The Reincarnation of Tom

The

Reincarnation

of

Tom

Aden Simpson

Copyright

Copyright © Aden Simpson 2020

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 9780995352377

To Ami and Peter Simpson

If at any stage you find the story making little sense, imagine all the characters are naked and scared. This should reduce confusion.

– God

Tom

I’m Blue daba dee daba daa…

These were the last words of Tom Robinson.

Not the most heroic of declarations, or remotely coherent. Funny what the mind deems important at the moment of death. What it scrambles together as the lights go out.

Funny, and oddly pathetic.

For his last few dwindling breaths, Tom Robinson’s brain treated him to the customary final walk down memory lane, a curious intermingling of the trivial and the profound.

He remembered falling off his chair at Thanksgiving dinner and rolling around the carpet in hysterics at his uncle’s impression of a turkey begging to be cooked just right.

He remembered dancing in his room to the Beatles the first time he heard Come Together and thinking one day he’d understand it all.

He remembered Lily White, his co-worker and, unbeknownst to her, the love of his unremarkable life.

But most strange and lucid of these memories was a recent incident in a mystical new age head shop Tom had wandered into once on his lunchbreak. Because he passed it every day on his short walk from the sub way to work, Tom’s mild curiosity eventually got the better of him and, despite the usual anxiety of stepping outside his comfort zone, he entered the dimly-lit bodega and its haze of new age incense. It was his hope that he could find a novelty gift for his office crush’s upcoming birthday.

The shopkeeper, bearing a zen aura that was either natural or a requirement of the job, waved Tom over from the dreamcatcher rack with hushed excitement. Without any prompting, he revealed a supposedly ancient chant as the secret to remembering one’s past lives. The chant was to be uttered in the moments preceding death, he explained, as if this was something one could easily predict.

Apparently, it went something like this:

"I’m blue daba dee daba daa,

Daba dee, daba daa,

Daba dee daba daa…"

Tom instantly recognised the chant for its uncanny similarity to the chorus of a late ’90s Europop dance anthem by Italian music group Eiffel 65, about a man living in both a metaphorical and literal blue world, although it seemed this had escaped the earnest shopkeeper. Well, if it had to be anything...

Unwilling to offend and fearful of a confrontation, Tom decided not to bring this to the attention of the wild-haired man, who continued with his mystical pronouncement:

Chant this tune in the last moments of your life and you will retain your memories when you roll into the next. Be warned, though, reincarnation remembering is not for the faint of heart. That’ll be $20 for the dreamcatcher.

In his 31 years of existence, Tom’s spirituality had progressed about as far as a lazy sloth on a hot summer’s day. The shopkeeper was clearly a lunatic and the dreamcatcher incredibly overpriced. Tom left the bodega empty handed and inhaled a big breath of fresh air to reclaim his sanity.

At the time, he thought the experience could make for an intriguing conversation starter with Lily. Unfortunately, he never found the right time to bring it up and two months later, he was hit by the M101 bus.

Lying there, dying, watching all those big and little memories fall short of a life truly lived, Tom’s fading brain felt the chorus of a silly Europop song offering him an impossible second chance.

Really, what did he have to lose?

Chicken

Cheep cheep.

Cheep-cheep. Cheep.

These were Tom’s first words as a chicken.

But he wasn’t a chicken. He was Tom. Wasn’t he? Not that he came to this conclusion straight away. Confusion rose in him as feelings became memories and slowly unravelled like a spool of yarn. But before then, as a chick with wet feathers and a cute little beak, Tom bathed in the warmth of the straw and cotton wool that surrounded him and his brothers and sisters, below a grey sky covered in dust.

Cheep cheep.

It was only when he began to notice and comprehend the glass walls, the fetid, artificial warmth and the huddle of little yellow bodies all around him, that he started to remember being Tom...

That wasn’t the sky. It was the metal lid of an incubator.

Cheep cheep.

Suddenly, things weren’t so chipper.

As Tom grew, and so did his compatriots, they were moved to a larger pen; this enclosure part of a mammoth indoor barn bustling with hundreds of beaks, feathers, and confused pairs of eyes.

Bawke, bawke.

Time passed, as time tends to do. He was still a chicken and there appeared little he could do to alter the fact. His feathers moulted and he grew depressed. Chaos reigned. He could understand the others, but they couldn’t understand him—all they knew was squawking and clucking and endlessly pecking at seed, with the occasional flutter of wings. Conversation was limited to one topic: the all-important pecking order, and how unremittingly good it felt to be at the top. Tom considered this significance when he studied the order of the stacked cages in which they roosted at night—the strongest, most aggressive and most handsomely dappled birds did seem to wind up at the top. Tom was not one of them, and even then, the real top was far from what they knew.

