"Reincarnation is so much more interesting than the Christian scenario," Ramesh said, in his pretty singsong accent.
"Piss off, mister," Jenni said. "I'm a Christian."
"Only by birth. Christianity promises an eternal future in heaven, after only a short infancy on Earth. Hinduism is similar in that it promises an eternal future, but also states that we have lived an infinite number of lives in the past."
"What do you think of my outfit?" she said. She was all leather halter and black jeans today. It would have been racy back home, and it was positively scandalous here. He took a moment to look at her. Miracle of miracles.
"Very American," he said.
"Would you prefer me in a sari?"
"That would have made a better impression on my parents. But it's too late now. Have you ever thought about having past lives?"
Oh, hell. She wasn't going to get him off this topic. Ramesh was really cute, in a sweater-and-glasses kind of way, and he had money, but he could bend her ear sometimes. Blah, blah, blah.
"Well, a fortune teller on Fourth Avenue once told me that I was a plantation owner in Georgia," she said. "A real Southern belle, like Scarlett."
"Do you remember any of it?"
"Let's see. She said that I was--"
"No. Do you remember actually being a plantation owner?"
"Oh. Nope. I don't think I believed her anyways."
"That's too bad," he said. "We have lived an infinity of lives, and we can't remember any of it. Ironic. I wish we could."
"Do you wish you were a Southern belle, too?" Jenni swung her hip and bumped it against his.
"I'm serious! Imagine if we could remember our past lives. Memories would reach back for eternity. We'd be immortal. We are immortal, we just don't realize it."
She and Ramesh reached the fountain-platform-thing that bridged the long, narrow pond, and sat down. The Taj Mahal was at the far end of the pond, masked by early morning fog. Its colors were muted and pale, and the pointy mushroom roofs seemed detached. They floated, frozen, in the white mist. As if a building could be a ghost. The trees all had tiny dew drops on them. She should have brought a jacket.
"It doesn't sound so great to me," she said. "What if you were a concentration camp victim? Would you want those memories, Mr. Smartypants? Or... oh! I know. What if you were a Nasty, like Hitler, or what's-his-name, Vlad the Impaler? All you'd get for your trouble is the guilties."
He looked away from her, to the Taj Mahal. His eyes narrowed, and he got that ambitious look that she found so sexy.
"I'd risk it," he said. "There is a deeper problem. Even if we were able to reacquire the memories from all those past lives, and benefit from all that experience, it would end as soon as we die. Whoosh!"
"Whoosh?"
"Yes, whoosh! Wiped out. We would be born into the next life dumb, ignorant of everything that came before. Unless we found a way to awaken our memories of this life, of today, while we were in that future life. That would be truer immortality, because I could just continue my existence in a new body."
"I'm cold. Do you want to get some breakfast?"
"You're not listening."
"I am! You want to wake up your memories of this life in your next body. You need a memory-waker-upper."
He smiled, and it warmed her just a little. "Would that be some sort of technology? I wonder if one could do it through meditation." He looked at her. "Okay, let's eat."
After a long day of playing tourist, they returned to New Delhi by dark. Jenni wanted to sample a little nightlife, but Ramesh wasn't up for it. Maybe he didn't couldn't stay out past his bedtime.
She figured their hotel in New Delhi was pretty cutting edge, since there was a TV in every room and a pool and hot tub on the first floor. Indian television was pretty engrossing. She had never seen Baywatch in Hindi before. She watched until almost midnight, then she realized that Ramesh wasn't in his room. She wandered downstairs.
The lobby was silent. She slipped out the back. It was cold! Instant goosebumps. There was someone in the hot tub, immersed to the top of his head, with a blue plastic snorkel sticking out of the water. It could have been Ramesh. She reached over and tugged on the snorkel.
Ramesh came up, sputtering and wiping his eyes. "Oh, hi," he said.
"Hi. What in the world are you doing?"
"Trying to remember past lives. Sensory deprivation."
"The water's not even hot. Why don't you run the jets?"
"It's just below body temperature. I can't feel the water. It's perfect."
She looked at his wet skin. He had beautiful dark Indian skin. "Want some company?" she asked. "I could get a suit and join you. Or then again, maybe I could skip the suit."
"No! I thought I was getting somewhere. I could swear I felt something. A distant memory, earlier than infancy, trying to push through. Why don't you go back to the room? I'll be up in a little while."
"You are so boring, Ramesh. I wish, just once, that you'd surprise me. But no, fine. Be a prick if you want to. Have a nice night!" She stomped up the seventeen million steps to her room and slammed the door. Eventually, she fell asleep with the TV on.
#
Uthakla the Destroyer screamed, the red energy of the executioner's beam still fresh in her mind. She spat the curved tube from her mouth and stood up. She was in a pool of warm liquid. She tried to climb out, but stumbled in her oddly-proportioned body. Two legs. The gravity was wrong, too.
The memories danced like images from a drug-dream. Ramesh. Human. Earth. She looked down at her five-fingered hands, and her new mind spun. She had spent the last twenty years believing herself to be an alien.
She had laughed at the old mystic who had come to her prison cell the night before her execution. Live on, in a new body? But the mystic had been right, and the Rukkathunak had worked! Barely. If the human hadn't been trying to remember through sensory deprivation, she might have stayed dead forever. How many eons had passed?
Rukkathunak was the wrong word. She remembered her native Kuthlarian, and the trade language of the ring colonies, but she now lacked the organs to speak them. She knew English and Hindi. And the English... memory-waker-upper?
Uthakla smiled, and ran her tongue over her disappointingly flat teeth. A new life, a new world, a new chance. Her human memories jittered and flashed. What kind of world was this? What manner of beings were humans? Would they follow as readily as her old minions? How much could she conquer? She suppressed her instinct to search for a weapon. First, she must have a conversation with the one called Jenni.
Copyright © 2002 by Stenger WhiteBio:Stenger White's fiction has appeared in Anotherealm and Wild Child. His story, "The Fastest Woman Alive," appeared in the February Aphelion. He lives with his wife and two cats in a cozy Seattle apartment.
E-mail: messier109@netzero.net
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