And just like that, Jake and Baxter’s slowly dissipating consciousnesses were somehow gathered up, strengthened, given form, and brought to a little white room where they faced an empty white desk with no one behind it and a closed-door behind it.

Jake was sitting in a white chair facing the desk while Baxter was sitting on a white cushion next to him. Jake looked around the room before looking down at the dog next to him. Somehow he sensed a feeling of shame coming from the dog which was odd, he felt, because he was pretty sure he’d never met the dog before. His last memory was of pain in his leg from the front plastic panel of an air conditioner and hopping around clutching his leg.

He was quite puzzled by how he wound up here. But he’d always liked dogs so he stretched out his hand to see if he passed the sniff test and promptly began scratching Baxter’s ears. They passed the time, how much he wasn’t sure of, but Baxter appreciated it and it helped Jake to relax so they fell into an indeterminate cycle of ear scratches which was about to escalate into belly rubs when the door behind the desk opened and a presence came in and sat behind the desk.

It seemed to be carrying something that his mind interpreted as a pile of paperwork. The presence itself seemed vaguely masculine, albeit in a curiously genderless fashion. “Jake, Baxter, you can call me Bob,” it said.

Jake had read Japanese isekai light novels on the web, when you’re broke in New York City, living in a closet, you tend to spend a lot of time online so he kind of understood the setup, but he couldn’t figure out the part about how he wound up here, in this little office, but he figured that he must have died. He wondered briefly if he’d had a heart attack or something but then decided to put off thinking about it until he got this office mess sorted out.

“I’m dead then?” Jake asked.

“You don’t remember?” the presence asked.

“The last thing I remember is grabbing my leg and hopping on a sidewalk,” Jake answered. “What was it, a heart attack?” he asked.

There was a moment then that seemed to be between the presence, Bob, and the dog beside him and the dog seemed to shake its head and the presence said, “Yes, we’ll go with that, something like a heart attack.”

Jake thought for a moment but decided it really didn’t matter and said, “So what happens next?”

“Well, that depends on you two really,” said Bob.

“How do you mean?” said Jake. “Are you in charge of intake to another world, are you a god?”

“No,” said Bob. “I’m not in charge of another world, I’m kind of in charge of your world now. Well, me and a bunch of others like me have taken ownership of the universe that your world is part of. And I guess you could call us gods, just without that whole need for worship thing that you are used to.”

“So,” Jake began.

“Let’s not go there, shall we?” said Bob.

“But,” Jake began.

“No, what's past is the past and we’re looking forward to the future now. Let’s be more forward-facing shall we? I don’t want to answer any questions about the previous universe, its rules, its former Gods, nothing. I’m here to give you guys a chance. A way to move forward. Do you want a chance?” asked Bob.

Jake thought about that for a brief second and then realized that if the only way was forward and the only method forward was what this Bob was offering, then he really wasn’t being offered much of a choice at all. “So if I don’t accept what you’re offering, which I don’t know what you’re offering yet, what happens to me, well to us then?”

“You’re right about one thing, you’re a pair deal. Either you both say yes, or it’s into the soul pool for you both.”

“What’s the soul pool,” Jake asked.

“Basically you know that whole concept of reincarnation that the Buddhists have?” Bob asked.

“Yeah,” said Jake.

“Well, they got it pretty close to spot-on, not the whole living-on thing where you drank the tea and popped back fresh into your next body, but life requires a soul and a soul requires life. You stay in the soul pool until you are needed or need to come out and then you get scooped out and placed in a body.”

“Is that what would happen to us? We’d go in the soul pool and then get placed back? Would we be humans? Dogs? What would we be?” Jake asked.

“Can’t say,” Bob answered. “It’s a big pool, it’s a big multiverse. The pool’s spinning and spinning around and you get taken out from your layer where you spin and generally get put back in something similar to what you came from, but it’s a big multiverse, so the odds are good you probably won’t be human again. But you won’t remember being human so, does it matter?”

“Wow,” said Jake. “Just wow. So, since you’ve got us here, you must have something special planned? Is that why you’ve brought us here?”

“Yep,” said Bob. “I do. What do you think about Dungeons?”

