"Derrick. Derrick, baby, pl—please open your eyes, baby."
The last thing Derrick Storm remembered was the smell of his own blood while lying on the side of a dirty pavement.
He went to the release of a very famous novel, Volume Two of Star Devouring Swordsman. Judging by the long line of hundreds of people camped outside the store since dawn, arguing over who would cut ahead of whom, one could tell that the novel was a great hit.
Derrick saw the big line reaching the far end of the street before taking a turn, turning into a second row, and decided to skip ahead directly with the help of the man grinning beside him like the two of them were pulling off a heist.
This man was Marcus, his childhood fired. The shop had not even opened yet, but this man could get him in before anyone else.
How? The shop belonged to Marcus.
If you have connections, why not use them? It was not like he had all the time in the world. Derrick was a busy man.
"Yo! The fuck, man! We came here first!"
"Why does he get to cut in line?"
People saw them cut in line and started shouting at them, expressing their rage. They even started cursing at Derrick, but no one stepped out of line.
They were more afraid that someone would take their spot if they did, but it seemed like not all of them were. A stranger stepped out with an ugly look on his face.
His eyes went cold as he stared at Derrick and shouted. "Do you know how long I have waited for the second volume? I am not waiting any longer because of capitalists like you!!!"
Then his hand disappeared into his jacket, and it came back out holding a handgun that barely fit in his small hands.
Bang! Bang!
Bang!
Derrick had just enough time to register the shape of the handgun before it went off.
Three shots.
Damn you! He didn’t even hear the first one, just felt the ground tilt sideways to meet him, the pavement cold and rough against his cheek, Marcus screaming for an ambulance in a voice that sounded very far away.
He saw the horrified look on Marcus’ face as the man knelt on the ground, pressing hard on the wound. His face was white as paper, and his eyes were shaking in panic.
Blood pooled warm slowly beneath Derrick.
Oh, come on, he thought, disgusted, staring up at a sky he could no longer feel the sun in.
Three bullets? Over a line? I died because someone could not stomach that I had connections and they did not.
This has to be the single stupidest killing in recorded history, and I would know; I’ve written at least forty of them.
Somewhere underneath the pain, a meaner part of him added that the guy could’ve at least had the decency to be a better shot and only need one bullet to finish the job.
Oh God! It hurts so much!!!!
He should have been afraid.
Instead, with his life running out onto the concrete in slow, unhurried increments, all Derrick could manage was spite.
The man standing over him with the gun still smoking had no idea who he’d just killed.
No idea that the reason for that line, the reason for the crowd, the reason three hundred strangers had spent all morning losing their minds over cutting order, was the one currently bleeding out in front of him.
The same man he had killed.
Nobody in the world knew his face; after all, he was an anonymous author who had published several bestsellers.
Today was the day he was going to step out and reveal his face at this very bookstore.
What bad luck.
That had been the entire point of the surprise signing his manager arranged, the one perfect chance to walk out from behind the counter and watch people love something he’d made without loving him for his money first.
Instead it would just be the universe’s last cruel punchline: the author, murdered outside his own launch, by a man who would regret not knowing how his favorite novel ended because there was no one to write it.
If I’m dead, Derrick thought, almost laughing despite the blood filling his throat, good luck getting the ending you were all hoping for. Let’s see how you enjoy it when nobody left alive knows how the story ends.
...
Suddenly darkness swallowed Derrick.
There was nothing but silence in the void where he drifted for less than a second.
Then a bright light came smashing into his face.
A woman’s voice, cracked down the middle, said his name like it was the only word she had left to hold onto.
"Derrick. Derrick, baby, please—please, just open your eyes—"
’Mother? No, that can’t be possible...’ He opened his eyes.
The ceiling was wrong.
There was Water-stained plaster instead of the exposed brick of his old loft that cracked in one corner around a thin embedded strip that pulsed faint blue whenever the room’s temperature shifted.
It was some kind of climate strip, cheap and half-broken, glued crookedly into a ceiling that otherwise looked one hard winter away from caving in.
On the nightstand, a cracked-screen phone hovered a fingernail’s width above the wood, humming faintly, as if gravity here were more of a polite suggestion than a law.
What the?
Did I hit my head? Or is Marcus messing with me? Derrick turned his head slightly and squinted his eyes. No, I did die. The pain was real.
The light through the curtain was thin and grey, but the curtain itself shimmered like magic.
But what it was was some cheap fabric-tech cloth reacting to the morning sun. The room was an embodiment of tech and poverty openly, in every crack and stain and secondhand piece of furniture.
What finally made him smack the truth into his face was the scene he saw when he looked outside the window of the room.
High up in the sky, there was a faint green shimmering light that faded in and out of time to time like some translucent shield working in secret.
Not only that, he saw several cars move by high up. Not on the road; they were flying in the air.
Okay, Derrick thought, the pieces clicking into place with the same satisfaction he used to feel plotting a novel. This isn’t my world. There is no way I slept through hundreds of years. Wait, did I reincar—no, it should be called transmigration.
Did I transmigrate to another world? This is otherworldly; no wonder everything looks so different.
And apparently even the poor people here have better appliances than I ever did.
"Derrick?" And leaning over him, closer than the ceiling, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his entire lifespan.
Hearing her call out his name, Derrick focused his attention on her.