Schiller was buried in work in the temporary Battleworld office. He had plenty to do, but the most urgent task was coordinating the selection of contestants and getting the Administrators of their respective universes to approve their departure.
For anyone, this would not have been an easy job. Yet the real difficulty did not lie with those Cosmic Administrators who had heard of Schiller or dealt with him before, but with certain gods in remote universes who had not returned to meet with their main bodies in tens of thousands of years.
At first, Schiller had estimated the job would be quite difficult. He thought that every phone call would require days of wrangling and negotiation, and that every Cosmic Administrator would seize the chance to shear wool mercilessly.
Later, he realized he had been judging others by his own standards. After all, intelligent life-forms willing to sacrifice their lives for money were still rare.
Most of them, upon hearing Schiller's name, hurriedly sent off their selected contestants. It would be inaccurate to call them reluctant or miserable; it was more like firecrackers exploding and gongs and drums booming.
The situation in Schiller's universe could not be concealed for long. Some of the effects it had produced were far-reaching indeed. Ever since he had arrived in the Marvel Universe, the Cosmic Administrator handbook had undergone three major updates and five minor ones every year. As for whom those updates were for, that went without saying.
At first, people had assumed there was something special about Schiller's universe. But as the Eternity of Schiller's universe frequently traveled to the greater worlds on business, everyone came to understand Schiller's universe through that number-one unlucky bastard.
That taught them one thing: if there was a bug in a universe but it had not