“I thought I knew what I was getting myself into …” Paula said gasping for air repeatedly.
“Well, at least you don’t have to hide for the rest of your life.” I said, standing up quite refreshed and stretched my arms while kicking the teapot of the fire a second time.
“We won’t see each other again, right?” Nope. I had no plans on ever getting back into that fucked up place. Each time I entered, it got weirder and weirder.
“Correct. You give me that book and we will never get in contact again.” I explained and extended my hand towards her, eyeing the exact copy of the book on the altar nervously.
“Here you go.” She said and handed it over to me, looking ten years older than before and honestly, way too exhausted to do anything.
“Thank you very much. Don’t forget to visit a psychiatrist afterwards … my weirdness may have spilled over.” I said jokingly and walked past her in delight. Finally, I was getting closer to the truth of … whatever hid in that book. Waving over my shoulder, I clamped the book beneath my armpit and strolled out of the church onto the hill where I looked at the starry night sky.
“The truth lies bare in front of my eyes.” I mumbled and strolled down the hill towards two horses grazing on a meadow. The constable was nowhere in sight, probably a bit too eager to get back, but Hannah sat on a tree stump munching on berries she must have found in the vicinity.
“Want some?” She asked, extending her hand with a few of them on her palm.
“No, thank you. Can you do me a favour?” I asked quietly, unsure wether reading this book was even safe for me.
“What is it?” She asked curiously, already eyeing the book with interest in her eyes.
“Read this.” I said and handed the book containing my memories over to her. After throwing the berries away, she took it and placed it onto her lap. Then, she opened it on the first page while I turned around.
Silence reigned supreme. For several minutes nobody spoke a word and only the flipping of pages along with the sounds of the wilderness reached my ears. And then, she cleared her throat as she flipped though all of the book and closed it again.
“I have no clue what this is.” Hannah admitted wryly and scratched her head a little.
“Eh?” I asked stunned. Did I really went into this horrible place that was my subconsciousness only to get a useless book? Surely not?
“Well, it’s a book filled with moving and realistic paintings which is nice and I can hear stuff happening but… it’s not making much sense.” Hannah explained while I sat down next to her and leaned over to look onto the still closed book. With its red cover it wasn’t exactly striking, but it was still made from the finest materials.
“What? Show me.” I asked and awaited the moment she opened the first page nervously.
“Okay …” She muttered and flipped the book open. It showed an unknown girl around sixteen, looking in a mirror at first. Suddenly, different tables appeared on the mirror, putting names right next to numbers. “You might want to touch it.”
Hesitating a little, I grabbed the right part of the book and immediately heard the constant humming of something in the background and listened to an unfamiliar voice. Additionally, I could feel her emotions, distant but still there. These memory books were handy for sure.
“So, what’s in my schedule today?” That girl asked while already turning around towards a metallic door. My a rather strange voice, she was apparently told where she had to go afterwards, but I was way too engrossed in this strange scenery than to actually listen to that. Metal was everywhere, strange lights illuminated the hallways and the doors opened by themselves to the side.
And then, she bumped into another girl who was running through the hallway.
“What’s up, Sofie?” Sofie? I caught a glimpse of that girl with she same name my friend had, but she didn’t look like her at all. At least, not on the surface.
“Do you think she has any connection to the Sofie we know?” Hannah asked while looking at my conflicted expression with interest.
“She does … I have seen this girl once before. She’s looking exactly like Sofie in her last life.” I mumbled, not really understanding what that meant for me straight away. “We must be seeing the memories of another reincarnator.” I guessed and pulled to book over to me, quite interested and not scared anymore.
“So this is their spaceship?” I asked as that person walked through corridors until she arrived at a rather large room with windows showing nothing. She strolled over to some kind of apparatus with glowing buttons and a magical interface, glowing occasionally in a green light. For a whole lot of pages, she merely stared at this thing bored until something must have happened because from one fragment of memory onto the next, there was chaos in that room. She scrambled to get towards the chair in the middle of the room and got the boy sitting on that chair to move away while she fumbled with a few buttons and gave out orders left and right.
And then, a portal to another place was opened in front of them and they activated something called ‘emergency warp’. I seriously wished Albert was with me as I listened to all these unfamiliar words, but it did seem as if there wasn’t much to understand.
