"You're fired! Please clean out your desk and be out by the end of the work day."
I stared at him across his mahogany desk, the same desk where I'd pitched countless project ideas over the past three years. Bob Riley sat there with his arms crossed, not even bothering to look me in the eye. The irony wasn't lost on me that thirty minutes ago, I'd been sitting in this exact same chair listening to Jane's voice through my phone speaker.
"Ben, I can't do this anymore. I found someone else."
Two years. Two years of weekend trips to Napa, expensive dinners I couldn't afford, jewelry that maxed out my credit cards. I'd treated her like royalty, and she'd tossed me aside like yesterday's code.
The worst part? The someone else was sitting right in front of me, adjusting his tie with the smugness of a man who'd won something he didn't deserve.
I should have felt devastated. Should have begged for my job back or at least demanded an explanation. Instead, I felt nothing. Empty. Like someone had deleted my emotional subroutines and left me running on basic functions.
My desk held nothing worth salvaging except a ceramic coffee mug my mom had given me last Christmas. The thing had a cartoon programmer on it with the words "I Turn Coffee Into Code." I left it sitting there next to my monitor.
The elevator ride down felt longer than usual. Twenty-three floors of watching numbers descend while my life imploded in real time. The lobby's marble floors echoed my footsteps as I pushed through the glass doors onto the sidewalk.
San Jose stretched out before me in all its tech-bro glory. Gleaming office buildings, overpriced coffee shops, and Tesla charging stations on every corner. I'd walked this route to work hundreds of times, but today felt different. Today I was walking away from everything I'd built.
My apartment was only eight blocks north. I could have driven, but parking downtown cost more than most people made in a day, and walking had always helped me think. Today, I needed the time to process what had just happened.
The sky had been crystal clear when I'd arrived at work this morning. Typical California weather, the kind that made people from other states hate us. But as I reached the third block, clouds rolled in from nowhere. Dark, heavy things that blocked out the sun like someone had thrown a switch.
The first drops hit my forehead as I crossed Market Street. By the time I reached the fourth block, the sky opened up completely. Rain poured down in sheets, soaking through my hoodie within seconds. In San Jose, rain was about as common as unicorns. The timing felt personal, like the universe had decided to pile on while I was already down.
I kept walking. Water streamed down my face and into my eyes, but I didn't bother wiping it away. Getting drenched seemed appropriate somehow. A perfect end to a perfect day.
I cut through Jeffrey Fontana Park, the same route I'd taken countless times during lunch breaks. The blue oak trees provided some shelter from the downpour, their thick canopies catching most of the rain. Water dripped steadily from the leaves above, creating a steady percussion against the soaked earth.
That's when it happened.
A sound like the world splitting open. A crack so loud it made my ears ring. The massive oak beside me exploded in a shower of bark and splinters as lightning tore through its trunk. The tree split clean down the middle, each half toppling in opposite directions.
I should have been crushed. Should have been buried under tons of wood and branches. Instead, I felt something else entirely. A tendril of electricity, bright as molten silver, arced from the shattered tree directly into my chest.
Every nerve in my body screamed. My vision went white, then black.
I don't know how long I was out. Could have been minutes, could have been hours. When consciousness crept back, I found myself flat on my back, staring up at a clear blue sky. No clouds. No rain. Completely dry.
My head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it from the inside. Every pulse of my heartbeat sent fresh waves of pain through my skull.
'Was I struck by lightning too? This day got even more perfect than I thought.'
I finally managed to sit up, pressing my palms against my temples. The headache made it hard to focus, but something was wrong. Very wrong.
The park was gone.
Instead of familiar walking paths and playground equipment, grass stretched out in every direction. Rolling hills extended to the horizon without a single building, tree, or landmark in sight. Just endless green under an impossibly perfect sky.
"What the hell?"
Then it hit me. Not the headache, though that was still pounding away. Something else. Memories that weren't mine crashed into my consciousness like a data dump from a corrupted hard drive.
