Complete The Story: 27 of 200

 I awoke to sights I had never seen, sounds I had never heard, and smells I had never smelled.  I laid in a hospital bed, as the temperature kept adjusting until it felt a perfection of warmth.  The bed softened and the pillow firmed, to a bliss of comfort, I can only describe as heavenly.  A man stood in front of me.  As my eyes adjusted to the light, he began to speak. At first, a heavy accent, in Spanish.

"Doc-tor. Hofteizer?" He said to me. 

"Yes," I answered him. 

"My name is Dr. Sergio Oviedo," he said. His accent had disappeared, as he spoke perfect English.  "I'm a descendant of Dr. Javier Oviedo. You are at the University of Boubin, in the hospital wing." 

I went to take the covers off of my body, so I could sit up. They were surprisingly heavy.  Not from a weakness of injury or illness. Not from a weakness of being elderly and frail. It was weakness of strength not yet developed.  Dr. Oviedo reached over and helped me remove the covers. I was horrified at what I saw. 

My arms and hands were tiny. My legs and feet equally as small.  I stared at my hands, feeling one with the other. Smooth, soft and unwrinkled. I took a deep breath, the most oxygen I had gotten in years. No deviated septum. No phlegm or mucus blocking my air ways. 

"Feel new?" Dr. Oviedo smiled at me as he held out his hand. "Come, it'll soon all make sense." 

The floor was only about two foot down, but considering I was three foot tall at the most, I appreciated Dr. Oviedo's help getting off the bed. 

We began walking down the hall.  I noticed my reflection in the mirror.  Mentally and emotionally, I was a grown man.  A 68-year-old scientist named Justin Hofteizer.  Physically I looked like a toddler. 

We came to a room, as Dr. Oviedo hoisted me up and sat me on a chair, in front of a monitor screen.  He sat in a chair beside me and began to explain my situation. 

"How do I go about this?" He said with a laugh. "Where to begin?" 

"What year is it?" I figured we'd start there. 

"The year is 162,026," Dr. Oviedo answered. 

He had to be lying.  There's no way that could be possible. I had gotten sick in 2026. There's no way I was 160,000 years into the future. 

"Technically you're 160,068 years old," He laughed again. "You have the 68-year-old mind you died with 2026, and physically you're around three years old." 

I lifted my tiny hands to my tiny head and rubbed my eyes.  I had to be dreaming.  None of this added up. None of it made sense. 

"Please," Dr. Oviedo said. "Watch the screen visuals. They will help you to understand." 

I sat and watched the screen, as Dr. Oviedo narrated. 

"Interstellar travel," He began. "We knew it was something that we'd never be able to do for a variety of reasons.  It was too far; it took too long.  We'd never be able to get from point A to point B within our lifetime.  Even has we discovered ways to travel faster and faster, closer and closer to the speed of light, we still had to deal with relativity.  We figured out a way to reach Alpha Centauri in 4 and half years, but the problem was, over 80,000 years would pass on Earth." 

The visuals were the best I'd ever seen.  Almost as if they were specifically designed for me.  Explained in a way that best suited for how I learned best. 

"At first we worked on the aging gene," Dr. Oviedo continued. "We tried to see how long we could make the human body last. We worked and worked, even getting a few up to 225 years old. The average age 150.  I mean people born in 2025, living to see their great grandchildren's, great grandchildren." 

"Remarkable," I said with great interest. 

"Yes," Dr. Oviedo continued. "But not anywhere near enough for the greatest minds to be able to travel throughout space and answer the questions that mystified humanity for 1,000's of years. We had to do something else."

"What?" My curiosity was at its peak. 

"At first we tried to slumber the body," Dr. Oviedo answered. "We induced comas. The more we discovered, the longer we could keep people alive.  This worked to a degree.  Better than where we had got with the aging gene. We brought people back up to 2,000 years after they had been placed in a coma. It's all the longer we could though.  Remarkable for many reasons, but still not what we needed." 

Dr. Oviedo took a breath and then turned to look me in the eye. 

"We call it the soulit," He said as he turned his attention back to the screen. "It was discovered shortly after you died.  It's an area of the brain where everything about you, that makes you, you is stored.  Dr. Ruth Cynthia discovered it, claiming it was our soul. Dr. Jace Litefoot figured out how to extract it. He called it a spirit.  Hence, why it was named the soulit. That's why you're here, Dr. Hofteizer." 


"Abortion was a huge political issue back in your day, wasn't it?" Dr. Oviedo asked. "University of Kentucky professor Don Marquis argued that what made abortion immoral, was that you were robbing someone of their potential. Someone that would otherwise get to exist & experience, as we exist & experience.  Abortion is no longer an issue. It hasn't been for well over 100,000 years." 

I was beginning to understand but I wasn't quite there yet.  I continued to listen to Dr. Oviedo. 

