So I sat on the threadbare bedspread in my small rented room and tried to figure it out.
Observation #1: I had been shot dead many times over the past several days.
Observation #2: The bullets not only made a mess of my body, but of my clothing, including my jacket.
Observation #3: When I re-incorporated, not only did I get a hale and healthy body with no injuries, but as the Professor so helpfully pointed out, my apparel was also returned to an unblemished condition.
Question: How did my “resurrection” ability work, that it not only put me in a healthy body, but mended my clothes as well?
It was, quite frankly, bizarre to me. So I broke it down further.
When I die, just like everyone else, my soul leaves my body, I mused. However, unlike anyone else, my soul does not immediately fall apart with nothing to contain it. Instead it simply floats around, under my control.
So far, so good. I continued.
At any time I wish, I can will myself back into a body, and when I do two things happen at once: I’m back inside a body that’s not injured, along with any clothing or items I had on my body when I died, while at the exact same time, my corpse and whatever was on it or from it vanishes – even including blood spatter. All gone.
I guess, now that I thought about it, the body I entered wasn’t my old body, but a brand new reconstruction of my body, perhaps using the ingredients of the old.
Then I had one of my inspirations, a eureka moment: When the Miami Mob shot me, I exited my body pretty quickly – but not before I was able to feel a moment of pain from my wounds. This had to mean that my body was wounded, but not yet dead, before I exited my body, killing it.
And yet when I reincorporated, there were no wounds on my rebuilt body.
My power was not rebuilding my body as it was when I died, but seconds previous to that moment.
My power rebuilt a past version of my body!
That’s was why my jacket was lacking bullet holes – my power instinctively rebuilt the version of it before it was shot!
But if I could rebuild a version of my body from seconds before I died, maybe… I dropped my body, took a breath, and popped back in.
Into my 20 year-old-self.
I ran into the bathroom, and witnessed myself from thirty years ago, staring back at me in the grimy mirror.
Holy crap. And if I could do it to myself, I could do it to other people too, I was sure.
I could do more than kill, I was a living fountain of youth!!
The Arbiter of not just death, Life and Death.
Because it was so weird being in my young body, I killed myself off again and jumped back into my fifty year old self.
I wonder if this was why I was losing weight dramatically? No more diets needed for me!
I had another idea, but this test would require some more apparel, and I wasn’t keen on either leaving my briefcase full of money here, nor attracting attention walking all around with it. The money inside was in banded stacks of a hundred, all twenty-dollar bills. Each stack was therefore $2,000, and I had 25 stacks in the case. (Well, I had spent most of one stack, so 24 stacks left.)
I took those 24 stacks out of the case, and put them under the mattress, then hugging the now empty case to me I astralled to a nearby grocery store, taking care not to be seen as I bodied back up. After chucking the empty case into a nearby river and watching it sink, I went into the store and bought some snacks – and while I was peckish, it was the paper bag I was after.
Clutching the bag and snacks to myself, I popped back to my room, put the snacks on the small, sad, bedside table, and pulled the stacks of twenties back out and put them in the paper bag.
I spent the better part of the next hour visiting several different banks, asking each one to turn five of my stacks of twenties into a single stack of hundreds. When I was done, I looked for and found a new hooded jacket with several interior pouches; I also picked up a money belt. Astralling back to my room, I took my newly consolidated cash and squirreled it away on my person.
Now for the experiment! I put on my old jacket, and tore a big rip in it. After another drop and pop – drop dead, and then re-pop back into a new body, that is – I was wearing the unripped jacket again.
I had confirmed it – I could restore anything or anyone – provided, if a thing, that it was wholly not more than four to six inches from a remade body.
How incredibly fascinating!
I checked the clock, and I still had forty-five minutes before I was due to meet H again. And then I had another thought, an idea – would it be possible to turn back the clock on some things in my body but not others? To, for example, get back the even longer hair I had in my thirties while keeping my fifty-year-old body?
I dropped and popped again. My body stayed the same age. My hair went down to almost the small of my back.
I even tried another pop and drop to see if I could simply will myself to have the body I envisioned instead of one I had once had – I tried to make myself five inches taller. That didn’t work. I could seemingly only rebuild and restore a past reality.
And it suddenly dawned on me what I could now do. I popped and dropped one final time and ran into the bathroom.
I almost wept with relief.
Every tooth was back where it should be.