‘Emergency warp’ apparently meant dying. Because that’s what they did. Not for real though. It felt … fake? I was looking at the scene where they all died time and time again, but I couldn’t shake that feeling. There was something odd about the way they died. As far as I was aware, a spaceship was a train like thing to travel around in. They had planned to get through the portal, which must have been successful judging by the view of the window a split second before they did their warp thingy. But they still died even though I saw no reason why.
I couldn’t feel any death in that scene which may have been because that person witnessing everything couldn’t sense it and it may have added to the feelings, but something about this was still weird.
“How often do you want to see that?” Hannah asked after a little while which did make me sigh and flip towards the next page.
That girl was on a rather bright area, grass beneath her body and the god of hope giving that damned speech I heard from Albert before. Skimming over this scenes, I was quickly greeted by a pitch black darkness and frowned a lot. There weren’t many places of importance this dark and I could already guess where that girl was.
“A living person in the land of dead, what a curi-“ Aska’s voice was in that audio without a doubt.
“No … that can’t be.” I mumbled and flipped the page as the memory fragment stopped. Aska and that person immediately had their differences and played their games straight away.
And then, Aska granted he four wishes. Four fucking wishes. My sole wish that he would leave me alone which was probably what that person was thinking as well.
But he didn’t fulfil that wish at all. He gave her immortality willy nilly, a way to find other reincarnators like her, promised her the best food on the world and a family she could love and always loved her back.
“You …” Hannah said soothingly and caressed my shoulder in worry.
“No. That’s not true.” I said, shaking her hand off me. I couldn’t accept that I was this dumb girl at all. I didn’t want to be in the same boat as the other reincarnators after all.
“Godhood, your compass and human blood. The last wish is a self fulfilling one as you try everything you can to have a family yourself.” Hannah stated which was honestly a logic I couldn’t deny, but still.
“Shut up! I’m not that idiotic girl! Look, she is even fighting against that stupid stone crab and attempting to do anything against it!” I said and laughed loudly as she held her foot in pain after throwing a ‘magical punch’ which was actually a normal badly executed kick.
“Wouldn’t you do the same? You are still that girl, just your enemies have changed.”
“Stop that! I’m not her. That’s impossible.” I claimed, flipping the page to follow that girl’s story.
“Are you sure? We have become friends in this life and apparently, we were close to forming that relationship in our past lives as well.” She said and flipped the pages until she reached a memory which showed me her … a bit younger, but still her. That much was impossible to ignore, but I still couldn’t accept that this was me for several good reasons.
“You do not become a god. It’s impossible. You are either born as one or you stay mortal during your whole life. The only way I can think of to turn a mortal into a god is through wiping their memories and flooding the soul with death for example. It’s how all the other gods who didn’t exist since the beginning of time came into existence. But that takes hundreds of years, not just a few. And I still have this memory buried deeply in me, so it is impossible. That girl cannot be me.” I claimed not entirely sure I had no life before this, but certain it wasn’t this.
“Then who is she?” Hannah asked, slowly following my logic as well.
“How should I know?” I asked and gripped the book tightly.
“The way I see it, this is you. She is less … brutal and bloodthirsty than you are, but she is attempting to manipulate a god, which isn’t that far off from what you are doing.” She was right … in a sense. Even though that girl behaved completely different from me, we were still largely similar.
“I … I need to think about this.” I admitted and wanted to close to book right away, but Hannah stopped me immediately.
“I want you to take a look at another fragment though. Here you go.” She explained and flipped over to the end of the book which showed the girl’s eventual downfall.
For some reason, she finally relented and allowed him to show the truth behind everything … a truth I would like to know as well. But apparently, I wasn’t given that opportunity as the page depicting everything was pure white. Only as they were back from wherever they went did the memory resume. And then, she agreed to let her memories erased, or maybe locked away by Aska. Her last feelings were that of hope, but also a bit of despair. She wanted to have freedom from the shackles binding her and took the most drastic approach there was.
“What’s that white page?” Hannah asked curiously which made me think a little. It was definitely not an erased memory as there would be fragments left.
