Volume One Chapter One

Meeting myself…

Author's Note/Warning (This chapter has a VERY small amount of genderbender in it. You’ll probably be ok with it even if you normally HATE gender benders but I figured I should warn you. Also, this chapter deals with some mature topics, (sex/drugs) not explicitly but I figured I’d also warn you for that. Enjoy:)

When I finally regained consciousness, I groggily wiped my eyes and looked around. In front of me was… me. Now that the shock had passed, I freaked out. I started pinching myself, trying to wake up, no luck. As I stared at myself, I began to wonder what the hell could have happened to me. Thinking for a while I began to wonder, what could possibly explain this more heroic looking version of myself? He’s taller, better looking, better everything than the real me. Ahh! Finally I understood. It’s a trick mirror, I’m at Disneyland! Right, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s weird now let’s get out of here! Finally calming down I start looking for a way to get out here.

Only… I can't see anything. Other than the mysterious me, everything is pitch black. It was as if I was stuck in a sensory deprivation tank. Thinking back to my greatest wishes, I grinned. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, this was the character creation screen to a VRMMO! Those weren’t supposed to come out for another 20 years or something. Am I lucky, or what? I yelled out, “Computer; log me out!” Of course, nothing happened. Now, I’m freaking out again. My delusions are falling apart, and all I can do is think about the horrible image of a distorted playboy bunny with stretch marks and pimples for eyes... Then, as if he knew I was out of ideas, the mysterious me spoke.

“Welcome home Dave.”

WTF!!!! Ok, now I’m seriously freaked. I thought I was just hallucinating or something. Maybe I took some bad acid. Now that I remember it, Bill brought some shrooms to my get away bash and we got all messed up. That’s it, this is a fucked up trip. Mom, Dad, I’m never doing drugs again as long as I come down from this. I promise please get me out!!!!

“You’re not on shrooms Dave”

…I didn’t say that outloud so… yep definitely tripping need to just calm down think happy thoughts…

“You’re right, you do need to calm down this will be much less painful if you just relax”

There it is again! I didn’t say anything damn it. If I’ve learned anything from pop culture it’s never, ever do what the weird hallucination of yourself tells you to do. For all I know I could be in the Matrix. No, this is a CIA or NSA plot. They’re going to brainwash me and turn me into a super assassin. Actually… that sounds kind of fun, definitely better than a boring life at college… No back on track don’t fall for it!!!

“Sigh… Guess we’ll just have to do this the hard way ok guy’s shock treatment time.”

I really didn’t want to know what shock treatment meant. For the first time, I actually spoke aloud, pleading. “Please, just let me go, let me wake up. I’m in my bed having a shitty dream because I hate flying in planes, please go away nightmare!!!”

As my pleas fell on deaf ears, the mysteriously heroic version of me waved his hand and suddenly hundreds of… me’s appeared out of thin air. There was skinny me, baby me, fat me, cyborg me, elf me, alien me, even, O god please don’t let this be so, FEMALE ME!!!! So many… me’s. All of them were grinning at me and chatting amongst themselves.

“This has got to be one of the best reactions we’ve gotten yet, what do you think skinny.” “Well, Fatty, I think Heroic did a horrible job breaking it to him. He hasn’t even told him what the hell is going on yet.”

At that point the Nerdy version of me, with cokebottle glasses and a horrible case of acne, coughed and said, “According to my calculations, this has been the fifth most interesting introduction of ourselves. The 4th most being, when skinny met fatty first and started laughing and pointing so hard that fatty smothered him. Hmm that seems reminiscent of how we just died... *Cough* The 3rd most interesting being, when I got revenge on jock by instantly using a taser to tase him, then paralyzing him for our next life cycle. The 2nd most was when baby showed up, and heroic had to restrain fatty from eating him.”

