The Heart of All Souls

The year is 2150, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. The world has already ended, you see; the catastrophe of human creation. All we have built, all ever constructed by humankind- a kind of imperfection - gone. All planes crashed, all ships sank, all trains derailed, all buildings collapsed. So, how am I alive? Well, It’s all thanks to Dr. Jaquelin, who is responsible for saving us all. How, you might ask? Well, answering that will take this story all the way back to the year 2075.

June 4th, 2075, was a day just like any other. Around the world, millions of people woke up to the rising sun; on the other side of the world, many fell asleep as the sun set beyond the horizon. People around the world began their daily tasks, driving to work, going to a wedding, escaping reality on grand vacations. It was all normal - that is, until the incident. To this day, nobody knows what caused it, and nobody knows why it happened - but on June 4th, 2075, at approximately 1:00 pm, everything created by humankind failed.

Every car, every truck, every bus, crashed. All of the planes flying in the sky fell straight out of the air, all of the ships in the sea sank without cause. Every home, building, and skyscraper in every city around the world crumbled, and every bomb, missile, and nuclear weapon went off. Every human died. Sort of.

Well, you see, we would have died; but our souls were saved. Project 88, a worldwide program accepted by every government and world leader, was just put into place before the catastrophe. Through our social media accounts, saved pictures, written emails and phone calls, a supercomputer was able to piece our lives back together. It knew everything about us; where we lived, our hobbies, our favorite foods, who we loved, and who we despised. But, how did it save our souls? Well, there was one part of project 88 that I haven't told you about; It is in partnership with an alien race known as the Porakai.

The Porakai are extraterrestrial beings who have created technology far beyond human understanding. Their technology can find the precise position of stars from trillions of light years away, and it also predicted the end of humanity. The Porakai offered humanity hope of survival in an unexpected and seemingly impossible form - a heart-shaped locket. This wasn’t like any other locket though; It wasn’t intended to hold pictures, it was intended to hold souls. Everyone’s soul.

In combination with one of the most powerful supercomputers the Porakai had ever constructed, the soul of every person on the planet was reconstructed, piece by piece. The souls were all contained inside of the locket, kept safe from being whisked away to death. So, that raises the obvious question, what is it like living inside of a locket? You might imagine that it is small, a cramped sarcophagus for all of humankind. But, you see, souls don’t weigh anything; and they don’t take up any space. So, there is plenty of room inside, but what is it truly like?

Well, there is only one way that I can describe living inside of the locket - boring. There are no beautiful trees or green grass, no lakes and streams, no clouds in the sky; just a shell. No one can move, but nobody needs to. Souls don’t need to eat, don’t need to sleep, and they don’t need exercise. As a soul, you simply exist with your thoughts and memories. It’s not only boring, but dangerous.

When we lived on earth - you know, in actual bodies - we used to take out minds for granted. What we thought was simply what we thought - nothing more. But when what you think is all that is left of you; all that you have to listen to; the mind can wander in dangerous directions. Your deepest thoughts and emotions are revealed, some of which you’d rather not realize.

Humanity, including myself, have been living in this locket for 75 years. Living is a relative term though. Life is the thing that you exist through, the thing that you move in, talk in, and walk in. This is more like limbo, some stage between life and death, and I don’t like it. There’s nothing I can do about it though; nothing that anyone can do about it. Dr Jaquelin, the founder of project 88, is trapped inside of the locket with us all. We have no way of speaking, no way of conveying to one another what we think and feel. We are simply thoughts, protected by a locket and kept here forever.