“Nothing … that memory fragment just blank. She never went anywhere … she just imagined it and was fooled by it.” I explained. I didn’t know for sure how Aska did it, but he successfully made that girl think she saw something that changed her mind.
“Are you sure?” Hannah asked, quite confused by my explanation while I turned the pages back and looked at the last fragment very carefully.
“Yeah … look at this. It’s called a clock. In this fragment it’s nine o’clock thirty two and in here it’s nine o’clock thirty six. It cannot be another day either as we would see pages filled with white, if that was even possible. She was merely given the thought that she knew something, a déjà vu like experience that never happened. The plan she thought he had to give her the freedom she wanted from the shackles of the gods was just her own dream. She didn’t even know for sure that the other gods would come for her, but she believed in it.
And then, her life ended. Not quite though. Her memories were locked away, with mine starting from there. The same room, the same hour … he even had the same attire the moment I opened my eyes for the first time.
“That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.” I explained slowly, still thinking about what I had seen and experienced.
“What do you mean? That was from your previous life, wasn’t it?” Hannah asked, quite sure of her idea.
“It can’t be. The moment this world started existing, I was thrown on it as a kid. I kept drowning for two hundred fucking years and I never underwent the procedure to turn my soul into that of a goddess. Never. The time is far too short for that. I was immortal from the very beginning of my life, I was a goddess since the beginning of my life, even though I struggle with feeling anything but death. And besides, this is a life?” I asked sarcastically and pointed at the book on my lap. “What fucked up world is it when my previous life starts with looking in a goddamn mirror?”
“That’s …” She muttered, slowly catching up to my logic as well.
“There should be hundreds of these books buried in my mind, but there is just one. A single one.” I said and laughed loudly. It meant that this girl wasn’t me. I wasn’t one of these idiotic reincarnators.
“Maybe … I don’t know what that means either.” She admitted quietly.
“I want answers for fucks sake, not even more questions!” I shouted out, so close to throwing the book onto the ground.
“But doesn’t that all mean the other reincarnators have no other memories either?” I … didn’t think about them at all. But Hannah may actually be right if that was me in these memories.
“That … Albert never complained about this issue, did he? But he seemed to struggle with banal things sometimes.” I said and scratched my cheek with racing thoughts.
“He took a long time to recall the names of his parents for example.” Hannah explained. Her point was valid. He knew all kinds of technology related stuff, but when I asked about his past, he always struggled to explain as if everything was covered by a thick fog.
“What if they didn’t have another life? If they merely experienced these few minutes and before that was nothing? What if they merely have the knowledge about all these things and their brain comes up with fake memories on the fly?” I proposed, even though I knew I was walking on thin ice with that.
“Wow, now we are getting into the conspiracy theory realm.” We were … but not all conspiracy theories were wrong.
“But it would explain things. I could be that girl in that case because I always was a goddess. Aska didn’t grant me any wish, I always had these things and was forced to voice them through some weird magic controlling my thoughts.” I added quietly. He had created me, that was for sure. But when he actually made me was unknown to me. And if he gave me everything I would wish for from the very moment he made me he could easily make it look as if I had free will to voice my wishes.
“Wouldn’t that mean …” Yeah … that memory I had was real, but also predefined by Aska. I had no choice but to do what Aska wanted me to because I was just too young to diverge from the template he created me from.
“All the reincarnators weren’t given a second life. They and I were made for this world from the very beginning. They were all given a template for our personality, knowledge about the past they never had. Aska created me. He is like me. It’s easy to guess what he would do in that situation which is exactly what I did.” I explained and thought about the implications. Luckily he erased that part of me, which had actually given me free will instead of what the girl in my memories had.
“But why create a bunch of people for a new world?” Hannah asked rightfully so. And the more I thought about it, the less sense it made.
“How should I know? But it’s the only possibility I can image. And it should be fairly easy to figure out if I’m right.” I proposed and stood up from the tree stump. Shutting the book close, I handed it over to Hannah right away.
“How?”
“We’ll ask them.” I proposed and laughed happily, even though I felt like puking. Because in all honesty, there was still a question weighing on my mind. If I was the girl in that book, why create me with memories only to lock them away shortly afterwards?
