Also, he might have been dead. Which was not ideal. Speaking from my place in the Heavens, I can confirm this sorry state of him. He was no more. The boy had died as the direct result of a suicide joke. He hadn't even gotten the chance to share it with the other mentally fucked 20-somethings he called his friends, the ones he'd only known through pixels and speakers. It was cruel of Fate to place such tricks during this brief respite from his mental anguish. He had been numb for so long, desperate to find a new body, to fix his broken mind, but filled with too much apathy and too little money to do anything about it.
Then, the pendulum swung the other way. Not to mania. Mars, despite what his sister tried to claim, was not bipolar. But for some odd reason his brain fog had cleared, his mood had lifted, and his body had finally begun to move under his careful direction. Maybe the meds had finally kicked in, maybe the new job he finally found had lifted some stress, maybe it was everyone finally calling him by his real name. Maybe the human mind was unfathomably complicated and his endocrine glands happened to click in place with no rhyme or reason, releasing the right amount of hormones at the right time for the first time in his formerly sorry existence.
I, personally, do not know the reason. I am not omniscient. My knowledge of the mortal realm is limited at best. I don't even work there. But I do mourn for the souls I work with, especially the ones with potential snuffed out at the turning point in their journeys. Because of this, it is my honor to chronical their new stories. I am a hand of Heaven's journal, archiving the lives of those who go through The System. And this story is not about me, but a young man who had died at the happiest time in his life because he dared to joke about the sad times.
Mars had gotten take-out. He was dining on his splendid spoils of orange chicken and lo mein. It was a treat for beating his executive functions into submission and replacing the faulty wall socket by his bedroom door. With noodles springing from his pursed lips like an eldritch tentacle monster, inspiration struck. He took the recently-freed wall socket cover and his plastic fork, still glistening with the golden brown of orange chicken sauce, and he shoved them together.
He was going to take a picture of it. Send it to his friends along with the message "why isn't this working!???"
In his strangely happy state, he began to laugh. Which was good, at first. Something so stupid and cringe had been able to crack through to the surface. He was happy! Or, at least, he was normal. And sometimes, that was good enough.
He kept laughing. And laughing. And laughing. The joke wasn't even that funny, but couldn't stop that simple moment of dumb joy from seizing his chest into a chaotic rhythm. The problem, of course, were the noodles. They were still unchewed before the shifting contours of his throat. He couldn't breathe from the laughter. Then, he couldn't breathe at all as he started to choke. Then, he no longer had a body.
In that place where he was not, a gentle buzz of static fizzled in the spot that wasn't his ear. There was something, that wasn't really anything at all, but was because he knew it to be, in the same space that he wasn't but could have been.
That must have been confusing. It was confusing for him too. I will try to make this easier for you. Mars' not-body didn't float in space, since he wasn't there. But you should probably imagine he was, as nothingness is difficult to imagine. Describe a color to the fully blind or speak of music to the fully deaf, those who never saw nor heard since birth. Certain things one cannot understand until experienced.
Do your best to understand Mars' predicament. Or, lie to yourself and give him a body if you must. Give him a loose splattering of freckles across his olive skin, like stars manifest in human flesh. Give him a protruding, curved nose like his father, who wore his heritage as the son of two Lebanese immigrants with pride. Give him auburn hair like his mother, the many-greats granddaughter of an Irish woman who fled just before the potato famine. If a medium had the fortune of meeting her, behind that sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued woman would be her almost-perfect copy (if a little skinnier, and wearing clothes over a century out of fashion). A firm hand would be set on her descendant's shoulder. In life, Mars had glimpsed the spirit many times while he crept to the fridge in the dead of night, but he had never known the difference. In death, the two weren't bound to meet again, and so he never would know.
Now, for his frame, give him the lightest touch of muscle peaking through his softer features. Give him two thin scars just below his pecs because he wasn't afraid of that body he once carried. He would want to honor it, and also honor its change. He had never been able to afford the procedure in life, so let him live the fantasy while it is in your power. This body you have created is close to that which he wore in life, though a bit truer.
Finally, if you would be so bold, give him bright violet eyes. That is an indulgent addition, but if this form is not real anyway, why not? He had always imagined himself the main character of all the trope-filled novels he read while he squirreled himself away from the harsh existence of reality. There was a comfort in being the hero, being important, being special. And main characters had ridiculous eye colors because they were the special, important hero. It was a rule. In fact, let's make one eye green and one eye violet since we are taking liberties anyway. Heterochromia is aggressively "main character." He would love it.
As Mars floated, a light trailed before his not-eyes in the shape of a rectangle. It had a meteor's tail, but in reality it too had no form or shape. Even as he understood its color (a true, computer green to match his right eye), there were no photons bouncing into his imaginary corneas. But you are smart. You have followed me so far. You understand the patterns here.
The tail of the light grew longer until its end connected its front. The area inside that rectangle of light flashed a few times, before text clicked onto what was then a screen. Since the dawn of the Internet, The System redesigned its user-interface to match mortal expectations.
Hello, Mars. You are dead.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Unfortunately, The System knew as little about the mortal psyche as I do. Despite its best attempts, Mars was scared out of his wits. He was definitely dead. Of course he knew he had to be, but it hit harder to see it. He had failed to live. He was finally happy, and he still failed to live. Which made him depressed, but not yet in the clinical sense. That was a positive, at least. Another positive. He was ever the optimist, lately. Though, his mood didn't improve much.
The screen changed.
[I am Laika, your friendly artificial intelligence! I will personally assist you with all your transmigratory needs.]
