In one of my past lives there was an animal named Neo. It lived in a house with me but it wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to keep it inside. I guess Neo was my prisoner but it seemed like we were friends too. Neo was small but it was quick and agile. It was a little like a sqonx but only a little because animals were different in my past lives. Some of them had names like people. Some of them were dangerous. Overall they were cuter and nicer than animals now and none of them sprayed acid at you. There were even some you could ride on. They’d let you sit on them and drive them like a vehicle. Can you imagine that?
Despite my best efforts, efforts which were confusing and silly, Neo finally did escape from the house we were in one time. But then it was scared and wanted to come back inside. There were loud noises and other things it didn’t know about out there and so he got scared and tried to get back into the house. That’s all I remember from that life. Isn’t that weird? An entire life and that’s all I remember.
I was like Neo at first. I tried so hard to escape the facility. I hurt people. I hit a woman so hard she never got back up. I threatened to stab another in the neck to make them let us out. And then once they did let us out I wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back inside.
The air hurt me. It hurt my lungs. It hurt my eyes. It hurt my skin. It hurt my ears. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t do anything at first. I tried to get back into the facility but there was no way, just a wall of metal. In my past life I let Neo back into the house and held it and we were friends again but there was no one to let me back inside in this life.
What would have happened to me if I stayed there? I had to escape because something bad was going to happen to me there or was happening already. All my past lives agree on that. If someone is trapping you somewhere it’s for something bad. But was it worse than what I have experienced out here? Maybe I was trapped like Neo, maybe it would have just been boring. Maybe all it was is that I couldn’t go where I wanted or do what I wanted. I think about that a lot.
It doesn’t matter now because I did escape. You can’t change the past. I still think about it.
My past lives are confusing. A lot of them don’t make sense to me. I can accept some ambiguity, things change, some lives don’t make sense to me now because of the passage of time. But how does it all work? How did the memories of other clones get to me? And why?
There were times in the past that I doubted my memories. I thought maybe I didn’t live those other lives. Maybe it was all a mistake. But I met these people. They told me about faith. Faith is when you believe in something without proof. They told me about forces. When you throw a rock why does it fly where you aimed? Why doesn’t it fall straight down? Why doesn’t it go into the sky? Because of a force called physics.
You can’t see this force, but the force called physics exists and it controls where the rock goes and how lots of other things work. The people told me that there’s a force they believe in that controls all other forces, that controls people and plants and everything. That is their faith. They believe this force exists. If something good happens it is because the force wants it happen. If something bad happens it is because the force is testing you or has other plans. All is as this one super-force wants it to be.
I learned about faith from them but my faith is not their faith. My faith is my past lives. I did try to keep Neo in, it escaped, and then I brought it back inside. That actually happened to me in the past. It’s not made up or a mistake. I did serve people drinks and a man in a hat played a joke on me and we fell in love. I did live in a vehicle under the water and tried to help the world above after a big war destroyed everything. I did live in a butcher shop with my dad and go to a school where I fought with a friend. I was a sheriff. I was a student. I was a spy. I was all these things and more.
I have faith.
Besides the other clones I have met no one else with past lives. I’ve told some other people about my past lives and some have claimed that they experienced other lives too but I could tell that they were lying. The others aren’t like me, like us. They only live once. They aren’t like us or the people in the facility that grew us. Something is wrong with them. They’re all sick.
I think this is the end. I have lived many lives before but when I die this time I don’t think I will continue on any longer. There will no more lives. Maybe things will be different once we get back inside though. Maybe the machines will tell us why we are special. Maybe this will be a past life for a new me.
We’ll find out soon enough.
Rocket Cat 