The door closed behind me with a soft 'click'. That sound was like the final echo from the outside world, separating me in a space that was silent, enclosed, and heavy with pressure. The air inside felt different: warmer, thicker, and smelled of a mix of old wood polish, dusty paper, and a faint, subtle perfume like lavender, almost faded. An artificial silence, as if the dark wooden walls swallowed all sound.
The room before me was smaller than I'd expected, perhaps about three by four meters, with a low ceiling that made the space feel close, pressing in, even though I was of average height. A dark oak table, so massive and heavy, took up half the room. Behind it, like a judge in a courtroom, sat a man.
He was perhaps in his forties, but the lines at the corners of his eyes and brows told of more years spent in dusty rooms like this. His hair was white like winter cotton, cut neatly to just above his collar. The most striking feature was his glasses round, thick lenses, like the bottom of a beer bottle, which magnified his eyes until they looked like two deep pools of blue water. He wore a perfectly pressed dark gray wool suit, without a single misplaced crease. The buttons were fastened tightly from his high-collared jacket down to his waist, forming a rigid, undeniable vertical line.
His hands were holding a sheet of paper, which must have been my form. The paper trembled almost imperceptibly at his fingertips. He didn't look at me immediately. His magnified eyes, behind those thick lenses, were fixed on the writing on the paper, his thin lips moving slowly, forming each syllable silently. The pale morning light from the small, paneled window beside him fell directly on his head, making his white hair glow like a cold, misplaced halo.
I was going to fail this interview.
That thought surfaced immediately after I'd solidified my earlier resolve. A very sensible decision, because this job was irrelevant. It was Friedrich's plan, Friedrich's dream, Friedrich's path to wealth in a new world that wasn't mine. My goal was on a completely different axis: finding a way back. Stepping onto a colony ship meant binding myself to a current that flowed away from home, from Earth, from everything that still called to me with a voice that was almost forgotten yet painful.
But.
In my chest, behind the ribs holding breaths that were too short, something pushed back. Not a voice, not another thought. But a sensation that felt heavy, warm, and guilty nesting in my solar plexus like a hot stone. A feeling that was foreign, yet forced to be mine: that this was responsibility.
Images appeared uninvited, not as complete flashbacks, but as sharp fragments: Lisa this morning before I left. Her light blue eyes, no longer full of suspicion, but hope so innocent and fragile as she said, "If you get accepted, we won't have to worry about money anymore!" Mother's hand last night Marie's hand, rough and cracked from dishwater, touching my shoulder, her voice hoarse: "You're the last man in this house, Friedrich. Be strong for us." And the most piercing: Friedrich walking home a week ago, deliberately placing his hammer and chisel on his foreman's desk, thanking him for his work. He had burned his bridges back. The last wages from the carpentry workshop were already spent on rent and staple food. The only options left were odd jobs that paid next to nothing, or this
If I failed this, it wasn't just Friedrich's dream I'd be killing. I'd be cutting the last tether holding the two women in that house back from a deeper abyss. I'd be forcing my own selfish desire, while Lisa postponed her schooling, and Mother accepted more laundry with increasingly weary eyes. That wasn't a choice at all. That was betrayal
Those feelings and realities collided within me: my selfish desire to be free to find a way home, versus the weight of Friedrich's responsibility, so real, concrete, and heart-wrenching. The guilt that arose was no longer abstract; it had a face and a name.
"You are Friedrich Wolff?"
His voice cut through the room. Deep, resonant, trained to be listened to. Not loud, but full of an undeniable authority that felt utterly strange truly, he was someone of very high status and I was someone of lower status, honestly it was a bit frightening, yet it made the air feel denser. He had lifted his head. His glasses now caught the light, hiding his eyes for a moment in a white gleam.
I nodded, my throat feeling dry. "Yes. I am Friedrich Wolff." My voice sounded flatter than I'd hoped, as if from a distance.
"What was your previous occupation?"
I focused my attention. "Carpenter. I worked as a carpenter and framer for the Holzer Construction Company in Gobsburgs." My answer came out smoothly. But as my eyes looked directly at his face, something strange caught my attention. His irises. Earlier, under different light, I'd thought they were ordinary blue. But now, under the clear window light, their color was… gray. Not ordinary gray, but like metal ash doused with water, with small black flecks scattered irregularly. Something unnatural, almost inhuman.
Unease crept up my spine. But I ignored it. And pretended not to notice the oddity.
