I slowly opened my eyes only to be met with a bright white light shining directly at me with nearly blinding intensity. Am I in a hospital? I pried my eyes open to look around, only to find that the blinding white light was, in fact, an endless expanse of a pure white void.
“Seems a bit too dull to be hell, and I somehow doubt I landed myself a spot upstairs.” The remark left my mouth before I could consider that on the off chance that I had made it to heaven, I really shouldn’t keep pushing that luck.
“Oh, this is probably a dream, or, well, is this what a lucid dream feels like?” A pinch to my arm sent out the expected sharp feeling to my brain, presuming I still had one wherever this was. As I tried to think of what else this could be and of what had happened to me such that I wasn’t surprised to find myself in a hospital bed, a sudden voice echoed out, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.
“Welcome, Vanessa Laval,” oh, lovely, it used the right name: that’s a relief. “Your soul has been randomly selected to be transferred between realms.” My mind raced; this didn’t sound good; I’d read enough stories to know that this never meant getting to go somewhere as convenient as a post-scarcity happy future. As I wondered about what this new realm could be like and lamented the fact that it had to be me who was randomly selected, a screen popped up in front of my eyes.
Please select a boon to guide you in your new realm:
- Boon of Strength
- Boon of Knowledge
- Boon of Sorcery
Wait, wait, wait, sorcery, so I’m being sent to a fantasy world, “Hey, uh, god? Could you maybe actually give me some information about this world I’m being sent to and perhaps maybe even these boons you are ever so graciously giving me?” I threw in some flattery to the god or whatever that was doing this; it seemed like an inopportune moment to get on this being’s bad side. And as my luck would have it, one of my requests was met; perhaps I needed to be more pious in my asking for the other to be answered as well...
Please select a boon to guide you in your new realm:
- Boon of Strength
- Your physical body will develop to inhuman heights, with all physical characteristics capable of unrestricted growth.
- Boon of Knowledge
- Your mind will become an endless reservoir, allowing to perfectly recall any information you have ever learned.
- Boon of Sorcery
- Your mind and body will become attuned to the nature of magic, allowing you to bend mana to your will and grow your reservoirs without limit.
These all looked too good. Frankly, this seemed far too convenient to just randomly happen, but there’s no reason for this to make sense, is there? I’m currently standing in an endless void with video game UI boxes giving me choices about reincarnation. I think I should just try to roll with the punches at this point; it doesn’t seem like answers will be easy and forthcoming.
As I stood there pondering what kinds of worlds I could be sent to, I considered where each boon would shine. Strength would only be super useful in some kind of medieval fantasy setting where killing monsters with a sword is a viable way to climb the social ladder. Seeing as this would be rather unhelpful in anything resembling a normal society, I think I’ll pass on that.
Knowledge, on the other hand, will be useful no matter what I think; if it’s a low-tech world, then hopefully, I’ll be able to remember things from Earth and be able to be some kind of medieval engineer, probably the most useful an electrical engineering degree could be. And if the world was advanced enough that this knowledge was already uncovered, I could still use this to become some kind of researcher.
Sorcery is also tempting, but if magic is already widespread, it only means I’ll be a more powerful mage than usual, which is very good but not Earth-shattering. In the worst case I could be burned at the stake for being a witch, and I wasn’t very confident in my ability to survive in the wilderness, especially since I have no clue what this magic would even let me do. In the end, it was just far too big of an unknown to rely on.
So that’s it, I guess, it’ll be the devil I know or something like that. As I mentally decided that I would be selecting the Boon of Knowledge, it lit up on the hologram screen thing in front of me before it faded away to be replaced by another one.
“Searching for a suitable newborn with the name “Vanessa” to match soul’s preferences.”
While that was very sweet of, uh, whatever was controlling all of this, I wondered how long it would take, but as I wondered what time even meant in this strange space, I felt my consciousness fade away.
----------------------------------------
I awoke to the sound of my own crying, even though I was conscious I could hardly do anything, my baby instincts seemingly controlling what little could be controlled in the body of a newborn, which was to say, the crying, and that’s about it.
I felt the embrace of what I assumed to be my new mother as my eyes slowly adjusted to the light and my ears slowly picked up on celebratory words coming from around me. I couldn’t move my head to investigate my surroundings. All I could look at was the distorted image of the sickly pale face of my mother in front of what seemed to be a simply made wooden ceiling. A strange kind of worry crept over my body as I saw my mother’s face; it was more than the worry of growing up without a mother in whatever strange new world I had been thrust into; there seemed to be some kind of natural affection towards my mother beyond that. I was no biology expert, but I felt quite certain in remembering that this probably wasn’t a thing on Earth. As I tried to think about what this could mean, I slowly drifted into sleep as my crying quieted down, thinking this hard had tired out my newborn body.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
----------------------------------------
I opened my eyes once again to find myself staring at a slightly different but equally wooden ceiling. To my sides were the edges of what appeared to be a crib of some kind. A feeling of loneliness and hunger compelled me to start crying again; part of me felt a little bad since I had no way of knowing what time of the day it was, but I reassured myself in my head that it was expected for newborns to cry whenever they got hungry. Rather quickly, I found myself in my mother’s arms, suckling on the rather watery meal she provided: I wasn’t going to complain; I was just thankful that my baby brain had taken over enough to make me not feel weird about this situation. I’m not sure how it works, but thank you, whoever put me here, for making this not feel weird and sexual. I sent a silent prayer to the divine beings that I was now pretty sure existed as my mother lay me back down and sleep called once more.
