Adon Komodo wheezed himself into wakefulness.
Despite the breathing mask he always wore to sleep, the sounds his body made as it struggled to keep itself alive were always far from smooth.
“Ahem. Haw.” His breaths grew more ragged as he slowly pulled himself up, or tried to, by the handles on the sides of his bed. His arms were too weak to handle the heft of his bulk. He pulled with all the force he could, only to advance by inches. Then he let go and fell back down into the bed. This repeated itself twice.
Finally, he gave up. At twenty-six years old and four hundred fifty pounds, he was, he felt, entitled to give up on getting up every once in a while. Even if “every once in a while” was becoming increasingly often.
Instead of pushing his limits—Adon’s heart was already pounding!—he reached to his right side and pressed a button. The bed immediately began moving. The half that lay underneath his upper body rose and adjusted itself until it reached his comfortable wide awake elevation.
At last, Adon was sitting up.
Now, what to do first?
He saw a note stuck to the screen at the foot of his bed. His mother’s way of trying to make him get up out of the bed before he could use his screens. Little did she know, he had trained his body for precisely this challenge.
Adon kicked the sheets free of his feet, and with the dexterous toes of his right foot, he plucked the note free from the screen. He gave a little smile of satisfaction, but it quickly curdled into a grimace. Perhaps his mother had intended that he might do this. Because in order to get to the note, he’d had to lean his whole body forward in order to see what he was doing and coordinate his foot.
And that meant that as soon as the note unstuck from the screen, Adon was facing it, leaning into view. It gave him a long hard look at his own reflection.
Ugh. His mind recoiled instinctively from his own body. Now, fitting with what his mother had surely wanted, he felt an instinctive urge to get out of bed, to get some sort of physical activity.
No, calm down, he told himself. He looked around for the distractions. There was the screen, and of course the note.
He opened the note, almost eager to see whatever banal reminders his mother had left for him. Back when he was a kid, it was things like “Brush your teeth. Do your homework. Help your brother with his school work.”
But now his brother and sister, despite suffering from the same glandular issues as Adon, were out in the world on their own. Gainfully employed. Married and engaged respectively. They kept in good enough shape for their bodies to support the cybernetic implants that made it easier for them to get around. Adon had failed to make the consistent effort required.
He often wondered what his life could have been like, if he didn’t suffer from this combination of a glandular disorder and crippling social anxiety. Could he have had a good career? Married? His mind drifted to its favorite fantasy, in which he was with his high school crush, Linda. They were walking in the park, holding hands.
But he shoved the image away. He didn’t feel like distracting himself right now. He felt agitated. Mom, why did you leave this note?! He read the text again and tried to parse out why it made him irrationally angry.
The note just said, “Please try to get up today. The gym downstairs is all yours for the next few days. Father and I are going down to the beach house for some sun. Please take care of yourself. Love you, Mom”
Should that really make him angry? He let out a long sigh. Probably not.
“Axel, please get me a Long Haul,” he vocalized.
“Getting you a Long Haul, Mr. Adon!” the artificial voice replied.
A slender robotic arm descended from the ceiling above, opened the mini refrigerator in the corner of Adon’s room, and handed him a can of Long Haul. The first energy drink developed that didn’t cause the heart to race unsteadily in any of its consumers, and also didn’t taste like battery acid.
Adon popped the metal tab with a sharp, satisfying crack, listened to the soft sound of fizzing bubbles, and inhaled the tart cherry smell. His mouth watered slightly, his body’s Pavlovian response to the presence of his drug of choice. Then he took a long swig, and he curled his lips into another smile. Long Haul always gave him the energy to face the day. Even if it was just a day of watching daytime television on his screen.
Like today would be, he decided. He wasn’t going to bother getting out of bed the whole time his parents were gone. That would show his mother for leaving him some moldy old note!
He guzzled down the Long Haul and tossed the can onto the floor. The robot cleaner would get it later.
“Axel, activate screen!” Adon boomed. One of his few rather charming traits was his deep voice, which had always drawn him positive attention. It became a little grating, after he started to put on the weight, how people would hear his voice, glance over at him with expressions of interest, and then look away in disgust.
After a while, he just stopped talking in front of other people. He realized, now that he thought about it, that no one outside of his family had heard his voice in years. He didn’t have to go outside for anything; it wasn’t as if his parents were hurting for money.
Why are you thinking this way today? he asked himself. Don’t be so depressed. Just enjoy the alone time!
The screen had flickered to life in front of him, a touch screen maxi-tablet designed to function as a highly mobile, thin but durable big-screen television and home computer. The little rotating eye appeared, prompting him to select what he wanted to do.