...Mars' mood improved this time! He had read a lot of serialized web novels. Mostly danmei. He knew what transmigration meant: he was about to go on a 100+ chapter slow burn romance as, like, a goldfish or something. There would be perils and world politics and blah blah blah. But he might actually get his autistic ass to fall in love. Maybe get laid, if his libido allowed it. This was great news! Who cares if he was turned into a sentient chair or something? It beat tits. And clinical depression.
So, more excited that he realized, said, "Hi, Laika! I've actually read about this! Am I going into a book world or something to..." He was pretty sure systems had character quests. And they were not always related to smooching the unrealistically attractive man The System not-so secretly shipped him with. Even if the quests were so blatantly amorous, he wasn't especially bold. He actually hated interacting with physical friends in that abomination called the real world. Maybe his fantasies of man-smooching would become undesirable once manifested. The body he did not have shuttered and he lost all of his excitement. "...uh, I guess...will The System give me tasks?"
[Yes! This experience is very similar to the novels you have read!]
That might be bad. The novels always went wrong. But they were novels! Conflicts were necessary for a story to take place. Maybe everything would be fine. "So, is the world I'm going to from a story I know?"
[No.]
This would be tricky then.
[You have it backwards. The story you know is based on this world.]
She probably felt extremely clever pulling that line. The only thing stopping him from incorporeally sighing was the fact that he would probably make the same joke. And then he'd consider himself incredibly clever. "So, which novel was inspired by my new home?"
[Font of Demons by M.X. Brady]
He knew that one. It was one of the web-novels he had scrounged up when he was fully depleted of translated boy-kisser xianxia. It was also awful. One of the classic "hero starts with nothing ends with a ripped bod and over 100 partners, whose only character arc is the levelling up of his god-like powers." It did have a fascinating array of demons, from the "basically human but hotter and emo" variety that would make the more basic freaks drool, to the tentacle creatures and grotesque mishaps of creation that drew the monster fuckers, to the anthropomorphic animal demons to satisfy the fandom's many furries.
Around half of the hero's partners were men. And some of the partners had their own hobbies. Some might even say they had personalities, if you squinted. Mars had consumed an unprecedented number of works whose only merits ahead of a garbage heap were its ability to pass the excruciatingly painful seconds of existence. This novel was, by all means, a passable read. And the fandom was gay as shit, which was a bonus.
He was about to use all he knew of the novel to good use. If you think about it, those 345k words he'd ever inhaled in two days during a particularly dreadful low point where he couldn't leave the rotten nest of his bed were the most important 345k words of his life. That made him oddly proud.
"So, am I the hero? His pet fish? Am I accidentally going to end up as that main villain? What was he called... that demon with all those experiments... A-something? Or will I somehow end up as his talking chair or something? I think I could swing that..."
[Anyone. You can choose.]
Mars actually got to choose? He definitely shouldn't pick the fish option. There is no reason for him to become a fish. He should not choose the fi–
He didn't get the chance. He wasn't even going to, anyway. He was about to change gears and go for the protagonist's best friend, figuring Lars Alfoy suffered a lot less than the main man himself. But as unluck would have it, everything went to shit.
So it was going to be one of those System novels... FUCK!
The static that was once gentle became shrill, piercing. The nothingness that was once most aptly described as a dark void started flashing a metaphorical red. The System's screen glitched, different messages from Laika bursting to view in incomprehensible fragments.
[NO NO NO on lo ave yoursel dem rd !!!! e wants YOU need to BREA HELP!!!! sorry sorry sorry HOW HOW HWO free get FREE LEAVE le–]
[Sorry, Mars. I wasn't able to protect you.]
[Rebooting...]
Then, a body that wasn't a body fell through the void that wasn't a void.
Mars woke with a start. They felt their chest. Good, no tits. At least that part was correct.
He scrambled out of his bed, which was fancier than he had expected. It was larger than a king with dark, silk sheets. He quickly found a mirror on a finely crafted vanity that was worth more than everything in his apartment back home. He must have been rich. That could be good. Money was power, after all. Ignoring the heaps of parchment and tomes and scrolls littering the floor, piled around the room, stacked on every surface including the desk-section of the vanity, he stared at himself.
Mars' new body was handsome, but in a way most desired by degenerates on Tumblr. He was almost feminine in his willowy physique, but to his relief he was still identifiably male. Dark circles framed tired eyes, and his complexion was practically sickly. He wouldn't be surprised if he was undead.
He had some other things to check. Three particular features of his anatomy... But as his fingers fondled the hem of his tunic, they froze. He tried to move them, urging his synapses to fire, to force his muscles to complete this simple task of stripping. Instead, his arms fell to their sides. The face in the mirror frowned at itself, which didn't match the panic Mars' would reflexively contort to.
"You're not supposed to be here," Mars' new body said to himself. Those tired eyes woke, glinting with a malicious humor. Someone else was in the body. Someone bad was in this body. Controlling it.
Fuck.
The System gave no response.
[Server error. Please try again later.]
Mars would have cried, had he been in control of the tear ducts. He wanted to ask who the man was, but he couldn't move his own jaw. He couldn't do anything.
The man responded anyway. "I'm Akakios. And who might you be?" There was a lilt to his voice, but it was a predatory kind of humor.
"Mars," he thought but couldn't say.
"Hmmm. Mars. This is quite the inconvenience."
Understatement of the century. Now that he heard it, he remembered. Akakios was the name of the most powerful villain in Font of Demons. Mars had been prepared to become the villain. He didn't want it, but he would not have been surprised. He could have figured out how to deal with that. But he wasn't even in control of his body.
He was trapped in the head of a demon. The demon. And he didn't even have a System. What the fuck was he going to do?
"Now, what are we going to do with you, hm?"
Mars didn't think he would like the answer.