Rebirth

Jack was a fairly ordinary boy the first time around, neither the smartest or dullest in any class. He was persistent, and would learn anything that was put in front of him. In a reserved manner he would read and absorb information. Perhaps his temperament would lead to some scholarly career. He had rapport with other kids. But it was always somewhat detached. He appreciated those around him but there were few peers with whom there existed a strong connection.
This was how Jack’s youth played out. Him slowly growing his knowledge, and staying no more than a supporting character in the movies of the lives around him. In their perspective at least. Conversely, he appreciated the ensemble nature of the story. Up until a cold autumn day in his thirteenth year.
Jack was walking along a path that ran beside the river and talking to his friend Duncan. It was a route that he walked every day to get to and from school. Dangling curtains from the willows trailed in the slow river. The ducks skirted around them on a winding commute. The two youths were absorbed in a discussion about the new video game system that was coming out that summer.
“My parents said I could get it for christmas If I do good in my exams.”
“Mine won’t let me get it.” Jack complained. “They said that video games make people violent.”
“Where’d they hear that?”
“Probably on one of those stupid daytime TV shows that are always getting adults upset about something.” Jack frowned as he said it.
“Shouldn’t have let your mum have that TV. Nothing causes irrational hysteria in adults like television and magazines.” Duncan jested.
“Well too late now, they’re hys…”
There was no buildup, or anything to announce the change. It just happened suddenly and without explanation. Jack found himself to be in a state of constriction, encasement. Without sight. It was warm and another heart was beating, resounding. He felt it pacing and bringing his panic down to something more relaxed. Despite numerous bouts of anxiety, Jack was biochemically contented. And so he passed the next few months in the womb uneventfully. Birth was traumatic and painful. Gasping for air that seared his lungs when it rushed in.
There had been plenty of time for Jack to contemplate what had happened, and over the weeks and months as he gained the basics of sensing, part of that was answered. He came to recognize younger versions of the parents he had known. The experiences he had came with a deja vu familiarity and he accepted that somehow he had been shunted backwards to live his childhood again.
Language came slowly as his infant faculties developed, but sooner than it might have. Jack’s parents were smitten with the prodigious uptake of their child. Soon they came to find it alarming. He was taken to various experts and child psychologists, all of whom were highly impressed. Jack was given special tutelage and already earmarked for the best schooling. As he gained a hold of language enough to actually express what had happened to him he became even more of a curiosity. No one believed him at first but his predictions vindicated the story. The headlines ran; Child prodigy claims Time Travel, Time Jumping Jack Predicts Scandal. And so on.
“Any headlines you might have seen on the newspapers or heard your family talking about? For instance do you remember anything about the national elections that will be happening next year?”
The sharp-faced man whom Jack knew as Doctor Ralph sat rigid in his grey suit, only shifting that unblinking gaze to scribble on his clipboard.
Jack furrowed his brow to think hard on it but there wasn’t anything coming up. “All I remember is that Humphries won I think, my parents said it was bad news.”
“You’ve already told us that.”
Jack withered under the doctor’s scrutiny.
“What about news of the Middle East? I’m going to read you some names, and I want you to tell me any associations that it brings up.”
For an introverted kid the successive years of interrogation, examination, and freak show celebrity were a kind of torture. When at the age of thirteen he once more found himself gone from cold autumn and back in embryonic solitude he felt a clash of emotions. On one side there was a relief at the nightmare reality he had lived through being gone, on the other he felt a flash of existential dread at potentially being caught in this loop indefinitely, or infinitely. The thought wasn’t worth pondering so he let it go. He already knew there was no expert on earth that could offer any practical insight into the condition. So Jack resolved to live this life without advertising the truth of his situation.
Roleplaying the incapacity of a baby and then a toddler as his capabilities grew was trying. Twenty six years of life experience had accumulated in Jack’s being and he wasn’t stupid. But the last thirteen were fresh in his mind and he wouldn’t repeat them. His natural tendency to not stand out asserted itself, and he lived happily in the background of his original school, recommencing those few strong friendships from that other life.
He made sure to sit nicely within the normal band of standardized examination. Naturally Jack’s academic interests grew and he pursued private study in esoteric subjects covertly. Often he could be found reading some tome of the sciences or history swapped into the jacket of a young adult pulp. There were times when people grew suspicious of his demeanour, the concealed depth of intelligence. But he made an art playing the character he ought to be and dodging this attention.
Jack was comfortable in this steady state of accumulation, it was natural to him. Having never reached the physiological transformations of puberty he had never known anything to alter this nature. Also, he reasoned that the only thing that he could take back with him if it happened again was the knowledge and ideas in his head.
