Reincarnation: A Story of Souls

[anonymous]

"Do you believe in the soul? Do you believe that your flesh and blood is a sum total of your existence?” - S.O.P.H.I.A.

 

Realize this is a thread quickly created, not having alot of efford put into it and thus lacking quite some counter-arguments as well. So yeah, criticism as well as more arguments are appreciated. Reincarnation… I've had this idea in my head for a longer time, though it was not untill Alpha Omega when I believed it might be an actual answer to some of our questions. The story of Call of Duty Zombies is a story about souls. This means that in order to understand this, we have to observe beyond one's life. Death is not always the end.

 

"The Life Force from the Dead World allows the bearer to flow with all creation." - Kronorium Excerpt 27101978

 

I guess you all are familiar with reincarnation. The word litterally means something like 'again in meat', which it essentially is. You live, you've passed away but your soul, spirit, consiousness or something transcendent is trapped in an interconnected cycle of existence, only to be reborn again. The transmigration belief varies by culture. This spiritual concept is believed in many Asian (including India and Tibet) and Mesoamerican cultures, cultures we are all very familiar with in our story. By some societies it is also believed that an escape for the eternal cycle, Samsara, is possible, and that the ultimate goal for each soul is to ascend from darkness. So could this actually be applied on our story?

 

Souls...who carries souls? For as far as we know, both living and undead humans carry one, the undead one its synapses neurologically enslaved to the Aether, as the Element creates a 'bridge' between his/hers soul and the Demonic Announcer. The proof for this can be found in the lyrics of Shi no Numa's ' the One' and Die Rise's moans Stuhlinger can hear when downed. In Die Rise, Maxis even says that "Reincarnation will reveal its way forward", when Victis is slaughtering zombies.

 

However, ever since the 'metaphorical hammer' smashed the Multiverse, creating Temporal Rifts and Fractures, the concept of a soul becomes a bit more difficult. According to some religions and cultures, souls cannot be divided into different or separate parts and the number of souls existing is finite. Thus, when a universe is splitted, the soul of for example @Lenne can exist in merely one universe. But there is still a Lenne living in that other universe, how? That is the story of Lifeforce, a complete other story @NaBrZHunter made an interesting thread about. As Maxis states in Buried, departed souls leave residual energy in their wake. This energy can be focussed upon powering artifacts and devices, a process we have done multiple times in our Easter Egg Quests. I am of the belief that it is this that keeps the soulless Primis, Maxis and Lenne alive.

 

If we are gonna apply reincarnation on solving issues, the first oddity that pops in my mind is that of Pablo Marinus, both a Medieval Knight and a Mexican spy in WW2. Having his mind connected to the Aether, he is even able to see the 'flashbacks' of this previous life. I see this as a most definite argument for the existence of reincarnation in our story. But also Peter McCain, a WW2 American spy, sees flashes of Medieval France, the location of the Great War, when he got revived by the Elemental Shard. Did he also lived a life before his own in Medieval Europe? 

 

The whole 'One Multiverse, one soul' thing might also explain why Primis had to harvest their souls of those exact versions of theirselves, and why they selves were soulless. 

 

Spoiler

“EDWARD AS YOU KNOW IT IS IMPERATIVE YOU AND THE GROUP FIND THE EXACT VERSIONS OF YOURSELVES THAT I HAVE HIGHLIGHTED IN EACH UNIVERSE ONLY BY KILLING THAT VERSION OF YOURSELF IN THAT PARTICULAR UNIVERSE AT THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME WILL WE BE SUCCESSFUL ONCE EACH OF YOUR OTHER SELVES ARE KILLED ACROSS ALL UNIVERSES REMEMBER WE ARE ONLY IMMUNE BECAUSE WE OPENED THE PORTAL IN FRANCE BUT I AM AFRAID THIS MIGHT NOT BE PERMANENT I FEAR THERE IS SOMETHING M ISN T TELLING ME AND THAT THERE IS NOT MUCH TIME LEFT FOR US”

 

The belief of reincarnation in our story also raises alot of new questions. How does the transference of souls into artifacts such as the Summoning Key and MPD work? Why do Primis experience a partly crossover of the psyche when entering another universe. What role has the Aether in all this? I am also very curious to the whereabouts of a soul between death and rebirth.

[RadZakpak]

Very interesting topic!

