1 ...Waking up?

'...Darkness...'

'...Darkness...'

'...More Darkness...'

'...And still more...'

'...Is there anything other than this darkness?'

Indeed, there is nothing but a pitch black void here. Wherever 'here' is. No perspective. No sensation. No point of reference. Just infinite dark void, no matter what direction one moves in.

'Wait. How do I know I'm even moving?'

Could one even know if they were moving in this situation? It's not like there's a body to experience anything with.

'Wait, no body? That's weird... Shouldn't I have a body?'

There was definitely a moment of instinctual feeling that there should definitely be a body, but despite how familiar it felt, it passed away quickly. But there is no memory of why this feels natural. There doesn't seem to be memory of anything.

'Huh... What even are memories, anyways...'

And the entity that is the residual essence of one deceased person's soul slowly dissipates further and further.

And the darkness becomes smaller and smaller.

And then, the darkness shudders.

The remnant thoughts jolt to momentary awareness.

'...Hu...Huh? What.... What's that?'

In the darkness, there came a dot of light. Slowly, the light enlarges, before it begins to change shape, elongating and branching out. Soon, the light forms a net encompassing the entire edge of this apparent sphere of darkness. It compresses the darkness as it slowly reaches its tendrils towards the center of the darkness, the place where the residual consciousness felt it's located.

'This is... Is... I feel I know what this is, but... I just can't remember it...'

And as the tendrils of light finally reach the center of the dark space, the consciousness goes dormant.

"How unusual. A deceased soul actually managed to crash into this pseudo-space before Samsara took it? How many cycles has it been since that happened?" asks a vague figure that appears to be dozens of frames of a movie super imposed over one another, a weird blurriness that implied at least a fourth spatial dimension.

"Four hundred thirty-three thousand cycles, plus or minus 1%," Replies another being, similarly blurry and likewise capable of moving in a fourth spatial dimension. "However, the atypical factor here is the soul is just a normal, stock human that gave up this normal, stock soul. The astronomical odds against being in an adjacent universe to this pseudo-space, to die when his world was right near the membrane of his universe, to be ejected in the correct direction, and finally to be close enough to not be taken before reaching here? It's only recorded as happening three times, and all of them were more than forty trillion cycles ago."

"Forty trillion, huh?" The first extra-dimensional being says in contemplation. "I suppose he may be one of those 'children of destiny' the mystics scream about from time to time. I've heard it's good luck to revive them with their memories intact, so long as you don't try to enslave them. So how about it, should we rebuild this soul and bring them back?"

"Sure. That 'child of destiny' blessing usually doesn't follow you outside the heavens it was bestowed in, but it's not like we have much else to entertain ourselves with in this backwater small-order multiverse. This should distract us for a few cycles. Let's do some soul surgery."

"91% OF MEMORIES REPAIRED."

"ERROR. MEMORY FRAGMENTS EXHAUSTED."

"ERROR. UNABLE TO CONTINUE MEMORY RECOVERY PROCESS."

"ERROR. MEMORIES OF 'SELF' MISSING."

"ERROR. MEMORIES OF 'IDENTITY' MISSING."

"ERROR. MEMORIES OF 'PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS' MISSING."

"ERROR. SOUL UNSTABLE DUE TO LACK OF SELF IDENTITY. PLEASE INDUCE ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND HELP SOUL FORGE AN IDENTITY."

The AI's voice may seem quite loud and shrill to third dimensional beings, but it sounds pleasing, even melodious, to the ears of these extra-dimensional entities. The message, however, is not so pleasing.

"Hah..." One of the two extra-dimensional beings sighs, exasperated. "Fourteen cycles and we still can't manage to recover this soul's identity. I don't think I've ever heard of a case like this without some serious soul magic involved. Was this soul cursed? Or maybe it was deficient before it reincarnated into its last body? We've managed to guess that this soul is male from its memories of 'male bathrooms', but it wasn't so clear... I'm still not one hundred percent on what a 'toilet' is for."

"Ugh..." Groans the other. "As I've said repeatedly, these primitive's 'toilet' is a biological waste disposal unit. Just because you haven't generated biological waste since you became immortal doesn't mean you haven't done that before. Get over your pride and stop with this farce of trying to rewrite your past. You're simply making yourself out like a forgetful old codger."

