Volume 1: «Preparation»
Chapter 2: «The Result»
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The seventeenth of April, nine hundred and fifty-seven years from the creation of the Council of the Great Clans. Today is truly a great day, a boy named Aaron is seven years old.
— The ritual was a success," the child said nervously, glancing around at his surroundings and his shrunken limbs. — Not the way I'd planned, though... Perhaps it was for the best.
That's right, in his body there is another soul, or should I say even two...
— Andrew," said Aaron thoughtfully, then nervously scratched the back of his head. — It turns out that his soul was absorbed in the process. Astonishing...
The essence of the ritual was to return to the past, but the actions taken in the process were extremely inventive and partly insane...
Time is like a stream of water that is constantly moving forward, so it is impossible to calculate the coordinates of the movement, as in the creation of a spatial portal. Each passing moment changes the coordinates of the entrance, hence the coordinates of the exit will also be deformed...
Simply put, only a god can swim against the current, going back in time... Moving into the future in general is absolute nonsense, because it is not clear where exactly to open the portal, because the necessary coordinates, in principle, do not exist ... How can you find something that will only appear in the future while being in the past?
Aaron was not a god, but he had to return. Otherwise, he would only face imminent death, followed by the death of many people who would be caught in the explosion of unstoppable necrotic energy...
In the course of his research and various experiments, he came to the conclusion that in order to overcome the flow of time, it is necessary to somehow exit from this very flow...
The only way to get out of the time stream is to move to another one. Into another universe... To another time stream, unrelated to the present one.
Finding the coordinates itself, another one that fits the conditions of the universe, is one big problem. Despite all the difficulties, Aaron succeeded, he calculated the coordinates of the neighboring universe, which lacked such a useful and necessary thing as magical energy.
The coordinates he calculated were purely theoretical at first, the experiment with the movement of animals succeeded, but showed questionable results — they moved, but did not manage to survive... It turned out that moving between universes while possessing a physical body is possible, but it doesn't work quite correctly...
The fact is that the human body exists according to the laws of its universe, and then what happens to this very body, in the case of moving to another universe, with different laws?
Everything is simple enough and unambiguous, it will turn into dust, because of impossibility of its existence according to laws of this new universe, probably not at once, but it will inevitably happen after a certain period of time. This time interval depends directly on how different are the laws of both universes.
The soul works differently, it is universal, and theoretically should, quite, comfortably move both in time and between universes, because the soul has the ability to exist outside of time. This is where the main hitch of the whole genius plan comes in...
Let's assume that the soul has moved, in this case, temporal and spatial coordinates do not play a role, it is enough just to get to another universe... Now, how to return it to the previous universe, and preferably to a certain point in time?
There is no easy way, in this case... After all, the soul is not able to function in the physical world, without the physical body it needs.
Faced with such a difficult problem, Aaron did not give up, and continued to look for ways to solve it...
In the course of his research, he determined that the soul has a certain attachment to the physical body in which it must exist. This attachment occurs differently in different species of living beings, so for maximum efficiency and personal benefit, Aaron studied this phenomenon only in humans.
In general, spiritual attachment to the body occurs at the moment when seven years have passed since the birth of the individual, with the accuracy almost to the moment... Apparently, during these seven years there is a process of purification of the soul from what is left in it from the previous life, probably from the ego and memories. Aaron has never been able to come to any definite conclusion.
This discovery allowed him to suppose that he could return to his universe using the binding of the soul to the physical body as a certain coordinate. But that didn't solve another problem... How, being in an alien universe, and not being able to function without a physical body, the soul should start the process of moving to that very coordinate?
Therefore, the only possibility was to take over the body, so to speak, of the aboriginal, and for this purpose it was possible to determine the coordinate of movement to another universe of any living being. Then, just a brief moment in another's body was enough to trigger the process of moving back to one's own universe, by the time the soul was bound to the body. Having moved, the soul was simply to be replaced.
The last detail was magical energy, which according to the laws of the other universe cannot be produced and stored in a physical body. Also, its use is extremely limited, even after successful application of magical energy, the body most likely would not withstand such a load and would die.
However, magical energy is energy born by the soul and produced as a result of existence in a body capable of using it. In addition, the soul is able to store a limited amount of magical energy, which, in principle, is enough to implement the plan...
— Thus, as a result of the most complicated magical ritual, my soul found itself in my body from the past, when I was seven years old... — summed up Aaron. — And it also absorbed the soul of Andrew, whose body I used to start the process of returning to my universe.