Lost Soul: Introduction

Lost Soul: Introduction

I had no idea I was anything but another ordinary human being, albeit one who recalls more than one human past life, until my mother lay dying in the hospital with ovarian cancer.

I was, as many people are during times like this, angry at God. I was certain he was punishing me for some bad karma earned during a prior incarnation, and so I had one question for him.

While sitting on a rock outside the hospital, smoking a cigarette, I asked that question, loudly, but silently. Mentally, I screamed towards the heavens, “What do you want from me?”

I then returned to sit beside my mother’s hospital bed, and I was answered. It was some time before I was able to determine whether what I experienced was a vision or a memory, and it left me with a lot more questions, but it didn’t matter. What I experienced was the answer to the question I’d asked.

I watched spellbound as the Grand Creator, the Great Architect, spun the world out of nothingness as I hung in space, bodiless. I observed the meticulous care It put into the creation of this world, as if it were one of the model railroad layout that my ex built. I watched it create mountains and oceans and life forms, moving from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms to plants and fish and mammals.

I was not the only one watching. There were many others, as well as those who helped in the development of this remarkable creation. For all of us, it was a relief from the endless boredom of eternity. It was entertainment; something to do that was different.

At some point, the watchers started making the same sort of snide comments that people do when they are watching another create. Don’t we always think we can do better than the doer?

The Creator at one point left Its project to work on a new lifeform it was developing. And that’s when the real fun began. That is when the creation became involved in our endless Game. One of the watchers decided it would be fun to mess with the creation, and make changes to it. He talked the rest of us into participating in it, and it became both performance art and competitive sport. That is the Game, at its very basic. It doesn’t matter what the rules or the scenario of the Game is, as long as it is both art and sport combined.

At first, we competed against each other to see who could vandalize the new creation in the most amusing way. The life forms gave us a great deal of material to work with as we changed their sizes, colors, and gave them spots and stripes. I won points in the Game when I took a camel and did some genetic engineering to give it a long neck, turn it yellow and give it spots. The Game got even better when those who were helping with the Creation joined in. They were trying to fix the damage we were doing.
The best part was when it became obvious that they were making the vandalism worse in some cases. We derived considerable entertainment from their efforts, and redoubled ours, just to give them more opportunities to play.

Not surprisingly, all hell broke loose when the Creator came back and found that Its children had been entertaining themselves with Its creation. It was angry with all of us, vandals and fixers alike.

However, we found new entertainment in watching It introduce the new life forms that had been developed during the lengthy absence. They were developed as higher forms of the monkeys and apes, only they were hairless and walked upright. We were all amazed by the naked apes It had created.

And then It made another mistake (leaving the lot of us alone with the Creation was the first) and It showed us how to breathe life into the Created Ones. It took parts of Itself and used them to give these creatures life and sentience and the ability to communicate. And then it made those parts of Itself self-replicating.

Up until then, none of us had known how to replicate ourselves. Only the Creator knew that technique. All of us were Its children. That was when we learned to replicate ourselves, and we also learned to insert ourselves into one of the creatures and animate them. This was known as “incarnation”.

And the Game began anew. This new way of playing allowed us to experience the Creation as if we were one of the created ones. However, we really didn’t like the bodies of the naked apes. They smelled, for one thing, and still had too much hair.

Thanks to the experience gained during our period of vandalism, we were able to easily engineer a new species of naked apes that were as much like them as they were like the chimpanzees they’d been engineered from. Those Created Ones became known as “humans”.

We devoted a great deal of time to playing with our appearances, as we amused ourselves within the physical “reality” that was the Creation. That was when vanity became part of the Game. Wild hairstyles and clothing were one of our many innovations that humans eventually came to copy.

It approved of the new way of playing the Game, and approved of our use of the Creation as a playing field for the Game. Before leaving us to our own devices, It came up with a few rules to ensure that the Created Ones didn’t get vandalized. We were not to mate with them and produce offspring. The races were to remain separate.

Fruitless mating was allowed, but at the time, that was akin to bestiality for us. We considered ourselves a superior race to the humans, much as the humans consider themselves superior to animals. Eventually, some of the players engaged in both fruitless and fruitful mating, and got in trouble for breaking that rule. Others of us couldn’t resist genetically engineering all sorts of interesting things, including different hair and skin types.

Those were allowed, because they didn’t change the fundamental makeup of the Created Ones. Combining their genes with various animals to create half-human hybrids was eventually allowed, but only if the hybrids were sterile, or could only reproduce with other similar hybrids.

Once we got tired of genetic engineering it was time for the Game to enter a new phase. We began to teach them all manner of arts and trades, and built a variety of civilizations. Yes, “Atlantis” was one of them. It was one of many city-states that we built during the long eons that we played that particular phase of the Game.

Once we got bored with civilization building, we taught them to make war upon each other and began the War Game. Most of the civilizations and city-states were destroyed, and new ones were built during that time. Including Atlantis. Islands and coastal civilizations were precarious, because it isn’t that hard to create a destructive tsunami.

We also began playing the God Game, setting ourselves up as local deities. We found great amusement in competing against one another for worshippers, as well as grandness of temple, sumptuousness of priestly garments, and amount of human sacrifices.

We probably would still be playing the Game in that way if it weren’t for a few of the players who started breeding our race with the Created Ones. The crossbreeds were a nasty lot, and highly fertile. Left unchecked, that would have completely eradicated the human race in favor of them.

We never knew who it was that snitched on us, but someone did. The Creator returned and wiped out the entire area where the crossbreeds were, including the humans, except for a handful of breeding stock. Because Its anger melted part of the polar ice cap, most of the coastal civilizations were lost as well. Most of our race ended up fleeing to inland areas as refugees.

It also did something worse. It made our race sterile, and the new rule was that we had to use human bodies when ours wore out, and not re-incarnate in those of our own creation.

And it remained to supervise the Game, to make sure things didn’t get too far out of hand again. Some children require parental supervision when playing. We certainly did.

It chose the group of breeding stock left from those that it destroyed as Its own particular group, and made it very clear that we were not to play with them. However, it soon became clear that It was playing with them and against us. And the Game began in earnest, as we got the chance to play against our Parent.

I was playing on Egypt’s team, and it was looking like we were going to win the Game, when It smoked us. That’s when I switched sides for the first time, and began to play on Its side.

Some time later, I regretted that decision, when Babylon’s team won a round, and I ended up playing on their team instead. It was angry with me, and we were at odds until not long after my impertinent question outside the hospital while my mother lay dying.

It wants me back on Its team again. It isn’t easy switching teams after this many centuries of playing against It.