“I thought I knew what I was getting myself into …” Paula said gasping for air repeatedly.
“Well, at least you don’t have to hide for the rest of your life.” I said, standing up quite refreshed and stretched my arms while kicking the teapot of the fire a second time.
“We won’t see each other again, right?” Nope. I had no plans on ever getting back into that fucked up place. Each time I entered, it got weirder and weirder.
“Correct. You give me that book and we will never get in contact again.” I explained and extended my hand towards her, eyeing the exact copy of the book on the altar nervously.
“Here you go.” She said and handed it over to me, looking ten years older than before and honestly, way too exhausted to do anything.
“Thank you very much. Don’t forget to visit a psychiatrist afterwards … my weirdness may have spilled over.” I said jokingly and walked past her in delight. Finally, I was getting closer to the truth of … whatever hid in that book. Waving over my shoulder, I clamped the book beneath my armpit and strolled out of the church onto the hill where I looked at the starry night sky.
“The truth lies bare in front of my eyes.” I mumbled and strolled down the hill towards two horses grazing on a meadow. The constable was nowhere in sight, probably a bit too eager to get back, but Hannah sat on a tree stump munching on berries she must have found in the vicinity.
“Want some?” She asked, extending her hand with a few of them on her palm.
“No, thank you. Can you do me a favour?” I asked quietly, unsure wether reading this book was even safe for me.
“What is it?” She asked curiously, already eyeing the book with interest in her eyes.
“Read this.” I said and handed the book containing my memories over to her. After throwing the berries away, she took it and placed it onto her lap. Then, she opened it on the first page while I turned around.
Silence reigned supreme. For several minutes nobody spoke a word and only the flipping of pages along with the sounds of the wilderness reached my ears. And then, she cleared her throat as she flipped though all of the book and closed it again.
“I have no clue what this is.” Hannah admitted wryly and scratched her head a little.
“Eh?” I asked stunned. Did I really went into this horrible place that was my subconsciousness only to get a useless book? Surely not?
“Well, it’s a book filled with moving and realistic paintings which is nice and I can hear stuff happening but… it’s not making much sense.” Hannah explained while I sat down next to her and leaned over to look onto the still closed book. With its red cover it wasn’t exactly striking, but it was still made from the finest materials.
“What? Show me.” I asked and awaited the moment she opened the first page nervously.
“Okay …” She muttered and flipped the book open. It showed an unknown girl around sixteen, looking in a mirror at first. Suddenly, different tables appeared on the mirror, putting names right next to numbers. “You might want to touch it.”
Hesitating a little, I grabbed the right part of the book and immediately heard the constant humming of something in the background and listened to an unfamiliar voice. Additionally, I could feel her emotions, distant but still there. These memory books were handy for sure.
“So, what’s in my schedule today?” That girl asked while already turning around towards a metallic door. My a rather strange voice, she was apparently told where she had to go afterwards, but I was way too engrossed in this strange scenery than to actually listen to that. Metal was everywhere, strange lights illuminated the hallways and the doors opened by themselves to the side.
And then, she bumped into another girl who was running through the hallway.
“What’s up, Sofie?” Sofie? I caught a glimpse of that girl with she same name my friend had, but she didn’t look like her at all. At least, not on the surface.
“Do you think she has any connection to the Sofie we know?” Hannah asked while looking at my conflicted expression with interest.
“She does … I have seen this girl once before. She’s looking exactly like Sofie in her last life.” I mumbled, not really understanding what that meant for me straight away. “We must be seeing the memories of another reincarnator.” I guessed and pulled to book over to me, quite interested and not scared anymore.
“So this is their spaceship?” I asked as that person walked through corridors until she arrived at a rather large room with windows showing nothing. She strolled over to some kind of apparatus with glowing buttons and a magical interface, glowing occasionally in a green light. For a whole lot of pages, she merely stared at this thing bored until something must have happened because from one fragment of memory onto the next, there was chaos in that room. She scrambled to get towards the chair in the middle of the room and got the boy sitting on that chair to move away while she fumbled with a few buttons and gave out orders left and right.
And then, a portal to another place was opened in front of them and they activated something called ‘emergency warp’. I seriously wished Albert was with me as I listened to all these unfamiliar words, but it did seem as if there wasn’t much to understand.