"Married? Have a family?" Same tone, efficient, without preamble.
"Not married. I live with my mother and younger sister." Each word felt like a brick I was stacking to build the persona of Friedrich.
He noted something with a quill pen he dipped into an ink bottle. The 'scratch, scratch' of the pen on paper was the only sound. Then he put down his pen, folded his hands on the table, and looked directly at me. That look, through the magnifying lenses, felt like a surgeon's scalpel.
"Why do you want to join the Compagnie Maritime de Weimar?"
That question hung in the air. Why?
In my head, two answers fought:
Because I have no other choice (Friedrich).
Because I don't want to join at all (Ray).
But from my mouth, something deeper than both emerged, something born from that very collision. My voice, when it finally came out, sounded deeper and wearier than I expected.
"Because it is my responsibility."
Those words were not a lie. They were the truth filtered through two consciousnesses. For me, it was a forced acknowledgment of an inherited burden. For the spirit of Friedrich, still clinging to this body's instincts, it was the pride and duty of a man as head of the family.
The man with the gray eyes was silent for a moment. His stone-carved face showed no change. But, for a very brief moment, I felt his analytical gaze shift, becoming more… observant.
"Good."
Just one word. Neutral. Unreadable.
Then, the man with the strange eyes nodded slowly. He turned, his chair creaking softly on the wooden floor, and reached for something on the shelf behind him a large roll of thick paper tied with a ribbon, which, from its shape and size, appeared to be a map.
That large roll landed on the wooden table with a soft yet decisive thud, disturbing fine dust motes that danced in the sunlight. The bespectacled man turned back towards me. His movements were measured, like a well-oiled machine. His face remained a perfect mask of professionalism, but there was a subtle change I felt, not saw: the atmosphere became more focused, more intense. As if the previous conversation was merely a warm-up, and now we were entering the real arena.
His thin, pale lips, previously locked tightly in a neutral straight line, finally moved. Not to smile, but to form carefully weighed words.
"Before we discuss duties, let us gauge your knowledge of the world you wish to sail into." His voice was flat, but there was a tone of examination within it. His long fingers touched the edge of his glasses, pushing them slightly higher on his slender nose bridge. The gesture was ritualistic. "How many continents do you know of?"
The question bounced around the silent room. I absorbed it. And immediately dove into Friedrich's memories. Images appeared: a stuffy church classroom, the monotonous voice of the pastor explaining God's creation, crude drawings on a chalkboard. Two. The names were on the tip of my memory's tongue: Esia… and Indropa. That was it, right…?
"Two…?" My answer came out as a question, my head instinctively tilting slightly. My voice sounded hesitant, fitting for a carpenter from a small town with a mediocre education.
The man across the table didn't immediately correct me. Instead, the corner of his hard lips curled up very slightly, forming something almost like a smile, but too cold to be called that. "Wrong," he uttered, and the word fell like a stone. But then, "However, you seem reasonably knowledgeable. Many of the applicants people who even claim to be educated only know one continent, usually the one they stand on."
This didn't feel like a compliment. It felt more like cataloging. Class C: possesses basic knowledge. I could almost hear his mental pen ticking a box. Well, honestly, job interviews were like this back on Earth too, not so different.
With a fluid, proprietary motion, he untied the ribbon on the parchment roll. The paper crackled, a rich, expensive sound. Parchment, not the cheap, ordinary plant paper that had been popularized for the last 200 years. Parchment like this, a single sheet of this quality and size, might be worth one or two Thalers a price potentially equivalent to 200-300 loaves of bread. My mind tingled, giving me a slight understanding of how extravagant this was. A sign that his company was either very wealthy, or very eager to show off its wealth.
"Let us rectify that ignorance," he said, his voice now more like a teacher, slightly condescending. His hand, with fingers that looked pale against the yellowish parchment, patted its surface. "Come closer."
I rose from my chair, the wood creaking, and stepped closer to the table. The smell of old dust, oil, and faint ink grew stronger. From over his shoulder, I stared at the unfolded map.
And the world crumbled.
"This is Indropa."
His finger traced the coastline, a contour that immediately burned me with recognition that was both impossible and terrifying.
It… was Europe.
Not exactly the same, but the resemblance was so striking, so profound, that it caused a dizzying, very strange sensation. A landmass shaped like an upside-down boot, slightly fatter in the south so like Italy. A jagged peninsula in the southwest clearly resembling Iberia. In the north, land extending like a connected horn Scandinavia without a sea separating it. And in the center, its heart: a vast expanse that was an amalgamation of France, Germany, the Polish plains, woven together by large, familiar rivers like blue arteries on the earth's skin. The Alps were there, though slightly shifted. There was no rugged Balkan peninsula; the land in the southeast was smooth, merging with a giant landmass reminiscent of Russia.
