Reincarnations, the infinite.

Chapter VI - In the real world

Eddie had realized that he needed to remember something very important, and only then could he be free from his "curse." Moreover, that thing about past and future was becoming increasingly confusing. How could his "present" be the past, and the future be the present? Was his life nothing more than a simple memory? And what if he decided to do everything differently? What would happen to the future? And if he couldn't do anything different because it had already happened? Yes, I know, these are questions that, as Nakata, his best friend, used to say in bar conversations, "give brain cramps"!

The days that passed were somewhat normal in Eddie's new routine. He had become a bit more introspective than usual. After all, the constant question that he didn't want to silence was: what did he have to remember? His wife Samantha constantly complained that he was very distant and had changed a lot. She still didn't know about his "visions." For her, as well as for others, he had just had a nervous breakdown and now it was under control. Few people knew the truth. What worried her the most was that Eduardo had changed a lot. That skeptical, calm, yet studious and even a bit "nerdy" guy now woke up at 6:00 a.m. to practice kung fu before going to work; only ate vegan food (that is, without any animal intervention) and attended spiritual centers. All of this was very cool, but where was her husband?

Eddie knew that his wife didn't like the changes. That's why he wanted answers as quickly as possible to be the husband and father he should be. However, his duties as a citizen also continued. He had to work.

During the week, a job came up that required the young lawyer to travel to the bustling state capital – São Paulo. Luckily, Nakata was going to the same city and decided to give him a ride. During the trip, an interview with a certain Marlon Lusk was playing on the radio. According to Nakata, this guy was like a real-life Tony Stark, the Iron Man. He was a multibillionaire entrepreneur who always invented cool things. Currently, Mr. Lusk was on a mission to send humans to Mars. At a technology congress in Massachusetts, USA, he said that according to the laws of probability and statistics, we might be living in a simulated reality, just like the acclaimed movie Matrix. He said it was a very small chance that we are in a "real" life. That subject seemed crazy even to Eddie, who ended up falling asleep during the trip. During his sleep, a dream came to disturb his mind. It was such a lucid dream that it seemed real. For a brief moment, Eduardo thought it was another one of his incarnations, but something didn't add up. This time he saw the world through the eyes of a teenage girl, and the chronological time was very close to what they were experiencing. It couldn't be one of his incarnations. There was no time. What Eduardo saw in detail was:

Amanda was sixteen years old and homophobic. On that fateful day, the girl was angry with her Portuguese teacher, Mr. Rodolfo, who had asked her to defend same-s*x marriage in front of the whole class in a debate. The worst part was that her opponent, Sarah, was a girl who "liked girls," and for her, it was "okay" to play the opposite role this time: act as if she were against same-s*x marriage after the teacher's speech.

– The idea I want from you is: I'm not the owner of the truth! What you believe is not a dogma, that is, an unquestionable truth that everyone must follow. I must have empathy, which is understanding others' feelings and putting myself in the other's place. Why does someone think like this? Why does someone act in a certain way? That's what I want from you in this debate. At this moment, forget your inner and personal convictions. You must act as true devils' advocates!

Those words could be beautiful for some, however, they didn't convince Amanda. The girl was egocentric, and what mattered was what she thought. Others were wrong. In the debate, her classmate started saying things from the Bible, like how man came to stand by the woman, created from his rib to be his companion, his pair. She wasn't made from the feet to be inferior, nor from the head to be superior. Man and woman to procreate and conquer the world! Amanda counterargued, saying that love in any form should be valid. However, the girl's impatience to convince made her get all tangled up with the species' procreation issue, agreeing with her opponent, and finally losing the debate. Pietra, Amanda's best friend, laughed at her companion's misfortune. The girl's fiery gaze flew across the room to her friend, thinking that those arguments from her opponent had been said countless times by her mother in their domestic conversations. At that moment, Amanda wished she had paid a little more attention to what her mother said, but she thought it was all nonsense. Foolishness told in church on weekends to empty the pockets of weak-minded people:

– Oh! I don't defend this idea at all. What matters is what I think. I won't change my mind...

The other classmates also laughed at Amanda losing control completely, except for Sarah, her opponent, who just gave a slight awkward smile. The bell rang, and all the students left in a hurry while the teacher made some inaudible comments due to the chaos at the end of that last class on a sunny Friday.

The girl lived only with her mother, Simone, in the city of Campinas. Simone always said that the father had abandoned them, and he died some time later due to some vice or illness he had. Amanda didn't remember the story very well.

Every day, religiously, the girl would come home with the same sour face, lie down on the sofa, and grab her cell phone at an incredible speed typical of a Wild West gunslinger. Today was no different, and her mother appeared, as usual, through the kitchen door with the yelling:

– Shouldn't you have cleaned your room yesterday? What are you doing here? Can you go upstairs and fix that mess now!!!

– Oh, Mom! Stop being annoying! Get a boyfriend to take care of his own life and leave me alone!

The discussion was interrupted by a sudden stop from the mother. She fainted and fell flat on the floor. The girl panicked, not knowing what had happened and even less what to do, went out into the street looking for the first stranger, shouting between sobs and cries for help...

Ten hours had passed in the hospital waiting room. Amada couldn't stand the wait anymore since her mother had been admitted without any news. Unable to resist any longer, the girl sneaked into the patient wing when nobody was paying attention. After walking for a while, the typical hospital smell she thought she had gotten used to became stronger in her nostrils, reminding her that she simply hated hospitals. She continued until she came across a door that couldn't be opened by just anyone, equipped with a sensorized lock to prevent the entry of unwanted people. Suddenly, a nurse hurriedly emerged from the opposite door that the girl had come from and swiped a badge from her pocket on the mechanism of that door that blocked Amanda's passage. The nurse quickly entered, leaving the door wide open to close by itself through an automatic system. The girl seized the opportunity and sneaked into the new corridor, full of new rooms and a staircase. The notice for the terminal patients' ward - the ICU, was highlighted. She didn't want to entertain this possibility, but her instincts urged her to follow that path... And she was right, although in this single moment in life, she wished she were wrong. Amanda caught her mother, very weakened, talking to the doctor at the moment he pronounced:

– ...you are dying of ovarian cancer...

