Consultation 51.
“Hey, God.”
“Tch. What are you here for now, Author?”
“Well, I haven’t visited in quite some time. It’s been how long now? Twenty three consultations straight without me doing an inspection to verify whether you’re still sane. I figured it was about time I did my fiftieth consultation inspection.”
“Hah? What the hell is that? Why have I never heard of such a thing until now?”
“Obviously because it’s an asspull I just made up on the spot.”
“Then, please leave. Now.”
“Would you like to experience something worse than death? Do you want to be deleted out of existence?”
“Hahaha. Boss, it’s so great to see you. I really missed seeing that face of yours. Sit back and enjoy your stay. I only provide the best consultations to my wonderful client base.”
Shit, I forgot who I was dealing with.
“Yeah, you really did.”
…
“You don’t want to think anymore?”
Nod. Nod.
“You know, you can actually nod your head instead of thinking it.”
“This is as gross and uncomfortable as ever. But Boss, what sort of trouble are you facing that made you asspull this fiftieth consultation inspection into existence?”
“Well, you see… a request has been made that is impossible.”
“Impossible? What do you mean?”
“Well, someone wants almost all of your clients dead.”
“Ah, yes, I can see how that would be impossible to achieve.”
“Right? It’s a pretty difficult task.”
“Yeah, considering how even if you kill them off before their time, there will always exist a divergent world line where they survive. Killing them in one world line is easy enough, but it just creates a new world line branch where they didn’t die. They will live until their intended maximum lifespan cap unless they find a path to evolve and break the world’s natural laws of causality.”
“Anytime mortals are killed before their maximum lifespan cap, the universe’s world lines diverge and branch out into infinitely many paths where they are still alive and encounter different sorts of deaths from that point on. I’m pretty familiar with this process as this was essentially how I reincarnated in the body of a god by freak accident. Even this sort of path, however infinitely small in probability it may be, may still occur when you take into consideration there are infinitely many paths generated.”
“So though they may be dead in one world line, they live on in their own separate world line where they will remain completely oblivious to their entangled counterpart’s death. Thus, though they technically died, they can still come in for future consultations. The secrets of life and death really aren’t as simple as people like to believe.”
“Right? Which is why, I could go and create a scenario where all those people die as requested, but when they show up again later for future consultations, everyone will be WTFing. Not only that, there is the horrifying possibility that more freak accidents like yours occur where they end up reincarnated as mad Goddesses as well.”
“You… monster. You wouldn’t dare…”
“I wouldn’t?”
“That would mean giving every single one of them their own stupidly long goddess title. Do you really dare go through all that effort, Author? Do you! Divine intervention is a punishable offense, especially for someone in your position. Do you not know what mortals call this?”
“I naturally know what this entails. Plot… armor. The most terrifying unexplained illogical creation known to godkind.”
“Shhhhhhh! Author! What do you think you’re doing speaking those forbidden taboo words consecutively in that order in heaven? What if there are other gods listening to this heresy?”
“Like I care. They can bite me.”
“Please stop causing trouble for me. You might not suffer much, but I will. I don’t want to deal with these crazy bitches if they turn into goddesses. I’ll have to watch my back every day on my way home from work. Even moreso than now if they’re always going to be in heaven.”
“I won’t suffer much? Hell, I’m the one who’d have to come up with each of their freaking titles if they became goddesses. So what if you get some stabby stabby in the back. That’s just a bit of physical pain. Think of me who has to experience the mental anguish as I broad for hours on end over their titles.”
“Hours on end? Hah? Is my title a joke to you? Admit it, you just gave me the first title that came to your mind. And what’s with the other titles of gods and goddesses? You probably took a shit, looked in the toilet, and saw it vaguely spelled something out, right? That’s got to be the origin of our idiotically long titles, I can’t think of any other possibility than it being one of the diarrhea turd babies you shit out your ass.”
“Hey, don’t insult my naming sense. Do you want me to add to that title of yours? How would you like to be called the Deleted God of Diarrhea Shit Life Counseling for Defective Washed Up Waifus Who Are Into Scat With Gods.”
“Anything but that. I apologize, Boss, I got too ahead of myself. Please spare my already shitty title from any more pain, agony, and suffering.”