"The moral issue of our time are the left over soulits," Dr. Oviedo explained. "A woman doesn't want a baby? We now can extract it from her body and grow it in our labs.  Once it is large enough, we remove its soulit and replace it with a soulit that society has deemed worthy.  Scientists, physicists, astrophysicists, geologists, chemists...I mean you name it; we have kept some of the most profound and remarkable thinkers of our time alive for over 100,000 years." 

I sat and wrestled with the moral dilemma that was now going to battle in my head.  Dr. Oviedo continued with the positives of this research, as the thought of "left over soulits" kept repeating itself in my brain. 

"Think," Dr. Oviedo said, "What if we had been able to keep Newton alive.  What if Albert Einstein could've kept coming back? As far as we are, imagine if those two minds were still around, how far we'd be." 

"The left over soulits?" I asked him. 

"Yes," He frowned. "They're stored. We keep them in a large collection.  That's the only down fall of this project."

"The only way to be able to put my soulit," I said. "Or anyone else's for that matter alive, and beneficial to society, is by removing someone else's and taking over their body?" 

"We've experimented putting them into other animals," Dr. Oviedo explained. "That's been interesting.  Chimps, bonobos, gorillas. At first the general public believed that these animals were simply getting smarter.  That their ability to read and write, type, all sorts of things was simply a matter of advancements in technology.  Then they discovered that the soulit of the animal had actually been removed and been replaced by what was originally supposed to be the soulit of a human being. Boy, did that open up a can of worms that the politicians ran with.  People protesting about soulits being removed from the body that was supposed to belong to them.  People protesting about the Apes and what became of their soulits. The whole things been going on for centuries upon centuries." 

"So, your body isn't your own then, I take it?" I asked. 

"No," He answered. "Neither is your's.  I haven't been in my original body for well over 1,000 years.  This is my 7th body overall, including my original." 

"Have I been through this before?" I ask. "Do I simply not remember it?"

"No," Dr. Oviedo answers. "Your brain was kept preserved post your death for 750 years.  When the soulit was discovered, we extracted it.  It was then stolen and we had thought that it was lost forever." 

"And nearly 100,000 years later," I laughed. "You discover it?" 

"We still have many questions left unanswered," Dr. Oviedo said. "Perhaps we always will, I'm a believer that there is no question without an answer.  There has to be an answer. I believe you can help us." 

Help with what? This was a society 100,000 years beyond anything I had ever known in 2026. 100,000 years more advanced than any technology that I had ever worked with.  As the day progressed, I came to find out that Dr. Oviedo had been speaking Spanish to me the entire time.  All human beings were now programmed with a device that allowed them to automatically translate anything someone said.  When I said, "Hello, my name is Jason Hofteizer," Dr. Oviedo heard, "Hola, mi nombre Jason Hofteizer." 

Pain was a thing of the past, unless you cared to experience it.  Humans were now programed with an ability to stop pain.  Pain from an accident. Pain from an illness. You got bit by a venomous snake, the anti-venom was already stored and being put to use the second the venom entered the bloodstream. 

"Real" sports and "real" movies still existed.  Yet if you wanted to watch the Chicago Cubs hammer the St. Louis Cardinals in a ball game 10-0, you could program to see such a game.  You could program it down to every last play.  

You could go into a movie theatre. Submit a treatment, name actors to roles, answer a series of questions and then watch the film unfold before your eyes on the big screen. 

For those that wanted the "real", to experience life as it "was meant to be" the option still existed in many ways.  Yet for the majority of people, artificial intelligence, pretty made all of life artificial, or so it seemed to me the more I got to know of this new world I was in. 

We discovered life on Proxima Centauri B.  Way primitive to the life we had here on earth.  Scientists were calling their stage of life similar to the Mesozoic era here on Earth.  

Dr. Oviedo gave me some time to adjust to life. To have the body of a 3-year-old and the mind of a 68 year old. Then he came to me one day with what it was they were hoping I could figure out. 

"We're essentially wanting you to play God," Dr. Oviedo said.

While people were alive, we could program messages, images and information into their brains. Make them not only have the perfect dream, but make them believe they were actually there, experiencing what was going on.  I suppose similar to TOTAL RECALL.   Yet not everyone wanted to live on Earth forever.  Not everyone was allowed to either.  Some wanted to die.  To experience death. They had no desire to keep coming back again and again in new bodies.  Then there was also the issue of the soulits that had been removed, so that scientist like Dr. Oviedo and myself could take over their bodies. 

They wanted me to figure out a way to give these soulits their Heaven, there paradise if you will. Create a utopia of bliss, happiness and reward.  Once I figured out how this could be done, if it could be done, it'd be easier for those that had been around.  If Fred Jones had lived for 136 years, loved his wife, loved to fish, then it'd be easy.  I'd put him in a gorgeous home by a lake, give him a boat and have him spending eternity fishing in the sun.  For the soulits that were extracted, like the one that had been extracted from the body I currently occupied? Well, that would be a tougher challenge. These people never got to exist, so coming up with their Heaven would have to be a guess.