I want you to picture a basement. Not a basement with a washer and a dryer. Not a basement with a fuzzy rug and a TV. No, friends, I want you to picture a basement that goes on for a thousand miles. It is a place of filing cabinets. It is a place of gray dust. It is a place where the light bulbs do not shine: they moan.
I was a man of the files. My name is Troy, and for more years than there are grains of sand in the sea, I sat at a desk made of cold iron. I filed the paperwork for the small sins. I filed the reports for people who didn’t return library books. I filed the records for people who took two pennies from the “take a penny” jar. I was a small man in a very large, very dark house.
I felt like a shadow. I felt like a whisper in a thunderstorm. Nobody looked at me. Nobody spoke to me. I had a vital need, brothers and sisters. I had a deep, hollow ache in my chest. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be more than a cog in a machine that only produced sadness and paper cuts. I wanted one moment of glory. I wanted one moment where the world stopped and looked at Troy.
But most of all, I wanted a cup of coffee.
Now, you have to understand the coffee in the Department of Eternal Damnation. It is not like the coffee you buy at the corner shop. It is not warm. It is not sweet. It smells like a wet dog that has been rolling in burnt rubber. It tastes like copper and bad intentions. But it was all I had. It was the only thing that kept my eyes open while I sorted the sins of the world.
I walked to the breakroom. I walked with a heavy heart. I walked with heavy feet. I saw the machine sitting there in the corner. It was a hunk of rusted metal called the Inferno-Brew 5000. It was shaking. It was coughing. It was making a sound like a bag of wrenches being thrown down a flight of stairs.
My supervisor, a tall, thin man named Ike, was standing there. Ike had skin like old parchment. He had eyes like two cold marbles. He looked at me, but he did not see me. He never saw me.
“Machine is broken again, Troy,” Ike said. His voice sounded like sandpaper on a brick. “Fix it. Or don’t. It does not matter. Nothing matters.”
Ike walked away. He left me alone with that growling monster of a machine. I looked at it. I felt a spark of anger. I felt a spark of pride. I thought to myself, “Troy, you are going to fix this. You are going to get your coffee, and you are going to feel like a king for five minutes.”
I reached behind the machine. My hands were shaking. My heart was thumping against my ribs like a trapped bird. I felt wires. I felt heat. I felt the grime of a billion years. The machine let out a screech. A cloud of black steam hit me in the face. It stung my eyes. It made my skin crawl.
I was blind. I was frustrated. I was a man on the edge of his wits. I saw a light through the smoke. It was a bright, glowing red light. It was a button. It was a big, beautiful, shiny button right there on the side of the machine.
In my mind, I saw the labels. I thought I knew what it was. I thought the sign above it said “Decaf Option.” I thought to myself, “Maybe if I just hit the decaf switch, it will stop the pressure. Maybe it will stop the screaming.”
I did not know the truth. I did not know that the labels had been switched by a bored demon eons ago. I did not know that “Decaf” actually meant “System Audit.” And I certainly did not know that “System Audit” was the code name for the Universal Reset.
I pushed it. I pushed that button with all the hope of a man looking for a miracle.
The world did not just shake. The world turned inside out.
There was a sound like a giant zipper being pulled across the sky. I felt a sudden coldness in my chest. It was a cold that turned into a heat so bright I thought I would melt. I saw colors I have never seen. I saw greens that tasted like lime. I saw blues that felt like silk.
I looked down. My desk was gone. My gray floor was gone. My filing cabinets were gone.
I was standing on a cloud. It felt like walking on a giant marshmallow that had been dipped in sunshine.
I looked around. There were millions of people. They were all wearing orange jumpsuits and looking very confused. They were holding harps. They were looking at the harps like the harps were live snakes.
Beside me, a man with a crooked nose and a tattoo of a dagger on his neck plucked a string. *Plink.*
He looked at me. His eyes were wide. “Where is the fire?” he asked. “I was promised fire. I was promised a pitchfork. Why is there a tiny harp in my hand, Troy?”