‘Emergency warp’ apparently meant dying. Because that’s what they did. Not for real though. It felt … fake? I was looking at the scene where they all died time and time again, but I couldn’t shake that feeling. There was something odd about the way they died. As far as I was aware, a spaceship was a train like thing to travel around in. They had planned to get through the portal, which must have been successful judging by the view of the window a split second before they did their warp thingy. But they still died even though I saw no reason why.
I couldn’t feel any death in that scene which may have been because that person witnessing everything couldn’t sense it and it may have added to the feelings, but something about this was still weird.
“How often do you want to see that?” Hannah asked after a little while which did make me sigh and flip towards the next page.
That girl was on a rather bright area, grass beneath her body and the god of hope giving that damned speech I heard from Albert before. Skimming over this scenes, I was quickly greeted by a pitch black darkness and frowned a lot. There weren’t many places of importance this dark and I could already guess where that girl was.
“A living person in the land of dead, what a curi-“ Aska’s voice was in that audio without a doubt.
“No … that can’t be.” I mumbled and flipped the page as the memory fragment stopped. Aska and that person immediately had their differences and played their games straight away.
And then, Aska granted he four wishes. Four fucking wishes. My sole wish that he would leave me alone which was probably what that person was thinking as well.
But he didn’t fulfil that wish at all. He gave her immortality willy nilly, a way to find other reincarnators like her, promised her the best food on the world and a family she could love and always loved her back.
“You …” Hannah said soothingly and caressed my shoulder in worry.
“No. That’s not true.” I said, shaking her hand off me. I couldn’t accept that I was this dumb girl at all. I didn’t want to be in the same boat as the other reincarnators after all.
“Godhood, your compass and human blood. The last wish is a self fulfilling one as you try everything you can to have a family yourself.” Hannah stated which was honestly a logic I couldn’t deny, but still.
“Shut up! I’m not that idiotic girl! Look, she is even fighting against that stupid stone crab and attempting to do anything against it!” I said and laughed loudly as she held her foot in pain after throwing a ‘magical punch’ which was actually a normal badly executed kick.
“Wouldn’t you do the same? You are still that girl, just your enemies have changed.”
“Stop that! I’m not her. That’s impossible.” I claimed, flipping the page to follow that girl’s story.
“Are you sure? We have become friends in this life and apparently, we were close to forming that relationship in our past lives as well.” She said and flipped the pages until she reached a memory which showed me her … a bit younger, but still her. That much was impossible to ignore, but I still couldn’t accept that this was me for several good reasons.
“You do not become a god. It’s impossible. You are either born as one or you stay mortal during your whole life. The only way I can think of to turn a mortal into a god is through wiping their memories and flooding the soul with death for example. It’s how all the other gods who didn’t exist since the beginning of time came into existence. But that takes hundreds of years, not just a few. And I still have this memory buried deeply in me, so it is impossible. That girl cannot be me.” I claimed not entirely sure I had no life before this, but certain it wasn’t this.
“Then who is she?” Hannah asked, slowly following my logic as well.
“How should I know?” I asked and gripped the book tightly.
“The way I see it, this is you. She is less … brutal and bloodthirsty than you are, but she is attempting to manipulate a god, which isn’t that far off from what you are doing.” She was right … in a sense. Even though that girl behaved completely different from me, we were still largely similar.
“I … I need to think about this.” I admitted and wanted to close to book right away, but Hannah stopped me immediately.
“I want you to take a look at another fragment though. Here you go.” She explained and flipped over to the end of the book which showed the girl’s eventual downfall.
For some reason, she finally relented and allowed him to show the truth behind everything … a truth I would like to know as well. But apparently, I wasn’t given that opportunity as the page depicting everything was pure white. Only as they were back from wherever they went did the memory resume. And then, she agreed to let her memories erased, or maybe locked away by Aska. Her last feelings were that of hope, but also a bit of despair. She wanted to have freedom from the shackles binding her and took the most drastic approach there was.
“What’s that white page?” Hannah asked curiously which made me think a little. It was definitely not an erased memory as there would be fragments left.
