I’ve done what, now? Hold on a minute! I’m sure there must be some mistake! Is there any chance I could speak with a manager?... Please?
Assessing the spiritual balance of Robert Robertson…
You have sufficient karmic balance to reincarnate on a lower plane of existence.
That checked out. My first thought upon seeing it was that one of my flatmates had spiked my tea with something psychedelic, and I was in for a bad trip. Nothing changed for a few minutes, just an endless void as backdrop to floating golden letters. I didn’t know whether I hung there for minutes or hours, as I had no way to tell how quickly time was passing. There were no frames of reference, no sun creeping across the sky or ticking clock. I had a feeling that if this was real, I’d end up as a very short-lived slime mould or amoeba. Possibly a woodlouse. Life number two would suck harder than the first time ‘round.
I was just hanging in limbo, staring at perpetually glowing letters explaining my lack of spiritual value. My initial panic and anger soon faded into boredom as I was left to my own devices for what might have been an eternity. As usual when I was bored, I started running through my mental list of people who had pissed me off recently. I began working out appropriate ways to punish them.
Craig has not been doing the washing up, perhaps a suitable punishment would be to hide a piece of fish in his room and leave it to rot… Jonesy, the git, tried to hit on Sam. I wonder what would happen if I “accidentally” let Sam know about what Jonesy did to Gemma and why she hates him? That prick Killroy with his holier than thou, I’m the boss mentality… I owe him big time. I should sow dissent among my colleagues so they quit, and the bastard has to work more weekends…
Even I could only keep the spite going for so long before I felt the need to break out of that mental loop. I resolved to escalate my complaint.
Oi! I’m not kidding! I need to speak to your supervisor right now, whoever you are.
Naturally, whatever had judged my karmic worth so harshly chose to simply ignore me.
I settled into a grumpy mood, normal enough for me, and wondered why I was, overall, so calm. It felt like how I imagined being in a sensory deprivation tank would be, but it wasn’t triggering any kind of claustrophobia, and it certainly wasn’t relaxing. Perhaps I truly was being shafted by the universe once more. That was usually the case, based on my experience.
Maybe it was true, and now that I lacked all the glands, hormones, and spasming neurotransmitters, I was only capable of viewing my bizarre situation with a strange dispassion. My mind wandered until, finally, something changed. The writing flowed and shifted, presenting me with a ridiculous decision.
You have sufficient karma to choose from one of four reincarnation options.
- Protoplasmic aspirant
- Mutagenic nightmare
- Defender of a hoard
- Fecund Uni-bunny
Well, number one was right out. No way was I going to become a slime; I’d seen that show, read that book. It sounded like fun on paper, but no thanks. Number two felt like it might be something that would evolve due to my lazy flatmate Craig’s inability to dispose of food waste properly. That wasn’t me either. I had only ever wanted a quiet life, where everyone was nice to me, and did their fucking chores.
Numbers three and four were tricky. Three didn’t give me much information beyond that there would be a hoard, and I would have to defend it somehow. From whom and why was left mysterious, but there was an implied threat that I didn’t like. Four felt… pervy? Did I want to be a horny bunny rabbit? Or whatever the hell a Uni-bunny was?
I don’t know how long I floated, disembodied and confused, as I pondered my options. No sounds, no smells, nor the gentle brush of a breeze disturbed me in my solitude. I had to treat this as though it were real. If I came round in my bed, sweating and shaking, and this was just some mushroom-fueled lucid dream, I’d be having strong, invective-laden words with my flatmates. But for now, I faced a decision that I had to assume was real.
The karma I had accrued over my twenty-five years on Earth was not enough to warrant a decent reincarnation, according to whichever dick was in charge of this kind of thing. So, I’d got the B or—more likely—the F-grade options. Fine, I could deal with it.
I chose number three. I tried to reach out and touch it, but I had no limbs, and I was forced to select it via an effort of will. It seemed the best of a bad bunch.
As soon as I mentally clicked the option, I found myself trapped in a different way. Everything changed in an instant; the blank void and golden letters vanished, replaced with a new, and very different experience.
Everything was pink. It was like looking at the world through a liquid lens. On the plus side, I could feel that I had a body again, which was reassuring. When I tried to move, my limbs stirred the goopy fluid in which I was encapsulated. I could blink my eyes, although the darkness slid across horizontally rather than vertically.
At least I had normal senses again, but the fluid didn’t feel right on my skin. It felt like it was sliding between something, as though parts of my exterior were numb. The quiet was only broken by the sound of my heartbeat and the sloshing as I waved my arms around in the goop.
Wait. Someone on the outside was shouting at me. The voice sounded like I was underwater. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Whoever they were, they sounded vaguely supportive, I supposed. At least I wouldn’t be alone when I managed to escape this place.
The ambient light outside my prison fluctuated as time ticked by. I assumed the alternating darkness and hazy pink light meant that days had passed. The unknown voice came and went. Occasionally, I’d catch a word or two through the burbling, but none of them made any sense in isolation. “Hatch” and “twat” were the most common ones I caught.
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I knew when I farted. Gases floated up over my head and collected in a pocket at the top of my oval prison. I could turn my surprisingly long neck and raise a long snout to poke into the only space free of the amniotic fluid that surrounded me. I couldn’t draw a breath; my lungs must be filled with the goop. That was probably for the best. Trapped in an ovoid prison and forced to sniff your own farts… I doubted my karma had been that bad.
As the days wore on, I began to feel a strange, stoic sense of peace. Nothing disturbed me, other than the voice, and I felt my control over my new body gradually increasing. Due to the murky fluid and terrible lighting, I had only a vague idea of my appearance. My neck was far longer than it should have been. It was almost serpentine. I knew I had four limbs, although they weren’t as easy to differentiate into arms and legs as they had been before.