But the coastline… the curves of bays, the protrusions of capes, the overall shape… it was the map of Europe from Earth's history books, gently twisted in a nightmare, yet undeniably its twin.
No. This couldn't be.
My breath caught in my throat. My heart, which had been pounding with anxiety, suddenly thundered, loud and fast like war drums, pumping blood that felt like it was boiling into my ears. The sound was so loud in my head, I thought the man must have heard it. My skin felt cold and hot at the same time. I might have frozen, my eyes wide open, staring fixedly at those impossible lines. It felt like being slapped by a parallel reality. All this time, in the chaos of transmigration, I had assumed this was a completely foreign world a fantasy world with artificial geography, just like the fantasy stories or webnovels I'd read.
But this… this was a broken reflection of my home. Irrefutable proof that these two worlds were connected in a way I didn't understand. Was this a different geological evolution? Or something else? Something… stranger?
"You look pale, Mr. Wolff." The voice cut through my rigidity, sharp and clinically observant. His metallic gray eyes, behind the glasses, stared at me, not with surprise, but with sharp analysis. He was noting my reaction, filing it away in his mental dossier.
"Sorry," I mumbled, forcing myself to look away from the intoxicating map, trying to swallow the panic rising in my throat. "This is… very detailed, isn't it?"
He nodded once, as if the explanation was accepted, though his sharp eyes said otherwise. "Indeed. This is the company's latest compiled map." His finger moved, gliding over the vast sea south of the Europe-like continent. "And this is the Middle Sea, Mittelmeer. The water highway connecting Indropa with Esia to the east. It is our lifeblood of trade, and also… the gateway to new colonies." His tone changed slightly, becoming almost enthusiastic, but with the passion of a surgeon discussing a procedure. He then indicated another landmass: Esia, which indeed had a vague resemblance to Asia a large continent with a ridge of giant mountains in the north but with unfamiliar peninsulas and bays. Then Wilhelmina, a continent only depicted with a rough coastline and the frightening inscription "Terra Incognita." Negerfad, with dotted borders, implying incomplete exploration.
Then, his finger pointed to a vast expanse of islands in the southeast, far larger than I had ever imagined. The Gilgamesh Archipelago turned out not to be just an archipelago, but a world of islands, as if the Caribbean, Polynesia, and the Pacific Islands had merged into a single entity whose area almost rivaled a continent. My mind, still reeling from the discovery of 'Indropa', could barely process this scale. This was no small expedition at all; this was an attempt to colonize an immense and diverse territory.
"Can you read a map? Or do arithmetic?" The question came suddenly, while I was still fixated, trying to understand the implications of what I'd just seen.
"Yes." My answer slipped out, spontaneous, unfiltered. It was the reflex of a graduate accustomed to digital maps and spreadsheets. But as soon as it was out, I realized my mistake. How common was that skill for a carpenter?
The man's expression changed for the first time noticeably. His white eyebrows rose slightly, and that thin, professional smile returned, but this time with a flash of interest in it, like a hunter spotting a desired track. "Good. Very good." He said, nodding. "The skill of reading maps and arithmetic is very valuable. That could significantly increase your worth. And your salary."
But then, all expression vanished, wiped clean by a deeper detachment. He pushed his glasses back into place. Those metallic gray eyes, now seeming darker under the shadow of his brows, stared at me with an intensity that made the air in the room feel frozen. The sound of trickling water from outside suddenly seemed very loud. The light from the window seemed to dim.
He leaned forward slightly, closing the distance between us. The scent of old lavender and something sharper wafted from his suit.
"Now, Mr. Wolff," he whispered, his voice low yet cutting through the silence like a knife. "The final question. The most important one."
He paused, ensuring every atom of my attention was on him. My already racing heart seemed to stop for a moment.
"Have you ever heard of the 'Divinum'?"
The atmosphere in the room changed instantly. The false warmth vanished. What remained was tension you could cut with a knife, and the gaze of those gray eyes demanding an answer, while measuring every blink, every twitch of a muscle on my face, every change in the rhythm of my breath.
Goosebumps spread from my spine to my fingertips. This might no longer be a job interview. This was something else entirely.