The Waiting Game

It is a fairly well understood phenomena that the human mind is unable to visualise the concept of infinity, or the ever-lasting. Try it, although I am sure you will already have. Picture any scenario you wish. The topic is irrelevant. Try and imagine that it goes on forever. You will find out pretty quickly that you automatically start to fixate on an end point. There is nothing special about this. For as long as we humans have been graced with the ability to consciously imagine, we have been equally cursed with the limits of our brain. To think as to where we would be now if we could truly imagine freely! The sky would be of no limit!

I want you to keep this on your mind as you read on. I will do my best on my end to detail my situation, and what is soon to be yours, as explicitly as possible. But I am afraid this requires a great deal of effort from you. We are physically not able to imagine what is to come, but as long as you hold this in your mind as we venture forth, we can do what we can to conjure a close approximation.

Lucy’s pale brown hair transfixed me in the way it flowed through the air as we fell to the ground. It was like something out of a painting. It was beauty at its most pure. When we hit the pavement, it stayed floating, just for a second. It was as if it was unwilling to ever move so freely again. It was perfect, no, she was perfect. Her eyes had this deep hazel colouring. It matched her freckles. She did not have many freckles, and the ones she had were gently hidden by her skin, that had just the smallest of brown hues. I knew she had some South-American heritage but could not tell you any more than that. I perhaps should have listened more keenly when she spoke about such things. I don’t think I was the best husband, but the love I had for her was very real.

She lay there, like a cracked porcelain plate. As fragile as she was mesmerising. I could make out a small steam of blood seeping from her brow. The colour matched her lips. It gently pooled onto a hard, cold canvas of concrete. We were holding hands when we jumped. Together in mourning. Two miscarriages is a tragedy, but three, as it turned out, became an accusation. The sympathy was replaced with blame, and we were alone in our sorrow. Lucy did not survive the impact, and for that I am grateful. She couldn’t see me staring at her, longing to join her, praying that I succumb to the pain that scorched its way across every fibre of my being. I was certain my jaw had broken, because my scream would not come.

Eternity makes the smallest of moments so dearly important, and I would come so close to madness as I continuously wished we left our lives together. It was all of fifteen seconds of consciousness before I too passed. A number that is both small and of no comfort.

Here, dear reader, is where I must reveal the harshest of truths. I am sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t, perhaps it is better to be blind. But I feel I must. I am sorry. Those of you that will surely feel the need to weep with joy, I ask you to refrain until I finish. I am sorry.

Reincarnation is real.

Reincarnation is also deeply flawed.

Dying was akin to a light being switched on. That’s a bizarre sentence, I know, and it almost certainly was the opposite metaphor to one you would expect. The moment I lost grip on the mortal world, I was flooded with memories. It was quite honestly overwhelming. Not memories of the life I just left, although they were very much still present, but memories of countless lives lived. For ease of explanation, I will be referring here to the life that I just described leaving, the life with Lucy, as my “primary” life. Whilst a relatively arbitrary title, it will help me to have a frame of reference. But more than that, mine and Lucy’s love was one I had not experienced in any other life. I would come to hold on to this fact very dearly. I found it both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Having access to these memories all at once was fantastic fun. Imagine the most in depth, lived-in stories, hundreds of them, all at your disposal, all… real. It seemed that in a good half of them I was some form of peasant. Statistically, of course, this is likely the case for most human souls. Being poor does not lead to being uninteresting however, and I found some amazing stories nestled within these lives. I remembered the joy of village festivals. I remembered the time I had a harvest so plentiful I let myself daydream of being a rich man. I remembered the end of another cold Russian winter, and the promise that the emerging sun brought, and how I felt hope for my children. In my primary life I was something of an amateur historian, and to have these time capsules at my disposal was something I could only have dreamed about.

As I explored these lives a fear started to creep over me. A dread of a realisation yet to come. Naturally I dismissed such thoughts. I can’t imagine dying does much good for your anxiety, there was bound to be some teething issues. It will pass. Suddenly, in a jolt of flashing light, the memories vanished and I was born again.