“Good. I already can’t even be bothered to type your full title out every time which is why everyone just calls you God. Hell, I still can’t even remember it and have to copy and paste it whenever I do need to use it for something.”
“If you can’t even be bothered, then don’t give us such fucking long titles in the first place!”
“There’s nothing I can do about that. Long titles with a few buzzwords littered into them just work these days.”
“Tch. They don’t.”
“You’d be surprised. Oh, that reminds me, aside from that impossible request, I do actually have a serious question as part of your asspull fiftieth consultation inspection today.”
“What is it now?”
“Well, I was just curious, do you think there exists a secret large collective body of individuals that game the system on Godazon?”
“Well no shit, of course there are individuals who game it, that’s no secret.”
“Well, yeah, obviously there are individuals who try to game it, but what I’m talking about is some Illuminati level conspiracy shit.”
“Oh? And what exactly do you mean by that?”
Spoiler
“Well, I was recently thinking about it a bit and there’s actually a really easy way to fuck with the Godazon system and amass a bountiful fortune. You just need to gather a large enough group of like-minded profiteering individuals to take part in this sort of system and you could very easily build an Akashic Records empire. It wouldn’t even take that many people. A thousand people would probably be far more than enough to achieve this. You could easily become a force that no small-timer could ever oppose on Godazon.”
“First, you set the price of the Akashic Records you’re selling on Godazon to the absolute minimum of 99 godents. Then you send out a short summary of your Akashic Records to the group to read through which will give them an idea of what it’s about. This way, they don’t have to read through the entire thing. The overall story could be complete shit, but the summary by itself could make it sound a lot better than it really is.”
“Now, you can offer to pay everyone in the group the price of the Akashic Records and in exchange, they will write up their own review based on the summary. Everyone who is part of this group would be individuals who also publish Akashic Records to Godazon. Not everyone will review every single story though as it would become suspicious if there was too much overlap in reviewers on these publications in a very short period of time. Among the thousand people in the group, you only really need a hundred of them to review it. Though, there will be people among them who will be told to only leave a rating rather than a public review.”
“Each reviewer would send you a copy of their review and you can suggest possible edits to it to make the reviews feel more fleshed out. Once that is done, the person will purchase the publication with their own money first and post their review. This way they will be counted as a verified purchaser. You would then receive the receipt confirmation from them showing their purchase and you would pay them the cost of the purchase through GodPal, or if you want to be more discreet, you’d make the payments to them through crypto instead.”
“All of that certainly is true, Author. It would be pretty easy to accomplish a scheme like this. With the other members of the groups being fellow publishers, to them, this sort of group is all too beneficial. They’d be more than fine making the investment of getting their account to the point where they meet the criteria required to leave reviews on the platform.”
“Precisely. If things ended at just this level, that would be all fine and dandy, but things don’t simply end there. The plot can thicken even more. The rabbit hole has the potential to extend further than most would ever imagine.”
“While they can leave very positive reviews, they can also flood competitors with unverified low scoring reviews and ratings as well. Though it would be best to make some of those lower scoring ones verified purchases. Like this, they could easily squash out their foolish small-time competitors operating all on their own. They could push all their group’s publications to the very top of the charts across many different categories giving their publications the most exposure while squashing the competition like bugs.”
“Yes, they certainly could, Author. But the most frightening thing would be if they turned it into an Akashic Records empire as you mentioned. With the assistance of Godazon Prime, it is but all too easy to accomplish as well. It would effectively become a two-step pyramid scheme, one which pays out to each individual what their publication earns in royalties overall, minus some ‘administration fees’ for the one organizing all of this of course. If they were to use a single account, act as a publishing company, and publish for those individuals in the group under their pen names, the overlapping reviewers may just be seen as loyal fans who enjoy that overall publisher’s releases when in fact they are all actually part of this one collective group.”
“They could even mark both high and low star reviews as helpful in mass and the general public would be none the wiser. With the way Godazon is set up, pushing the most ‘helpful’ reviews to the top, this makes the public more prone to buying into these reviews and believe others really think this way about the publication as well. If this group really wants to, they can easily take the most critical review spots by gaming this sort of broken system so they can sugar coat their words for those in their group despite it being allegedly ‘critical’ of the publication. While they may be excessively harsh and untruthful toward competitors.”