“Screen, play today’s biggest story from Info Corp,” Adon said.
A video appeared on the screen and began to play.
A voiceover began, “Dr. Laurence Santana explains why the immortality of the soul is a myth!”
Adon started, almost bolting forward, before he calmed himself. Dr. Santana said that?
Then two figures appeared on screen. One was a newswoman in a tasteful, flower print dress. Adon recognized her from many other news broadcasts, and knew her name before it popped up below her on-screen: Kate Bechdel. The other man was new to him. Or so it seemed at first.
As Adon squinted at the screen, he at last recognized the face of the old, liver-spotted man with the mane of thick white hair. It was a face he’d seen in textbooks in his school, minus fifty years of age. It really was Dr. Santana.
The man who scientifically proved the existence of the soul and founded the field of essence physics, which studied the properties and activities of the soul. Dr. Santana had always stressed how the work of his predecessors should really be credited with his achievement, but despite his humility, he was treated as a Sifuentes or a Newburg figure. A towering giant of science.
Now, here he was, in the flesh, albeit severely aged and decrepit, with multiple visible cybernetic implants supporting him as he stood beside Ms. Bechdel.
“Doctor, please explain your latest discovery to our viewers,” Bechdel said, her expression grave.
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“Well, as you know, Ms. Bechdel, we have long been able to track the activity of the soul. We have measured its size and movement in the past. We know that when you die, the soul travels elsewhere, we know not where. And we’ve proved that souls that appeared previously sometimes reappear in this world in a newborn baby or animal body.” He smiled a bit to himself, as if that last discovery was a real coup.
“Yes, miraculous discoveries, and they proved the existence of a spiritual world for billions of people. But what’s this about the quality of souls changing with time?” Bechdel pressed.
Santan frowned and wrung his hands, clearly agitated. “I’ll be blunt,” he said finally. “We’ve discovered that the souls that have entered our world in the last several decades are lesser than they once were. There is less substance to them. Souls today are basically flimsy, fragile things. A shadow of their former selves. This comes at the same time as our global fertility bust. A problem which we discovered afflicted not just ourselves, but our fellow ensouled species as well.”
“What does this mean? A soul has less substance to it than they used to? What are the implications of that?” Bechdel seemed to be channeling the nervous energy she anticipated from her audience. Adon himself felt beads of cold sweat gathering on his back.
“Essentially, we have discovered that the souls coming to our world are lesser each time they arrive. We don’t know the cause, but we have an idea that seems the only credible theory at the moment. It’s as if you had a memory tape, and you played the tape again and again.”
Bechdel nodded along, since the reference was so obvious and clear. Memory tapes wore out from too much repeated use.
“At some point,” he continued, “the memory can’t be played anymore. You may have made copies, but if you hadn’t, the original memory is of no more use.”
“And if we’re talking about the soul, doctor? What does it mean when this metaphor applies to a living being’s essence?”
He heaved a deep sigh and looked distraught. “It means that the immortality of the soul may be a myth. Something we’ve deluded ourselves into believing. We’re aware of the ignorant generations in the past who believed there was no second life for the soul. It’s possible, however, that the people who are putting their stock in having a next life right now might be wrong. The cycle of reincarnation, that people weren’t certain existed once upon a time, might be coming to its end. For the current young generations, anyone less than fifty or sixty years of age, it’s possible that this life might be the last recurrence that your specific soul can endure.”
After a commercial break, Ms. Bechdel went on to interview a local essence physician, a woman named Dr. Lee, who suggested going to see your local specialist if you’re worried about your soul. But Adon tuned it out, and after about thirty seconds, he turned the screen off.
He wanted to think, and he needed silence for that.
Have I been living my life, all this time, anticipating that I would get to enjoy something else after? Putting off really living, making my fullest effort in this life, because deep down, I knew I would have another chance? Did I let myself miss out on all that I could have been?
His thoughts went involuntarily to Linda again, and this time, he didn’t try to pull them away. Maybe if he had some motivation, he could make something of this life. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late for him to waste the last, or second to last, life he had.
Adon decided to go down to the gym. It had seemed pointless before, and he’d even thought that abstention would accomplish more than a visit to the gym. But he didn’t care about spiting his parents now. He wanted to see if he could get into decent shape. The last time he’d checked Linda out on social media, she’d been single.
Maybe it wasn’t too late for him to have a full life, with love and career success and all the trappings he’d quietly given up on.
“Axel, open the door to my room!” he boomed.
The robot hand quickly obliged. Then Adon pushed the lever that lowered the arms on the sides of his bed, so he could slide out.
