Reborn Gamer

Chapter I: The Goddess Athena

I know you
e not going to believe me, but this is the truth. It sounds crazy and insane, but every word I tell you is nothing but the truth. Its going to sound fantastic, insane, unbelievable, and everything else you can say about it.

But its the truth and theres plenty of evidence if you know where to look. I know what you
e going to say; ”Evidence? Of reincarnation? Thats impossible. ” Not at all. There is plenty of proof throughout history. Take Dorthy Eady, for instance. A British woman who claimed she lived in Ancient Egypt as a priestess in the Cult of Isis. She has given a convincing account of her life before.

Then theres the account of the Oklahoma boy, Ryan, who lived in the golden age of cinema as Marty Martyn. James Leininger was a Louisiana boy who claimed to be a World War II fighter pilot shot down over Iwo Jima.

There are other accounts of people claiming to be reborn. Or reincarnated. Whatever it is that you would like to call it.

Thats what happened to me, though my account may differ slightly from those listed above. Before I died, I was Jacob Hansen, a boy born in the first year of the 1970s. It was a great time to be alive and Im glad I got to live through the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and the early 2000s.

My first memory was watching my father as he played Computer Space and Galaxy Game, some of the earliest video games to ever be released. My mother died in childbirth, so I never knew her. Maybe if I had, my life would have been different, but only gods can turn back the hands of time and none of them want to do me any favors.

My father loved my mother with all his heart and he did his best to cope with her death. He was a gentle and kind man, so he never turned to the bottle. Instead, he grew to love video games. Thats where my early fascination with the medium comes from, and I think thats where you can look if you want to see the point that set my life on the path I lived.

My father loved me and he did his best to take care of me as a single dad. I don blame him for the person I became. Video games were my drugs, and I got addicted from a young age. I forsook the world to stare at a screen for most of my life. None of that can be blamed on my father.

He did love video games, so growing up, I too came to love them. Whenever new games were released in America, we would buy them. Some nights we would stay up until morning playing, then hed grumble and go to work and Id grumble and go to school. Those were good days and I didn release how much I treasured them until my dad passed away in 1989.

I was attending college in Austin Texas at the time and when I heard the news, I came straight back to Mayfield, Texas. In my time, Mayfield was only a small town, not the city that it would grow to become. It was a small town, the place I spent my childhood and the place I lost my father.

My father left him his savings, his house, and everything else of value. I dropped out of college to attend to his affairs, setting everything in order. None of our relatives attended his funeral.

After everything was done, I sold his house. I couldn bare to stay in that house, filled with memories of my father at every corner. It was too painful. So I sold it and used the money to move to Seattle. I wouldn live there today, but at the time the city was exactly what I wanted and needed. An escape.

My dad left me with plenty of money and when I sold his house, I had even more. He left me with stalks and investments, enough to assure me that I would never have to work again. If I was frugal, I was set.

I paid rent for my shitty little apartment, I bought food and soda to keep me going, and when I needed to, I would buy equipment. Games were everything to me then, so thats what I spent most of my money on.

I became a shut-in and I let myself go. My hygiene took a turn for the worst, I only took showers when I left my apartment, or when my body became too itchy or sticky. I hardly washed any of my clothes, because I didn wear any unless I went outside. There was a pizza restaurant and a grocery store nearby that would deliver, so I called and had everything I needed brought to me. The only time I set foot out of my rat-infested cage was when I wanted to buy a new game or a new console.

The PlayStation 1 didn impress me that much. I was a Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn guy, but then the PlayStation 2 came out on October 26th in North America and it changed my world. To this day, it remains my favorite system and I think if my father was still alive, hed love it. I remember spending days just playing Dynasty Warriors 2, Eternal Ring, Evergrace, Midnight Club, Smugglers Run, and so many other games. It was a new month of insanity that I have rarely experienced.

It only broke a year later with the release of the original Xbox. PlayStation 2 is my favorite console, but the original Xbox is a very close second. Halo, my favorite game series, was a launch title and I sunk more hours into that game than any other game. Baring Primal Vale, of course.

When the Xbox 360 came out in 2005, I order it and had it the very first day, along with a few launch titles. By that time my apartment was becoming too cluttered with games and consoles to move without risking stepping on something and breaking it. I got storage and put all my old consoles and games in it, putting it on a plan to take money out of my account every month to pay for it.

Then I played the 360 for all it was worth, never leaving my apartment except to pick up games. I was falling further and further into my little world and Im sure even my father, who loved video games, would be concerned. He was the one who pushed me to go to college in the first place. He didn want me to waste my life, but thats what happened.

I died in 2006, a few days before the PlayStation 3 was set to come out. I had pre-ordered it because I was me, so of course, I did. I had a heart attack before I could ever lay eyes on it. The years of sitting in a dirty apartment eating junk food had caught up with me at last.

And that was that. The pitiful excuse for a human that was Jacob Hansen died in 2006, thirty-six years after he was born. He contributed nothing to his country, the world, or society. He died in his dark apartment, unloved by any living person

Anyone except for the neighbor girl who loved video games as much as Jacob did. He left everything to little Eryn and he hoped she would get use out of his games and his money. Everything he owned was left to her.

And so our story comes to an end. Pathetic Jacob Hansen died as he lived, alone. That should be the end of it, right?

In his thirty-two years of life, Jacob had never seen anything that would lead him to believe that God existed. Not just the Abrahamic one, but no God or gods or any higher power. Creation was a series of random mutations in a universe full of chance and anarchy. We, humans, had no special place in the universe, any more than another alien species did.

Earth could support life and we got lucky. Thats all there was to it. Everyone only got one life and when you died you were just dead. There wasn any higher power looking down at you, there was no heaven or hell, there was just the void. Darkness. Oblivion. Your body rotted where it was left or you were burned to ashes. You ceased to exist.

I was sure that was what happened after death. There was regret there at the end. As the darkness closed and my vision faded, I remembered my fathers smiling face. How he would tell me stories about my mother, who was such a beautiful person and so full of life. I remember spending hours at the arcade with my dad, learning how to play video games. My dad… God, I missed him so much.

I had let my life slip past me and there was regret there for that too. I didn do anything my dad expected of me, I closed myself off from the world and lived in places created by video games. That was something I was just going to have to live with.

I wished there was an afterlife. I wanted to tell my dad how sorry I was.

And so I died and that was that.

Then I found myself sitting in front of a beautiful woman. We were in the middle of a majestic meadow that stretched as far as the eye could see. Tre