Day in, day out, it was much of the same, until a man in gumboots and a grimy, red-chequered shirt came to separate the chickens according to what was to be their life’s work: laying eggs, being a rooster, or becoming Sunday dinner. Tom was surprised when he was taken to the hen shed where he would be expected to lay eggs for the rest of his life. There were no mirrors in the barn, but he had just sort of assumed he would wind up a rooster. He had never been a female before, at least not that he could remember, and wondered with a brief flurry of panic whether laying eggs would be painful. He was forced into a cage—metal, straw, wire mesh for walls—and seated himself as comfortably as he could. The comparative solitude was not unwelcome, though he could have done with a bit more wing room.

As it so happened, the excreting of eggs was not painful, but after a few weeks it certainly grew dull and monotonous. A constant feeling of fullness about the belly, a pressure that grew ever more insistent, then a push and a throb and the act was barely finished before the next in line began to form. Looking around, still adjusting to his rudimentary and somewhat cramped confines, he noted another hen down the way in the row of cages opposite. This old-timer had greying feathers and didn’t squawk like the rest. Most tellingly, it seemed like she deliberately avoided looking in Tom’s direction. Around the time of his hundredth egg, a milestone unnoticed, Tom confronted this old mother hen.

Do I know you? he shouted over the squawking of the other hens.

The old-timer did her best to ignore him.

You just seem so…familiar.

The old-timer dipped her head like she was attempting to bury her face in the Sunday newspaper, and the familiarity of this action set off a light switch in Tom’s bird brain. You were a human! You remember too!

The old-timer finally acknowledged him and gave a sigh. When she spoke, Tom heard it less as a shrill, caged mother hen and more like a grizzled, impatient Queens businessman. Yeah, OK, you got me! Jesus, I just wanted a chicken phase in peace this time, the old hen chided, flapping her wings in frustration.

Sorry to bother, Tom yelled over the din of clucking. Just thought it would be nice to have a conversation with someone while I’m stuck expelling foodstuffs from my asshole in a cramped prison. It might be business-as-usual for you, but this is my first time being a chicken. Or anything other than a human, for that matter.

The former businessman from Queens flapped her wings again. Fine, OK, so you’re new to the merry-go-round. Congratulations. What do you want? You want me to bake you a cake? No need to be so cruel, thought Tom. I’m terribly sorry to bother,he persisted, it’s just I have so many questions—like how long will I be in here? And what happens after this?

Well, after about another two years and a few forced moultings, when you can’t lay eggs no more, they’ll cut your head off and I imagine you’ll end up on somebody’s plate.

Tom gulped. So what happens when I die? Do I just sing the song again?

"What song? You mean the chant? Sure, if you want to remember."

You mean some people don’t?

How should I know?

But you just said... All right, forget it. Can you at least tell me, how I can become human again?

Jesus, kid. Figure it out. You’re at the bottom of the pecking order. You gotta ride the karma train up to the top. The old-timer raised a wing towards the ceiling.

How long does that usually take?

Depends.

Depends on what?

Depends on how much you annoy me. Doesn’t being a jerk set you back?

The old-timer shrugged. Not always. Sometimes it’s worth the risk. He glared, as though to emphasise his point.

The old-timer’s unwarranted animosity particularly offended Tom. He thought he might cry and blamed it on the hormones they had undoubtedly been putting in his seed. Such abrasiveness was uncalled for, yet Tom tried to rationalise it; maybe the older timer was just tired of being a chicken and ready to move on. Tom was already miserable, and it hadn’t even been a year (as far as he could guess).

So you got any advice, or not?

The old-timer calmed down. Look, just be patient and try to enjoy it. Take something from each experience and if you can use it in the next life, good for you. Remember, you don’t always have to think like a human. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. Also, don’t try to overthrow humanity, at least if you can help it.

Tom bobbed his head, things both a little clearer and a little more confusing. Especially the part about overthrowing humanity. Is there any way to control the process? Say I wanted to be an eagle...

Once again, the old-timer simply ignored him. "And if you are human, don’t kill Hitler, or anything like that."

Do you mean like a ‘future Hitler’ or ‘Hitler-Hitler’?

The old-timer glared at him as if he was an idiot. Both.

Right, of course, because of the butterfly effect? asked Tom.

Yeah, said the old-timer, Incidentally, try not to become a butterfly—tough dating scene. They look all pretty and delicate, but really they’re a bunch of little sluts.

