The eternal rebirth of Bob
Take Bob. He lived a normal life in a second world country, had an average childhood with the usual amount of bullying but nothing crazy. He grew up, got married, had children, worked a boring wee job, retired then died. And this was all completely normal until he noticed his head and body forcibly ejected through a long, slick, dark red tube towards a bright white light and he couldn’t recall ever breathing before.
Bob has been reincarnated. As soon as he dies in one body on earth, he’s immediately implanted in another one, somewhere else on earth. While he doesn’t know it yet, he’s about to embark on a cycle of lives with the memories of his previous lives intact. Until he wants to permanently end his own existence then commits suicide, he won’t be able to finally die. Most importantly, Bob’s mind, memories and thinking come back to him after about 14 months of age. Further details about what Bob can and cannot do can be found in this WorldBuilding question. For my answer, check it out here.
This blog post won’t be about the answer but rather about how the answer was written, how I thought about it and how I reached the answer I did.
Central to any kind of Worldbuilding question is “what are the implications?” and what are the real life similarities? Then run through as many scenarios and similarities as you can come up with. That’s what I did with Bob.
The first question was “If Bob can be born anywhere in the world, at any time, what kind of circumstances is he likely to find himself in?” The answer was that he will be very very poor and uneducated. I found out that 80% of humanity lives on less than $10/day, so many of the times that Bob comes back, he will be poor. Being poor means subsistence farming, no education, no medical care, no days off, no niceties of life, just constant backbreaking work.
Next was “If Bob is constantly reborn, where is he going to spend most of his time?” My answer was “in childhood, as an infant” and that’s very unpleasant place to be. Most child abuse and most childhood fatalities happen between birth and age 3. Children and infants are the most powerless people on the planet.
Life in the developing world is pretty harsh. Resources are limited, water and food can be difficult to come by so it’s reasonable that some pretty traumatic things are going to happen. And depending on how long Bob has been in this reincarnation cycle, some really really horrific things have happened. Couple these traumatic experiences with the Bob’s ability to remember them over lifespans and as a small child, the story can take a turn for the supremely disturbing. For example, Stalingrad.
Stalingrad saw some of the greatest bloodshed in the 20th century. An estimated 1.1 to 1.2 million people lost their lives in that battle. Some accounts I’ve read described literal mountains of bodies. Anyone, at any age, will have to fight very hard to not be traumatized by that kind of carnage. Suppose Bob fought and died there but now he’s a 4 year old in Romania in 1970 crying for his mother about nightmares that he can’t possibly explain. No parent knows how to handle that kind of a situation.
There are any number of this kind of horrific experience that Bob might have experienced and on average he’ll experience many of them over his lives. Since Bob’s mind persists across lives, he also carries the emotional baggage with him. Unless this is somehow cleaned out it will compound and cause considerable problems. I didn’t address therapy in the question but he would definitely be an excellent candidate for it.
Language skills should also persist across lives so after a few reincarnations, Bob should be able to speak all the world’s major languages which will be a huge surprise to his parents when he starts talking. That Bob is usually poor does not imply that he’s stupid. Over his lives, his mind may get better and better at picking out patterns in people and society. Lacking instruments or instruction Bob will likely find some solace in the observational, soft sciences like psychology or sociology. Experience in agriculture would also come quickly.
Sometimes, I would think of something humorous. For example, Bob’s last words might be “Aw hell, this is really gonna hurt.” To the people around him, they might think he’s talking about dying but what he really meant was “It’s gonna hurt being born, again.”
Most of my answer was restricted to the most common occurrence that he would be poor and uneducated. The author could tweak the succession of lives to make a certain point about the world or just tell a compelling story. Certainly, the idea itself is broad enough for interpretation any number of ways.