 

About your Maxis quote:

Quote

“EDWARD AS YOU KNOW IT IS IMPERATIVE YOU AND THE GROUP FIND THE EXACT VERSIONS OF YOURSELVES THAT I HAVE HIGHLIGHTED IN EACH UNIVERSE ONLY BY KILLING THAT VERSION OF YOURSELF IN THAT PARTICULAR UNIVERSE AT THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME WILL WE BE SUCCESSFUL ONCE EACH OF YOUR OTHER SELVES ARE KILLED ACROSS ALL UNIVERSES REMEMBER WE ARE ONLY IMMUNE BECAUSE WE OPENED THE PORTAL IN FRANCE BUT I AM AFRAID THIS MIGHT NOT BE PERMANENT I FEAR THERE IS SOMETHING M ISN T TELLING ME AND THAT THERE IS NOT MUCH TIME LEFT FOR US”

Now obviously he does not mean at any EXACT point in time because Primis tends to come to terms with the deaths shortly before each time, and there are delays that prevent them from arriving at any exact point, like Nikolai fighting back, Dempsey asking to do it himself, Takeo wanting to do it himself. By particular moment in time, Maxis could mean that the situation each of them is in is the situation where they have their immortal soul because the immortal soul does not stay at any one place at any one time.

 

What would cause the immortal soul to transfer between dimensions exactly? Upon death the immortal soul is transferred to another living body across the multiverse that needs it. We have to remember time isn't always linear when you look at it from the Aether's perspective. This is essentially reincarnation. Nikolai dies in a fracture, then that soul is transferred to the newborn Nikolai of another dimension, who lives his whole life before being transferred again. It's possible before the invention of teleportation which split the multiverse that reincarnation existed within one universe, which would explain multiple Pablos and multiple Primises in D63. However, with Primis we still run into a chicken or the egg paradox.

 

Looking at the situations that Dempsey, Takeo, and Nikolai were in when their souls were harvested, we may get an idea why Maxis specified these versions at these times. Takeo and Nikolai were surely on their way to death at the time. Takeo's body was being used by the plants that had controlled the island, and was barely alive when he was found. Nikolai was alone fighting in Stalingrad, not really caring whether he lived or died. The dragons would have likely destroyed his mech, killing him. What about Dempsey? We don't know a whole lot about the Deceptio fracture and what was going to happen to Dempsey on the Moon. It's possible his rocket was going to explode before it arrived. Or, with Richtofen gone there may have been a contingency plan where Griffin Station scientists would have to destroy him after a certain amount of time. We don't know the full story, but it must have been similar to Takeo and Nikolai's situations for him to be chosen.

 

Now also notice that Maxis says after successfully collecting the souls: 

Quote

ONCE EACH OF YOUR OTHER SELVES ARE KILLED ACROSS ALL UNIVERSES REMEMBER WE ARE ONLY IMMUNE BECAUSE WE OPENED THE PORTAL IN FRANCE BUT I AM AFRAID THIS MIGHT NOT BE PERMANENT

It seems the plan is that once they return to the house with the souls who are now children, all of their other selves across dimensions will be killed, thus preventing them from wreaking havoc across the dimensions. What makes harvesting the eternal soul so important, though? Without it, the soul of that being cannot be reincarnated in another dimension or within its own, and thus they never existed.

[anonymous]

27 minutes ago, RadZakpak said:

What makes harvesting the eternal soul so important, though? Without it, the soul of that being cannot be reincarnated in another dimension or within its own, and thus they never existed.

Now that is a very interesting idea I havent thought about myself. Indeed, once a soul is scrapped, or prevented from hopping to another dimension/rebirth after death (which might be the fundament behind the existence of the House: a Soul's prison), the character will not be reborn and removed from existence. 

 

Another thing: at the end of Blood, Richthofen mentions Nikolai being the only one still having a soul, as Gorod Krovi hasn't happened yet. He says it is vital he keeps it. Does he speak of 'him', referring to Ultimis Nikolai (who has a soul), or really to Primis Nikolai, to who is been spoken. Because if the latter is the case, it appears that Primis originally has a soul as well. I have a theory for this:

 

Monty noted that before the methaphorical hammer slammed, a Multiverse already existed, with all universes coexisting linear.

Spoiler

Left, the different universes can be seen. Right, the depiction could be the different realms/layers, one of them Earth, Agartha, Aether. Another possibility is that these are the original universes and the left depicts the fractures.

Dimension 63 was just as much a real universe as the Original Universe. Both universes might've had humans with souls. It was the creation of fractures, Agonia, Proditione, Deceptio, etc, that made the souls jump between dimensions, and some dimensions not having souls, as the souls could only take one 'path' once a split occures.. So if this would be the case, both Primis and Ultimis originally had souls, but connected since it were different versions of the same, and when one soul is collected (Ultimis), the other becomes soulless too (Primis). Monty's goal was to erase them from reality and lock off all unperfected realms.