Edward Smith 

It had been roughly about a year since I had been reborn, and within that year, I had learnt quite a bit about my new and strange situation. First of all, although I had been reborn... I hadn’t been reborn as a baby in my own world. No, I had been born into a brand-new world, a far more advanced world at that. A world filled with technology and machines. 

Instead of carriages pulled by a variety of different creatures, they had metal capsules called cars which raced along the street on wheels powered by... well I had no idea. They also had tall buildings made of glass and metal that stretched high into the air like mountains compared to the wooden and stone ones found back in my own world. 

They had weird, black screens of glass instead of portraits, that lit up and portrayed moving pictures with sound. Kind of like plays, except they were behind the glass screen and didn’t always enact stories. At first, I had believed that they were people trapped within an abnormal dimension... but now I knew that there was a way to capture people's movements and voices and then replay them at later dates. Things like that would have been very useful back in my old world when it came to trials and finding out who was telling the truth and who was guilty. 

There were many, many differences to this new world compared to my old one. So many in fact that it had taken months and months to getting used to. However, there were a few similarities to this new world and my old. I had discovered it one random night six months ago when I had been abruptly awoken by the sounds of racing cars outside of the small house that we lived in.  

This world possessed a strange power. A sort of energy, that existed within, sort of like the spiritual power of my old world. Spiritual power existed as a source of energy, located within the solar plexus of about one twentieth of the living creatures within the world, whilst also existing within the atmosphere itself.  

Spiritual power allowed those who had it to achieve superhuman levels of strength, speed, agility, durability, vitality, the list goes on really. The point is... spiritual power made you special back in my old world.  

Of course, there were different levels to it, and these levels, allowed the user to climb even higher and obtain even greater power as they did. And to achieve these new levels of power, you had to do a mix of both meditation and practical training to strengthen the energy. And as you did so, the greater your power would become. 

This brand-new world also had a very similar power system. I had discovered it on the very night. After being abruptly awoken by the sound of racing cars, I struggled to put myself back to sleep and so decided to perform an old act that I had become very used to back in my old world. Meditation. Not only did it help me enhance my spiritual power, but it also served as a great source of comfort for me in that messed up world, where I was driven by both hate and revenge. Meditation was the only time in which I felt comfort... the only time where I felt truly relaxed. 

And so, after six long months of getting used to my new body and the strange... strange new and advanced world that I had found myself in, I had finally meditated. And then, it happened. I felt it... I saw it. 

This world had its own unique source of energy, what it was called I still had no idea. After all, it wasn’t like I could ask my new parents about it. But what I had learnt from my own investigations, this energy existed to empower those who possessed it. Similar to my old world. 

And so, for the past six months of my new life, whenever I had some time to myself, I’d meditate. And just like in my old world, the meditation caused an internal reaction within my body. Small dots of energy that existed within my body slowly began to gravitate to a singular point and clump together, slowly creating a sort of core in the centre of my heart. And every time I meditated, the clump grew larger and denser. 

I had no idea what it meant. I had no idea what it would do to me... but whatever it did, I had a sort of sixth sense that told me that whatever it was wasn’t harmful to me in any way. In fact, it was the exact opposite. 

However, the key difference between my old world and this one was... that I actually had parents. Loving parents. I wasn’t an orphan being raised at a church with a bunch of other abandoned kids. I was loved... I was wanted. 

It was a strange feeling after so many years of being angry and alone... it was... nice. 

Of course, I didn’t necessarily see them as my parents. When I had been reborn into this new world, I had been a twenty-seven-year-old man. So, it was hard for me to see them as my actual parents... or maybe that was because I didn’t want to see them as my parents. After the life I had lived... it had become hard to love again... hard to open up my heart and let other people in. And spending a year with these people... hadn’t necessarily helped me open up in any way. Even after all the love and care they had given me. 

I didn’t know whether that made me a bad person or not. After all, what baby had no love for their parents. They took care of me, fed me, changed me, bathed me... they did pretty much everything for me. They were there when I first learned to crawl in this world, when I had said my first words and when I had taken my first steps. I had the mental capacity of an adult, meaning I was able to see and understand all the love and attention I was receiving. I was able to understand the hardships that I was putting them through. 

And yet even after that. I cared little for the two of them. It wasn’t a good feeling. I did not feel happy about that, the fact that I cared more for the dead priests and nuns, who were unrelated by blood to me, than my actual biological parents in this world. 

I hoped that as I grew in this world and spent more time around the two... that my feelings would soon change and that my heart would heal and allow me to open up to the two. So, we could truly be a family like I had dreamed about all those years ago. But only time could tell if my damaged heart was yet capable of such acts. However, if it was any consolation... I hoped that it did.