“Nothing … that memory fragment just blank. She never went anywhere … she just imagined it and was fooled by it.” I explained. I didn’t know for sure how Aska did it, but he successfully made that girl think she saw something that changed her mind.
“Are you sure?” Hannah asked, quite confused by my explanation while I turned the pages back and looked at the last fragment very carefully.
“Yeah … look at this. It’s called a clock. In this fragment it’s nine o’clock thirty two and in here it’s nine o’clock thirty six. It cannot be another day either as we would see pages filled with white, if that was even possible. She was merely given the thought that she knew something, a déjà vu like experience that never happened. The plan she thought he had to give her the freedom she wanted from the shackles of the gods was just her own dream. She didn’t even know for sure that the other gods would come for her, but she believed in it.
And then, her life ended. Not quite though. Her memories were locked away, with mine starting from there. The same room, the same hour … he even had the same attire the moment I opened my eyes for the first time.
“That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.” I explained slowly, still thinking about what I had seen and experienced.
“What do you mean? That was from your previous life, wasn’t it?” Hannah asked, quite sure of her idea.
“It can’t be. The moment this world started existing, I was thrown on it as a kid. I kept drowning for two hundred fucking years and I never underwent the procedure to turn my soul into that of a goddess. Never. The time is far too short for that. I was immortal from the very beginning of my life, I was a goddess since the beginning of my life, even though I struggle with feeling anything but death. And besides, this is a life?” I asked sarcastically and pointed at the book on my lap. “What fucked up world is it when my previous life starts with looking in a goddamn mirror?”
“That’s …” She muttered, slowly catching up to my logic as well.
“There should be hundreds of these books buried in my mind, but there is just one. A single one.” I said and laughed loudly. It meant that this girl wasn’t me. I wasn’t one of these idiotic reincarnators.
“Maybe … I don’t know what that means either.” She admitted quietly.
“I want answers for fucks sake, not even more questions!” I shouted out, so close to throwing the book onto the ground.
“But doesn’t that all mean the other reincarnators have no other memories either?” I … didn’t think about them at all. But Hannah may actually be right if that was me in these memories.
“That … Albert never complained about this issue, did he? But he seemed to struggle with banal things sometimes.” I said and scratched my cheek with racing thoughts.
“He took a long time to recall the names of his parents for example.” Hannah explained. Her point was valid. He knew all kinds of technology related stuff, but when I asked about his past, he always struggled to explain as if everything was covered by a thick fog.
“What if they didn’t have another life? If they merely experienced these few minutes and before that was nothing? What if they merely have the knowledge about all these things and their brain comes up with fake memories on the fly?” I proposed, even though I knew I was walking on thin ice with that.
“Wow, now we are getting into the conspiracy theory realm.” We were … but not all conspiracy theories were wrong.
“But it would explain things. I could be that girl in that case because I always was a goddess. Aska didn’t grant me any wish, I always had these things and was forced to voice them through some weird magic controlling my thoughts.” I added quietly. He had created me, that was for sure. But when he actually made me was unknown to me. And if he gave me everything I would wish for from the very moment he made me he could easily make it look as if I had free will to voice my wishes.
“Wouldn’t that mean …” Yeah … that memory I had was real, but also predefined by Aska. I had no choice but to do what Aska wanted me to because I was just too young to diverge from the template he created me from.
“All the reincarnators weren’t given a second life. They and I were made for this world from the very beginning. They were all given a template for our personality, knowledge about the past they never had. Aska created me. He is like me. It’s easy to guess what he would do in that situation which is exactly what I did.” I explained and thought about the implications. Luckily he erased that part of me, which had actually given me free will instead of what the girl in my memories had.
“But why create a bunch of people for a new world?” Hannah asked rightfully so. And the more I thought about it, the less sense it made.
“How should I know? But it’s the only possibility I can image. And it should be fairly easy to figure out if I’m right.” I proposed and stood up from the tree stump. Shutting the book close, I handed it over to Hannah right away.
“How?”
“We’ll ask them.” I proposed and laughed happily, even though I felt like puking. Because in all honesty, there was still a question weighing on my mind. If I was the girl in that book, why create me with memories only to lock them away shortly afterwards?
