> the Egg

I don't think I've read that before, but after giving it a read, it's exactly what I had in mind when making this. It's a theory I learned of a long time ago, that we're all one soul, one collective consciousness reborn, and I thought that'd fit well here.

As I lay there, my eyes felt heavy. I wasn't sad, though my family was, I could hear the sniffling, see the tears. I raised my hand one last time and spoke to my family, "We'll be together again, I love you all so very much."

A cacophony of sniffles and sobs was the last thing I heard. I drifted above my body for a moment when reality around me suddenly seemed to fold in on itself. That's the best way I could describe it, the room folded into the ground and from it arose a long hallway with what seemed like a variety of scenes from my life.

I drifted past my doctor telling me and my wife of my prognosis, of my admittance to the hospital, to Christmas when I fell. The hallway seemed to both come to me and away from me, as if it was a carousel. The scenes shifted by faster and faster, allowing me to catch glimpses of the birth of my youngest, to my wedding, to Hannah and I meeting, my high school graduation, my parent's divorce, and finally the hallway stopped at my birth.

"So," a booming voice appeared in my head and all around me. I felt the word reverberate through what I can only describe as my soul. "That is what your life would be like, do you want to be born?" It asked as if I was at the end of a long conversation with it.

"I-" I could manage only one word, I had not a clue what to even think about let alone say.

"Ah, let me..." the voice faded for a moment as the scene hallway disappeared without fanfare, leaving me surrounded by a void. I saw nothing, heard nothing, not even a heartbeat. Even my tinnitus was gone.

For that moment, I knew peace.

The voice returned, startling me, "You were shown a preview of your life, should you choose to be born during this time. It's a trying and changing time, a challenging one that not many choose. However, your soul is a resilient one, which is why I showed you this option. There are more options, other lives in other times."

I had no response. My whole life, a preview? Of my life?

"You don't remember, do you?" The voice asked my soul.

"I... no, I don't." I felt both young and old at the same time, like I had the seemingly infinite energy of an eight year old, but the knowledge of an eighty year old and this was the only thing I knew nothing of.

The voice sighed. "Okay, this happens sometimes, give me a moment."

I was then in a room. A desk was before me with what appeared to be a human seated in the chair behind it, though they wore a cloak that covered their appearance. Behind me was a door, surrounded on both sides by bookshelves filled with thick, worn books of a variety of colors.

"You may be more comfortable in this setting; a familiar one. Every soul is allowed a choice of a time period in which they want to live, a choice of a life to experience. Souls, like you, choose. Oftentimes, souls tend to live out their lives in their previews which appears to have happened to you." The voice, now coming from the cloaked figure, continued explaining.

"Since you have lived that life, would you like to preview another? I have one in mind, one just as challenging, perhaps even more so than the one you lived." The voice gave me almost no time to process what was happening, yet...

My thoughts seemed to move quickly, faster than ever before. I looked back at my life, with my wife, the children, their children, their career, everything. I wanted more time, the life I lived was one that I wish I could spend an eternity in.

"You can." The voice replied to my thoughts. "But we advise against it. If a soul experiences the same life twice, it will forever remain, and your energy will return to the universe and a new soul will be created in your place. A soul as resilient as yours is highly prized, and used for some of the most challenging lives. Perhaps a new life will give you time to think it over. You can always return to your other if you choose."

If I had a head to shake, it would've been shaking. I knew not what to choose, nor what to do. I wanted to see the wife of that life again, and to be with her and experience it all again... I think... It felt as if it had been a lifetime, ten lifetimes since I saw her last, since I experienced that life. The children, the grandchildren, so distant, yet so close. It began to feel all too familiar. I remembered.

I looked to the cloaked figure who pointed to the window frame on the wall. In the frame was a view into the void, a view into my lives. I saw the wife again, everything I experienced with her. Then, a... husband? A mother? Faces flashed by, faces I knew. I felt a connection to all of them, as if my soul wanted to bind with theirs. All were from different times, from before the ancient humans to intergalactic human times and beyond, and more.

