As a joke you had always said "I dedicate this to Hades" as you threw away food scraps from your cooking and cleaning your plates. When you die you find yourself in front of Charon's boat with Hades sitting in it, seemingly very excited to see his most devoted follower in recent times.
"I'll be honest, I wasn't ever expecting anything to come of it," I admitted - and maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to say to a god, but cut me some slack. Ten minutes before this, I had been just minding my own business on the sidewalk.
"Well, your - what is it they call it now?" Hades looked expectedly at Charon.
"Commitment to the bit," he supplied in a bored tone that I recognized from years of working retail.
"Yes, your commitment to the bit was so ardent that it went full circle to just... commitment." He gestured vaguely at me. "The rules have changed quite a bit over the millennia. But loyalty - even ironic loyalty - is still honored."
"So I... Pavolv'd myself into being, what, your high priest?"
"Mm, more like you constructed your own Schrodinger's box, where your daily dedications both were and were not serious, but it was enough to catch my attention regardless."
I thought over that for a long moment, feeling a rising headache. "So... what now? We shake hands and then you send me on my way?"
"Actually, I wanted to offer you a job." I immediately wanted to say no, based purely on the look of complete and total hell-is-a-job-here on Charon's face, but I held my tongue as Hades continued. "I try to take a new advisor every few hundred years to keep up with the happenings in the mortal world. Keeps things interesting."
"So, you... want me to like, explain TikTok dances to you?"
"Yes!" Hades smiled, a little too widely, but it seemed genuine enough for an otherworldly being of unfathomable power. "And other trends of the time. I like learning about the mortal world. You're all so innovative, there's always something new to learn."
"Huh." Well, in all honesty, it didn't sound like a bad way to spend some time. "Uh, sure. Okay. I'm in."
"Excellent!" Hades reached out a hand. He was icy cold to the touch, but I was more surprised when the shake turned into him helping me into the boat. "Now, first, could you explain what social media is? My last advisor tried his best, but he was from 1853, and just as baffled as me."
Charon pushed the boat off the shore with a loud sigh, getting us underway as I began trying to explain Instagram to the Lord of the Dead.
