Chapter 7: Chapter 6

Once I had gotten all my gear in my bag and pockets, we returned to the office and sat down for one last meal he insisted I have. Something about not leaving on an empty stomach. 

Not complaining, however.

"This pasta is delicious." I praised.

"Thank you. It's all grown locally. I'm especially proud of the mushrooms."

I nodded.

"Yeah, they pack that extra oomph of flavor. Best mushrooms I've ever had by a wide margin." 

"Mushrooms are like a little buillion cube of flavor if you know how to use them right."

"And you do?" 

"Yeah. Had a lot of time when I was setting up my first cloning project and nothing to do, so I just polished my cooking skills to the extreme. As a plus, my wife and kids love it. She's not really good at household chores, phenomenal hunter though. Don't tell her that." 

"Don't tell me what?" A voice came from the side, and a hooded figure walked out, covered from head to toe, silent as a grave, "That you're having a romantic dinner with another man while I'm out working hard? Should I be worried~" She teased.

"Only if you want to be." He pulled her close and kissed her, as her cloak fluttered behind, her tail curling up and down happily and she made a cute noise. 

"Ah-ahehem." She parted from him and pulled up her mask just as quickly but I could see the flush on her cheek for a fraction of a second, "I.. uh..... I'll check on the kids." She said, flustered, but she tried to hide it.

Cute!

Hedge gave her a smug grin of victory and the woman shied away even further.

"Sure honey~" 

"Mou! Why do you tease me so?" She pouted cutely, losing ground, and huffed. 

"If you don't want to be teased, you shouldn't be so darned cute. Reflect on your mistakes!" Hedge laughed, hugging her softly.

"I will." She said with a glint in her golden eyes as she turned to me, "You guys have a wonderful gay dinner." 

"We will." I replied with a cheeky grin.

"Great. Another cocky one like you." She rolled her eyes and disappeared in a puff of invisible mist. 

"You know, I might just change my mind about getting that catgirl waifu." I thought out loud.

"You should." He leaned in and said softly, "She gives great head. Can't say that's true for all of them though. Your mileage may vary." 

"I was thinking more from the fluff aspect but sure." I shrugged. 

"That does bring me to an important topic. The whole reason I called you over for dinner."

I looked up from my plate and tilted my head in confusion. 

"Hm?" 

"What do you plan to do with your new life? When I scanned your mind earlier, I didn't see anything about your goals." He clarified.

"Ah yes. That." I realized.

What were my goals now?

What did I want to do?

Did I even want anything?

Well, aside from extending my life from 2 years to...to... Shit. 

I couldn't help but sigh.

"You know, between being reborn, that whole jumbled mess in my head and this lifespan problem, I haven't really thought about what I'll do now. I mean obviously I need to find a solution to extend my lifespan of 2 years. Not going to just die at 26 after cheating literal death. But...."

I gripped my fist as I thought about my future. 

Hedge reached out and held my hand.

"It's okay. Take your time. Hell, build a harem and seek more power if you want." He laughed.

I relaxed and took a breath. 

"Don't even joke about it. A life without purpose...." I shook my head, "You know I was this close to achieving my dream before I died." I raised a pinch, "This close. It was easy to decide what I wanted then. One universe, one planet, one species of hairless monkeys to worry about. I could predict everything about my life down to the number of steps I'd have to take each day. It was so simple. And now? Now there's a whole multiverse out there and I don't even know where to begin. It's laughable."

"So you're afraid of this loss of control. It's understandable. It's a common weakness of you calculative types. You are used to knowing everything, seeing everything, being twelve steps ahead of everyone. The multiverse throws that for a loop. When you think it's going to walk two steps ahead, it jumps five to the left and sinks into the 5th dimension."

"Yeah. It's a damn nightmare. But, you know what, I think I know what to do."

"Do you now?"

"Yeah. I'll take it slow. I'll build a little base. Maybe a spaceship. And then... I'll just build an enterprise. A merchant enterprise, yes!" I gestured with my hands, "Spanning across worlds, across the multiverse. It's always been my calling. 

I was going to play the markets the rest of my life anyways. But this... Here? I can make the goddamn market! I don't need to play in the sandbox, when I can make the whole sandbox myself! Can you imagine how many worlds out there have never experienced the sweet, sweet joys of capitalism? I can go there, I can teach them, and I can break the bank trading across all those worlds!"

"But will that make you happy?" He suddenly asked. 

"What?" I narrowed my eyes, "What's happiness got to do with-" I shook my head, dismissing the thought, "Of course it will. It's what I have always planned on doing. Making money. Lot's of money. The more money I have, the greater my chances of survival and the better I can... Live."

The realization struck me.

"Shit."

"And there you go." He laughed.

"I was not looking for an existential crisis today, man." I said sourly, burying my face in my hands. 

"An existential crisis or two is good for you every now and then." He poured me a cup of coffee and cleared the table.

"Okay. Hit me. What am I supposed to do now, because if you don't have anything better then I'm just doing my bit straight."

