Soul society
Imagine a people. They are human-like in nature, but in many ways inhuman.
They communicate telepathically. Not a single word ever spoken, no sound ever made. They share memories and emotions, hopes and dreams, pains and sorrows. A presence allows them to see everything, near and far, as if by instinct.
They move objects with their minds. They create them from nothing, shape them into new elements, or deconstruct them back into nothing at will. They can alter reality to such a degree that they would never need to touch anything. And indeed, their sense of touch would have long since vanished, along with their bodies, if not for a single, collective decision: to remain tied to the material world, away from the digital.
Their bodies are perfect. There is no disease nor death, and they never age. There is still pain, for they found that pain was necessary. But all forms of harm that may come to them can be undone by the presence.
One might wonder why individuals with such power wouldn’t annihilate one another. Have you ever thought about what would happen if humanity was suddenly granted telekinesis? If a single stray thought could create force, I believe most people would kill each other instantly. That may sound pessimistic, but I don’t think it’s wrong. We are what we are.
They are what they are too. Many have tried to settle disputes by killing one, or many, of their own. A single stray thought, and the target is undone. But the presence undoes this undoing. And the perpetrator is banished forever.
A few managed to fool the presence. With enough power, they disrupted its workings. And then, for the first time in ages, it failed. The song of death, long silenced, was heard again.
In the most recent case, it was able to undo some of the damage. But the disruption made its workings too slow, too weak. As more time passes, it gets harder and harder to undo reality, it takes more and more power. The presence tried - slowly, then frantically - it tried to undo, but it failed. What it brought back… It was deformed. Body parts missing and placed incorrectly. Blood and pus and gore leaking all over. It screamed itself apart. It never stopped. They put it down.
The perpetrator of this hell was not merely banished, but rewarded with an eternal hell of his own. Pain signals were sent through every nerve cell in his body, forcing his brain to suffer the highest levels of possible pain. His body was continually repaired, making death impossible.
“I will kill him slowly, and he will die in far greater pain than any creature has ever suffered.” The shaper’s words became reality. By the end of the first year, the perpetrator’s body was an amorphous lump of flesh - conscious, breathing, revolving around itself, silently screaming. It died 102 years later.
We may find such punishment excessive, even cruel. But to them, it was a warning - a monument to the dangers they once learned to control. They had long forgotten their place. They had long forgotten who they were.
Over the next century - the same century the lump of flesh screamed for - they changed. With a newfound sense of purpose, they developed their final power: the ability to predict the most likely actions of living beings and to see beyond the present with high accuracy. They had learned to see the future.
This new power let them remove deviants before their actions came to pass. If you were, or became, someone who would one day use your powers irresponsibly, the presence would see it, and you would be banished. It became common for children to be born and immediately killed. Their futures showed them unfit for power.
You might wonder why, with all their power, they couldn’t simply create children who were worthy. Why not engineer wisdom itself? If that were possible, their problems would have been solved long ago. Just as the presence couldn’t silence death, wisdom cannot be orchestrated. Even at the edges of power, there are fundamental limitations to being.
But now there were no more undue deaths. With foresight fully mastered, they turned outwards, and they conquered the universe. Those who actively opposed them were destroyed. The rest fell under their dominion. They became god-like beings. Not quite omnipotent. Not quite omniscient. But close enough.
But… there are so few of them now. Only five hundred remain. They crossed galaxies, searched millions of worlds. And in all that vastness, they found only one hundred beings with pure futures. It wasn’t the conquest that broke them, but what followed: the silence, the hollow stillness, the unbearable weight of standing alone. They are not a dying race, for they are immortal. But they are not alive either. They exist in stasis. And in that stillness, they saw something even more terrifying.
For their future sight shows them a moment nearing. A moment past which they cannot see. Despite having silenced death, and wielding mastery over reality, and having endless vision, and ruling over the universe… There is still one moment of uncertainty. One moment that looms over them, and stills them into inaction. And so they wait.
There’s this question that often gets thrown around: “Can an omnipotent being create a rock he can’t lift?” And the answer is yes. He would then cease to be omnipotent. Being free means being free to bind yourself in a moment of decisive significance.
And so in one such moment, a man revealed his creation. With endless stars that belonged to them shining behind him, he rose and stood before his five hundred fellows. And as he rose, the presence fell silent. And then he broke a thousand-year silence of his own, and he spoke aloud:
“The presence is useful.
It undoes death. It sees the future. It has kept us safe. It has given us much.
But it is external.
It solves the problems of death and power, but not in a way that is inherent to being itself.
That is not enough.
The problems of death and power must be solved internally, within being.
A society that endures must have internal order. It must be made of beings who are responsible and who act with care. Not because they are watched or filtered by a presence, but because their will compels them to act righteously at all times.
And so I have created a device.
A construct of such power and complexity that it can neither be destroyed nor predicted.
I have created a soul.
When the soul binds to its host, it becomes its host. It does not guide. It does not judge. It is.
It is a construct of pure will.
It is also a black-box.
Untouchable and inviolable. It cannot be corrupted or altered by anyone, not even by me.
It responds only to the soul-bearer’s actions over time.
The presence shows us that we have pure futures. That we are worthy.
But beyond us, across millions of inhabited worlds, this is not so.
We have learned of this painfully.
Most are not yet worthy of power.
But they must be given a way.
That way is the soul.
The soul is immortal. It is immaterial. It cannot be broken. Its future cannot be read.
Because of its incorruptibility and autonomy, it will become the foundation of our society.
Every being will be ensouled.
Each will live through thousands of lives.
Each will face hardship. Each will be tested by choice.
And in that time, their souls will shape themselves.
The measure of a soul’s growth is its relation to power.
When given power, does it wield it with care?
When denied power, does it accept its place without resentment?
Souls that wield their powers carefully, and accept limitation with grace, grow positively.
Souls that abuse their powers, or rebel when subjected to it, grow negatively. But they still grow.
Growth must be allowed in both directions.
For there is no true ascent without the freedom to fall.
The soul must make its own choices.
It must go down all wrong paths.
It must risk being lost eternally.
It must learn for itself.
It must shape itself through countless lives.
It must be given more and more power, more and more responsibility, until it is worthy.
And when it is worthy, that worthiness will be obvious, and we will welcome it.
And so we will show them the way.
Let them walk it with their own footsteps.
Let them stumble and fall. Let them rise and walk again.
And when they come home, they will be more than we ever were.”
The man’s five hundred companions listened. And they agreed. One by one, they transformed themselves, just as he had already done. They were now ensouled. And soon after, they agreed to extend this transformation to the entire known universe. All beings under them would also become ensouled. It may have taken a moment. It may have taken a million years. It doesn’t matter. It happened. And because of it, we are all ensouled.
But there were some who didn’t agree. There were some who saw the banishment of death as a curse. Why should they be forced to live forever, unable to ever end? As the millennia passed, this question consumed them. They gave themselves over to it completely. They became agents of nothing. Those are who we now call demons, evil beings aimed at nothing. Their hunger is only for the final death, the unmaking of being itself. And they will take with them as many as they can towards the final annihilation, towards the final nothing, as revenge towards the man who bound them to endless existence and to endless suffering.
Every few thousand years, the man welcomes another worthy soul into soul society. Each soul has a unique path, carved by their own footsteps, leading them home in ways he couldn’t have imagined. He is always pleasantly surprised.
He knows that for each one he welcomes, there are many more who remain almost eternally lost, and almost eternally suffering. He knows this is doing and his fault. But who said being eternally good was easy work? He believes in his creations. And he believes that, in the end, they will all come together to create a lasting soul society.