Prologue - Hello, Myself in the Past

The souls of people come in pieces, rough jagged shapes that want to escape from each other’s embrace but are glued together by hope and fear, like two magnets with the same pole that are forcibly held together by a child’s clumsy hands. People can’t see them, but they float right above their heads, watching and guiding their every move. As they live longer, the spring blossoms and crinkly orange leaves wear away the rough bits, and what can’t be worn away is thrown away into the ocean of time gone by. What’s left is a cohesive whole, like an elegant quartz sphere, within nothing more to add and nothing left to take. Everything for the whole. 

Of course, that’s the ideal situation. It rarely happens and I’m glad because ideal things are hardly interesting. 

The ideal soul that we were taught about to use as a standard is boring. Perfection is a state of death. The difference is no one reaches the former and everyone reaches the latter. 

Rain starts falling from the grey sky. A cool wind blows. 

You’re asking who I am and why I’m writing this? If you want me to answer that, first learn to ask the right questions. It’s not who am I - it’s what am I? I’m not human, and that’s all you need to know for now. 

Most of the others like me pick the souls that they find most similar to the standard we were given - the shining, quartz like sphere. I started like that too, and of course, even that is a hard job. We all went looking in the same places. Those were the days when we were still young and every soul - no matter how mediocre - was something of a surprise and could still leave an impression. It took a few decades to realize that there was no necessary connection between physical and social circumstances to the shape, size and colour of a soul, although it does sometimes affect the material or what we call the type. It’s not that hard for a businessman to go to heaven after all. 

The first time I saw a human soul, I was overwhelmed by its shining beauty. For the first few hundred times, I had the same reaction. But now, some souls are worthless to me. Not that there’s anything wrong with them - most of the time they fulfill their responsibilities nicely. It’s just that they are like plastic water bottles, and I’m looking for a stormy ocean. They do their job well and can be recycled into a multitude of possibilities. In the sunlight or the wind, they can appear beautiful. Perhaps their only vice is in their commonality. After all, anything in moderation is not bad, and anything in excessive amounts cannot be good. 

Something that always touches me even now is when the bits that someone throws away because they have too much of it, or because it disrupts their sense of self is just what another needs to complete their self. This is what you call love. Especially when the types match. It’s always beautiful when two souls that look like sorts of gardens with their own plants complete each other’s symmetry. 

The first truly different soul I saw belonged to a youth with algae green eyes and black hair who lived by the sea. It was expansive and spherical, with a thin and transparent wall like a goldfish tank. Inside, instead of water, there were shiny, golden wisps of smoke. Pieces of his soul floated gently in this golden, like sunlight breaking through the mist in a crisp fall morning. None of the pieces fit each other, yet they were at peace, there was no repulsion or striving for anything else that wasn’t there. Looking closer, I saw that some pieces were cracked in ways that only the souls who fought in wars were. But through each crack more of the golden light flowed through, and circling each cracked piece were smaller pieces, as if attending to it. To this day, I still don’t know what makes a soul great, but I’m sure that soul was one of the greatest ones that ever existed. 

Anyways, I said I’m not human. But I used to be, so I know that at this point you are wondering what I look like. It doesn’t matter. I can look like whatever you want me to look like. No and no. But, relative to you, you may consider me that. My job? I’ll explain more when I have time, but I am a selector of sorts, choosing the souls for my collection. It’s not just for fun. My life depends on it. I’m in a race with a few thousand others like me. We carry our chosen souls in 

The race lasts eight thousand years, so unfortunately you won’t be here to see the result. Unless one of us chooses you, or you become one of us. 

Our prize is the knowledge of our pasts, and to become a world-creator or a human, to feel something again.