"Hey, look I'm not telling you not to open a multiversal enterprise. You can still do that."

"I will." I replied.

"Good. Look I'm just asking you a simple question. Will it make you happy? Is this what you want to do, or something that you think you have to do, for some nebulous reason. Is this your dream? Your purpose in life?" He asked.

"It's uh....." I winced as I was forced to admit, "I don't know."

"You don't know." He repeated, "Great. That's the first step to-"

"Hold on, when did this become therapy hour?" I interjected.

Hedge looked at his watch with a flair and replied with a smirk.

"About two minutes ago. So chop chop. We only have the hour. Any more will cost you extra!"

I chuckled at his antics and decided to play along.

"Alright. Ask away, doctor!"

"I will." he said, and a pen and pad appeared in his hand as he leaned back into his chair. And was he always wearing those spectacles?

"So let's talk about your childhood. Before you decided to become a-" He looked at me expectantly.

"Market analyst and portfolio manager." I supplied. 

"Yes. Before that, was there something else you wanted to be? A doctor? An astronaut?"

I thought for a moment, back to my past, before I met my grandpa, before the accident that killed my parents, to the days of yore, and it came back to me, natural as breathing, like a sweet flood of memories. 

"A scientist." I said.

He raised an eyebrow at the contrast. 

"You wanted to be a scientist? Why?"

"Because you know when you see those movies and tv shows, where it's just those muscular heroes punching the bad guys and having the sidekick make them a cure or some gadget, I used to wonder, why doesn't the guy who can make the gadgets and all this amazing stuff do the job of the hero himself? Why sit on the sidelines and let the dumb brute hog all the credit?" 

"You don't like heroes?" He asked.

"I don't like stupid people." I corrected. 

"I see. And then what happened?"

"I realized why."

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"Why? Why they didn't fight the villains themselves?"

"Yup." I nodded, "It's because they're smart. They realized that it's better for the dumb brute to risk his life against the villains rather than waste their own. It was a simple cost benefit analysis and they valued their lives more than the glory. Which is fair. Better the dumb die than the smart."

"Clever interpretation but I don't think that was why-"

"I know. I was a kid. It's a child's interpretation of it." I assured him.

"And then what happened? You could have still become a scientist if you wanted. What made you choose something so radically different?"

"As I said earlier, a cost benefit analysis. As I grew up, as I learned more and more about how the world works, I did a simple cost benefit analysis of the profession of the scientist. And the results were far from acceptable."

"Do elaborate." 

"See, our idea of the scientist, the great ones from history is rather flawed. For you see, in ye olden times, when sir Newton and Tesla were going around discovering shit? When John Snow was deducing the root cause of Cholera? They didn't need fourteen PhDs and a million 'peer reviewed' publications to be believed for what was the simple truth. For their research to be valid. To be a scientist. 

Back in the golden age of science, you could be a paper boy and discover some rare phenomenon and you'd be taken at least semi seriously for your work if it held merit. Your effort had value. Your educational background didn't matter so much. Back then, science was fun. You could be someone, make something of your life. Nowadays? Scientists are lab slaves who are worked like mules and get paid peanuts for their effort. The scientific community would rather accept feminist mein kampf as a marvel of science and fire an experienced CERN researcher with 40 years in the fucking field over ten year old tweets. Where facebook moms and Karens throw out your research in favor of anti-vax nonsense and believe the Earth is flat. There is no value, no satisfaction in being a scientist in a world of lunatics and cartoonishly evil people. And I figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Better to rule with the lunatics than be trampled by the mob and burnt at the stake for pursuing and protecting the truth. If the world doesn't value science, respect its caretakers, why should anyone bother to support it?" 

"And so you decided to become a glorified investment banker?" 

"Pretty much, yeah. Also, my grandpa had connections in the business so that was a plus."

"And now you're just going to blindly follow the same doctrine in the multiverse?" 

"Well no, not blindly. I know not every world is the same. But being a businessman pays a hell of a lot more. Besides, what else would you have me do? Collect a harem of one dimensional bimbos and fuck my way into an early grave?"

He laughed and then thought for a moment as realization flashed in his eyes before speaking. 

"You know the fatal flaw of all those people who jump into the multiverse thinking 'I want to be a harem god!'? It's real easy to do all that. And once they've got a harem and once they're gods? They become lost. Because now they're immortal, reality bending monsters and no amount of fucking will make eternity bearable. Without purpose, without meaning in your life, in a thousand, ten thousand years, sex will lose all meaning, your definition of beauty will be twisted beyond recognition and life will become a joyless chore of existence. The world will leave you behind and you will leave the world behind. 

And then all you're left with is yourself. And suddenly you've got to, if not love yourself, at least learn to live with yourself. When you're that high up in the pecking order, one's a company. And the people who come looking for meaning their existence through others? They're not exactly the sort to be able to live with themselves. 

So they do one of three things. They either kill or seal themselves, which is by far the most humane option. 