They were me. I was all of them. My soul.

"Your lives. Billions." The voice spoke. "You have the choice, relive a past life and allow a new soul to be born, or move on to the next. We highly recommend you choose the latter. Never before have we had a soul that experienced as many lives as you." The voice implored.

I took a moment, reflecting, remembering my lives.

"Show me the next." I replied.

> Give us the soul of John the Goldsmith. In his place, take mine for three days, and in three days it will return to your possession. While the soul of the free wanders in the kingdom, mine will be in your service, my Lord.

It does! Something along the lines of:

> Give us the soul of John the Goldsmith. In his place, take mine for three days, and in three days it will return to your possession. While the soul of the free wanders in the kingdom, mine will be in your service, my Lord.

Yep! Well, the students were finishing up a movie today so it’s not like I was ignoring them lol.

Thanks for the correction, in all honesty I wrote that as my final class was finishing up for the day and I had students asking me a ton of questions so I was distracted! Fixed.

And thank you! Excellent prompt!

"Sign here, here, and..." blackened fingers traced down the page as I searched for the final signature. "Ah, yes, here."

As I looked back down to my own papers, shuffling through the patient's information and the woman's request, she hemmed and hawed.

"Is there a problem?" I asked, my eyes staying on my papers as I read through the request.

"It says here seventy-two hours, I thought we agreed on-"

"Yes, three days; twenty-four hours a day times three days is seventy-two hours." I reminded her, it was always apparent in my patient's families that wealth may buy happiness, but it could not buy them a brain. The woman remained silent as her pen glided along the lines, signing a significant sum of money over to me. When she clicked the pen, I reached out for the papers and nodded to my customer.

"I appreciate your business. The resurgere will take place tomorrow morning at eight seventeen exactly, no earlier, no later. Please have any who would like to witness the resurgere present no earlier than five minutes beforehand. Your..." I glanced down to the papers for a reminder, "husband will return for exactly seventy-two hours. It is highly recommended that he is present, here, by his regressus time. If he is not, please ensure he is in a place that is easily accessible, and as noted in the contract, an additional fee of 10% of your total will be incurred for an absentia fee." The woman nodded along as I spoke, her mind clearly elsewhere. Formailties.

I walked the woman out, and as she left, I waved. The least I could do for a woman paying me more than a year's average salary of a CEO.

The next morning, the resurgere was nearly ready. My garb, a black gown with subtle inlays of crimson Latin phrases, had been prepared the prior evening after my customer departed. The husband's body was placed on the large stone tablet in the middle of the room. The tablet was something to see, it was black. Not simply black, like soot, or smoke, but a void. Looking into the stone was almost as if looking into nothing.

Incense had been burned for the past half hour, giving the room an even more legitimate feel. I waited, hands clasped, as the family began to enter the room. My hood was down, I never liked putting it up unless the family was into the ornate, or the... eclectic arts.

This family was not. It was just the wife and who I could only assume were her children present. After they entered, and glanced uneasily over to me, I began my ritual.

"Confer nobis animam Johannis Aurifabri." I began, my words echoing through the chamber. An orange-red glow appeared around the black void of a tablet. "In loco illius sume per tres dies meam, et per tres dies ad tuum dominium redibit." The glow traveled through the stone, and into the body. As the body began to convulse, I uttered my final words. "Dum anima liberorum vagatur in regno, mea erit in tuo servitio, mi Domine."

I saw his eyes open as mine closed.

Three days later, at exactly eight seventeen in the morning, I awoke, standing just where I was when I departed in his place. His wife was there, holding onto a limp hand attached to a now lifeless corpse. She gasped in shock when I appeared in the cloud of black smoke.

When she regained her composure, she nodded and thanked me again.

After she left, I took a seat next to John. His was a life long lived, a life full of pain and suffering. Not his own, but inflicted upon others. For three long days, I took his place. For three long days, I labored, I suffered. It was worth it though... four hundred and fifty thousand dollars for three days in Hell.

It's always worth it.