At which point fatty, started to blush embarrassedly. He approached Baby, trying to apologize, but the female me picked up baby and shouted, “Go away! You scare him you big tub of lard! I can’t believe you are a part of us, go die already! You weigh so damned much, I can’t believe you haven’t had a heart attack yet”

Coughing, nerdy continued on while looking at female nervously, “The most interesting introduction goes to female.” After glancing over at female, he whispered sagely, “As all of you know, in all of our hundreds of lives we have only been a female once. As soon as female saw heroic she just couldn’t help herself, and jumped him…. AHHH!!” Nerdy screamed as female kicked him in the balls, starting to tap dancing on him while blushing scarlet red, muttering “You will pay!!!”

Clown started laughing and said, “Hey, technically it was just masturbation, as you did it with yourself.” Of course, this didn’t work out too well for him as female started chasing him around. With his big, floppy clown shoes, he couldn’t out run her. Soon, she was tap dancing on him while glaring at everyone, daring them to say anything.

While all of this was happening, I sat there in a daze unable to believe what was happening. Worried that I had gone into a vegetative state, the doctor me began checking my vital signs. While mad scientist me began chatting with heroic.

“Vell, ve can adjust much easier if you allow me to administer the serum”

Everyone, even female who was still busy dancing on clown, turned and yelled simultaneously, “NOOO!!!!”

Heroic said, “The last time we let you test out one of your serums, we were born in a vegetative state. The time before that we, got early onset alzheimer's at the age of 8… and don’t forget about that time where we had a tail.”

Someone in the back muttered, “Hey, I liked that tail.”

Finally, somewhat recovering from my comatose state, I looked around in shock and yelled out, “Ok, what the hell is going on here?!?!?”

Heroic answered, “We are you and you are us. Every time we are reborn a new version of us is born, and becomes the main consciousness that body dies. Each of us here are a version of us that has existed in the past. With caveman over there being the first.”

He pointed over to a small corner, where a weird looking version of me sat. He looked maybe 4 feet tall, and had hairy feet with scraggly, long hair. He was chatting amiably with what looked like a slob version of me, with cheese puffs in his hand. Crumbs and bright orange stains all over his clothes and face.

Fatty suddenly yelled, “HEY!!! Those are my cheese puffs! What do you think you're doing slob!!”

A little freaked out, I thought caveman me looked more like a hobbit than a caveman. Looking around every single version of me was well… eccentric. Not only that, but it was as if all of the attributes were enhanced to the extreme somehow. Fatty was so obese, he made the bunny tattoo lady look skinny. Skinny looked like a freakin skeleton. Then, I noticed out of the corner of my eye there was an actual skeleton among us; along with a wraith and a zombie. They were sitting around ignoring everyone else while looking creepy. Unable to hold my down my curiosity I pointed to the undead group, and said, “Please tell me they are just messing with my… our head.”

Heroic answered “Well… our attributes are based not only off of what we became in our life but the main aspects of our personalities. For instance, Fatty was a glutton in real life but wasn’t really that fat. He’d have died long before reaching his current girth of nearly 2,000 lbs. It is just emphasized in this place. However, think about it. We’ve lived nearly 600 lives at this point and existed for many millennia between incarnations. Very few souls manage to go through as many lives as we have without either ascending to immortality or going insane and initiating a total personality wipe. Imagine it, spending thousands of years with 600 versions of yourself, but having your own individual consciousness… All of us tend to emphasize what makes us different from the others.”

After thinking for a while, I nodded. It made sense, I was already feeling the need to differentiate myself from these… people? Unconsciously, my body started to change with the most visible difference being my lower jaw turned into steel. Suddenly I looked like a certain Bond villain... Nerdy then shouted out in glee, “You owe me sucka’s!!!” What looked like some form of money was being passed to him and a few others. Apparently, they’d been betting on what my defining characteristics would end up being.

Heroic then smiled and said, “The final order of business before you become an official member of our soul, is picking the destination of our next reincarnation.” Suddenly the entire group of widely disparate beings turned, staring at me intensely.

“Umm… what do you mean?” I asked.