Tom was uncertain whether this was the most helpful information. After further unanswered queries, the old-timer drew their conversation to a close by pretending to be asleep. Tom resolved to try again at a more convenient time for his new mentor. He felt he was owed a comprehensive explanation. Christians had the Ten Commandments, Muslims the Quran and Jews the Torah; so where was his Buddhist handbook? You couldn’t just tell someone the secret to remembering their past lives and then leave them to it, unsupervised. It was irresponsible and indicative of systemic problems in upper management. Answers were owed. Unfortunately for Tom, the old-timer was carted off to his/her death shortly thereafter. As they took her, she hummed, I’m blue daba dee daba daa… in preparation.

Left alone in a crowded frenzy of feathers, Tom had little to do but ponder and plot his next move. He decided to be a better person the next time around, if only to avoid the horrors of being a chicken again. He also wondered what time period he would incarnate into next. He’d presumed, on the basis of never having given it much thought, that reincarnation was linear. But the old-timer’s specific mentioning of Hitler suggested it was equally possible he could be storming the beaches of Normandy during WWII, or flung far into the future, with the ravages of climate change having scorched the land, and humans popping over to Mars for the weekend. With the unhelpful old-timer gone and the aforementioned Buddhist handbook nowhere to be seen, all bets were off.

Tom waited out the clock on his chicken life the same way he waited for 5.30pm each day at his insurance firm: with long, transcendental daydreaming. It was a nice distraction from feeling his skin crawling more or less constantly with parasites. Tom hoped to be something cool in his next life, like an American eagle, astronaut or rockstar, and wondered if a higher power was paying attention to these wishes, like how when Oprah or countless motivational speakers spoke about the power of manifesting one’s dreams and visualising success. This transformed into paranoia when he realised someone may also be casting judgement on his frequent, uncontrollable lusting of Lily White, a finance analyst at the insurance firm he worked for. Or used to work for. Of all the mistakes he’d ever made as Tom Robinson, not asking Lily out on a date before his abrupt meeting with the M101 bus was his greatest regret. Never mind the fact it was a million to one shot she’d say yes. He was hopeless with women but he’d never been as hopeless with anyone more than he was hopeless with her. She was more than her amazing body, perfect natural brunette locks, retrousse nose and soft ocean green eyes—she was smart, passionate and witty (from what he overheard and saw online) and over everything else he wanted to be the kind of person she wanted to be with. This chant was his ticket to being just that: worldly and wise; full of exotic experiences. And if it was possible to reach her again, he’d tell her the secret to reincarnation remembering and she’d be so damn grateful she’d say something like, Tom, we’ve barely spoken in person except for that one Christmas party where you were slurring a bit but now that you’ve done this for me we can finally be soulmates forever and go on lots of adventures as many different creatures and rich lovers who laugh together on their yacht.

If he could confirm it was possible, this would be his ultimate purpose. He promised to himself he’d do anything—he would even overthrow humanity or change the course of history if it meant rigging his chances to win her heart. Tom didn’t make many promises, but those few he made he kept, and he was quite proud of this little known fact.

Tom tried to take stock the rest of his time as a chicken, tried to appreciate the many burdens chickens were made to endure on behalf of the stomachs of mankind. He’d been guilty of overindulging in his past life as a single, self-loathing schlub; gorging on chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, BBQ chicken, buffalo wings and buckets of the Colonel’s original recipe, his fingers greased in the fat of poor souls like the ones to the countless left, right, above and below him. So the next time he was a human he’d be a vegetarian. Several months spent as a chicken had exposed too many of the horrors of the poultry industry. Also, Lily was vegetarian, so if this gift ever gave him another shot at life as Tom, his being one could only improve his chances.

Knowing the greatness that life offered outside of these cages slowly eroded Tom’s optimism, and just like back in the insurance firm, Tom got stressed and his work suffered. His egg production slowed and after a steady decline in his monthly numbers, Farmer John’s Cruelty-Free quality assurance team decided to retire him.

They took Tom over to the processing bay. A worker in thick gloves picked up a big, shiny knife, and held it over his head. Suppressing a squawk of terror, Tom recited, I’m blue daba dee daba daa, as loudly as he could for as long as he could.

He’d read once that a chicken could live for several minutes without its head. Thankfully, he only had to chant for 40 seconds or so.

Cow

Tom preferred being a cow to being a chicken. His new colleagues felt the same way and had only bad things to say about the fowls of their acquaintance, especially that bloody rooster, always waking everyone up and prattling on and on about their stupid damn pecking order.

