemed to have any impact on the world. Eventually, she just gave up. She started to live a less involved life—a life where she just had a normal job and followed instructions like a normal person, but that didn’t seem to help.

It seemed like she was just doomed to be dissatisfied—never happy with what she could accomplish trying to change things, and yet also discontented with the world itself when she just tried to live in it. Sometimes she wished that life was different, although even she didn’t really know what exactly she wanted to be different.

She finally drove into the parking lot at her office building and turned into a parking space. She took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind. Enough reflection. She had a job to do. As she walked across the parking lot and up to the front doors, she hoped that something, anything, would happen today to help her cheer up.

Karolina strode confidently through the sliding glass doors of her building, hoping that her face hid the turmoil that she was feeling. She flashed her employee ID and nodded distractedly at the security guard, and then waved at the secretary sitting at the enormous front desk sitting at the back of the lobby.

The lobby was ostentatious, built to impress. Expensive wood panel floors, elaborate lights, and a few scattered wooden tables surrounded by fancy-looking chairs. She had never really agreed with the company spending so much on the lobby and so little on the cubicles where the majority of the company worked, but it seemed effective on potential clients at least.

As she walked into the elevator and pressed the button for her floor, she wondered what she would be doing today. Today was one of the rare days that she didn’t have any meetings with clients scheduled, so she would probably do some follow-up paperwork unless her boss needed her for something else.

When she got to her floor, she saw Janice waiting just outside of her cubicle. Janice was a few years younger than her, and worked as a paralegal. She was wearing her standard formal blouse and knee-length black skirt, and tapping one of her fingers on her water mug impatiently. She and Janice weren’t close, exactly, but their cubicles were close to each other and they occasionally got drinks together after work.

“Hey Janice, what’s up?” she asked. Janice almost certainly had some bit of office gossip that she was dying to share, but there was no reason not to hear her out.

“Did you hear about Jason?” Janice responded quickly, so excited that she didn’t even bother to return the greeting. Karolina shook her head and motioned for her to go on. “He’s being forced out of the firm!”

That actually was interesting. Jason was one of the firm’s main partners, and him being removed would be a pretty massive change to the firm. She had only met him once or twice, at corporate events, and all she remembered about him was that he was a pretty handsome middle-aged white guy, same as most of the other partners. It probably wouldn’t affect her directly, as she didn’t work directly under any of the partners, but it was definitely a big shift for the company.

“Why? I thought that it was pretty difficult and costly to fire a partner, so whatever he did must have been big,” she asked.

“There are lots of rumors, but the most common, and the one that I believe, is that he had an affair with Richard's wife. That means that he broke the morality clause in the partnership agreement,” Janice replied with a vicious grin. It was clear that Janice was loving the drama and excitement of it all.

“Wow. If that’s true, that was a very stupid thing for Jason to do,” Karolina replied. In fact, it was mind-bogglingly stupid: Richard was the founder of their firm, had built it up from a single-person legal practice into the large firm that it was today. If he was angry with someone in the firm, he could not only fire them, but blackball them in the entire industry.

She had only met Richard’s wife, Meredith, once, but she remembered her being nice, if a bit distant. She was attractive, but at least in her opinion she wasn’t stunningly beautiful. She couldn't imagine finding a person so attractive that you would risk ruining your life to be with them, but that was what Jason had apparently done. She didn’t understand it at all.

“Yeah, but it was kind of brave, right? If Jason really cared about her, then he risked everything to be with her. I can almost admire that,” Janice went on. Brave? Karolina didn’t see it that way at all, and maybe that showed on her face because Janice stopped talking.

“Anyway, Janice, do you want to get drinks after work today?” Karolina asked. Her thoughts from her drive were still fresh in her mind, and she wondered if hanging out with one of her coworkers would make her feel better.

Even before Janice said anything, Karolina could tell that she was going to say no. Was it her facial expression, the way she stood, or something else?

“Sorry, but I can’t tonight. I’m already meeting with some friends,” Janice said, and then walked off before Karolina could reply. She could see her moving to another cubicle, once again eager to spill the dirt on Jason and Meredith’s torrid love affair.

This was her life. She couldn’t even go out for drinks with her coworker. She unconsciously adjusted her tie and tried to get in the mood to do some paperwork. She really wasn’t feeling like working right now, so she decided to head to the bathroom. She could take a short breather before she needed to get into the paperwork.

She quickly walked to the bathroom, swinging open the door. She made a cursory check and confirmed that she was alone in the bathroom. The bathroom was relatively clean, which was the best thing that she had to say about it. It was cramped, and the light occasionally flickered. She wished that the firm had put some of the money that they put into the lobby or the executive floors into the places where their workers actually spent their time.

She went up to the mirror and examined herself. There was nothing about her appearance that indicated the way that she was feeling. In the mirror, she saw a mildly attractive brunette in her late twenties wearing a gray pantsuit with a white blouse and a black tie. She was somewhat overdressed, as she didn’t have any important meetings today, but she liked her outfit. Especially the tie.

She had fielded questions about why she liked to wear ties for years, but she didn’t understand why anyone thought that it was a big deal. She just liked the way they looked. However, even her impeccable dress sense wasn’t enough to cheer her up right now.

She took a deep breath. She could deal with her unhappiness with the world after work. She gave herself a nod in the mirror, feeling silly as she did so, and then turned to face the door.

Then everything went black.

What was going on? Had she hit her head? Had the lights suddenly turned off for some reason? She felt her breathing quicken, and her heart started racing. Beyond the omnipresent blackness, she suddenly realized that she couldn’t feel anything besides her body. It didn’t feel like she was standing on the ground anymore, but rather that she was floating in some black void.

She closed and opened her eyes, wiped at her face to try to clear any intangible obstruction, and waved her arms at the space around her to try and feel something, anything, other than her own body. Absolutely nothing changed. She was still floating, unmoored from anything else, in the middle of complete blackness.

She held her right hand up in front of her face to see if she could see it, and stared as hard as she could at where she knew her hand was. At first she could see absolutely nothing, but as she opened her eyes wider she began to see the outline of her hand. Were her eyes beginning to adjust to wherever she had found herself?

When she looked around, however, she found that the void was just lighting up on its own. As she watched, wherever she was gradually started to light up with a sourceless white light. Soon the void was about as bright as her office had been, and she could finally see herself. Before she could do anything beyond seeing that she was still wearing her office outfit, a blue screen popped up in the center of her vision. When she turned her head, the box’s position stayed constant, as if it was imposed on her vision, not an actual object.

Welcome, new aspirant. Your universe has just begun the process of being integrated into the wider multiverse. After you are given fifteen minutes to receive answers to your questions and to choose your class, you will be placed in a tutorial. After the completion of this tutorial, you will be returned to your planet, which will have undergone changes to make it suitable for the multiverse at large. Welcome, aspirant, to the new world.

New world, huh? She was scared and confused, and yet, she felt a smile slowly spreading across her face. Perhaps this new world was one where she could actually make a difference, one that she could change for the better.