Images of beings that defied description. Creatures wielding power that could reshape reality. Gods and immortals locked in battles that spanned centuries. But these weren't my memories. They belonged to someone else. Someone I'd somehow absorbed.
The knowledge came in fragments. This place, this endless grassland, existed inside something called a Chaos World Bead. A pocket dimension created naturally by the forces of chaos itself. Even the name felt foreign on my tongue, but I knew it was true.
According to the memories flooding my brain, these world beads were incredibly rare. When one formed, it sent ripples through the heavens that every divine being could sense. The power to control an entire world, even a pocket one, was too tempting for any god to ignore.
Through the fractured recollections of someone named Jihasti, I watched the aftermath of the bead's creation. Gods descended like vultures, each determined to claim the prize. The battle that followed reshaped entire star systems.
Jihasti had won, but barely. He'd managed to partially refine the bead, gaining enough control to enter its pocket space. Smart move. Once inside, he'd transported his entire divine court, every treasure from his vaults, every subordinate who'd sworn loyalty to him. The bead became his fortress, his final refuge while he worked to complete the refinement process.
But his enemies hadn't given up. They'd found him despite his precautions. In desperation, Jihasti had thrown every last follower into battle, using them as shields while he poured everything he had into finishing the refinement. Just a little more time. Just a few more moments and the world bead would be completely under his control.
Unfortunately for Jihasti, time ran out before he could complete the refinement. Through his fragmented memories, I watched his final moments play out like a nightmare. His last subordinate fell to enemy blades while he poured every ounce of divine power into the bead's core. So close. Just seconds away from total control.
But seconds were a luxury he didn't have.
His enemies broke through his defenses, their weapons aimed directly at his heart. In that moment of absolute desperation, Jihasti made a choice that would reshape the cosmos. He turned his divine energy inward and detonated his own existence.
The explosion defied comprehension. Gods packed energy equivalent to entire star systems within their bodies. When that power released all at once, the resulting blast vaporized everything within reach. Galaxies vanished in an instant. Space itself buckled and tore under the assault.
Jihasti's physical form disintegrated along with his enemies, but the Chaos World Bead survived. The pocket dimension absorbed the worst of the blast, its chaotic nature actually feeding off the destruction. But the explosion had consequences beyond simple annihilation. It ripped a massive wormhole through the fabric of reality.
The bead tumbled through chaotic space for eons, riding currents of pure entropy until it finally emerged in a quiet solar system orbiting an unremarkable yellow star. Earth.
What the Chaos World Bead hadn't anticipated was that Jihasti's soul would hitchhike along for the ride. Even without a physical body, divine souls possessed incredible resilience. He clung to the bead like a parasite, waiting for an opportunity to rebuild.
That's when the Heavenly Dao took notice.
Every universe possessed its own governing force, a cosmic intelligence that maintained balance and order. Earth's Universal Dao sensed the foreign divine presence immediately and responded with extreme prejudice. The sudden storm hadn't been random weather—it was a targeted strike.
The lightning that split the oak tree was the Dao's attempt to annihilate Jihasti's soul before he could establish a foothold. Each bolt carried the concentrated will of an entire universe, designed to erase divine threats from existence.
Jihasti felt his soul fragmenting under the assault. Another few strikes and he'd be completely destroyed. In desperation, he spotted me walking through the park and saw his salvation. If he could possess my body, the Dao would no longer recognize him as foreign. He'd become just another human, invisible to cosmic detection.
That was when Jihasti's soul targeted and attacked me.
The memory came rushing back with crystal clarity. What I'd thought was lightning bouncing off the tree had actually been Jihasti's soul moving at speeds that defied physics. The silver tendril wasn't electricity at all, but a desperate divine spirit attempting to hijack my body.
His plan was simple. Possess my flesh, replace my soul with his own, and the Heavenly Dao would no longer recognize him as a foreign threat. He'd become just another human walking through a park, invisible to cosmic detection. The perfect disguise.
The impact of his soul slamming into mine had knocked me unconscious instantly. I'd been completely unaware of the battle that followed, my mind shut down while forces beyond comprehension fought for control of my body.
