Day 116 - Die Story

Die Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

They might as well have been gods. They had the powers to shift fates, bend time, and defy reality and alter many other improbable and universally difficult things. They were powerful, but not omnipotent. They didn’t actually know the extent of their own powers. They weren’t born and they didn’t grow old. They just existed. They might have been immortal but they didn’t know. They were not omniscient. They had no idea what their own personal fate would be. They might have been intentional creations or they might have been dimensional anomalies.

Part of not knowing all their answers, but existing for a very long time, meant that they would get very very bored. Even though they were powerful, the eventual repetitive nature of any type of existence was enough to turn them apathetic and indifferent. They had intervened in human affairs before. They had taken sides and determined outcomes. They had done it all. More than once. Over and over and over again. It was old news. They had seen and done just about everything they could imagine. And so now they were bored. And when boredom set in, they played games.

Most of them did not have names. There wasn’t any real need. There were only a few dozen of them, and they all inherently knew who the others were. Occasionally someone would disappear for good or someone else would come along into existence. They didn’t usually know how or why, but they all adapted quite easily. They accepted and took things too easily for granted. It was an ingrained character flaw most of them had. They accepted themselves and their place in reality. They didn’t know or want to know why they were; only that they were mattered.

They were attached to each other. They could feel or find the others whenever they wanted to. It didn’t even have to be a fully formulated thought and they would just suddenly be in each others company. It was a useful skill, but certainly eliminated any concept of true privacy. But they didn’t all mind that much – they had no idea what privacy was. They had never had it before. Felix, who called himself Felix, not that anyone else objected or had another name for him, liked to tempt fate. He wasn’t interested what they could do; that usually proved to be a lot and be too easy and too repetitively boring. He was interested in what they couldn’t do. Felix pushed himself and anyone else that would let him push them.

Felix created the die. It was a six-sided die, seemingly like something from any common game. But one side meant death for the caster.

When Felix created the six-sided die of death, he didn’t actually think anyone else would ever want to play the game with him. He couldn’t imagine anyone else could also be so bored with immortality. But immortal routine and a lack of any potential for new had a funny way of making anyone mad, regardless of their abilities or powers.

And so they played. With universal power at stake, they rolled the die and let random odds and chance determine whether they lived or died. These were people that could control reality. They could have swayed the outcome in any way that they wanted to. But they didn’t. That wasn’t the game. The game required an absolute indifference to the outcome. Boredom made them do silly things.