As I came to, ice-cold blood rushed into my veins like I’d been raised from the dead. My muscles cramped and my head stung like I’d been bashed in the head with a mallet. It took me a moment for the world to stop spinning and for my eyes to start focusing again.
Getting up from the bedroom floor it occurred to me that I had no recollection of how I’d ended up there. The rug under my feet was stained with blood in a thick, moist circle - the smell of iron giving it away instantly. I realized that my shirt was also drenched in blood, although it had mostly dried off already, giving the formerly white t-shirt a very morbid tie-dye treatment.
With the slight beginnings of panic brewing in my dislocated mind, I started walking towards the bedroom door to check if anyone else was here when my foot coincided with something hard, giving my pinky toe a solid uppercut, the pain making me lift the leg up as if it had to flee from its opponent.
It was a handgun. The make and model were not familiar to me, but as I picked it up it contoured itself smoothly to my hand, its coarse and cold handle a sensory delight for my palm and fingers. As I examined it, something inside its metallic mechanism clicked, and its magazine fell to the ground. Giving it a closer look, it looked almost full, like there could still be space for one more round.
Wait, had I been shot?
Frantically I started patting my body like I was giving myself a strip search. I sighed in relief as I found no holes, blood fountains or other indication that a bullet had penetrated my body. But that brung upon an even alarming question.
Whose blood was I wearing?
Slowly, and looking at the ground more carefully this time, I made my way to the door and opened it. I could see the rest of the small apartment clearly from my vantage point. Hallway to my left, leading outside the apartment, a half-opened door to the bathroom a few feet down the hall. Living room and kitchen in front of me, tied together by a small bar. Minimal decor and only essential furniture: a couch, TV, bookshelf. I walked around the quiet apartment, and finding no one else, I returned to the bedroom for no other reason besides that’s where I had woken up. That’s when the biggest question hit me.
Who was I?
I tried and tried to think of the subject, but there was no recollection or even a sliver of familiarity to the concept of ‘me’. It was like I was trying to think of an answer in the midst of an important test at school; although the question undoubtedly had an answer which I’d at some point known, I just couldn’t locate it in my mind, no matter how hard I tried. I sat down on the bed to think of something more useful. As my body weight shifted the mattress, something tiny slid across and touched my thigh just barely enough for me to notice. The object sparked familiarity; it was a USB stick.
With no other clues to go on, I picked up the laptop that was laying on the single nightstand next to the narrow bed and booted it up. Luckily for me, it wasn’t password protected, so I stuck the USB stick in and waited for the system to recognize it, hoping for some clue as to what was going on.
The screen flashed and the drive’s folder popped up. Inside it was only one file, called savepoint.txt.
I double-clicked the file, and for a short while nothing happened. For a second, I thought the system had crashed. Suddenly the laptop’s fans started to roar and the file flashed open in a jagged glitch. The text editing software was still loading pages as it opened, and after a minute or two the fans relented and no more pages were added to the tally. The final length for the document was 12,421 pages, and it began with the following paragraph.
“Your name is Alastair Stephen White, born to Bethany and Richard White on July 2nd 1987. You were born in the United States of America, in the state of Missouri, in the town of Jefferson City. Right now, you are in your own apartment, located in Topeka, Kansas. You live alone. You are safe there. There’s food and drink in the fridge - help yourself.
If you are reading this and have no recollection of the aforementioned information, it is deeply important that you study this document in full and internalize the information within. You may not remember who you are, but that can be relearned - a risk that I knew well to be probable, and that is why I’ve arranged this document for you. The text is formatted to be chronological, so as to reacquaint yourself with yourself in the same order as you had when you lived through the memories within.”
The text went on to describe certain physical traits (the shape of my ears, a few birthmarks) in great detail, which I confirmed to be accurate descriptions of my body. Although I was compelled by the text, it was hard to comprehend what it was for. Either way, whoever had written it had a very intimate knowledge of me physically, which therefore indicated that other aspects of the text held some modicum truth as well. After a few pages of further prologue regarding ‘my’ life, the author had written a long passage about my first memory.
“Your first memory was of a stroke of genius you had as a child, thereby relaying to your parents both their dim wits and your potential in matters of greatness. Thankfully they furthered your education and prospects thereafter.
You were between the ages of two and three, and you were watching Bethany in the kitchen as she cut cherry tomatoes one by one, dropping two halves at a time into the salad bowl. You saw the efficiency that she so horrifyingly lacked and your first real idea sparked itself to life. Bethany went to the other room for whatever, and you climbed up on a wooden stool to reach the countertop. You flipped the tomatoes onto the counter, bunching them up as you did so, and placed the cutting board on top of them. You laid the knife at the edge of the board, between the board and the countertop.
