Reverse Tensei, ver 0.1

Exposition

My name was Zevir El’kharuf. I was a sage, a wizard, and very, very old.
My peers considered death to be an inescapable reality. I didn’t think differently, but I still tried to prove them wrong. After all, what did I have to lose?
My soul was still strong, but it needed a body to inhabit. Therefore, I just needed a new body. The problem was that all the available bodies were already occupied. I needed a living body in good condition, but without a soul. Such cases were rare, but not unheard of. The problem was time. I couldn’t afford to wait for a suitable host to lose his mind.
Still, I did not plan on having my life extended by extinguishing another’s. While such a method might have been easier, in my vanity I decided to not trade with Death, but cheat him altogether.
My decision was to put my soul in the stasis of a sapphire gem. That gem would then be inlaid in electrum, carrying the enchantments necessary for merging the soul with a potential vacant body. In such a way, time would no longer be an issue, and my auguries and divinations have indicated a satisfying result to be probable.
That was then.
I do not know how much time has passed.
Now is now.
Regaining consciousness wasn’t easy. I faintly remember a lot of screaming and pain. The merging of my soul with this body was arduous, and the body was in bad shape beforehand. Still, everything considered, I declare the experiment a success.
My new body is that of a 17 years old female, who had been recently involved in an accident (which I suspect was the trigger for the body’s sudden vacancy). It is by no means in mint condition; neither is it a model I would’ve picked. Still, I’m alive. Everything else I can work with.
Now I need to rest, recuperate and regenerate. In the meantime, I need to figure out what is going to be my place in this new world. For a new world it is, where wonders unimaginable are treated as commonplace and are available to all.
Who needs magic, when technology can achieve the same result?


*********************

Entry 1, January 11th
The first few entries to this journal are a bit to be messy. I’m writing them retroactively after getting my laptop.
January 11th was the first time I woke up lucid enough to attempt Rashid’s analytic test (going through the powers of 2 until you get confused). I decided to mark it as the first day of my new life.
Let us take stock of my current situation:
I expect my current condition would be labeled as ‘clinically insane’. I seem to possess two distinctive sets of memories. One of them belonged to Zevir El’kharuf, an old wizard that tried to cheat death. The other set belonged to 17 year old Ellen McKenzie, whose body I now inhabit. I assume that as time goes on the sets of memories will either merge or wither. Not that I have an actual basis for this assumption, as I have never heard of anything even remotely similar happening before.
This diary will hopefully allow me to observe the process. As of this moment, I still consider myself ‘Zevir’ and I’m wondering how long until I start answering to ‘Ellen’.
Physically, Ellen is in bad shape. She was with her parents when their car got hit by a truck. I do not feel my legs, but I can’t feel my hands either, and I can see those. I’m probably drugged out, and shouldn’t be lucid. I hope it’s nothing addictive; Ellen seems to have been afraid of getting addicted to things. I would need to ask the medical experts for the details.
I have later learned that Ellen’s parents didn’t make it. Since Ellen didn’t have siblings, it seems she is pretty much alone now. On the bright side, I won’t have to lie to any close relatives.
At this point in my musings a nurse entered the room, and saw that I was awake. I tried to talk, and only managed to mumble. The nurse left, and soon after a doctor came in. He adjusted something, which I then noticed to be a bag, piping liquid into my forearm. I freaked out, started thrashing, and passed out.

Entry 2, January 12th
I managed to speak. A bit mumbled maybe, but I did manage to get the nurse to tell me how bad my condition is. Let’s see then: there were some broken ribs, one of which caused internal bleeding. They managed to fix that before anything important got ruined. My right leg was broken, but will heal fine. My left leg is in a much worse condition, and the odds of me walking again are ‘not 100%’. As if some bone fragments are going to stop me.
Then there was the head injury. The MRI scans* showed that the brain was alive and active, but the patterns were irregular. Since I woke up and am coherent the worst case has been averted, but there might still be complications in the future.
*note to self, figure out what ‘MRI scans’ are
Overall, it was still a step up from being old.
******
Jonathan Martens, or Uncle Johnny, heard that I woke up from my coma and stopped by. Johnny was Ellen’s father’s coworker (they were lawyers; Ellen never cared enough to remember the specifics). Ellen had a crush on him; thought he was gay; and also thought he had a crush on her dad. Did all 17 year old girls were such a mess of conflicting emotions?
Luckily, I remembered the emotions instead of having them myself. I wouldn’t want to experience her pain on discovering both her parents died in the crush. Johnny was surprised at my lack of reaction. I am not nearly good enough an actor to try and act this scene. I hope he thinks I’m just in shock.
He tried to assure me that everything would be all right. I smiled at him weakly and said ‘I’m alive, I can deal with this’. Poor guy started crying.
He promised he’ll visit every day. He brought me Ellen’s smartphone (to the nurse’s disapproval), and left me a credit card for ‘whatever you might need’.
I spent the rest of the day going through Ellen’s memories trying to figure out the miracle that is the smartphone. Now why did Ellen care so much about it being a ‘galaxy’ and not an ‘i-phone’?

Entry 3, January 13th
I have not inherited my host’s fine motor skills. Either that or it’s the hit to my head. Typing on this phone is *difficult*. After scanning Ellen’s memories for solutions, I settled on getting a laptop computer.
Actually buying the thing was surprisingly simple. I called a store that specialized in such things, and asked to buy a laptop. The guy on the other end tried to ask me for details like how much ‘ram memory’ and do I want a ‘graphics card’ and other technical jargon I didn’t have time to unpack on the fly. It took a while, but I managed to explain to him that I’m stuck in a hospital, and ‘can you please just take care of everything and bill me for your time?’
He said it might take a couple of days but he’ll see if he can do it faster.
******
The task of comparing this world’s sciences to my previous world is daunting in its magnitude. I do not balk at lengthy tasks, but this one would take years, and would benefit no one else. Still, I couldn’t help myself, and it’s not like I have anything better to do at the moment.
I started by looking through Ellen’s memories of her education. At least I planned to, but even that much will take a while, considering she had been schooled for over a decade. At first glance, it seems that her education consisted mostly of cultural indoctrination, with bits and pieces of natural sciences and math.
There were no formal etiquette classes. Also missing were classes on economy, psychology and magecraft. The latter if which is understandable, considering just how thin the mana here is.
In fact, it seems that the science of this world does not recognize magecraft as a thing that exist at all. Many phenomena that I would consider to be self-evident are completely ignored. The most egregious example would be the Flame of Life*. The energy that runs the body is a thing that exists, and with some practice can even be consciously controlled. The fact that this fact is not recognized disturbs me greatly.
*note to self: come up with a better translation
******
It frustrates me how deep Ellen’s math education was, and how little of it she actually understood.
******
I had an unexpected visitor. The manager of the computer store came to deliver my purchase. The people there were touched by my tales of woe (well, Ellen did just got orphaned) and gave priority to my request. The manager came in person to help me up with setting the settings. In fact, he also made sure that the entire thing would be classified as a donation, and no payment would be required.
Lucky for me, as it seems there would have been some issues with an underage girl making a purchase with someone else’s credit card. Johnny was mortified of making such a blunder, and got me my own credit card a few days later.