I couldn’t see.

Sadly, this wasn’t an unusual occurrence. My particular case of brain cancer was centered around the visual cortex, and every now and then my vision would go blurry, glowy, or simply refuse to work at all. Not seeing was normal, but the headache that always accompanied it was missing.

For a minute I simply savored the feeling, the blessed relief from a pain that had defined my average day. But no matter how used to the headaches I had gotten, that dull throbbing behind my temples had always been present, a constant reminder that my days were numbered.

Without that headache of a headache sapping away at my thoughts, I slowly began to think back over my recent history. I went skydiving for my birthday. I had had a party. It was to celebrate my birthday, but it also served as a farewell to everyone I knew and loved. My cancer was terminal at that point, the headaches just a constant reminder that the tumor was slowly spreading through my brain. I only had a couple of days left before it would intersect a major blood vessel and be my end. After the party I’d spent a lot of time in bed, listening to music, to podcasts, to the few family members who could be bothered to still visit me. And then….

That was the problem. There shouldn’t be an ‘and then’. I was dying. I should now be dead. I probably was dead, given I couldn't seem to see, hear, or feel anything at all, but somehow I was still able to think. At least I wasn’t burning for all eternity, but insanity via sensory deprivation wasn’t that much more appealing as far as eternal fates went. Before I could give it too much thought a word was suddenly felt. I didn’t hear it using my ears, nor could I have said how it was pronounced or what language it was from. It was simply something that was understood at the core of who I was.

[Listen]

Even as I came to grips with the sudden imparting of knowledge, I couldn’t help but follow the strange command. I could hear again and with a degree of fidelity that I had never had before, or had forgotten after too many loud concerts and noisy days living in Chicago. Without any other senses I was able to focus completely on the multitudinous sounds around me.

One by one I picked out the noises I could identify. The gentle slapping of water against a rocky shore, staccato slops of sound as waves collided with one rock or another. The screeing caws of seagulls as they flew overhead, constantly complaining about the vagaries thrust upon them. The constant song of the winds as they guided the waves to shore, similar yet distinct to their aquatic companion. The baritone hum of a craftsman at work, fragments of song occupying his voice while his hands and mind worked on something else. The solid clunk of well made boots on a wooden pier.

I was no stranger to sailing on the Great Lakes, and could easily picture myself at one of a dozen small docks that locals used to play out on the waters. I just couldn’t understand why. Why was I not still in hospice? Why would someone bother to kidnap an invalid 34 year old and take him out to the lake? And most importantly, how did that strange voice fit in with all of this? It felt like I was missing a key piece of information, something that would make sense of everything I knew, but I had no way of guessing what that revelation would be. Had my religious grandfather smuggled me somewhere for a session of faith based healing? Had I been abducted by a black market organ harvester? Was this all one last hallucination caused by my cancer riddled brain?

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Before I could get lost in my own thoughts I heard the boots returning down the dock. They paused for a moment, before landing with a solid thump right next to me. The sudden splashing clued me in to the fact that I wasn’t just by the lake, I was on a boat, and had just been joined by someone.

“Right then. I think that’s everything. Let's take her out for a test run shall we? Boat, head for Shellpin Bay.”

What sort of boat used voice controls? No company I knew about was even close to making something that advanced, given how variable any body of water could be. It might work for large ocean tankers with nothing to crash into for miles around, but certainly not for anything small enough to be visibly and audibly displaced by a person getting in or out. My confusion was further compounded as I felt my body begin to move without my input. My arms slowly stretched and waved about, cycling through a maddeningly familiar motion that I couldn’t quite place. Even though the rest of my body was still unresponsive, feeling my arms move made me think it was still there, and I tried to speak.

‘Hello? Can anyone hear me? Tell me what is going on! Show me what’s happening!’

Rowboat

Autonomous Intelligence

Component Weight 120/750 Durability 10/10 Enchantments 3 Mana Saturation 15/10 Hull - Wood Listening

Navigation Oars - Wood Automation

Oh. I’m a boat.

I was tempted to dismiss the strange information in front of me, but I couldn’t. This was real. Somehow I was no longer Robert Rowland, 34 year old civil engineer. I was now a boat. A rowboat to be precise. Robert Rowboat?

The joke didn’t strike me as all that funny at the moment. Reincarnation was apparently a thing, and I got stuck as an inanimate piece of wood. Except that wasn’t quite correct. I could move, was moving this very moment. Even if I didn’t have full control over the process I could feel my arms, my oars, steadily dipping into the water and propelling the boat forwards heading towards the destination that had been given to me. So I wasn’t inanimate, and could still remember everything from my previous life as well as think like a human. Or at least think that I think like a human. For a moment I wondered if this was a dystopic future, where copies of dead peoples’ minds were put to use as artificial intelligences for various items. Being an AI was possible, but it felt off.

The screen and that first word I had heard didn’t fit. I could see the screen without seeing, and that one word, [Listen], I had felt with everything I had to feel with. They were things that interacted directly with my soul, with the essence of myself. I was positive that it was something beyond what any piece of software or complex circuit board could accomplish. And even if I was an AI, then why would they stick me in a rowboat? The future should have hover boats and spaceships, not basic rowboats that are apparently made out of wood and powered by enchantments.

Once you eliminate the improbable, rethink what is actually impossible. I wasn’t in my world, with its limits of technology and science. I was somewhere else, with magic and souls and weird status screens. I was a boat, and I had no idea what to do with any of that information.