Once Bethany came back, she was confused and started to scold you for touching the knife. No, no NO, you thought, possibly rambling something childlike through your meek lips, and pointed at the tomatoes, not backing down to the wishes of dumb Bethany.
‘Oh,’ she said to herself, surprise in her voice. ‘I do it like this, I get a bunch more at a time. Clever,’ she mumbled to herself as the cogs in her brain finally caught up to speed. Bethany held the fruit in place with the cutting board as she slid the knife across two dozen tomatoes, cutting each one in half with one quick motion. ‘Is this what you meant for me to do, baby?’ she asked, turning to you. You nodded, victorious. This wouldn’t be the first time you had to convince others to do as you said, for you were different. Better.”
After that, the text held each memory that was supposedly mine, written down in great detail, beginning from childhood. How an apple I’d bitten into had a bug on it, fueling my interest in biology at an early age. How, on my first day of school, the teacher called my parents to tell them that I’d be more suited for an upper class, for my education to be more aligned with my skills and abilities. How the other kids wouldn’t play with me because I’d win at any game they’d throw at me. What my childhood home looked like, with all its nooks and crannies. How I felt when Jeremy from school had pantsed me in front of everyone at gym class. How I’d swore to find revenge through success and brilliance.
The level of specificity was so exceptional, it occurred to me that the only possible author for the document could be me. I’d been a child prodigy - someone clinically better than everyone around me - and I’d held others in contempt because of their lack of appreciation and understanding. A dissonance slowly grew in my mind as I read further, for I couldn’t relate to the ‘me’ that had written the document. I’ll be referring to the author as him from now on. He was brilliant, yet horrible.
The document quickly became nearly impossible to read - the man in the pages growing into a pompous prick, mostly boasting about his greatness and lamenting on how no one understood him. As he grew up, he slowly became more introverted and bitter. He couldn’t relate to other kids, teens, or even adults. He was lonely, hating the world for it, while the world hated him back not for his genius, but for being a self-righteous asshole. Although he’d excelled in most everything he did, nothing seemed to satisfy him.
I scrolled through large excerpts of text, occasionally skimming some in an attempt to decipher the egoistic babble within, until I wound up in his college years, wherein he finally started writing about something other than himself.
He’d started to study theology in college, taking random classes between his joyride of a major in biomedical engineering. He did it just for fun - and to be able to discredit religions with an in-depth view of their infrastructures and holy texts. Each religion and sect within - it was all inane to him; a morbid, practical joke thrust upon the weak minded.
That is until he read about the Bardo Thödol, a Tibetan buddhist funerary text, and for whatever reason, he immediately regarded the text in high acclaim. In short, the Bardo Thödol is recited to a dying person to guide them through death and into a successful rebirth. He said that the ancient text held astounding similarities to the principles of death and life within living organisms.
“They knew things in great detail we have only now uncovered through expensive, back-breaking research. The text is astonishing by all accounts, and its convoluted nature and lack of proper translation has kept it somewhat hidden from modern society.”
That was the beginning of his research, which he soon started calling project Savepoint. Below I’ve highlighted relevant passages from the document relating to his research for a chance at conveying his thought process, and how Bardo Thädol relates to what we know of death in modern times.
“– and so, there are three bardos, or gaps, when any living thing dies, and it must go through each one to achieve rebirth. The first bardo, also known as the moment of death, is essentially basic biology; the subject experiences hallucinations of luminosity and shapes, as well as vague, overall positive feelings. This is in part due to the neuroprotective activity of the brain’s serotonergic system.”