----------------------------------------
I spent the next few days passing in and out of awareness; I’m pretty sure that my body wasn’t sleeping all of the times that I was unaware of my surroundings; I guessed it had something to do with my mind being too complicated to fit into the brain of a newborn baby. Though the concept of souls, which pretty much had to exist for this whole situation to have even happened, kind of made that argument a little less concrete. However, it’s on this day – the fifth if I haven’t skipped over whole days – that something interesting finally happened. I called for my mother as the uncomfortable feeling of a wet cloth diaper pressed up against me. I had been dreading being awake for this the whole time, but until now, it seemed to have only happened while I was blissfully unaware. As my mother undid the diaper, I sent out another silent prayer in thanks that my baby instincts overrode any embarrassment I should have felt from this situation. My train of thought was interrupted by a single word from my mother.
“Mireni,” she called out with a soft tone, and I felt all of the waste in my diaper vanish from reality. I knew magic existed in this world; the boon of sorcery had all but confirmed that. But now... now I knew it was commonplace; combined with my knowledge from my previous life, the ideas of what I could make were flowing endlessly.
----------------------------------------
I have come to the conclusion that in any world, the fate of engineers is to have their hopes quashed by the uncompromising hammer of reality. In every story I had read, all you needed to do to learn magic was to meditate and try to feel the power within and then BAM magic. Unfortunately for my dreams of being a magical prodigy from my crib, this did not appear to be the case here. Or perhaps it was just an unfortunate reality of my being a 5-day-old baby. Regardless, I will not abandon my dreams of being a magical engineer just yet.
----------------------------------------
Being a baby is dreadfully boring; despite my best efforts, even after several months of trying, my mouth is still not yet capable of anything but endless baby babble. Even worse yet is that after months, my limbs are still barely able to move: the most advanced thing I can do is wave my arms around and try to lift my head from the ground when I’m laid down on my front. I have, however, learned many things about this new life: for one, my family seems to consist of only myself and my two parents, who both work in a bakery downstairs. I’m just starting to see colours properly now and can now be sure that both my parents have the light brown hair that I imagined and not some strange bright colours straight out of an anime.
My mother is a relatively short woman – at least compared to my dad. I don’t have any obvious references. Everyone here could be at most a meter, and I’d have no way of knowing – with a healthy weight that indicates that my parents are eating well. My father is not a particularly muscular man, but he has a cute face and a somewhat slender build, which is only emphasized by his standing more than a head and a half taller than my mom. If I had to guess, he’s about 6’1”, and my mom would be about five feet tall on the dot. They both still look young, probably younger than I was when I died back on Earth, probably no older than 21 and very possibly not into their twenties yet.
“Hi, Nessie!” My mom coos out at me, walking over from the wood oven where she’d just placed the bread, insisting in that motherly way of using the lamest possible shortening of my name.
“Mama,” I babble out, doing the best I can to acknowledge her as I grab her finger, happy for something new to grab onto.
“Yes! I’m your mama Nessie!” She seems so happy when I respond with mama that it soothes my heart as well.
“Mama,” I reaffirm with what I can only imagine is a silly baby smile on my face, glad to know that the universality of Mama and Papa seems to translate even if everything else has changed.
“Alex, sweetie,” she calls out to my dad, “I think our baby girl knows I’m her mama already.” I can feel the pride in her voice; I’d been a bit busy (and lacking in romantic partners) for kids, but I think I’m probably going to be setting some records for infant language development; there’s no way I can hold back on talking when that’s literally all that I’m able to do here.
“Are you sure she doesn’t just think everyone is ‘mama’” he replies, walking over to see me with a warm smile on his face.
“Baba,” I exclaim as he gets close, a big smile crossing my face as I get to prove him wrong, though I can’t quite get the p sound yet.
“See, sweetie, our girl is so smart she can already tell us apart!” My mom is both proud of me and a little amused by the little interaction, and both feelings come right through in her tone. “I bet she’ll become the greatest mage our town has ever seen,” she proclaims with such a tone that I’m not actually sure if she’s serious or not.
“Maye, maye, maye.” I try to tell her I’m interested in being a mage, but unfortunately, the “j” sound is still beyond the capabilities of my 4-month-old tongue. Though technically, the word for mage sounds something like beige /bed͡ʒə/ if you want to be precise, the sound I can’t pronounce remains the same.
“You’re right, Laina; look, she’s trying already,” my dad replies while ruffling my still-growing baby hair with only a little bit of loving sarcasm.
----------------------------------------
Have I mentioned that being a baby is really boring? It’s been about a year since I was born, and I am still only allowed to crawl around the living area upstairs while my parents are there, and despite my best efforts, my legs cannot carry me more than about 2 steps before I am gracefully pulled right back onto my butt. I’m definitely speaking earlier than any other baby, but I am finding it difficult to get anything resembling useful answers from my parents. Every time I see my mom use magic to clean my diaper or light the oven or I see my dad flip over the sign out-front and close up the shop with naught but a flick or two of his wrists and a word, I inevitably ask the same thing.
“How do you do that?”
“Magic,” they always reply, sometimes even mentioning fire or air before so.
“Can you teach me?”
“Not until you’re older,” and so it continues. I’m not unsympathetic to their cause here; I also wouldn’t want to give a one-year-old the ability to summon fire out of their hands; one-year-olds are not well renowned for their ability to make smart or rational decisions.
Well, at least I’ll be getting a younger sibling soon if the noises I have elected to pretend I never hear from the bed my parents share right next to my crib are any indication.