His lessons also consisted of his surroundings, the people especially. Living a third childhood, now with the the same people he had spent it with the first time around, Jack gained a deeper understanding of these personalities. Nothing ever happens the same twice, and Jack learnt this first hand. All his interactions were different and from him at the centre change blossomed outwards. He knew who had the potential for strife, that he’d had conflict with in the past and steered clear of those people. Those he would be friends with, Jack kept company with immediately, striking up conversations about interests he knew they shared. He remembered confidences they’d given him in the future and preemptively made distance from a friend he’d fallen out with badly.
The further away from Jack’s immediate world, the more events would transpire in their original form. Elections and earthquakes, the announcements that the principal made to the school assembly. But the ripples of difference throughout the school let Jack know how much influence and connection he had in a subtle way. Lewis was no longer on the football team, him and Thomas, Jack’s friend before the falling out in another life would now spend their time together. Georgia, the quiet girl now seemed to be a part of the popular clique for some unknown reason. The small changes spun into different events so that it was a whole new world of situations, with new and different conflicts, just peopled with the same characters.
It seemed like the presence of Jack as this knowing perceiver of the microcosm elevated everyone to a higher level of being. Perhaps they were caused to shed at least one layer of pretense.
The effects that Jack had felt in this stabilised life that he’d chosen were even more so the next time around. Because on that cold Autumn day Jack reverted for the third time. He seemed to have entered a cycle that was going to continue. Living this life on repeat, Jack came to know the people he shared it with in a very deep way. He saw them in endless varieties of situation, he knew how his friends and his class and school would act or react as the world morphed from Jack’s actions. And as Jack would be caught by the differing hangovers of his previous lives he would live them differently. He would counter a life that had felt boring by introducing chaos into his next one. If he had felt trapped in the small world Jack would use the intelligence that had been building over decades to impress people and gain himself opportunities.
He would sometimes use his foreknowledge to gain money and to buy himself things. Jack came to understand how money represented a key to reality, unlocking all kinds of experience that were not readily available to a normal child. It wasn’t through a tendency to manipulation that Jack gained the ability to have his parents do or facilitate what he wanted. It was just the simple fact of living a childhood subordinated to them over and over, he came to understand how they would act and restrict him and how to have them instead aid him.
“No, of course you can’t skip school and go to Disneyland!” Jack’s father snapped in one lifetime.
“But I asked Mrs Jones for the lesson plan of the week ahead and I’ve studied it on my own time. I told her I’d be going on holiday and she let me do an assessment on it already. Really it would be stupid if I went to school now, I’d just be studying the same stuff over again.”
Jack’s father scratched his head. He did believe in rewarding proactive and clever behaviour like this, and it wasn’t as if Jack was really shirking any responsibility. “How do you expect to pay for it? Because I certainly have the money to fund a short notice holiday like this.”
Jack was ready with the answer. “I’ve been saving my pocket money and my earnings from the paper route for the last six months.”
“Well, I guess so..” He looked at Jack suspiciously. “Let me talk with your mother.”
Jack knew this battle was already won.
Every part of Jack’s life took on this character of penetrating through to more profound levels of action and control within the world. He could have things occur as he wanted them to, stir emotions or guide behaviour in his usual cast of characters with carefully placed words. He continued to study, surveying the classics and gaining comfort in different fields of specialty. Jack would correspond with and gain the friendship of contemporary masters. Surely it was a function of his temperament, but Jack never became bored with this life. There were always knew insights to gain, experiences to have or secrets to learn. He did become irked by the return to infant feebleness and the period where any sort of independence was difficult. But it all took on a pleasant rhythm as his seeking for understanding of the world advanced reliably.
“I’m sort of like a time traveller.” Jack confided to Duncan for the first time in this circuit.
“You’re what?” Duncan’s eyebrows lowered sceptically. His friend seemed serious, but he said it so nonchalantly that it was absurd.
“I travel through the thirteen years of my childhood again and again, living it slightly differently each time. I’ve done it so many times that I know almost everything there is to know about the people around us. I can basically make anything I want to happen and do anything I want because of it. I’ve learnt from geniuses and can read twelve languages.”
Duncan laughed. “Good one.”
“For instance I know that you wet your bed till you were nine and have never told anyone. I know the code to your bike lock is five seven two four. And I know that you had a twin that died in childbirth that you don’t even know about. But if you ask your parents they’ll tell you.”
Duncan was shocked into silence by Jack’s revelations. He was juggling in his mind thoughts about how Jack could have found this out, with whether this claim about a twin was real or not.
“You probably want to know why I’m telling you this. Well, it’s because sometimes I need someone to confide in and I know you’re a hundred percent trustworthy. And so that I can take you on a trip with me. Now who is the person you’d most like to meet out of anyone in the world?”
