บท 2: Mysterious Bubble
His eyes were closed, but he could still see the flustered face of the big shot before him, commanding his subordinates. There was a distinct emotion of anxiety and fear etched on his face. The security guards hurried to carry out his orders while the PA made numerous calls, practically screaming through her phone, in an effort to urge the listener to hurry.
The surroundings slowly blurred; Kaushik found himself getting lifted up. A moment later, he found his motionless body below him, sitting on the sofa, sporting a peaceful expression akin to deep sleep. Passing through the ceiling, appearing on the 15th floor, he spotted a pair of man and woman wrestling each other.
His body; or, his spirit to be exact slowly passed through the numerous floors and finally appeared above the hotel building. Steadily gaining altitude, his spirit body passed through a cloud, appearing within a huge bubble. In the bubble, the figure of a person floated; his face looked a mixture between man and monster.
Each strand of his hair, long and transparent, had small suction pod-like mouths at their ends, painting a scary picture. There was nothing below his hips, while a hazy translucent fog escaped out of his body, disappearing into the bubble.
The moment his spirit body spotted the figure, an intense sense of hatred clouded his being, making him want to shred the opponent apart. He moved his body forward, in an effort to destroy the other person before his anger fully consumed him.
The man with half a body looked at the sight before him, at a blob of jelly sprawled on the surface of the bubble, wriggling towards him, like a wraith. It released a pungent odour, its body covered with rings that resembled bangles, pierced into its gooey mass of jelly-like flesh. The bangles made clinging sounds, expressing its anger. They also wore down on it, making it hard to move forward, scraping its gooey mass, leaving behind patches of gooey substance on the bubble surface along its wake.
"Actions, and their consequences; attachments of the material world; bonds that traverse space and time; pride, ego, happiness, and sadness, they form into layers of restrictions that weigh down your soul, your essence. That…is your Karma. Shedding them leads to enlightenment!" The man spoke, in an ethereal voice that reverberated through the bubble. Every sound wave, produced from his uttering broke some of the bangles that covered the gooey mass. After every bangle that broke, the gooey mass could move better, faster, more agile.
The man continued to speak, slowly uttering one word after the other. His words formed into a mantra that he chanted, each word removing part of the restrictions on Kaushik's spirit body. Below the bubble, the scenery of the modern city slowly blurred. The vehicles, people, animals, birds, plants, the flow of wind, actions of nature, everything became hazy, looking like they were fast-forwarded.
The place flourished, faced destruction, eventually withering in the annals of history. The land became barren, eventually submerged under the sea. The weather changed, becoming even blurrier; the surrounding space began to distort, wrapping around the bubble, empowering it.
The man finished reciting his mantra, his body only reaching till his chest now, continuously shrinking. Before him floated a tiny wisp, looking transparent, without any defining features; the wisp floated aimlessly when the man waved his hands. Small threads of letters, engraved in cryptic form floated to the air, filled with information. They arose out of the gooey substance the wisp had shed, thanks to the mantra the man had recited.
They gushed into the floating wisp, adding a faint blue hue to it. After they were extracted, the gooey substance—having lost the empirical components that sustained it—vaporised into nothing. The space surrounding the bubble had changed once again; rifts appeared while spatial lightning flashed. The bubble looked insignificant as compared to the turbulent forces of nature that involved the domain of time and space, but it deftly manoeuvred across all obstacles, before arriving at a hazy surrounding.
The hazy atmosphere had a sense of purity, the sunlight that shone brimming with vitality, and the wind carrying with it a gentle lifeforce. The inconspicuous bubble arrived above a city when the man sighed with sadness.
"I have killed you," The man gazed at the silent wisp, "Though I could say, I also did you a favour.
"In the original timeline, after signing the deal, you faced a car accident on your return journey that claimed your life. It was why I chose you; you, a person who is neither too old, nor too young.
"The older the person, the greater the Karma binding their soul; younger people are too immature and ignorant for my purposes. Only you, a person who is no longer a teen but possesses an abundance of knowledge and a mind for creation, is the right person for this job.
"You no longer feel an attachment to your past life, but you will remember everything, including me, in detail when you woke up. The laws of the world forbid direct reincarnation without erasure of memories; hence, I am taking this round-about approach. I will attach you to a newborn soul; take your time to conquer its ego and make it yours, finally becoming a resident of this timeline.
