> All progress is impossible without change.
>
> Walt Disney
It had been a while since Rick had gone out with his college buddies, but he could not remember how he got home. Everything was a blur? had he drank that much? What was that ruckus? Did he set the alarm on a Saturday? And those flashing lights? Everything was a blur? Could he smell smoke? All of a sudden, he opened his eyes and tried to get out of bed just to end up face against a… window? Where was he? And why hadn’t that hurt?
Everything came into focus in the blink of an eye. He was standing in cylindrical glass tube on top of what looked like a conveyor belt, the kind used on by automated factories. He looked from side to side, and there were hundreds, if not thousands of similar settings as far as he could see. Looking at his neighboring cylinders, they also had ghostly-looking occupants. But seemed to be sleeping. Or were they dead?
He looked at the screen in front of him and saw a monitor with an error message:
Starting cleansing cycle… CRITICAL ERROR!
CLEANSE FAILED!
Please contact your system administrator before restarting the cycle.
Just as then he saw two guys in lab coats run past him. He placed a hand on the glass and was about to shout for help, when he was stopped on his tracks by what he saw. His hand. No. His entire body was translucent!!! WTF???!!!! Were they experimenting on him?
Just when he was starting to hyper ventilate, the tube opened.
He descended from the conveyor belt before the tube closed itself again. He needed to get out of here and fast. But what about the other people? He quickly decided that there was nothing he could do about them now. He would escape and then contact the authorities. He was no hero by any definition of the word.
He looked back at his glass cell. It was labelled 99-2754 and he could see the one to his right labelled 100-2754 and the one to his left as 98-2754. He didn’t know how far the numbers got so he decided to go left.
At first he went slow taking in his surroundings, and he got further and further without encountering any more of the technicians he dared to break into a run. He had looked a the tubes along his corridor as he sped along. Some tubes were empty, others had other ghostly occupants inside, but they all had either their eyes closed o had a muted look... as if there was no one "upstairs", like his grandma used to call that catatonic look. He was so distracted that he almost missed the three technicians coming around the corner. Luckily, they were so wrapped-up in their conversation, or they would have seen him jump on the empty tube labelled 2-2754.
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Had they looked his way they would have spotted that something was amiss on the spot as he was sweaty, winded and trembling due to exhaustion. He had to do more exercise.
He could now hear one of them yelling – “This is the second time in 10,000 years!!! Why do they always have to test these ‘upgrades’ and ‘improvements’ on our sector?? Everything overheated!!” - They stopped walking by his tube. Closed his eyes a took a deep breath, turning to face on of his companions – “Jonah, could you please check to see how many soul cleanses, adjustments and reincarnation failed?”
While the Jonah started looking at what looked like a tablet and started touching the screen here and there, Rick stayed as still as he could looking straight ahead trying to mimic the black stare he had seen in other tube residents. It was impossible not to look at the screen before him.
Starting cleansing cycle…
CLEANSE SUCCESSFULL!
Starting soul adjustments…
ALL SKILLS AND STATS HAVE BEEN RESET.
SOUL FROM LEVEL 10 UNIVERSE RECALIBRATED FOR LEVEL 2 UNIVERSE.
Starting soul reincarnation…
DONE!
“According to this, 22 souls failed at reincarnating, 3 failed during the adjustment phase, and 1 failed at the cleansing phase. All from universes level 40 and up.”
“Are you for real?” Replied the first man. “Can you not see the soul behind you? How can you say that all are from universes 40 and up when we have here a level 2 soul?”
Jonah frowned at this. He checked something and replied “He should not be here. According to the logs he should already have reincarnated!” He looked at something and started reading “Lets see the logs… cleansed correctly… all adjustments were done… He should had reincarnated just before everything halted!!!”
“Obviously not, as he is here. Great! Now the logs are not even reliable! We’ll be here all night long double checking everything! Just completed this one and let’s check the others, specially the one that failed at cleansing.”
They were talking about him! He had to escape! As they turned around and Rick was about to escape, the tube sealed itself amd he could read on the screen:
Restarting soul reincarnation…
“Oh Fuuuuu…..” He never finished that sentence…
Everythig went black and then he felt wet, he was surrounded by warm liquid… and then he felt cold, his skin, as well as all of his nerve endings felt raw. He couldn’t breath. He was suffocating! And the pain! Was he being tortured? He could take it anymore! He screamed as hard as he could! - And then everything stopped and he heard a voice say: "You have a healthy baby boy. Congratulations!"
Had he just been born? How was this possible? This didn't make sense. He was a grown man. But he couldn’t see more than a couple flashes of light before closing his eyes. It hurt to much to open them and he couldn't control his body, no matter how much he tried. He had no strength, and as he was taken, cleaned, and brought to his mother's bosom he had no choice but to accept that he had reincarnated and that he could do nothing about it. At least for the time being.