MA-30 The End! (Patreon)

One year later.

I brought out the birthday cake with eleven candles arranged on top of the pink frosting.

“Here’s the birthday cake!” I set it down and started lighting the candles as the girls all giggled and laughed climbing up onto chairs at the dinner table in our small apartment.

“Ooh, Tiny Little Ponies are my favorite!” Jessie said, grinning. I loved seeing her smile, loved seeing her happy for the first time in a long time.

It had been a rough year. The metempsychosis apotheosis event had been the single most catastrophic accident in human history. Nearly everyone the world over had been transmigrated into another body. Strangely, it only affected humans, not other animals.

“Happy Birthday To You!” I sang. The children and other parents joined in. “Happy Birthday, to you!”

Jessie beamed at me, the lights from the flickering candle making her light blue eyes dance.

“Happy Birthday dear Jessica, Happy Birthday, to you!”

She smiled and blew out the candles. Everyone cheered.

I cut the cake into equal portions, then began ladling them onto paper plates to be handed out.

“She’s so adorable,” Jinny Thomas said, taking a plate. “You’re raising such a wonderful child.”

“Aww, thank you.” I handed out more plates. The girls giggled and talked at the table each one appeared happy and glad to be at Jessie’s party.

Three of the girls had been older women, one much older just a year prior. Studies showed that adults swapped into younger children shortly became children in mind as well as body. The intellect never disappeared, but the immature brain was unable to comprehend advanced concepts. They appeared perfectly capable of relearning, so the ‘new children’ as they were called, adapted and were fostered by loving ‘parental figures.’

The world had undergone an evolution in the last year. Gone were any race or class tensions. When Uncle Albert was suddenly LaShonda, the woman across the street, racial disparity had virtually disappeared.

Gender constructs around work and home also had disappeared overnight. Women now earned the same as men, trans-people could be re-homed into gender aligned bodies, and age discrimination was a thing of the past.

That was the bright side.

The dark side — overnight, the Lord Mallory Patent was worth it’s weight in platinum or whatever the current cyber-currency was. Transmigration studios were as common as fast food restaurants as everyone immediately wanted to swap into their original body, or into a more id-aligned body.

Except for us.

Apparently, being in the center of the cyclone did something to our minds and souls. We could no longer be placed into any other body. I had tried to have Jessica placed into a more age-aligned body, but the swapping apparatus treated her like a piece of furniture. It was as if we didn’t exist to the transmigration process.

Which, in the scheme of things, wasn’t that bad.

I was Madeline Barnett, divorced single mother of Jessica Barnett. We lived in Prescott Arizona, and I worked as an insurance agent for Prescott City Insurance.

Jessie rarely spoke about our previous lives. She remembered them, distantly, but she was excited to be a child again and learning how to succeed in this changed world.

She giggled, happily as she opened her presents.

“Ooh, your own purse!” I said. “Now you have something to put your makeup in!”

She rolled her eyes at me and gave me the look. She looked at me like that when I was laying on the mother to little girl act a little too convincingly.

Stephen had been flipped into a male intern’s body. He reached out to me at one point, hoping maybe I was ready to reconcile, but I ignored his texts and calls.

Ex-Muritious disappeared the night of the Apotheosis. He wasn’t among the casualties, and he never revealed himself if he was among the swapped. He could be in another body and ‘playing the part,’ which is what multitudes of people had done. Inmates from government incarceration facilities had found themselves in other bodies. Rather than expose who they had been, they chose to try to blend in with the world. Some had apparently found success, others had been exposed.

OriginID was a new term for the body you had been born into. We all had OriginID information associated with any federal or local state government information. They’d been able to identify a ‘soulprint’ a unique frequency oscillation for each individual human soul. Since people could change bodies frequently, it became imperitive for the government to keep tabs on its inhabitant.

My OriginID read ‘Joyce Reagan,’ however. Robert Adamson had been tagged while I had been in Joyce’s body.

Sometimes the ‘who was whom’ gave me a headache.

“You okay, Mommy?” Jessie asked, looking up at me. She wore a multicolored party dress and a silver tiara from the Tiny Little Ponies cartoon series.

“Yes, baby. Just a bit tired.”

“I can tell everyone to go home if you need rest.”

“Aww, no baby. I’m happy you’re having a nice time.”

“It really is fun.” She smiled. “Debbie said I can go to her party next week, too!”

“Congratulations, sweetheart!”

She twirled and was gone, running to be with her friends.

***

After everyone had gone home, and I had done the dishes and cleaned up the last of the mess, I flopped down on the couch. Jessie played with some of her new toys on the floor.

I triggered the television and watched the last of the news. The world had been digging out from under the rubble left from the Apotheosis. World governments had combined to assist each other with aid and support with rebuilding. Mental and spiritual counseling had skyrocketed as more and more people delved into their identities and who they were, under the skin.

Jessie climbed up onto the couch next to me and slid under my arm.

“Did you have a nice birthday?”

“Yes, Mommy. It was the best day of my life!”

I smiled, ruffling her hair. We’d had it cut a bit shorter since the Apotheosis. “I’m glad.”

“Wanna know why it was the best day of my life, Mommy?”

“Of course.”

“Because all the other days are in the past. This is the day that happened now.”

I liked that. “You are wise beyond your years.”

“I know!” she giggled

“Do you ever miss...”

“Mommmyyyy, you know I don’t like to talk about that stuff.”

“I know, but I just wondered.”

“No, Mommy, I don’t miss it. Does that make you sad?”

I looked down at her. She stared at me with those blue eyes, her blond curls in a tussle from the days events. She had frosting at the corners of her mouth, and she still wore the tiara I had given her.

“A little,” I said. “I miss Karyn, sometimes.”

She nodded, threading her small hand with mine.

“But I am happy you’re not sad, though,” I said.

“My first childhood wasn’t very happy.”

I nodded, squeezing her hand.

“My dad was an asshole, and he made me hate myself.”

This was information she’d never shared with me. Karyn’s childhood had always been something of a mystery. I knew her mother, but had never met her father.

“It’s part of the reason I got into social media. I craved the attention.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Mommy, you’re giving me the childhood I always dreamed of. I never had a birthday party like this. Not with friends, and cake, and a tiara.”

I smiled, toying with her hair. “Not a tiny ponies party?”

“No!” She stood on the couch, and put her arms around my neck looking into my eyes. “And I will never forget this, either Mommy.”

“I’m glad baby.”

“You are the best Mommy in the whole world!” She hugged me tightly.

“And you are the best little girl.”

She giggled and pulled away. “Think I’m going to go to bed now.”

“Alright, baby. Go get ready for bed, and I’ll be in to read you a story.”

“Brush my teeth?”

“Yes, brush your teeth.”

She scooted herself off the couch, and I heard her going down the hall and into the bathroom.

Sighing, I looked around at our small apartment. It wasn’t the life I had originally planned to have with Karyn. I wanted to have children with her, not raise her as a child. But at least we were together, healthy, and happy.

And that’s how we would stay.

<the end>