Ch. 1: An end and a beginning
My Name is, or was, Jane Smith. Yes, it is a very ordinary name that was befitting a very ordinary life, but that was my previous life and some every now and then I wish I could go back to the simplicity of it. Back in that life I had been a high school history teacher for a very small school in rural Illinois, and I loved all 30 or so years of teaching. I never got married and rarely dated, but that was fine and I was content as I was able to lose myself in a variety of books. I never stuck with any one genre for too long because I always got bored and moved on to another. At one point I even took the advice of a student and read these odd little Chinese fictions that were very similar to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon; they were pretty good for the most part, but I always felt that the women in them were portrayed as weak too often and drifted away from them after a little. One thing that had caught my attention was the idea of reincarnating into what I assume to be a parallel universe. Even to this day I’m not too sure why that always stuck out, but I’m glad it did. A few months after I turned 61 I found out I had an advanced and terminal case of lung cancer. Just six months later I was laying on my death bed and was thinking to myself:
“Is this all there is to life?”
Over the years I had read nearly every type of fiction possible that could be found by authors like R.A. Salvatore and R.R. Martin. From space opera’s to medieval fantasy, everything pasted through my head in an instant and I couldn’t help thinking back and feeling like was a boring life I had lead. Even now I feel it was a little boring, but that feeling is tinged with nostalgia and a little envy. During those last six months I also wondered what would happen after I died; would the Christian be right and I see those pearly gates, or would the atheists be right I just die with nothing else. That one thought is what made me worry the most, and in the end I ended up just hoping for the best and not give in to my religious friends wanting me to convert last minute. This is mostly because I knew, after reading tons of history research and books during my life, that most wars have been fought due to religious differences and that annoyed me to no end throughout my life. With all that said, On July 21, 2024, I died.
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After I died my, for lack of a better word, consciousness just kinda floated around in a black void. Needless to say, it was extremely boring. An indefinite amount of time later I started to attempt to recall every part of my past life down to the smallest detail out of sheer boredom. I was oddly successful in some ways but failed miserably in others. I was able to recall everything except for my early childhood, and was even able to recall the majority of what I learned throughout my years in college. Unfortunately I was unable to remember most of the books I had read which was sad as that would have alleviated a lot of boredom. Most of the time I spent in the void I was asleep; I couldn’t tell you how long I was in the void, but it was overwhelmingly boring and if I hadn’t been able to sleep I probably would have gone insane. Luckily that didn’t happen, and after an indeterminate amount of time I felt a strange tug on my consciousness. As I had nothing better going on I decided not to fight the pull and just went with it. After a little I began to feel extraordinarily tired and fell asleep.
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When I woke up again I felt warm, and this made me ecstatic as I hadn’t actually felt anything in so long. Soon after waking I again felt tired and fell back to sleep. Some time later I woke up again surrounded by the warmth, but I still couldn’t move or see. One difference was that I could feel an odd continuous thumping, but again I fell asleep after only being awake for a short time. When I woke for a third time I was still blind, but I was able to move around a little. I was also able to hear the thumping a lot more clearly. I was then I realized what happened and where I was. As you can guess I was inside some ones womb. A little bit after this realization I again fell back to sleep. Over the next few months I woke up randomly only to fall back asleep no matter how hard I tried to stay awake. Eventually the time came for me to be born, and I can honestly say it is still the oddest experience I have ever gone through. The actual process of being born was horrid due to the pressure of the canal walls pressing in on you, and when you make it through that and hit the open air it feels as if someone just pored hydrogen-peroxide into a cut only all over your body. Needless to say that stung, a lot, and probably the worst thing is the eyes. Oh the eyes! Just picture going from pitch black to what felt like a Hollywood spotlight shining in your eyes. Add to that the fact that I still couldn’t actually see all that well; it felt as if I needed those coke-bottle glasses you saw in old movies. The most annoying part is that I couldn’t see my parents or the doctors or anything else; all that added together made it easy to cry, and did I ever. Eventually I calmed down enough to stop crying and notice I was being held by my new mother. I could also hear her talking with my new father, although that’s just a guess. I did notice that the language is very different from English; in fact I didn’t sound anything like any language I had ever heard before, but it sounded very beautiful. One thing that I did know was that this was my chance at a new life, and I was going to make sure it was an exciting one.