Unfortunately for Jihasti, he'd made a critical miscalculation.
The Chaos World Bead had awakened its own consciousness eons ago. It couldn't resist a god who wanted to refine it through proper channels, but Jihasti was no longer a god. He was a fractured soul, weakened by the Dao lightning and operating on borrowed time.
More importantly, he had no idea the bead was aware.
When Jihasti entered my body and attempted to replace my soul with his own, that was when the world bead struck. It had been waiting for exactly this moment, when the divine soul was at its absolute weakest and most vulnerable.
The bead's attack shattered Jihasti's soul like glass hitting concrete. His consciousness exploded into fragments that scattered throughout my soul space, each piece dissolving into raw memory and knowledge. The shattering was what allowed me to absorb everything he'd accumulated over millions of years of existence.
And there was so much.
Cultivation techniques that could transform mortals into beings capable of reshaping reality. Methods for absorbing spiritual energy from the cosmos itself, just like the Chinese web novels I'd binged during late night coding sessions. The knowledge felt familiar yet alien, as if someone had translated advanced physics into a language I could almost understand.
But that was just the beginning.
Jihasti had lived for millions of years, and his curiosity had been boundless. Technologies that made Earth's most advanced systems look like stone tools. Refining techniques for crafting weapons that could cut through dimensions. Array formations capable of trapping gods. Talisman creation that could store and release devastating power.
The sheer volume was overwhelming. I could spend lifetimes just cataloging what he'd learned, let alone mastering any of it. Alchemy, beast taming, soul manipulation, space magic, time dilation techniques. He'd dabbled in everything at least once, and mastered some of it.
Just when I thought everything was over, I felt the consciousness of the World Bead feeding me supplemental memories. It wasn't in any words or even a language, it was more like thoughts and feelings directly fed into my mind.
The sensation was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Pure information flowed through my consciousness like water through a sieve, carrying emotions and concepts that had no human equivalent. The bead's awareness felt ancient beyond measure, patient in ways that made mountains seem restless.
Through its perspective, I understood even more about what had really happened. The World Bead showed me everything I'd already seen from Jihasti's memory—being refined, traveling through chaotic space—but it also sent me further information beyond that.
During my unconsciousness, while Jihasti's soul was being systematically destroyed, the Chaos World Bead had made another decision. It chose to accept me as its master, fully allowing itself to be refined without me even being aware of the process.
The bead's logic was sound. As long as it remained masterless, it was vulnerable to detection and theft. Any passing god could sense its presence and attempt to claim it. But with a master, it could hide its signature completely. More than that, it would synergize with its chosen owner and experience rapid growth.
Although it had spent eons traveling through space, without a master, its growth had been minimal.
The refinement process had completed while I was unconscious. By the time I woke up in this endless grassland, the Chaos World Bead had already bonded with my soul completely. I owned an entire pocket dimension, and Earth's Universal Heavenly Dao no longer considered it a foreign object.
I'd gotten ownership of one of the rarest treasures in existence for the bargain price of being struck by divine lightning and having my soul nearly destroyed.
'Talk about falling upward.'
The irony wasn't lost on me. This morning I'd been a unemployed software engineer whose girlfriend had left him for his boss. Now I was the master of a pocket world with access to cultivation techniques that could make me immortal.
My headache was finally starting to fade, replaced by something else entirely. Not pain, but pressure. Like my brain was trying to expand beyond the confines of my skull. The memories weren't just sitting there passively. They were integrating, becoming part of me.
I stood up slowly, now understanding that the place I was in was inside the World Bead. The air tasted fresh, and there was an energy in it that I now understood was spiritual energy. I also knew that I wasn't stuck here at all—at any time I could choose to exit and return to the park where I was before all of this happened.
I couldn't help it. I grinned and began laughing out loud like a madman, completely hysterical. Happy beyond measure. If having all this only cost a job and a girlfriend, then Bob Riley and Jane Porter had done me the biggest favor of my life. Of course, I wasn't going to thank them.