The first glares at the second, clearly offended. But, despite that, he chooses to pretend nothing was said. Instead he returns his attention to the soul repair as he asks, "So, shall we go ahead and forge an artificial identity?"

"Might as well. We can't continue at this point otherwise."

The two slip through a fourth dimensional hallway into the room containing the soul repair device. The room is a hollow, perfect sphere, in a sky blue color, one hundred meters across. The soul repair device is a small mechanical orb floating in the middle of the space with a ball of light floating just above it; this ball of light is the collected soul. It was once nearly black, but has since moved through every inch of the grayscale until reaching its current point, a nearly perfect ball of white light. The only problem was the very core, where a deep blackness burns, easily visible from every angle through the white light. This dark portion was the damaged sense of self of the soul.

With a few interactions with the soul repair device, there is a change in the room: The originally blue sphere disappeared, as a simulated space was formed. Rebuilt from the soul's memories is a newly appeared hospital room. The two extra-dimensional beings appear to lose most of their blur, as the space compensates by bending light to fix their appearance for third-dimensionals. With the scene set, the device is manipulated into inducing artificial consciousness.

Soon, a spirit body appears on the hospital bed. Its form is that of an androgynous human. All of its features are nearly impossible to use, either separately or together, to even guess at a sex; even the unstyled shoulder length hair gave an androgynous feeling.

Soon, the spirit body wakes up. Looking around, the soul body finds itself in what it immediately believes to be a hospital room. Remembering back a moment, its last memories are of being in the burning apartment building, the building being on fire, the building collapsing on its head, then nothing. If it's alive, a hospital is definitely where it would expect to be. And it would also find two doctors standing in the room to be well within expectations. Though something seems kind of off about them, like a slight fuzziness around their edges. The soul body just assumes this was a residual symptom of whatever physical trauma it experienced and would just bring it up later.

"I... I'm in a hospital. How did I survive that fire? Was 'I' in a fire? I... I... Wait... Who... Who am I?" The soul body has a perplexed look on its face. It can't remember its name or identity. It can't remember anything about itself directly. It can remember where it lived and what it tended to do, but the soul body felt like it doesn't know itself personally. One of the 'doctors' then steps forward.

"Ah, well, that's the thing," says the extra-dimensional being, suddenly realizing he hasn't actually thought through what to say after waking the soul body. In the end, he tries to just wing it. "You have two problems with your questions. Well, three, but the third isn't relevant right now." Dramatic Pause.

"Uh-huh..." Says the soul body, nodding. It then waits several seconds without a response before saying, "So... What are these two things?"

"Er..." replies the 'doctor', realizing he misunderstood the appropriate timings for this primitive's culture's conversations. Time to fall back to local standards. "Right. Ahem. The first is that you didn't survive the fire. You died. Your body is destroyed, and you're currently just a soul. The only thing stopping us from making a body for you is the second problem; We don't know who you are either."

"Huh? Well, I guess that makes sense, I was on the first floor of a thirty story building. How could I survive a fire caused collapse? But you don't know who I am? And more importantly, if I'm just a soul, who are you and why can you speak to me like this? Is this heaven? Hell?"

"Woah, woah, slow down on the questions please so I can answer them," pleads the first 'doctor', as the other one smirks in amusement at this mismanagement of the situation. "Who we are is irrelevant right now, but we're helping you; that's what matters. This isn't heaven or hell or any afterlife. Besides, the sort of afterlife you're thinking of doesn't exist here... Ahem. More importantly, we've read your memories. Sorry about that, but that's just a necessary side effect of repairing a deceased soul. The problem is all your memories of yourself are destroyed, for some unknown reason. That should never happen before all other memories are destroyed. In order to stabilize your soul and create a real body that can work for you, you need to decide on a new identity. So let's do that, shall we?"

"Oh. Huh. That's a lot of information that should be overwhelming me, but I feel oddly calm," says the soul body.

"Ah, that's because we're currently suppressing your negative emotions," replies the 'doctor' with a smile. "Now, shall we get to it? First, we think you might have been male previously. But if you don't want to be a male, you can change that..."