Heroic explained, “After many discussions, failures, tribulations, and well …” he looked embarrassed. Pausing for a moment before continuing on, whispering, “wars between us…*cough* Well, it was decided that the newest member would be allowed to pick what kind of life he, or she, wanted to live in the next incarnation. We don’t have much power over it, except picking the types of worlds that we will be reborn on, as well as our race. Though we have decided as a group to limit your choices to humanoid races, as being a beast or demon just is not fun. The only other requirement, is that it has to be an interesting life. We personalities have not been existing for thousands of years to waste our lives being a housewife, or janitor.” At this, every member of the group nodded vigorously. “Also, depending on your choice it may take hundreds, or thousands of years to be reborn. It may also only take a few minutes, however that has never happened before. The choice is yours.”

Dumbstruck, I stood there looking at the anticipatory gazes of my fellow personalities. Suddenly, nerdy yelled out, “Somewhere with technology!” Female yelled, “Let’s be female again, it’s been so long since we carried a child!” Suddenly, the entire group of nearly 600 personalities were yelling out suggestions. In the back the caveman was jumping up and down in excitement, while the wraith moaned, “Leettss bbeee aaa neeccrrooomaannncceerr agaaiin.” Finally, Heroic had had enough, flying into the air like superman he shouted, “SHUT UP!!!!” Everyone quieted down quickly surprising me, after all this was a rowdy individualistic lot. Why would they listen to the superhero like personality? Heck, I saw at least two shady people in the back that looked like super villains!! They’d certainly make noise just to be contrary.

With the quiet, I thought for a bit before asking, “So you're saying we cannot change our affinities to certain types of magic; or enhance our traits at all based on my choices?”

Heroic looked at me for a moment and then explained, “There is no such thing as genius. Genius is an invention of mortal minds that do not understand the very concept of souls. The fact is, that every soul must work hard, and suffer through many lifetimes in order to gain affinities, skills, and attributes. Sometimes, with luck, you can be born into a race that is exceptionally skilled with certain attributes or types of magic. Even then there is no guarantee that you will actually have any success. Beings known as genius’ are, almost without exception, the incarnation of powerful souls that have existed for millennia. The more personalities, lives, and experiences that a soul has experienced. The more powerful it becomes, and therefore the more likely its incarnations are to succeed. Also, hard work plays a major factor into it. Even if you have lived for thousands of lifetimes if you waste your time lazing about, you will be unable to succeed at anything meaningful in your lifetime. However, you should understand that we are considered to be a fairly powerful soul, at least in the upper tier.”

“Earlier, you said that it is possible to become immortal; aren’t we already technically immortal? We have lived for hundreds of lifetimes.”

Heroic finally answered a few minutes later, “Well… when we have become powerful enough to become an immortal soul, our attributes will fuse together perfectly, never again to be split apart. We will become whole. It is our greatest wish, for while we enjoy being ourselves, in the end we are all the same person. It would be the same as being alive forever, never to be reborn, which is why it’s called immortality.

After thinking for a while I nodded and said, “I want a world where we can train to become immortal like in the Xianxia novels I used to read. Also, since this may be our last lifetime, I’d like to be born into a world with a VRMMO since it’s been my dream to play one for years. Hopefully, one that is dedicated to training us to become immortal.”

Heroic then turned and looked at the assembled personalities and said, “I believe that this meets our requirements; while I believe that it may take a long time for us to be reborn, it will certainly be an interesting life any dissenters?” There were none, and so the first official meeting of personalities that I had ever been a part of was finalized. Our choices made. Heroic, and many others came up to Dave, welcoming him into the group. Telling him that since he was now officially a member of their community they needed to come up with a descriptive name for him. Finally, they settled on calling him Jaws, after the old bond villain. Soon thereafter the somber atmosphere was gone, and it turned into a full blown party. Evidently, in this soul space you only had to imagine something you want in order for it to appear. So while we partied every personality had its beverage, food, or drug of choice. It quickly turned into what from the outside must have seemed like the weirdest frat party ever.

Man, what a sausage fest.