I don’t look upon that next life fondly. I was born in the year 2045. I died in the year 2065. Automation on a mass scale meant job loss. I had been poor in many lives, but to be poor and hopeless was something else entirely. The flicker of hope I did have died not long before I did. It died when I left school and stepped out into what is a bleak, bleak world. I lasted two more years. It seems the only purpose the near future served was in providing taller buildings to jump off.

Great. Two suicides in a row. As I once again found myself acclimating to this bizarre afterlife, I wondered what the record was. Was there a record being kept? Who is the most suicide prone? A couple more and I reckon I was in the running! I imagined my ponderings would be considered far more insensitive had death not lost its bite in the shadow of reincarnation. I will be back soon, so does that death really matter? Damn. There is that feeling again. The dread is stronger this time. This time I embraced it. I couldn’t hide from it forever. Sure enough, that dread eventually gave way to realisation. And I screamed. I scream with no mouth, into a void that I could not hear. I lost breath that I did not have, and cried tears that did not come. The worst of truths about this afterli-… A flash of light and all was forgotten.

I grew old with happiness and love. I had two children and twice as many grandchildren. I was surrounded with loved ones in my final years. I was also Asian. A first for me, as it turned out. Strange. Statistics wise you would think that would not be the case, but oh well. Some novelty is always nice, not that I knew it at the time! It’s funny how quick life goes. Before long I was on my death bed, flowers beside me. I withered alongside them. My eyes closed, and the familiar dance of the afterlife restarted. However this time was much shorter. The dread had gone, there was no need for it anymore. I now knew the harshest of truths. A brief re-orientation of where, what, who, why, and a short dive down the memories of the lives I once had. And then anguish. In its purest, harshest of forms. A hopelessness that spread through me like a cancer.

We have to wait.

When you die you don’t cease to exist. You remain conscious in what I can only describe as “the black”. There is no sensation, no sound, no sight. Just you and the memories of lives you once had, in vivid detail, sure, but still just memories. Reincarnation will come, but you have to wait for an opportunity. For the atoms and your soul (if soul is the right word here) to align in the perfect way to give you a new life. But until that point you will feel every second of the black. That plain, unassuming life I just described was the last life I would live for millennia.

Lucy’s face haunts me now. It was so long ago that I have lost the love I felt for her. I knew I loved her, for centuries I held on to our love. But that feeling has gone. The longing I had for her is replaced by the longing to feel. To feel anything at all. Please. I know I am going to lose my mind, but in eternity that will be of no respite. I will lose my mind, the only thing we are given in this endless afterlife, but will continue to exist. There is blackness with no end.

This gives way to the second terrible truth. Humans are finite. Once humanity ends we will still be here. The whole of the human race. Maybe even the whole of the animal kingdom, of this earth and any others. Every soul to ever exist, sitting in a never ending blackness. Alone, with memories that will only last as long as your mind will. I know Lucy is somewhere in this abyss of nothing. We had a dog, Rosie. I envy her. Without complex thought her soul will never know the true scale of its fate. I, without doubt, know she is scared and alone, as we all are. And as we always will be. And as you, reader, will too be. Again, I am sorry. I may have robbed you of years of blissful ignorance before this dawns on you too. But in truth I am terrified.

I write this as I lay dying. This is not unfamiliar, I died roughly an hour ago. They were able to restart my heart. I found myself in that dreaded void, but when resuscitated, I did not lose that knowledge. A quirk of the universe I do not care to seek an answer for. I am an old man now. These will for certain be my last words, the last time I put pen to the page. There is a flickering TV showing the news. It is clear that humans do not have long left. I think this will be my last life.

I said that the human mind is unable to comprehend the concept of infinity. I know now that this is a kindness of the universe. As having hope of an end is all you will have left. Think of me as you go into the black. I will try to think of you. I hope that will make us feel less alone.

Credit: Thomas Prince