The credits rolled on the Season 4 finale of The 100, and Mike slammed his laptop shut.
The glowing blue light of the Praimfaya-induced "Previously On" summary vanished, plunging his dorm room back into the oppressive gloom of 11:50 PM, lit only by the sodium-yellow campus security lights outside.
"What a load of crap," he muttered, scrubbing his hands over his face. He leaned back, his chair groaning, and surveyed the disaster zone of his room. Empty energy drink cans, a cold pizza box, and discarded textbooks formed a messy wall around his bed.
His mind was still buzzing, not from the caffeine but from the show. The frustration.
"I mean, seriously?" he began his rant to the empty room. "Wells. They just off Wells. Randomly. A kid with a knife to the neck. He was supposed to be the moral compass, the counter to Bellamy, and poof. Gone. What a waste of a character arc."
He kicked his feet up onto his desk, careful to avoid a precariously balanced tower of ramen noodle cups.
"And Finn! Don't even get me started on Finn. They turned him into this whiny, lovesick puppy, then, bam! He mows down a village of unarmed Grounders. The whiplash was insane. And his death? A mercy kill? After all that? Heck, I wanted him to pay the equal prize."
Mike grabbed a can from the floor and sighed when he found it empty. He tossed it onto the growing pile.
"And Murphy. God, Murphy." A small, bitter laugh escaped him. "The ultimate cockroach. I respected that, you know? He did what he had to do to survive. But now? He's got Emori, he's got this... conscience. They put him on a leash. They tamed him. It's pathetic. The guy who was a genuine chaotic threat is now just... part of the group. People will say, 'Oh! But it's happy and all', who wants that???'"
He stared at the blank screen of his laptop, his own reflection staring back. Dark circles, a five-day stubble, and a restless energy in his eyes.
"And don't even get me started on the whole A.L.I.E. thing. All those people," he said, thinking of the scene in Polis, "just jumping off the damn cliff. Just... giving up. Because some AI program finally made them 'feel bad' or whatever, taking away their pain? God, this world is so soft, even their apocalypses are about feelings."
He shook his head, a different thought coming to him. A small, genuine smile touched his lips for the first time.
"But damn... those Grounder women."
That, he thought, was the one thing the show got perfectly right. Indra, with her unbending will and facial scars, was so bad-ass. Anya, the ruthless pragmatist. Octavia, evolving from a butterfly into a damn scorpion. Even Lexa, who commanded armies with a glance. They were strong. They were hard. They were survivors. They weren't "sissy women" who needed saving; they were the ones holding the spears.
"Hot as hell," he whispered. "All of them. Well, except Indra. She gives more of a big sister vibe."
Mike stood up and stretched, his muscles popping. He was tall, built solid from years of... well, trying to find an outlet. He walked to his small window and looked out at the quiet campus quad. It was so... peaceful.
"Sometimes it feels like I was born in the wrong time," he murmured.
He'd always felt it. This... itch. This deep, burning urge to fight. He wasn't just competitive; he was combative. He'd joined the university's MMA club, then the boxing gym downtown. He'd been kicked out of both.
He remembered the last time, at the boxing gym. He was sparring with a guy, a good fighter, and he'd taken a solid right hook to the jaw. The world went white for a second, and then... pure joy. The thrill of it, the raw, primal impact. He'd roared and just... unloaded. He didn't stop at the bell. He didn't stop when the guy was clearly done. He didn't stop until the coach and two other guys physically hauled him off.
"You take it too far, Mike! Every time!" the coach had yelled, tossing his gear out the door. "This is for sport, not for a goddamn deathmatch!"
But it wasn't a deathmatch that he wanted. It was just... life. Watching The 100, watching all that war, the bloody fighting, the life-or-death stakes... it made him yearn for it. It was a feeling that crawled under his skin and made his current life feel like a colorless, muffled cage.
"Man," he sighed, turning back to his room. "Imagine me in that era. Fighting for my right to exist, every single day. Having not... this..." He gestured vaguely at his phone, with its endless stream of curated, fragile personalities. "...but strong women by my side. A real shield-maiden. Someone who could fight alongside me, not just text me."
He laughed at himself. "Dayam. Dream stuff."
He was about to flop back onto his bed, maybe try to get a few hours of sleep before his morning macroeconomics lecture, as his alarm went off.
Not his waking alarm. A different one.
BREEP! BREEP! BREEP!
"The hell?" he thought, confused. He picked his phone up from the tangled sheets.
The screen lit up with a calendar notification.
ASSIGNMENT: PHIL-210 (ETHICS AND MORALITY) FINAL PAPER
DUE IN: 5 MINUTES
He looked at the time 11:55 AM.
His blood ran cold.
His eyes widened, stretching in pure panic. The 15-page essay he hadn't even started.
"Oh, shit."
He lunged.
He scrambled off the bed, his mind a sudden, white-hot blank of adrenaline. "Five minutes! Five minutes! I can... I can email the professor! I can say my power went out! I can..."
He dove for his desk, for his PC. He had to at least try to open the file.
His foot, bare, landed directly on one of the empty, cylindrical aluminum energy drink cans.
It was the perfect, cartoonish setup. The can rolled, his entire 200-pound frame pivoting over the tiny, unstable fulcrum. His ankle twisted with a sickening pop. Gravity, that relentless bitch, took hold.
He was propelled forward, his trajectory aimed directly at the sharp, solid oak corner of his university-issued desk.
Time slowed down.
Wait, he thought, suspended in mid-air. Wait, wait, wait...
A flash of genuine, absurd clarity hit him.
All this training... all that time in the gym... and this is how I die? Tripping on a can of Red Bull?
His forehead connected with the desk. It wasn't a dull thud. It was a sharp, wet CRACK.