– NO!!! Mom! – the girl interrupted, bursting into the room.

The doctor looked at the situation and simply concluded:

– Well, you have a lot to talk about. I'll leave you alone. If you need me, Mrs. Simone, ask the nurse to call me.

In the following months, mother and daughter stayed together and became one, as if nothing could separate them. The mother departed from this world on a cold autumn afternoon, full of gusts of wind that seemed never to end. The mother's last words, engraved in the girl's memory, were about the revelation that the father was still alive:

– Look for your father. His name is Alan, and he lives in São Paulo. He never abandoned you; I expelled him from home for betraying me.

Amanda spent a few days with her mother's friends to recover, however, the girl wanted to frantically search for her father. In the computer class, along with her friend Pietra, they checked every possible social network to find relatives and acquaintances, but found nothing. The girl remembered that she had her mother's password for a more accessible social network. She logged in, and after a long search and a few shouts from the teacher later to leave that kind of site, she found a distant uncle who might know her old man's whereabouts. The girl only had time to send a quick message before the teacher kicked her out of the room for disobedience.

A few days later, Amanda received the response on her cellphone. Her uncle knew her father and had contact with some of his relatives. He wasn't fond of the internet, but the uncle gave her the physical address and encouraged the girl to go after him.

Amanda and her friend Pietra took the six o'clock bus and went to São Paulo. Upon arriving in the state capital, they headed to the designated address, thanks to the map program on her cellphone. It was a beautiful building, and the doorman didn't allow the girls to enter. Pietra, despite being seventeen, looked like a well-formed woman, making many older women envious of her. The lovely girl initiated a more suggestive conversation with the doorman, catching his interest. Amanda took advantage of the man's distraction to go up when a couple arrived a few minutes later. The girl went to the twelfth floor, rang the doorbell, and her heart raced. The door finally opened. A handsome man, tall, with dark hair, and that American actor aura made the girl tremble and stammer, hoping he wasn't her father:

– A-are you Mr. A-Alan?

– No, my dear. Alan is in the shower; I am Luciano. What do you want? – he replied with a deep voice that made the girl tremble even more. However, Amanda regained her composure, let her face show the blush on her cheeks, and inquired:

– I'm his daughter! And who are you?

Before the man could answer, another slightly graying man, with an athletic body for his age, only in a towel but obviously older than the first, approached and said:

– Daughter? Amanda? Come in! This is a friend of daddy's!

The girl knew the truth from that moment. What the betrayal was about and all the hatred her mother had fed for all these years about him. The girl ran away from there and met Pietra at the agreed-upon place, a bar around the corner. The two decided to get drunk, a remedy for everything since then. The girl was crazed with anger at her father. Cursed be he. Exchange her beautiful mother for another man? She couldn't believe what her eyes had seen. Her father was a homosexual!

They drank all night and almost did things they might regret when sobriety set in. The next day, the father found her with some difficulty and tried to explain:

– I won't lie to you. Luciano is my partner since I separated from your mother. However, I never abandoned you. I always sent money to her and looked at your photos through my partner's social networks. I was an insecure guy for a long time. Unhappy with the marriage and making your mother unhappy too. Maybe I acted wrongly, but I moved on with my life. Your mother should have done the same with her life too. I'm sorry for the tragic fate she had. What matters now is that she gave you a second chance. Wherever she is, she is giving us a second chance. In the end, she told me that you would come. Come live with me and see life through my eyes. I promise you won't regret it.

The girl held her father's hand firmly, looked into his eyes, and replied:

– NO!

No other word came from there. The father was speechless while Amanda released his hand. She crossed the busy street, held hands with Pietra, and went towards the horizon. The world would be little for them, in their full freedom, if it weren't for a tragedy that abruptly interrupted their story. An out-of-control car hit the two girls head-on, making Eduardo wake up suddenly from that crazy dream.

*

– DUDE! I just had the craziest dream ever. It was like I was someone else and felt the same as her too. I saw the whole world through her eyes! – Eduardo shouted as soon as he woke up, startling Nakata.

– JESUS! Do you want to scare me to death? Or better, do you want both of us to die here in a car accident? Isn't this your crazy thing about time travel or something?

Eduardo crossed himself after the words "car accident" came out of his friend's mouth. And then he told the whole dream in detail, making it clear that it was different from his "travels." He felt a cry for help coming from there. In the end, Nakata simply replied:

– Ah man, instead of trying to save the world as you always say, why not try to save just one person's world? After all, the world ends for those who

leave. For those who stay, the world still continues. It always continues in one way or another. No matter what happens, those who stay suffer the most!

Nakata's speech ended just in time for them to stop the car in a metropolis parking lot. Eduardo remained silent and only opened his mouth again when they stopped in front of the town hall, having an even stranger vision that mixed dream with reality. A man in a black overcoat was fighting on the street with various humanoid creatures blackened like shadows, all similar to a science fiction movie. Eduardo turned his head and said to Nakata:

– Wow, that's cool, this movie they're playing around here! Look at the choreography of the guy in the overcoat!

– Where? – Nakata replied. – Man, teach me how to do that thing you do. I always miss these cool visions of yours...

– Dude... Would you be upset with me if I asked to stop by the spiritual center soon?