A limousine pulled up on the road beside them and a chauffeur got out to let them in.
The game expanded from Jack’s small world until he was playing with bigger pieces on the grand chessboard. Now when he made himself known to the powers it was from a position of strength, rather than vulnerable as in his second life. Jack came to know all the major events and players of his period. He would walk into historical peace talks held between famous diplomats. His expertise made him invaluable and presidents were forced to heed him if he revealed himself. Sometimes Jack would council action that would elevate one country then the other. He could steer the world to cataclysm. Achieving a Utopic outcome realized in his time proved harder. He guided government policy like a master strategist and influenced the the thinking of key leaders to help them be their wisest selves. He would relay the cutting edge discoveries from his oldest year to the scientists and technologists of his infancy. Accelerating progress in this loop it became so he could jump technic capability to a distant future level if he chose. Jack sometimes ruled as global autocrat and sometimes lived out a small life in his familiar school. Through the copious data of action and outcome Jack felt like he was coming ever closer to perfect mastery of the world.
Jack had lost count of how many revolutions he had gone through when something new and unusual started happening. He first sensed movements at the corner of his vision periodically. They were like sunspots because if he turned to catch them they just seemed to have receded, sticking to the edge of his peripheral. And he got this feeling that he was being watched.
Perhaps he was picking up on a Chinese intelligence surveillance effort. Jack was sure he’d had the department head briefed on his immunity, but maybe he hadn’t taken enough care this time. He dialed his contact in the Defense Department.
“Jack.”
“I need a download on the tail that’s on me right now. I suspect Chinese government but could be wrong.”
“Yes sir, one moment.” There was a long pause. “We’re registering no evidence of a tail. Are you sure you’re being followed?”
“I said so didn’t I?” Jack snapped.
“Yes sir. I’ll have a team dispatched immediately to sweep the area.”
The special forces unit arrived promptly and provided a twenty four hour guard of Jack’s parent’s house for the next two weeks. With no sign of the presence he had detected Jack dismissed them.
“I must have been mistaken. Your service will be recognised. Thanks.”
The feeling that his perceptions could have been mistaken like that was unsettling for Jack. In all his lives that wasn’t something that had happened before. And then shortly after the squad had left, the feeling was back. The movements that he just barely sensed were back too. This was definitely something real. He resolved to let whatever this was reveal itself in its own time. There was no gain in trying to guard against it, he would stay aware and let the mystery be. The sensation and the sunspots continued for a week, very distinct, then they ceased abruptly.
When they came back next it wasn’t in any permanent way that resolved the mystery. The perceptions would recur intermittently and seemingly at random. Jack soon realized that they would come to him at the same time in different lives. For instance starting in early June when Jack was nine they would always start to appear, and then continue for weeks just as they had that first time he detected them. It didn’t matter what he happened to be doing in that particular life, so that Jack felt these were phenomena of a specific locus in time rather than having anything to do with physical space.
After many brushes with these things they grew into distinct presences that Jack felt were individuals or entities, they had forms, shadowy bodies. These strangers that lurked at the fringe of his vision, right where he could never quite see them. Jack would talk to them, taunting or imploring them. He wanted them to show themselves, to declare their intent. But the most he ever got as a response was a shivering of the dark imprint, they rustled at him. These watchers that had pursued Jack through scores of lives were his only true enduring companions. They were like him, of some stuff that was beyond that distant dream of mundane reality.
The watchers grew increasingly more imminent. Jack had to prepare himself for the seasons of their arrival. He trained in meditation with zen masters to try make his mind so that it could bear what was coming. They were huge presences in more dimensions than one. Vast things that had obviously travelled from some distant realm, getting ever closer. This time when he sensed them Jack felt like they must be close to bursting through the bonds of the air molecules, rupturing and collapsing the world as they did so.
The figure was approaching down a long corridor that started somewhere far behind, and terminated in the shape of Jack. The room warped around him as the corridor telescoped the shadowy watcher from astronomical to null divergence.
When Jack could see again, he was looking at himself from outside. Sitting on the floor where he’d been just before was his placid, nine year old face. When it spoke the other him didn’t move its mouth. Jack understood the meaning rather than hearing the words. He knew that this was some very deep and elemental agent, that it had felt him as something that was out of place. It had been drawn here by a morbid curiosity. The perception Jack got from it of himself was of a cancer, growing and multiplying redundantly, without end.
And it wanted to ask him something. What was the meaning of the time you gained, what was the end?
Jack tried to say something about all the skills and knowledge he had learnt, the mastery over the world to control and guide it. It rang somehow hollow and Jack reached for some of the certitude he’d always felt amidst a creeping panic.
So it was just a means? The watcher asked. A means to a means.