The world didn't go black. It exploded into a universe of white, blinding static.
His last coherent thought was a digital one, borrowed from a thousand online games, the ultimate admission of defeat.
Jeez. Well, GGs, world. Guess I'm out.
Then, there was nothing.
And then, there was something. Weird.
A quiet, sterile... whiteness. It wasn't a room. It was an absence of anything but room. It was limitless, like a 3D rendering program before the assets loaded.
Mike... was. He didn't have a body, but he had a perspective. He felt... fine. No headache. No panic.
"Okay," he... thought. "So... that happened. Am I dead? This feels very 'dead'."
"A-hem."
The sound was slightly annoyed. It came from... below?
Mike's perspective shifted. He looked down.
Sitting on the infinite white floor, looking utterly unimpressed, was a German Shepherd. It was a magnificent animal. Perfect posture, intelligent eyes, and an aura of authority that was frankly intimidating. It wore a simple, functional leather collar with a brass tag that just said: JACK.
Mike, who suddenly found he had a body again, or at least, a translucent blue-white approximation of one, stared.
"A dog," Mike said, his voice echoing in the void. "I'm dead, and my welcome wagon is... a dog."
The dog huffed, a sound like a disappointed father. And then it spoke.
"Now this is weird," the dog said. Its voice was... well, it was exactly as authoritative as it looked. Deep, gruff, and sounding suspiciously like a drill sergeant who'd just found a private's footlocker in disarray.
"You can talk," Mike stated, numb.
"Obviously," Rob rumbled. "You're dead. The rules are different. Now, if you'll excuse me... step on the plate."
"The... what?"
A faintly glowing, circular disc, about three feet wide, appeared on the white floor between them. Mike looked at the dog, then at the plate.
"Is this... a weigh-in?"
"Just. Step. On. The. Plate," the dog commanded.
With nothing better to do, Mike stepped onto the glowing circle. It hummed, and a series of lights, visible only to the dog, apparently, flashed in its dark eyes.
The dog tilted its head, then let out a low groan.
"Ahhh," Rob said, in a tone that was the canine equivalent of someone realizing they'd just formatted the wrong hard drive. "Ah, that makes sense now."
"What? What makes sense?" Mike demanded, stepping off the plate, which promptly vanished. "Why am I here? Why are you a dog? What's going on?"
"You're Mike Anderson," Rob said, reading from an invisible clipboard. "You died. Pathetic, by the way. 'Death by energy drink.' We'll be filing that under 'Comedic Irony.'"
"Hey!"
"And to answer your question," the dog continued, ignoring him, "you're here because, frankly, we have a problem. We... we had a bit of a mix-up."
"A mix-up?"
"We're short-staffed," Rob grumbled, as if complaining about the cosmic economy. "Souls coming and going, apocalypses on three different worlds, a whole pantheon in sector 7G just imploded... it's been a mess. And you, Mike... you're a clerical error."
Mike just stared. "I'm... a typo."
"Precisely. Your soul," Rob said, "was sent to the wrong timeline."
Mike's jaw, spiritual or not, dropped. "Come again?"
"You were supposed to be in the Middle Ages," the dog explained, pacing in a tight, professional circle. "Specifically, 1072 AD, Normandy. You were slated to be a minor baron's third son. Lots of wars, bloody fighting, defending the keep, the whole... 'thing' you've been fantasizing about."
It hit Mike like a physical blow. "Wait... so... the gym? The... the urge to fight? Going overboard?"
"That's the one," Rob confirmed. "It's a soul-mismatch. Your core programming, your entire spiritual operating system, was designed for a brutal, medieval reality. We accidentally installed it in a 21st-century, soft-shell college kid. It's like running... I don't know, Doom on a graphing calculator. It works, but it's messy, and you keep getting kicked out of the calculator club."
"And... the thing for warrior women?" Mike asked, feeling a strange sense of validation.
"You were supposed to be negotiating a political marriage with many women, one of them a Viking Jarl's daughter," Rob said flatly. "A woman who could keep up with you in battles. Your soul desires partners who can hold a shield-wall, not one who gets upset about her Instagram likes."
It was all so absurd, and yet... it made perfect sense. It was the most validating thing anyone had ever said to him.
"Ohhh, damn," Mike breathed, running a hand through his ethereal hair. "You guys really messed up."
"The understatement of the millennia," the German Shepherd sighed. "Which brings us to your compensation package."
"My... 'compensation'?"
"We can't just send you to 1072 AD. The slot's been filled," Rob said dismissively. "But we are authorized to... redirect. We've been monitoring your file, and we noted your significant recreational interest. Your browser history, your viewing habits."
Mike suddenly felt a chill. "You saw... all of that?"
"We noted," Rob said, with the slightest hint of a canine smirk, "that you really wanted to go to the world of The 100. You've practically been screaming it at the cosmos for four seasons."
Mike's soul-heart hammered against his soul-ribs. "You... you're kidding me."
"I am a German Shepherd in charge of post-mortal traffic control. I do not 'kid,'" Rob stated. "To compensate for the egregious error in your placement, we are authorized to send you there."
"Just... like that?"
"Just like that. And," the dog added, lifting a paw, "you will retain your memories. Otherwise, what's the point? It'd just be another mismatch. You'll know what's coming. You'll know who people are."
"This... this is..."
"And," Rob said, cutting him off, "due to the sheer scale of our blunder, you are entitled to one... reasonable... gift. A boon. A head start, if you will. To help you survive in a world that, frankly, you are still woefully unprepared for, medieval soul or not."
The great white void seemed to hold its breath. Rob sat back on his haunches, his gaze intense, professional, and utterly serious. The interview was over. The offer was on the table.
"So, what do you want, Mike?"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS!!