1 Death

In the year 2090, Constantine Novak of Turkey had proven the existence of the soul. This lead to decades of research and finally in the year 2130 he proved reincarnation. He put markers on the souls of the most heinous terrorists and murderers to have ever lived and somehow followed the process of their soul being reincarnated. In the process, Constantine not only proved reincarnation but also the existence of parallel dimensions.

To his surprise, many of the dimensions were extremely similar to stories from Earth. From Harry Potter to the Lord of the Rings, One Piece, The Wheel of Time, etc… For generations, artists, musicians, author's, have all talked about their inspiration as having come out of the blue. A musician could just randomly start hearing a melody in his head. A poet could hear the verse of an epic poem, an author dreams of a world unknown to all. What Constantine Novak discovered was that these people weren't actually creating these worlds, songs, or poetry. Instead, they had somehow tuned into these dimensions and witnessed events there. They heard a song from another dimension, wrote an epic poem about a great battle taking place in another time, witnessed monsters flying through the sky and terrorizing villages.

Trillions upon trillions of dollars was spent on research. Everyone wanted to know how to choose where to go when they died, even how to get to these dimensions without dying!

By 2201, Earth had already made several advances. You could now choose from several dimensions to be reborn in and even their status upon birth in many cases. Some of them, like the immortal worlds, where more expensive to go to and thus the domain of the rich, while others were more readily available. The research continued, after all everyone wanted an advantage in their next life. Criminals were sent to worlds like manned drones, there they collected information and sent it back through special devices implanted in their souls.

In 2214, inspired by pop-culture, Christian Gruber created the first system. All humans could purchase systems and have them implanted in their soul. They worked as miniature supercomputers and could be used to gather information on the various planes. They observed your surroundings, helped calculate cultivation methods, and even heal your body and soul when damaged.

In 2256 it was decided that sending your soul to another dimension was too dangerous. Most people died before they even had the chance to grow, with only the incredibly lucky few even managing to grow to adulthood. Research was redoubled and an artificial dimension created by Reborn, and off shoot of Stray Gaming. Not much was known about the artificial dimension other than a press release where Reborn said the artificial dimension was an attempt to recreate Stray Gaming's most popular video game, "The Planar Realms" in real life.

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Carter was an inch short of 6 feet tall, with a martial artists body. His father had passed away when he was 12, leaving behind just enough money to buy a soul-link. Soul-links where a device that ensured your soul was delivered to your specified dimension after death without having to worry about the EMTs getting to your body on time, or criminals getting your soul and turning you into a slave.

Soul-links are incredibly expensive, but also very important to Carter's family. They had a genetic defect that turned their hearts into ticking time bombs. Because of that, it'd become tradition for the family to spend their lives training for the next life. It wasn't until Carter that the family had actually figured out how to make money off of their tradition.

Perhaps because of Reborn's fixation on creating an artificial dimension, Stray Gaming had created "Fighting Champion" a game depending completely on character control. The game was a showdown between players who all had the same stats. Marketed as a way to train before your death, the game quickly became the most popular in the world with tournaments giving out millions of dollars in cash prizes. Today, the top prize was a place in the new artificial dimension upon death.

Carter wanted that prize more than anything, he'd spent thousands of hours playing the Planar Realms since he was a child. If the artificial dimension was anything like the game than it'd be like a dream come true to live there.

After training all year, Carter was in the finals of the World Championship facing off against his arch-rival Caroline. She was the daughter of some big shot, trained from birth to be the best martial artist in the world she'd dominated her side of the bracket with her sword play. The two of them had been fighting against each other for nearly a decade in game after game.

"Come on Carter." Caroline taunted with a smile, "Remember the bet, if I win you have to give me your weapon in Planar Realms."

Snorting, Carter said. "And if I win you have to go on a date with me."

Caroline blushed, her face turning pink. Caroline was a sheltered rich girl who'd never been out with a boy before and Carter planned to take ruthless advantage of that. He attack mercilessly while she was still distracted thinking about the bet. Caroline may have been a master swordsman, but Carter was a genius at hand to hand combat.