Or they become tricksters, walking in and out of stories, messing around like madmen for the rest of eternity. 

Or they drink themselves into a perpetual state of half consciousness through drugs or whatever to push away the pain of existence.

And then there's the classic. With nothing else to do, they become world conquering, tyrant eldritch horrorterrors, spreading across the multiverse like a plague until some poor soul has to deal with them or they conquer their multiversal cluster and realize the futility of it all. 

You see, man isn't a creature made to comprehend the true vastness of it's own existence, and that perception, that understanding is the bane of their existence. Of our existence. 

And the only salve to that open, festering wound of sapience is the lie of meaning. Only purpose makes eternity bearable." 

He sighed, his eyes looking into the far distance of his history. 

"It took me a long time to learn this lesson. And now that I am sending you out into the multiverse, it's a lesson I hope you won't have to learn the hard way."

"That's very... Nice of you, Hedge. But-"

"Yes. I know. You want to go already. It's 'cringe' to hear me talk about all of this. But I'm saying this because I know what it's like out there. Because I have read your mind. 

You like to believe you're different. That you're some creature of pure logic and rationality, a true man of science. You believe things like love and attachments are weakness and people who believe in them are pathetic. And that you're immune to such weaknesses."

"Because I am." I told him.

"And yet here you are. Killed by someone who had all those weaknesses."

"That irrational piece of-"

"There are more, so, so many more of him out there. And so are you. You like to lie to yourself, and I get why you do. You believe love is a disease."

"A drug addiction." I corrected, taking a sip of my coffee, "Just like any other addiction, it needs to be treated and it's victims need to be rehab-ed. And knowing their state, their plight, their misery, I refuse to partake in the same, twisted ritual of disappointment. I'd rather avoid the unnecessary pain. Sue me." 

"If you keep going on like this, someone very well will." He chuckled kindly.

"Let them try. I'll thrash them in court." I quipped.

"You always have a smart comeback, a quip or laconic to everything don't you? Are you sure this isn't some banal excuse to keep the existential dread at bay?" 

"I can do two things at once." I leaned back in my chair, "What can I say, I'm awesome."

"Then tell me one thing, Mr. Awesome.

Was your love for your grandfather also an addiction? A ritual of disappointment as you call it?"

That...shut me up. I raised a finger to interject but found myself at a loss for words. 

"That's different." I finally muttered, "He raised me. He was family. It was my duty." 

"There you go, lying to yourself again. And that's fine. You can lie to yourself. I can't stop you from doing that. I can only lead you to water. It's your choice if you want to drink or become parched till you die. 

Just know this. You're not a robot. You're a human being. And no amount of logic will ever drown out your humanity. You can choose to accept it, with all its flaws or bury it deep inside till one day you find yourself alone facing the end of eternity. And let me tell you this, by then, it'll be too late to do anything."

Those words hit me like a bolt of lightning, thundering within me.

My breath hitched and I stood mute and shocked for a moment before I realized how I had been acting.

I gulped involuntarily and sat up straight.

Still, some stubborn part of me refused to bow to what was evidently the truth. 

"So what's the difference between this lie and the lie of meaning? Both are lies, yet you advocate for one and denounce the other. As far as I can see both are just as necessary to live."

"Now you're just being facetious." Hedge sighed, "But fine. You see I have a speech I give to young men, about all that it means to be a man. You look like you need to hear a piece of it."

"Secondhand lions." I interrupted him with a shit eating grin.

He rolled his eyes.

"So what?" 

"So, I know that speech. Love the movie. 'Some lies are worth believing in. Virtue, honor, true love, blah blah blah.' Great speech. Loved it when I saw it the first time, when I was, you know, ten. In the real world though? That shit doesn't work." 

Hedge facepalmed.

"Alright. Fine. I'll get to the point."

"I appreciate it." I said, adding with genuine gratitude, "And I mean that, truly. I appreciate the speech you gave, the intentions you had. I will keep it in mind, all of what you told me."

"You better. That speech took a lot of thinking. I don't usually care this much."

"I know. And for what it's worth, I still think science is fun. It's just the idiots who make it suck for everyone else."

"So you will follow your dreams then? Find your purpose?" He nudged.

"After you made that beautiful, glorious speech? How could I not?" I snorted in laughter.

"I will become a scientist. Or at least I will pursue the truth, like those scientists back in the good old days. And I'll be a merchant as well. Not because I have to, but because I want to. Besides, haven't you ever wondered what it would be like if one of those xianxia losers got anime powers or super-tech before their grandpa-in-a-ring golden finger activated? Imagine trading their halo of destiny away for a laser pistol. Now that would be a trade to die for." I grinned evilly.

"You're a psycho, you know that?" 

"And?" 

"I want pics. I want to see their faces when they realize what they've just lost." He smirked. 

"Done."

__________________

And that's the second to last preparation chapter.

Next chapter, MC discusses future plans and gets an introduction to multiverse survival strategies.

Then, he is sent off to the first world in his journey.

Thanks for reading.

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See ya later.

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