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In the second century A.T., it was discovered that the soul is a quantifiable substance similar in nature to certain quantum particles. This discovery was predicated by the rise in demonology studies, and followed by a spate of related discoveries, not least among them the discovery that soul-matter, like any energy, can be neither created nor destroyed. The implications of this discovery rocked both scientific and religious communities, and the theory of multiple consecutive incarnation is still hotly debated to this day.
- History Transcended, Holman, Chopra & Meyer, 2472
…
You pass through the city centre every day on your way to work, so often that you’ve worn a groove in the sidewalks of this prairie metropolis you’ve always called home. By now the city’s nothing but background noise, the hum and pulse, the tide that drags you off the train and out of the station.
Today, though.
Today, you emerge from underground, part of a great rush of humanity, and the sun strikes the office tower overhead just so and for a moment you are blinded. In that moment, as the tide carries you forward towards who knows what, something you can’t see for splotches of colour filling your vision, you catch a whiff of scent as someone shoulders past you. You don’t see them as they disappear into the crowd ahead, and the scent disperses in a moment, as you pass a garbage can full almost to overflowing and your thoughts fall from whatever wander they had taken back into the usual is it another garbage strike and will this be clogging the sidewalks I can’t be late again.
You will forget, almost as soon as it strikes you, the curious freefalling feeling that swept over you as that scent did, the cool sensation of salt waves lapping over you and the warmth of a blinding sun.
…
Reincarnation malaise, or ‘the déjà blues’, as it is colloquially known, is still a little-understood phenomenon, despite an increase in its study and research over the past decades. Sufferers have reported symptoms such as: a sense of displacement, detachment from emotionally significant memories, unfocused nostalgia or nostalgia focused on things with which the sufferer has no personal experience, depression, inappropriate attachment to strangers, and a sense of lacking fulfillment. Experiences of reincarnation malaise can last as little as a few seconds or as long as years, and may be isolated occurrences or may persist throughout a sufferer’s life. Treatment options are still limited, though regression therapy and psychic adaptation exercises have shown some success.
- “Singing the Déjà Blues”, Quincey & Halloran, Journal of Popular Psychology 18.2 (2490)
…
Not every past-life can be Cleopatra, Beyonce, Dipper Pines. You start looking into lesser-known (but still recognisable!) historical figures so you can give a convincing 'reading’ to some of your more skeptical clients, and that’s where you find them.
Precious little is known about the man Stanford Pines (so much the better for you, as it means you can…tailor his personality to any particular client), save that he was a brilliant researcher whose works were foundational to early post-Transcendence studies, and that he was related to the one and only Dipper Pines. Even less is known about Stanford’s twin, Stanley - in fact, you can only find Stanley in a short encyclopaedia entry on the Stanley Pines Memorial Library of the Supernatural, which he apparently both founded and named after himself.
For reasons you can’t quite explain, this makes you smile. You know both men are long dead, that they have no relation to you, that their lives are so far removed from yours that you’d be just as close to old Cleo herself. But you still feel a…glow, of sorts, thinking about two brothers who despite origins shrouded in mystery and hinted unpleasantness, managed to make places for themselves in the turmoil of a new world. You can’t explain it, but for a moment (though you’d never admit it), it has you near tears.
Heck, maybe there is something to all this reincarnation business other than your brand of baloney, after all.
…
“Reincarnation is a lie - a dangerous lie, perpetuated by the enemies of faith, by those who, rather than admit their own sins, would deny the true believers their rightful entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven. Friends, I say to you, do not believe them. Do not allow your hearts and minds to be turned away from the light of truth. We have but one walk through this vale of tears, beyond which lies only judgement. Will you be found wanting when that judgement comes? Friends, turn your thoughts to your immortal soul. What loving God would force it to return to walk these same thorny paths, through life after life, with no relief from its eternal suffering? What loving God would make this the reward of the faithful?”
- Reverend Sarah Broughton, sermon (Maypril 27, 2469)
…
You lie up, late, listening for your parents’ footsteps outside the door as you list evidence on your tablet under the covers.
1. For as long as you can remember, you have desperately wanted to visit - no, to live in - the Pacific Northwest, in the trees, in the rain, with the mysteries that still linger in the depths of the old-growth forests.
2. That day in the library (hidden in the warm silence of the stacks, towers of books at least twice as tall as you, as rain and the pages of your mother’s magazine rustled on the other side of the set of shelves) when you pulled free a book from the nonfiction section that told the story of a boy about your age who solved a mystery and saved the world, and for a moment, you could feel gravity releasing its vise-grip on your feet.
3. Your parents say that when you were young, you used to ask them where your twin had gone. You have never been a twin, and yet, you still sometimes turn to make a joke to someone who isn’t there, has never been there.
4. You know that physical traits don’t carry over, but you list your dark hair and brown eyes anyway.
It seems obvious to you, as you tap a finger against your braces, trying to think of the other things that made it oh-so-clear in your mind, so that you can list them, quantify them, keep them. Understand what’s strange about you, where you fit. In the dark, writing by tablet-light, it’s easy to see the shape of it, the shadowy centre around which all your small strangenesses orbit.
In a past life, you must have been Mabel Pines.
…
I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through…
- “I’ll Be Seeing You”, Billie Holiday, 1944
…
The funny man’s mouth opens in a smile, and you gasp at the sight of all his sharp, sharp teeth. It’s not a frightened gasp, and he smiles wider.
“Hello, little Mizar,” he coos, and his voice has a funny echo and you’re pretty sure that’s not your name. You kick, and he laughs, a silly laugh you think you might like, but he backs away.
“I missed you,” he says, his smile going all wobbly as he does.
You shriek, with a smile to show it’s a good shriek, and he laughs again.
…
Oh, I know we’ll meet again…