“You mean like in the web novel form or the medieval kind or the S&M kind?”

There was a pause and then Bob said, “Hmm! Threw me for a loop there. You humans! I guess I meant the web novel type, but if your tastes run that way, I guess you could start there and evolve in the other two directions.

Jake looked at Baxter and Baxter looked back. A message was exchanged but neither really knew the full extent of it. They both turned back to the well, Bob, and Jake asked his next question.

“So when does the apocalypse start anyway?”

“Monday, June 5th, midnight,” Bob answered.

“Wow,’ Jake responded. “I didn’t really expect it to be that soon.” It was May 1st, at least it was the last time that Jake could remember. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in this space.

“Yep,” said Bob. “We’re kicking off the apocalypse at 12:00 am of June 5th. It’ll be loads of fun. Well at least for us. Lots of changes are happening, money’s changing, the government’s probably changing, calendar’s changing, physical laws are changing and we’re adding back Qi and Mana. Woo Hoo! It’s gonna be fun!” He paused and then said, “well, it’ll be fun for some of us. Lordy, it’ll be some big ole changes!”

“I’ve gotta ask,” said Jake. “Do you guys really talk like that?”

“Nah, we just determined that you’d be comfortable with a guy named Bob and an accent like this. Your brain is providing the translation, I’m just allowing it to happen. So, back to my question, wanna be a dungeon, boy?”

“Why?” Jake asked. And judging from the look that Baxter gave him he was wondering the same thing.

“Well,” Bob began. “Primarily this: adding back Mana and Qi is kinda tricky. Since it wasn’t natural to the world, mana, in particular, tends to flow funny and clump. It also tends to take on the elemental characteristics of whatever the environment is that it surrounds. For instance, Mana over a lake, water attributes, mana in a desert, earth and fire, maybe wind. Mana over the poles, all that ice, water mana. And mana tends to be mutable. It takes on the characteristics of other mana, so you get a big chunk of water mana, it tends to make the mana surrounding it water mana. That’s not a good thing. After a while, you wind up with a homogenous mana pool and, well, things that aren’t equipped to use that mana tend to die out. For instance, if the whole world turned to water mana, well, humans better learn to breathe water and swim really well. Which is kind of likely since 71% of the planet is water. That’s what you dungeons are for, well, one of the purposes of a dungeon. You kind of wash the mana and restore balance. The ocean is important, but so is the land. You and some others like you will keep the water mana from overwhelming the land. It’s how you’re made. Well, how we make you. You also have some other purposes, but I’ll leave you to figure those out yourself.”

“Huh,” Jake said. “Do I get a dungeon fairy?”

“That’s what Baxter’s for. He’s gonna be your helper, your dungeon boss. He’s gonna be your legs, he’s gonna see to it that you survive.”

“Is he going to be a dog, still?” Jake asked.

“Despite the stuff you humans tell each other, there ain’t much of a difference in between dogs and men. A few more brain cells, some hair, and opposable thumbs and you’re pretty much identical. You all float in the same layer in the soul pool. He’s going to be a semi-mutable dog-like entity that’s going to help you and you’re going to be a big crystal at the bottom of a hole that needs his help.”

“Does he agree to this?” Jake asked.

Bob said, “You two are a little bit karmically bound together. You’ve got some soul stuff to work out together. Nothing too major from my point of view, but you guys got a little bit entangled. We figured that being a dungeon and a helper ought to let you work it out. And at the same time, you can help us out. It’s a win-win situation. But to answer your question, he does.”

Jake said, “Then I’m in. I assume there’s gonna be a tutorial or a help file or something similar, right?”

Bob chuckled and said, “You know what they say about assumptions, don’t you? Well, in answer to your question, nope, nope, and nope. You are going to be a semi-autonomous, quasi-divine helper that’s been recruited to manage a transition problem. How you do it is up to you. Certain parts will be automatic, so you won’t need to worry about them. The rest you’ll just have to figure out. So, welcome! Now go to sleep and when you wake up, you’ll be in your new home.” And he looked at the two and with a flash of light, white again, blackness overcame them both.