I also had a tail. The first time I’d rolled over and it had slapped me in the face, I’d thrashed around in fear, clamping down on it with my forelimbs. The pain of my fingers tightening around it had let me know that I was attacking myself. While I wasn’t human anymore, I didn’t seem to be some monstrous aberration. I had not been overly handsome back on Earth. No one would have been wowed by my good looks, but I didn’t make small children run away screaming either. I had been somewhere comfortably in the middle of the attractiveness spectrum. My family's wealth had always been the most attractive thing about me.
There were some odd impulses that I didn’t remember from before. Greed, hunger, and territoriality were new and slightly disturbing. I knew I wanted to feed, to hoard, and to kill anything that threatened to steal from me.
I had been hibernating in my prison for more than a week since I’d last heard the squawking of the voice from outside. The peace had become the norm, but a new imperative filled me from the colder parts of my mind. It was like an itch, one that I had to scratch.
One of my legs reached around and began scratching at my snout. I’d already figured out I had a distinctly equine face by fumbling around in the dark and clutching at my mutated nose.
My hand, possibly paw, scratched at a nub protruding from the end of my snout, rubbing at it until a blossom of pain ran down the limb from my injured maybe-hand. I realised that biology had armed me to face my first foe.
I was some kind of bird or lizard! I paused in a moment of terror as I realised I could even be something as slow and awkward as a turtle. I hadn’t sensed any feathers, but I was pretty confident that most birds were born without them. It was an odd feeling, to hope I was a four-legged parrot or something, and that I’d have to guard a pirate's treasure chest seemed like one of the better possibilities. They, whoever they were, had been right all along: karma is a bitch.
I’d had enough. Stuck in this horrible, claustrophobic space for god knows how long had changed me more than just the tail, the snout, and the impulse to eat anything that threatened my shinies—no more Mr. Nice Bob.
It was time for the first battle in my new life, and my foe wouldn’t even see it coming. It didn’t have eyes, after all. I didn’t have many attack options. I only had a single move: Peck. I launched a savage strike with the horn on my nose, slowed somewhat by the gloopiness of my environment. A hit! It was not very effective.
Eggshell used: Taunt. It was super effective.
Oh, you bastard!
There were no floating golden letters, and I was very much aware that I was narrating the fight in my head, but I didn’t care. Weeks trapped in this prison had driven me slightly loopy. The impact of my first blow left me spinning in the goop, and the bastard dodged the subsequent two attacks, until I figured out to push off the far wall with my tail to let me land a blow with a bit of power behind it.
Peck has evolved into Forceful Peck!
Bob used: Forceful Peck! A hairline crack appeared in my nemesis. I have you now, you villain!
Eggshell used: Don’t Care Bitch. Once again, being inanimate was super effective.
You bastard! Have some of this!
Forceful Peck, Forceful Peck, Forceful Peck.
As I pulled my head back this time, a sliver of light entered my aquatic world. The noise from the voice on the outside increased. Whoever it was, they were clearly gripped by my thrilling battle against an eggshell, so they probably weren’t terribly bright. Rage suffused my entire being.
Bob is afflicted with Berserk!
Forceful Peck evolved again! It evolved into Slam Peck!
Despite a valiant effort to use Don’t Care Bitch repeatedly, the eggshell was a one trick Pokémon, and I had its card marked. Soon, I had enough of a gap to push my face outward into my new world. The greasy fluids of the egg clouded my eyes, and I sneezed, expelling the liquid from what I hoped were lungs, before I began smashing my neck back and forth to push aside enough of the thick, rubbery shell to let me slide out into my new reality.
“Bob-mon defeats Eggshell! Plus ten XP,” I panted as I slithered out into the world as a newborn whatever-the-hell I was.
“Took your fucking time but hey, some kids are a bit slower than others, ya know?”
The voice finally hit my ears clearly, and I immediately disliked whoever was speaking. She wasn’t helping me, so she could sit and wait while I figured out what kind of avian monstrosity I’d been transformed into.
It hurt. Shoving my shoulders through the gap I’d made, pushing through, inch by inch, had left me sore. Something sticking out of my back had gotten caught, and I’d pulled muscles and torn skin as I struggled to escape my gloopy incubator. The edges of the shell had been sharp, and lines of burning pain ran down parts of my body.
I struggled to catch my breath, then spewed out murky fluids to clear my chest. My lungs were still new to the idea of being filled with a gas rather than a liquid, and it hurt to draw in air. My neck swept from side to side. I was in a cave of some sort. It was huge, easily forty metres across and half that in height. Several broad tunnels led away from the central space, and one opening let out onto a blue sky, sunlight streaming in. The place was still and calm for some reason, despite the large opening that showed nothing but clouds.
I looked over at my former prison. Shards of shell, dark like obsidian, lay scattered around. Atop a modest pile of golden coins—not much of a hoard—lay the rest of my former incubation chamber. From there, my gaze moved down to the tail that extended behind me and lay next to the treasure. Then I tracked along my body, and I realised maybe the universe wasn’t a total dick after all.
Glistening black scales lined my new form, edged with a hint of scarlet. The serpentine tail led to a body which was horse-like, compact, and powerful. I had four legs, each ending in taloned paws, and a pair of bat-like wings sprouted from my back.
The entire world stopped spinning as the realisation sank into my mind.
“You’re a lizard, Harry,” my new companion said helpfully.
Goldsphere and for the awesome work they did making my cover and shoutout codes look amazing!