He took his first steps in days, toward the doorway and the nearby staircase.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life, he vowed, grinning. Today will change everything.
Adon couldn’t see his feet when he was standing upright. He didn’t see the can of Long Haul as the toes of his right foot found it and accidentally kicked it forward, through the door. He thought little of it. I guess I left my slippers in the middle of the floor again.
The can found its way under his other foot when he stepped out of the room. He felt it then, but not until he was already putting his weight down. The can rolled and slipped under his foot like a banana peel.
In what the medical examiner would later term a “freak accident,” Adon fell forward and flipped over the stairway railing, flailing his arms and crashing down the stairs.
“A particularly bad landing on one of the lower stairs snapped his neck. Instantaneous death. There was no pain,” the medical examiner would assure his shocked parents.
No pain, that was true enough, if one ignored the first few steps Adon collided with before he landed near the bottom and fractured his spine. But as his soul hurtled into the darkness, there was palpable disappointment.
When Adon opened his eyes, he was in a bright white place, surrounded by clouds and light. He seemed to be in the same body he had died in, minus the broken bones.
“My child,” a mellifluous voice pronounced, “you’re back again so soon.”
Adon looked up and saw the Goddess. She returned his gaze, just as Adon was hit with a flood of memories.
He not only remembered every time he’d been in this place before, which was considerable—I’ve really reincarnated around a hundred times? How many does a soul usually get?!—he also remembered his other past lives. He remembered being a dragon in a fantasy world. A tiger in a deep jungle. The only daughter of a great noble. Several dozen lives in which he’d been a beggar, or a peasant, or a member of an untouchable caste. A life where he was a computer programmer. Another where he was a ballerina. So many lives, in worlds that were wildly different from the one he thought of as his own.
But there was a single common thread. I’ve disappointed myself in all of them! There’s not a single one of those lives that I’d live again. Just like in my current life, I had no friends, no lovers… Nothing worth having!
Even when he’d been a dragon, people had feared him and cheered the brave hero who finally hunted him down and killed him. It was a painfully solitary life. He was almost glad to die, if not for the excruciating pain from the lance through his chest. The same applied to his existence as a tiger, except replace “hero” with “hunter hired by the colonial government.” And as a noble girl, he had been kidnapped and held for ransom, then killed. It was a successful plot by the girl’s stepmother to remove her from the line of succession.
Even as that nearly-royal noble girl, Adon had no real friends. Just a personal servant girl. The one time that incarnation of Adon and the girl played together, the commoner girl was caught and whipped for her presumption. From then on, it was isolation.
Oh, Goddess, I’ve wasted every life you’ve given me! Adon stared back up at the Goddess, eyes brimming with tears.
He had marveled at the Goddess’s beauty every time he was here, and every time he was here, he took something different from her expression. The first several incarnations, he’d thought there was a beautifully blissful expression on her face. Then he’d started to read it as a more mysterious expression, like she had some secret. This time, and the last few, the Goddess’s face came across as melancholy to him.
But he realized, for the first time, that her mood was the same every time he saw her. Her face never changed its expression. It was only his reaction that was new.
“My child, there is no need to cry. You are loved.” She drew close to Adon and folded him into her embrace for a moment that seemed to last forever. “Do you have any requests for your next incarnation?”
It might be my final life, he reminded himself. But I won’t screw this up! The one thing I know is that with every life, my basic character can be drastically different based on my environment and the temperament that my new body comes equipped with. There’s no reason why I should be alone in the next life.
There was nothing wrong with Adon that reincarnation couldn’t cure.
But as he looked up at the Goddess, he felt his familiar social anxiety kicking in. Who was he to be looking at her? Making requests of her? This divine being, a wellspring of love.
Why would she waste her time with me? Even thinking about what I want? The tears welled up in his eyes again.
But he managed to speak. Stammering, words barely audible, he voiced his request. “Please, ah, my Goddess, I just want the, the friendship and to be l-loved. Ah, maybe good-looking? Handsome or beautiful. And charming, if possible. Soch-social skills, to be a social butterfly. M-make me a social butterfly!” His voice rose and fell throughout his request, reaching its loudest at the last word.
The Goddess’s expression changed, for the first time he’d seen across the thousands of years of his existence and over a hundred encounters with her.
She looked confused for a moment.
“I see,” she murmured to herself. “To be a beautiful, loved creature, charming…”
Her expression returned to normal.
“I know just where to send you!” she proclaimed. “Hold on tight, my dear Adon!”
The ground shifted underneath him, and Adon found himself hurtling through dark emptiness once again.
D-did she mis-hear what I said? he wondered.