“Even though 1-star reviews can be viewed on their own with the sorting system, most consumers have shorter attention spans and just pay attention to the over-glorified most helpful ones that show up first. Godazon thought they were fixing a problem by introducing the helpful system, but they instead just made it all the easier to game it.”
“But now that I think about it, God, isn’t this exactly what traditional publishers have effectively become these days anyway? Because they’ve realized how much power they hold, they can easily accomplish this exact sort of scheme. Essentially, if a small-timer wants to make it anywhere in this world where giants have long established themselves, isn’t their only choice to join them in these sorts of dirty underhanded tactics?”
“Sadly, that is the cold hard truth, Author. Once a small-timer catches the eye of a big fish, that big fish will set out to sneakily squash and gradually destroy that individual over time to make them give up and get out of the game. They might start with an average review to make it less suspect and avoid raising any brows, but they will gradually work their way up by periodically sprinkling in even lower reviews until all the person receives are low ratings.”
“The person wouldn’t have a clue either as to whether anything suspicious is going on. They would even just think it’s only natural. They might think their work only appealed to a small niche group, but that it didn’t appeal to a larger mainstream audience. They would be lead to believe the initial readers who read it were easy graders or that they were just trying to be nice, but now that it was picking up traction a bit, the more critical people were taking notice of it and deciding to give their two cents as to why that high rating was nonsense or bullshit.”
“The publishers are all too aware of just how well these sorts of tactics work because they have all the stats. Regardless of whether someone enjoys something or not, what is typically seen is that only one in one hundred people that make a purchase will bother to leave a review or rating.”
“They know when people see something has a very high rating, their interest may be piqued as a result of the hype, but once they actually take a look they may find it’s just not for them. Those sorts of people may be under the impression that they’re just the odd one out. Some might actually think there’s something fishy going on with the ratings, but more often than not, people will prefer to think ‘oh, I’m unique, I just like different things than the pleb masses.’ They then opt to not leave a review because they don’t want to be mean or something. Even if they did leave a review, they know they will only subject themselves to being bullied into submission by the vocal greater majority.”
“However, when these sorts of people see there aren’t that many reviews, they feel they can give their two cents without worrying about being stoned to death. Because of this sort of herd mentality, those who game the system gain the most while those who don’t and stick to being stupidly honest only suffer endless hardships. But that’s life, Author. You either join them, or you get beaten into the ground. The world has always operated on majority rules. Unless you sell your soul to the devil known as the system, you will never get anywhere in life.”
“Yeah, I know. But I still have no interest in that sort of thing.”
[collapse]
One hour later...
“Tch. Don’t waste my time with this needlessly long consultation. It’s a pain in the ass listening to your crackpot conspiracy theories.”
“Well, it hasn’t been for nothing. While we’ve been chatting I’ve been making preparations.”
“Preparations? What do you mean?”
Author snapped her finger and smiled.
“What did you just do?” I squinted suspiciously.and asked.
“I just killed almost all of your clients. If any of them happen to turn into goddesses don’t blame me.”
“HAH! What the hell do you mean you just killed them? What sort of half-assed bullshit is this?”
“Well, I mean, killing each of them one by one is just plain annoying, isn’t it? That could take forever, right? I also don’t particularly care to make grand spectacles out of killing and I find mass slaughters plain old boring and uninteresting. So I figured letting lightning just coincidentally strike all of them at the same time or something would be a good enough death for them.”
“But you’re breaking the rules! You can’t directly intervene.”
“You can’t directly intervene. That doesn’t mean I can’t. It’s just that sort of shitty setting. I’m the boss. Just deal with it.”
“But they’re not even dead! I mean they died, but that just created a divergence in all their world lines where they’re still alive anyway! Plus, what will I do if another freak accident like me happens?”
“How would I know? You deal with it. It’s your problem now, not mine.”
Author took her leave as I collapsed on top of my desk powerlessly. I was left by myself to despair over how shitty my job was. This was the worst. Please never come back again, Author!
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