“During the second bardo, the subject is said to become reckoned with by ‘wrathful’ and ‘peaceful’ entities. This correlates directly with the fleeting moments of brain activity after death, wherein the brain releases a concoction of different chemicals in a fell swoop akin to tripping on mushrooms. Existential thoughts are often copious during such strong, mind-altering experiences, giving credence to the deities as innate human morality presenting itself in different physical forms, often called ‘good’ and ‘bad’”
“– and therefore the mystery lies within the last gap, sidpa bardo: rebirth. The sacred texts regarding the first and second bardo correlate directly with what we have come to know about death - an unprecedented finding in and of itself. For them to have had access to such information with such clear evidence would indicate that the third bardo exists as well, even if humanity has yet to uncover and quantify its existence in the realm of traditional science. During this phase, the subject is selected for rebirth among one of the six realms, all according to their karmic projection –”
“There are thousands of people who have been clinically dead, and then brought back to life. In some cases their return to the living world has come minutes after they’ve become braindead – and they return to their own body. At first it seemed a direct discordance within the teachings of the Bardo Thödol, but once I researched the most common attributes of experience from victims to such trauma, it all made perfect sense. The victims had accidentally bypassed their karmic projection, breaking the 49 day cycle, and wound up back to their own bodies – and what if I could recreate that scenario? What if I could make a surefire way of returning back to my body after death, thereby reaching near-immortality? Reverse the bodily harm which had taken the life? Once I reached this conclusion, it was just a matter of execution, preparement, and patience.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure if these were the ramblings of a lone genius gone mad, or something which could potentially be an actual scientific discovery. It was apparent that he had worked on his theory for years, slowly accumulating research as he found new translations of texts and built a vast collection of evidence. Weirdly enough, it started to make sense to me – although the hypothesis was outlandish, each piece of the puzzle supported one another. He was convinced that there was a system through which any person could prevent their death in the immediate moments after it has happened and return back to life, and frankly, I was beginning to be convinced as well.
He started spending less time on his actual studies, instead allocating most of his time on project Savepoint. Even so, he seemed to do fine in school, on account of his innate brilliance and lack of any social life. Other people were barely ever mentioned by name in the document, besides Bethany and Richard once each year when he’d go and visit them out of obligation. His ego seemed to become severely bloated, as evidenced by the following snippets. Although the text had been mostly written to ‘me’, it had slowly shifted into the first person, betraying its original intent of speaking to the reader directly.
“I am the catalyst. I will change the world. What should they call me? Perhaps the Immortal Man – no, that’s dumb. I’m not a superhero. At least I will get a Pulitzer prize –”
“No wonder I’ve felt social ineptitude. I should have realized. How could a God be entertained by man? Soon they will all see.”
After years of nonstop work, he concluded his research, and began to prepare for death. He wanted to be the first subject of project Savepoint, further proving that he needed no assistance from anyone except himself, and proving to himself that his theory held true.
It was evident that there might be complications along the process of death, and that is why he wrote the savepoint document. According to him, there was a significant chance that after death, when he came to, he’d have no memory of who he was, or what he had done during his life - his whole life swept under the rug.
That’s why he needed to write it down; to protect his legacy and his achievement. That’s why I was reading it right now: the proof that I, Alastair Stephen White, had killed myself and returned to life using a bastardized version of ancient knowledge. In case things went awry, he wanted me to learn to be him, so that I could share his legacy and live his life as accurately as possible.
Apparently the USB stick hadn’t been the only place he’d injected the document into. There were several more alongside hard drives throughout the house along with digital copies located in every device within the apartment. According to him, there was even a printed copy next to the bookshelf. The fridge was stocked, the upcoming month’s rent paid, and an alibi given to his parents and teachers. Scrolling down to the last page of the document, he revealed his final plan.
“Tonight, I will update the cloud-based files with this final version of savepoint.txt, and distribute plentiful copies of it around the apartment. I will take the gun and insert it into my mouth, pointing straight through my brain - the most surefire way of killing myself. If all goes according to plan, I will wake up at some point thereafter, returned from the dead, having successfully hacked the cycle of rebirth to target my own body instead of another.
This will be my savepoint. This document holds within it all that I am, and all the research and evidence I’ve gathered. There are two distinct risks present in what I’m about to do. 1) The rebirthing cycle continues uninterrupted, and Alastair White dies, his essence given to another lifeform. 2) The hack is successful, but in returning the essence of me, the kyenay bardo is wiped from existence to relocate its clone. Simply put, some or all of my memories and sense of identity will be gone.
Tonight, I will face death, the final frontier.
This is my savepoint. Bring this to the world, Alastair. Show them that we are God.
Yours,
Alastair White”
His plan was airtight, except for one glaring omission. Not once did Alastair White even hint that his post-death self would hate what he read, hate the man behind those words, and despise his opportunistic ‘research’. It’s daring to call his experiment a success, for although his body had been sprung back to life as he’d promised, the monster that had created it hated itself.
I will not tell you the specifics of how he achieved what he did, for the sacrifice was great - and not just to him. What I will tell you is that it took months and months of intense preparations, which not only hurt himself but others as well.
I will not finish his work. He will be known as a lonely lunatic, and savepoint will be nothing but a vague story of a man who tried to defeat death, all his fervent research and preparation for nothing.
I am Alastair White, and I intend to continue this life instead of dwelling on death.