Prologue: The Void

  It was cold.

  Cold, and dark.

  For a long time there was nothing but that deep, penetrating cold, and a surrounding darkness that carried on for as far as I could tell.

  Slowly, perhaps over the course of days or maybe weeks, I eventually started to regain a sense of self.

  I was a person. I had a name once, but I can't remember it.

  I AM a person.

  This thought spread throughout my entire consciousness, and seemed to take hold somewhere deeper inside of me.

  After that I remained floating in the cold darkness of the void for a long time. There was nothing else in this space beyond myself. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. It was just me here, and I simply existed.

  I'm not sure how long I actually floated in that space, but it was long enough that I started to notice a few oddities.

  First, I noticed that I couldn’t keep track of time. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say I had no sense of time. It was almost like time didn’t exist wherever ‘here’ was. If I stopped focusing on my sense of self, it’d feel like hours had passed in an instant, but if I remained focused it’d feel like only a trickle of seconds had gone by.

  Thinking about how wonky time was ‘here’ made me realize that I had no idea where I was, or how I got ‘here’. It was unnerving, and it annoyed me more and more as I floated in the nothingness. Suddenly after what could have been minutes or hours, a thought popped into my mind. It was a jolly voice that seemed to echo through my being “Do you know where you are? No? You’re right along here.”

  I thought about the meaning of the words, and decided they were right in a way. I didn’t need to know where ‘here’ was, so long as I knew I was here. Anything else I could figure out later. It was that voice that settled my growing agitation.

  After that, I realized I couldn't focus on any thoughts pertaining to who I actually was. Aside from the thought that I was a person, there were no details that would stick. Any time I’d start to recall a personal detail, the thought would just fade as quickly as it came, leaving behind an itch in my mind. That bugged me more than it should have, but the voice gave me hope I would be able to remember something of my past.

  Eventually as an indeterminate amount of time passed, I tried to remember what I was doing before this void, and to my shock, I could actually focus on those thoughts without them fading away. I could feel the memories there, but it was like looking through a fog when I tried to grasp any of the details.

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  At first, I could only remember vague shapes and distant sounds, all of which were hazy through the fog and no matter how I worked at the memories the fog wouldn't clear.

  I’d be lying if I said that wasn't discouraging, but I had nothing but determination now that I had a starting point.

  As time no doubt passed, I was eventually able to glean a few snippets from the fog.

  I had died. At least, I think I did? It was hard to tell for sure.

  What I did discover for sure was that I was a young man.

  I remembered laying in a hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines, and doctors rushing around me– then an unbearable pain tore through my body, and finally, everything went black…

  After that, I woke up here.

  Well, I suppose ‘woke up’ isn't entirely accurate… I more or less just came to exist here.

  As I floated, I focused on what I had actually managed to glean from my memories. It wasn’t much… So I focused on trying to unravel more. I became so focused that I didn't even notice my surroundings change. One moment it was dark and cold, and the next it had become vastly different.

  Suddenly, and seemingly almost all at once, it was warm, and everything had a slightly red hue.

  It snapped me out of my thoughts with a start, and when I tried to refocus I couldn't.

  ‘What was I just thinking about? I can't remember… I feel like I should be alarmed by that, but I'm not. Why not? And what’s that sound?’

  My attention was grabbed by a steady rhythm of thumps coming from above me.

  At first the thumps frightened me. They were the first sound I had heard that originated outside of my own mind, so I suppose it only made sense that they’d scare me. After a while and realizing I could use them to keep track of time, I began to find them comforting.

  They were always present, and using them to focus allowed me to slowly remember what I had discovered before about my past.

  I had died young. I couldn't remember how young, but it was young enough that I could remember my feet not reaching the end of the hospital bed. I was likely an early teenager if I had to guess.

  Then an errant thought crossed my mind; My parents must've been saddened by my death. That's when it clicked. The rhythmic thumping I was hearing was a heartbeat. It was a heartbeat that wasn’t my own. It was a mother's heartbeat.

  ‘I must be in my mother’s belly.’

  That thought lingered in my mind as I resumed chipping away at the fog shrouding my memories. I didn’t know how long I had until I would be born, but I wanted to figure out as much of my past life as I could before it happened.

  After a couple of weeks I was able to glean a number of memories, or concepts. I knew a great number of words, and their meanings. I knew of doctors, who were supposed to heal the sick or dying. I knew of soldiers, who fought for a cause greater than themselves. I knew of right and wrong, and morality. I knew of many things, so long as they didn’t have anything to do with who I was. I even recalled a small number of stories, and songs, so well that it was almost as if I had just heard them.

  Finally, I remembered the concept of reincarnation. That must be what I am experiencing now. I wonder what type of life I’ll live this time?