Tell me about it, said Tom, glad to be rid of that pecking order nonsense. Nor did he miss the incessant preening, the endless ordering and reordering of feathers, or the previously mentioned parasites itching him all over. It was undeniable; being a cow was definitely a step in the right direction.

Not that Bovine University wasn’t without its own set of challenges. He was already an adult by the time his memories came flooding back to him and he had to adjust effortlessly to the art of moving on all fours, lest he be laughed at by his friends for forgetting how to plod with grace. Then there was the other sole expectation thrust upon a dairy cow. Tom was milked every morning. It was somewhat painful, and Tom didn’t enjoy the constant cycle of pregnancy, lactation and the cold, thin metallic insemination rod that kicked each cycle off. He wished he were instead a bull, maybe one of those ones in Pamplona who got to do all that running. That looked like fun. Back when he had been human, The Running of the Bulls had been high on Tom’s bucket list, perhaps only to make him appear more exciting than he actually was, because he knew he’d never make it to Pamplona. It was just one of those things you say, his version of swimming with dolphins. He wondered if being vegetarian meant he couldn’t do the Bull Run. How would he be able to justify that? Surely Lily would say it was cruel. She once scolded Renshaw from Sales in the lunchroom for wanting to ride elephants in Bali. So maybe Pamplona was out the question. Oh well. It wasn’t like he actually would have done it anyway.

Afternoons were spent in the meadow, basking in sunshine and fresh air. Hanging out in the meadow after milking was pure bliss. It reminded Tom of that ubiquitous Windows desktop background from the early 2000s, the one that came preinstalled and showed the rolling green hills of pristine English pastureland. Tom deduced he was in England based on the accents of the other cows, and, judging by the Freddie Mercury moustache on the farmer and his children carrying on in ragged Live Aid shirts, it appeared he had ended up sometime in the 1980s. The fact that a herd of cows spoke with English accents didn’t make a great deal of sense, admittedly, but Tom accepted it all the same, because it confirmed that he could reincarnate backward in time, and, hopefully by that logic, potentially reincarnate into his old self for another chance with Lily.

He breathed in deeply, revelling in the country air, before giving a contented moo. Moo, said one of the other cows by way of acknowledgement. That old chicken/Queens businessman was right—you had to make the most of it, look on the bright side. At least he wasn’t a veal calf.

Times were simple, and all was well. He was even getting used to his daily milking. One day, however, Beatrice started mooing uncontrollably, complaining about her brain being itchy. All the other cows tried to scratch Beatrice’s head, but there seemed to be no abating the sensation. Beatrice kept complaining and complaining until the others herded her over to an adjacent meadow and told her to cool off, but poor Beattie never recovered her wits. It was only a couple days later that she violently bumped Nancy into the fence and had to be taken away by the farmer.

The mood around the farm turned sour, and when Nancy told the herd she now felt her brain was feeling a little itchy too, Tom’s docile bovine eyes widened in fear. England. 1980s. Mad cow disease. Oh dear.

When he realised the unfortunate truth and informed all those within earshot, the others failed to grasp his explanation. What the heck was the 1980s? they asked.

Never mind that, that’s not the point. The point is that we’re being fed the remains of other cows!

What, like Beatrice? They hadn’t seen Beatrice in two days and rumours on the paddock spread faster than the rooster’s morning call.

Tom shrugged, as best as a cow could shrug. Maybe.

The other cows did not take this information well. A chorus of distressed mooing commenced and several of them vomited on the spot. The wild sight of rampant sickness and spooked eyes gave the otherwise kindly farmer no choice but to put down the entire herd. When Tom was prodded to the slaughterhouse he began wailing, I’m blue daba dee daba daa… and the other cows shook their heads in dismay. Poor sod, I guess he got the 1980s.

Pig

Tom was growing tired of being a farm animal. He’d seen the film Babe, but as it turned out there was little accurate representation of daily farm life in that film. Kept in a pen with eight other pigs, his only respite was wallowing in the mud to keep his skin nice and moist, and, frankly, because there wasn’t a whole lot else to do. Discouraged by the rapid deterioration of proceedings as a cow, Tom maintained a low profile this time around. Because of this, the other pigs thought him rather snobbish, and it took some time for Tom to open up. After a month spent mostly in silence, Tom remembered that pigs were known by humans to be very smart. He expressed this fact to another pig, who replied, Why, of course, we’ve always thought this—in fact, we were also considering that perhaps a change in leadership on this farm might serve us well…

Tom struggled to recall where he’d heard such rhetoric from a pig before,