Souls Struggling to Come Together by Vivien Dean

I have a confession to make. I absolutely adore the use of reincarnation as a fictional trope. Inexplicable soulmates, not necessarily, but the notion that souls will fight to be together over centuries regardless of their human hosts is a romantic idea that fills me with both hope and excitement. Because I have such a soft spot for it, I've been reluctant to write it myself.

So I decided to dip my toes in the water using technology as a vehicle. The result? My story for the A Cure for What Ails You pax, A Soul Remembered.

In it, Adam Silver is a prostitute living in a San Francisco over a century in the future. It's a world where most people are chipped, where they carry all of their personal information in digital form. Adam carries more. He also carries all the electrical brain activity – the memories, the feelings – that he's had in the lifetimes since the chip technology first came into being. In that first lifetime, Adam was a brilliant software designer, desperate to hold onto the love of his life. He created a way of preserving the essence of a person in the chip technology, and he's spent all these years trying to find him again.

There's only one problem. Well, that's not true. There are a couple problems. The biggest one is that the love of all his lives has no idea who they were to each other. Adam has a way around that, but what he doesn't have a way around is explaining whether or not he deserves the nickname, "Dr. Death." Because people who get involved with Dr. David Bogart, the man Adam has been hunting for a century, have a tendency to turn up dead.

While it's not about reincarnation in its purest form, there's enough of the idea there for me to be happy with. And I'm hoping this isn't the last story set in this universe. In his original work, Adam implemented the Reborn technology in a variety of test subjects. What happened to them? How have they moved on? I guess time will tell.

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A Soul Remembered by Vivien Dean is now available at Amber Allure.

If you'd like the chance to win the entire pax collection, just leave a comment on today's post. On Saturday, a winner will be picked at random from all the comments made this week on the blog. Comment on all, and that's multiple chances to win!