I did not know how he knew my name. I did not know anything. But then I looked up.
High above, the sky was not blue. It was a deep, swirling red. And I could see them. I could see the people who used to be in the clouds. They were the ones who always stayed inside the lines. They were the ones who never raised their voices. They were the ones who always wore clean socks.
They were falling. They were falling into the gray basement. They were landing in the chairs. They were looking at the stacks of paperwork. I saw a lady in a white dress pick up a folder. She looked at the report for a man who forgot to signal a left turn in 1984. She started to cry.
I realized what I had done. I had swapped them. I had swapped the saints and the sinners. I had swapped the penthouse and the basement.
I looked at my hands. They were glowing. I felt a sudden, sharp laugh bubble up in my throat. It was a laugh that started in my toes and erupted like a volcano. I was a low-ranking bureaucrat. I was a man who didn’t matter. And yet, with one finger and a craving for coffee, I had flipped the universe like a pancake.
Ike appeared next to me. He wasn’t wearing his suit anymore. He was wearing a robe made of swan feathers. He looked at his hands. He looked at the cloud under his feet. He looked at me.
“Troy,” he whispered. This time, he really saw me. He saw me with a look of pure, unholy wonder. “What did you do?”
“I wanted decaf,” I said. My voice was loud. My voice was strong. It echoed off the edges of the new world. “I just wanted a cup of decaf, Ike.”
Ike started to giggle. Then he started to roar. He grabbed a harp from a man who looked like a bank robber. Ike smashed the harp against his knee.
“Do you know what this means?” Ike shouted. He pointed down toward the gray basement where the “good” people were now frantically filing papers. “They have to do the work now! They have to sort the sins! And we… Troy, we get the view!”
I looked out over the edge of the cloud. The curiosity was burning in me. What would happen next? Would the sinners start a choir? Would they turn the golden streets into a race track? Would the saints find a way to make the basement smell like lavender?
I saw a man who I knew had been a very bad person on earth. He was sitting on a throne of light. He was eating a grape. He looked happy. He looked like he had finally found a place where he didn’t have to hide.
And down below, I saw a man who had been a world-famous monk. He was staring at a broken stapler. He looked like he wanted to punch someone.
The balance was gone. The rules were broken. The Great Exchange had begun.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the man with the dagger tattoo. He smiled at me. He had a gold tooth that caught the light of a thousand suns.
“Hey, Troy,” he said. “Since you’re the guy who ran the place… do you know where they keep the snacks?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know a thing. But for the first time in an eternity, I wasn’t worried about the files. I wasn’t worried about the gray dust. I stood up tall. I looked at the red sky and the white clouds. I felt the triumph of the underdog. I felt the joy of the accident.
I reached into the pocket of my old, dusty coat. My fingers brushed against something. It was a small, plastic cup. It was full.
I pulled it out. It wasn’t the sludge from the Inferno-Brew 5000. It was golden. It was steaming. It smelled like toasted hazelnuts and victory.
I took a sip. It was perfect.
I looked at Ike. I looked at the bank robber. I looked at the billion souls who were trying to figure out how to be holy while wearing leather jackets.
“Friends,” I said, my voice rising like a hymn. “I do not know where the snacks are. I do not know how long this will last. I do not know if the Big Boss is going to come down here and turn us all into salt.”
I paused. I let the silence hang there. I let the curiosity grow until it was a physical weight in the air.
“But I say to you,” I shouted. “While the coffee is hot, and while the clouds are soft, let us see what kind of trouble we can get into!”
The roar that came back from the crowd was louder than any thunder. It was the sound of a billion people who had been given a second chance by a man who just wanted a break.
I looked down at the basement one last time. The saints were already forming a committee to discuss the filing system. I shook my head and turned away.
The sun was rising on a new heaven and a very confused hell. And I, Troy, the king of the red button, was going to enjoy every single drop of it.