And then he pushed.
The world around me shifted once again, closing in around me and then opening up, revealing open blue sky above me and smooth rose-tinted marble beneath me. I was on my knees, having landed hard against the marble. Ouch. Totally not kidding about the hurting part. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that I was on the very edge of one of the floating platforms. Below was miles and miles of sky, and below that was a snow-capped mountain with a pine-covered base. The mountain itself was some kind of onyx stone; nothing that I recognised. I gulped, crawling away from the edge and then pulling up to my feet. Those bastard sols.
“We won’t let you die, Willa.” I mimicked, brushing off my boy-clothes and shoving my hair out of my face. “We’ll just teleport you onto a platform in the sky, where you’re definitely going to die, while we wait in our little safety-cave.”
“Excuse me?” A voice piped up to my left.
I turned my head and promptly shrieked. The thing wasn’t entirely human, but it certainly wasn’t a god. It was almost naked, except for some weird kind of skin-suit that covered about as much as ordinary underwear would cover, before stretching up over the stomach, over the chest, and then separating into straps to go over the shoulders. I could still see the general shape of everything. I wanted to cover my eyes, just to be polite, but the thing had a face that didn’t really allow you to look away. There was a nose, but it didn’t seem to be breathing. There was a mouth, but I couldn’t see any teeth. It had eyes, but there was a strange, waxy texture to them.
“What the hell are you?” I hissed, before I could think of a more sensitive way to ask the question.
“I am a server,” the thing replied. “My name is Jeffrey.”
I blinked, my eyes moving to Jeffrey’s strange covering. “No offence, Jeffrey, but I’m pretty sure you’re a chick.”
“A chick?” Jeffrey cocked her head to the side, blinking that waxy gaze. “I am sorry, Sacred One, I do not understand.”
I spluttered out a laugh. “Sacred One?”
“Yes, Sacred One. I am a server and you are a Sacred One. I was made to serve the Sacred Ones of Topia by the Sacred Creator.”
“Way too many Proper Titles in there,” I muttered. “So you’re like a servant? And you’re not real? You can’t push me off this platform if I do something stupid?”
Jeffrey made a mechanical gasping sound. I took it as a no.
“So why’d he name you Jeffrey?” I asked, trying to wipe the look of shock off her waxy face.
“The names are distributed at random,” Jeffrey answered. “It does not matter, as long as they have a name to call when they require something.”
“I require something.”
“How may I assist you, Sacred One?”
I looked up to her head, noting that the Creator hadn’t bothered to give her any hair at all. She was all smooth and bald and freaky.
“I need a cap. Something to cover my hair. And whatever the hell it is you’re wearing. I need that.”
Jeffrey let out another mechanical gasp. I sighed, rocking back on my heels to wait it out. Eventually, she jerked herself into a short bow, and then turned and walked away, presumably looking for a cap. I doubted that any of the other Jeffreys were wearing caps, but they could just assume that someone had put it on me as a joke. Because they definitely made jokes out of those things, right? Maybe that’s what really happened to dwellers when they died. Maybe they turned into semi-naked, Topian serving robots. That was worse than the ‘hell’ we were all supposed to be going to.
I was still pondering the living-hell in front of me, and the promised hell-for-the-dead that I had always grown up believing in, when Jeffrey returned, a cap in her hand. I tucked my hair away while she pulled off her covering, handing it over to me. I pulled my boy-clothes off and changed into the skin thing, casting one very quick glance down.
“Motherfreaking gods,” I grumbled. “Why am I always doing embarrassing things with my nipples showing?”
Cue mechanical gasp.
“Don’t worry,” I told Jeffrey, handing my clothes over to her. She stared at them, and then dropped them, evidently preferring to be naked. “I say stuff like that sometimes. I’m the God of Embarrassment.”
She frowned. “Sacred Luke is the God of Shame, Sacred One.”
“Did I say shame?” I shook my head at her. “Honestly, Jeffrey, it’s like your head is full of empty air and Proper Titles.” I raised a hand, cutting off the mechanical gasp. “I need to find a cup now. Can you help me?”
“I will fetch a cup, Sacred One.”
I caught her before she could disappear again. “Hold up. It’s a specific cup. Is there someone here called D.O.D.? It’s his cup.”
Jeffrey shook her head. Her waxy face was twisting in a particular way. I thought it was concern.
“Well are there any special damn cups up here?”