Entry 1 - The Soul
Hospital - 2019.3.2 - Hanbal
I've been praying for years, but no answer has come. I'm still dying, and I think my time is up. It's a miracle I've lived this long at all. "Ten years..." I rasp out. I have had cancer for ten years now. We had tried everything, but none of it worked. It had gone into recession a few times, but it always came back.
I was already too ill to move, so I laid on my uncomfortable bed in the hospital. My wife, Eliza, sat to my right, weeping. My daughter, Yui, to my left. Yui grew up while I was sick, so I was unable to spend as much time with her as I wanted.
Before I got sick I had traveled the world with Eliza. My parents were quite rich, so we never had any problems, other than my cancer.
A coughing fit interrupted my revery.
My time was coming to an end. I know that prayer won't save me, but perhaps it will help me in my next life. So I prayed, and Prayed, and Prayed. My wife already knows what I pray for and why, and she agrees with me that praying for help in this life is useless. So, we both Pray, to any god that can hear us, We Pray. And when my time comes, and my life ends, we weep.
My vision faded, and my hearing, and then the rest faded to nothing. It was an all-encompassing nothingness. Then my mind too faded.
Then there was a spot of light, a minuscule thing, hardly there at all, but I had noticed it. Then there were more. So many lights filled my void like the night sky. Only, instead of simply being a hemisphere, the lights were everywhere, both above and below.
Then they started colliding. One merged with a nearby one, then fly away and merge with another, letting out a small flash of light every time. Along with the light came pain, pain worse than I had ever thought imaginable.
If the stars were my memories, then if they all merge together, would that be my soul? I sure hoped so, it would explain the pain. If I was wrong, I didn't want to meet whatever was being created.
The horrendous pain continued. It was all I could think about now. It was a constant blinding light now, no longer flashing. My void has nothing it but Pain.
When it was finished, there was only one star. This star had devoured all others. It was no longer a star in the sky, it's too large for that. Now it's like the sun, and I'm floating just out of its reach.
But even the truce between us ended eventually, and I was drawn into it just as the other stars were. I understood now. This is my strongest memory. A memory without thought is just a remanent, a thought without memory is just a shell. I cannot allow it to consume me, and I cannot consume it. To keep your mind after death must be a very difficult thing to do indeed.
To keep my mind, I must capture it, and make it mine, but I must never make it's power my own. If it is now the Sun, then I will be the Stars. I float around my memory, circling it. After every cycle, I would break myself further. After millions of cycles, I had made myself into the Stars. When I became a part of the void, rather than an observer, I was complete once again.
When I became complete, I was once again able to see outside of myself, though I was no longer in the hospital.
All around me are figures of various shapes, wolves, humans, eagles, balls of light, diamonds, and many others. They all stared at me. Who are they?
They are gods.
That thought shot through me like a cannon. Impossible to distinguish whether it was my own or not.
If humans are one step above animals, then the gods must be 100 steps above humans. But not all humans are equal, some are a step behind, some even, are two steps behind. Some of these gods must be more powerful than others. But there must be more than one path as well. I have taken a step to the left, moved from the path of humans to the path of spirits. What will this change? I thought to myself.
A voice called out, "He is the one, the one who granted us access". It didn't sound like English, yet I could understand it all the same. Like the meaning was said rather than a word. I simply stared back, not knowing how to speak.
Finally, someone spoke up, "What you have gone through is called the trials, they determine what happens to your soul. Those that get devoured get sent someplace bad, those that conquer go someplace good, and those that meld, like you, get reborn. Of course, we would have interfered regardless, but we wished to see the outcome anyway". So, hell = controlled by emotions, heaven = controlled by the mind, rebirth = companionship? I'm glad I did what I did then, heaven and hell seem like horrible places.
They spoke up quickly, "no, not heaven and hell, those are fictional places your people created to explain death". Oh, they can read my mind? Of course, they are gods, I just don't know how powerful. Then, Why am I here? I asked in my head, hoping they can hear me.
A short god that spoke like a child said, "Your god sealed earth from the interference of other gods, and when he died, he didn't remove the seal, leaving the people without guidance". Another god slapped the short one lightly on the back of the head, saying, "Shut it, he's supposed to learn that slowly, so he doesn't freak out".