Extremely familiar with Carter's abilities, Caroline dodged with incredible grace and slashed out with her sword. Carter dodged backwards, but had to block with the back of his left forearm to keep the sword from tearing a gash through his chest. Taking advantage of the time it took for the sword to tear through his arm, Carter charged forwards and got inside Caroline's guard, using his right hand to dislocate her left elbow before she could respond.

Both injured, the two of them continued to taunt each other as they had done countless times before. Suddenly Carter turned pale and he grasped his chest in pain, collapsing to the ground.

"How ironic." Carter thought to himself as he felt his heart beat for the last time, "Of course I'd die just before I earned a spot in the Planar Realms."

Caroline didn't know what'd happened, and moved to behead Carter the instant he showed a sign of weakness. The match of the decade ended just like that, with Caroline standing over Carter's dead body a frown on her face.

Coming out of VR, Caroline heard about Carter's having a heart attack during the final and how he was currently in the ICU with a machine keeping him alive. He only had a day or two to live according to the news.

"Daddy!" Caroline called her dad, who'd always spoiled her rotten.

"Yes pumpkin." Her dad answered his phone in the middle of a meeting, "What's wrong?" He asked when he heard her sniffling.

"Carter's going to die!" Caroline wailed, "I want you to make sure he goes to the Planar Realms, give him the extra spot I just won in the tournament."

Her dad sighed in exasperation for a moment, "I never understood your infatuation with that boy."

"He's the only person in the world who can defeat me! It'd be such a waste for him to disappear into a random dimension and never see him again." Caroline said as she sniffled, obviously crying.

"Fine, I'll call the hospital and give him the extra entrance you won. The press releases of Carter saying he wanted to live in the Planar Realms will make it easy to convince them to alter his soul-link." Taking a moment to think about it, her dad said, "You should release a statement telling the world what you're doing and why. The hype behind a rematch between the two of you in the future would bring a lot of positive publicity to the project. Those fringe religious groups have been acting up recently, and some good press could be handy."

"Got it daddy!" Caroline smiled in victory as she turned off her phone and began to make plans. Daddy would be pissed at her, but there was no way she'd let Carter get a head start on her. In her mind she and Carter were fated. The two of them would be rivals fighting each other to the top, and after getting there they'd have the most beautiful babies...

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Carter had spent the last couple of days in a state of limbo. His body was failing him, despite his young age and incredible fitness the bomb in his heart had gone off. Such was the curse of his family. When his dad died at 32 he'd been in such incredible shape that Men's Health had spent nearly a decade trying to persuade him to be a cover model for them.

Remembering the look on his dad's face when he told the tale, Carter tried to snort in laughter but only coughed a little. The hospital had done all they could to repair the damage but it was too late. They could keep him awake for another day max, so lawyers and attorneys where on their way to go over his final will and testament. The TV in the corner changed and he recognized Caroline form as she walked into a hospital.

Twitching, he barely managed to turn the volume up on the TV. A random reporter was asking, "Are you here to say goodbye to Carter?"

Caroline didn't respond, brushing past the reporter while one of her many body guards pushed the reporter back. Turning the volume down, Carter sighed as he realized what was about to happen.

"You've got a visitor." His nurse said, a smile on her face as she tried to ignore the fact that Carter was going to die within 24 hours.

"Yes." Carter said glumly, not looking forwards to seeing Caroline's gloating face. He expected she'd be happy, she'd won in the end.

Caroline pushed past the nurse, a sad smile on her face as she closed the door behind her and walked over. Looking at Carter closely, she sighed in her heart as she saw the mass of tubes running into his chest keeping him alive. "I wish we had more time in this world." She said.

Weakly, Carter looked up to see her. "Why?" He croaked out.

"Doesn't matter," Caroline shook her head, trying to hide the tears in her eyes, "I came to give you the entrance to the Planar Realms."

"I don't want your pity!" Carter said, his machines going wild as he tried to sit up violently.

"It's not pity!" Caroline yelled back, "We're not done fighting, we'll settle this in the Planar Realms."

Caroline was forced to leave by the doctors a moment later, but Carter died late that night with a smile on his face.