"I pray for your safety, pray for your strength, and pray that you can destroy the Mother Parasite." The man—with only a couple of strands of his hair remaining, his body vaporised—said. The wisp floated out of the bubble, in accordance with the man's wishes and attached itself to the soul of a newborn baby.
After seeing it successfully attach itself to a baby, the man let out a relieved sigh, "Using my entire life as a wager, I could only bring two people. I hope, in this world of parasites, they amount to something."
The man vaporised into nothingness, the bubble following his fate soon after, leaving behind no trace of their existence in the world.
…
7th Ring, 12th Sector, Baker Street, in the mansion of the Bone family, a woman held a crying baby in her arms. She looked happy, but at the same time, nervous. The woman steeled her nerves and placed the crying baby atop an apparatus.
The apparatus looked like a cradle, but the presence of many electronic components embedded into its structure meant otherwise. The cradle lit up with a faint green light and scanned the baby from head to toe, once, twice, thrice. The colour then changed to red as it repeated the scan. After a few minutes had passed—with the cries of the baby rising in magnitude—the scan finally stopped as a green light lit up on it.
A man hurriedly lifted the baby with a relieved face and placed it in the hands of the happy woman. She held the baby close to her eyes and planted a kiss on its forehead. Her eyes glistened with tears, while she held the baby dear to her, mustering all the gentleness she could muster.
Inside the baby, or more appropriately, its soul, something weird occurred. The baby's soul that looked like a tiny transparent wisp, barely detectable was approached by a humongous soul. Unlike it, the invader soul had a faint trace of blue in it, its body hundreds of times bigger than the wisp. A tendril emerged out of the blue soul, slithering through space and attaching itself on the transparent wisp.
The transparent wisp shuddered once but failed to mount any resistance. An insignificant amount of blue seeped into it through the tendril, an amount that was minuscule as compared to its body. Immediately, the blue soul woke up.
'What happened?' Using the brain of the baby to support its thoughts, the soul slowly started to remember its life. Though, subconsciously, the rate of its thinking slowed down to a crawl, to avoid burdening the brain of the newborn. It reverted to being in a passive state, slowly invading the baby's soul through the tendril while patiently waiting for the body to develop.
Time passed in such a manner; days turned into months and months into years. The invasion of the blue soul continued while the host soul slowly grew, in accordance with the physical body growing up. When the child was 10 years of age, the blue soul had finally regained all of its memories. It had also taken over enough control over the host soul to use the body's brain for its thinking process. Though, it only tried to do so when the host body was asleep.
'My state is strange. I am a soul that is trying to gobble up this body's owner. I have retained the memories of my previous life, but it looks disconnected to me. Like, it wasn't me that had actually experienced that life. But, judging by the present state of the world, have I lived in a different world?'
'I am Vadlamani Kaushik, an engineering student from Earth. My host body calls himself Jyorta Bone, scion of the Bone family. This world has technological advancement similar, if not, superior to my world. Moreover, I have seen the father character and the relative characters perform strange feats, feats falling under the superhuman category. Everything is strange. Why did that creepy-haired man bring me here? What did he mean by a Mother Parasite? Is it something similar to me? If not, what is it?'
The blue soul fell silent as the host showed signs of waking up. It stopped using the host body to think and passively continued to conquer its soul.
…
An alarm rang, producing a shrill sonorous sound. A boy sleeping next to it became irritated while half asleep. He twisted and turned in his bed until finally getting up, slamming the head of the alarm clock to shut it. He tried to get up but failed due to a pair of hands that tightly clutched his hips, like a crab. Lifting his bedsheet, he saw the sleeping face of a beautiful lady come into view, a thin line of drool covered her cheek.
"Sister, wake up. Today is an important day for you." The boy nudged his sister who slept like a log. On seeing his futile efforts, he stealthily crouched down, lifted the bedsheet and glanced at a pair of feet. Using his left hand to hold them in place, the boy used his fingers to tickle her feet.
"Guchi…guchi…goo!" The boy tickled her sister who sprang up like a kitten, grabbed hold of his hands in reflex, and retreated to his back. She wrapped her arms around him, using her legs to lock his legs in place, and used her fingers to tickle his tummy.
"Brat, you asked for it." A melodious voice, filled with a tinge of anger sounded near his ears when the tickle counterattack started. The boy readily expressed his surrender, but his sister showed zero intention to stop so soon. The laughing face of the boy turned sombre for an instant before reverting to his carefree laughter. The blue soul watched everything in silence through his eyes.
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