The Soul Camera (Short Story)

When you die, your soul ascends to heaven to stay there for eternity.

For thousands of years, these words had been comforting to humanity. People had tried to live lives that were most promising to get them a ticket to heaven, to be closer to their god. Who wouldn’t want to be spared from death? Why wouldn’t one want to be reassured that life didn’t really end with death?

Things change. Although change tends to imply something gradual, something that happens over time. In this case, it happened all at once, with the invention of the soul camera. Built by a physicist and a biologist, which explains the name. Scientists tend to pick either incredibly nerdy or super boring and descriptive names.

At first, they believed the soul camera did only capture an image of a human soul. They tested it on each other and were delighted to have finally solved one of the questions that had been bugging humanity since forever: What makes us humans?

The souls couldn’t be found in animals, taking a picture of them with the camera didn’t have any effect. It seemed to reinforce the idea, that humans were special.

After a while, the two scientists noticed that something was … different. They saw the world and other humans differently. Suddenly, questions that had occupied scientists from all over the world seemed to be so easy to answer. Between quantum physics and genetic engineering, nothing seemed particularly complicated to them anymore. They also noticed that it wasn’t possible to take a second picture with the soul camera. It was as if their soul had actually been captured._@suesa
Time passed. The two scientists wrote papers about their findings that were rejected by every larger journal. It took them years to finally get published and then, the uproar was immense. How unholy, how perverse was this device they had built!

That was one side of the debate.

The other side begged to have their picture taken with the soul camera, to free them of the restrictions their soul seemed to have on them. More and more people opened their eyes, free from the burden of their souls. Free to finally grasp the real truth behind life.

I am one of them. I was one of the first. My name is Stefanie and I’ve been one of the soulless for 2 years now. Two years, in which I’ve solved more mysteries than scientists have been able to in the past few decades. Humanity is flourishing! Clean energy, a working space program, world hunger is going down each day and wars have almost completely stopped.

Turns out that souls seem to be what’s making us bad. What’s making us irresponsible and selfish and … some might argue human. But hasn’t humane always been defined as good? It’s not very humane how humans tend to behave when they still have their souls. Luckily, their numbers are slowly going down. We’re not forcing anyone to have their soul captured, but we try to encourage them. It’s not easy, especially with those who still believe in a god.

God. None of us is sure if this being exists or not. Our souls came from somewhere, right? There must be a reason why only humans have them, and why they seem to stunt our growth. Some theorize that souls are a tool to control us, to make sure humans never reach their full potential. I’m one of those who stand with this theory. It’s the most logical one, as something as harmful as a soul wouldn’t have survived the evolutionary process. And even if it did, there would be some traces of it in other animals.

But there’s nothing. Nothing at all.

I’m standing at my workbench in my lab, patiently watching the solution in front of me turn from red to green, then to blue. It’s a new kind of fuel I devised to make space travel more efficient. I know it will work, I know my calculations are correct.

The liquid turns bright yellow and explodes.

I open my eyes and am blinded by a white light that seems to come from everywhere.

”You’re one of them”, echoes a voice in my head. ”You’re the first of them to die.”

”Where am I?” I ask. This doesn’t make sense. The solution turned yellow, that means something went wrong. The explosion should have killed me. I look around. Is this heaven? Is the voice god?

”You’re dead”, the voice said. ”And under normal circumstances, I would now be able to harvest what you call your soul. But you clever little apes had to find a way to avoid that. I didn’t expect you to ever figure it out.”

”To figure what out?”

”How to escape my control. I assumed that I had thought of everything, but I was obviously wrong. I expected the souls to keep you dumb enough. My supervisor will be livid.”

”Your … what?”

Finally, a figure steps into my field of vision. It’s not humanoid. It’s … it looks more like an insect than anything else. But even that is not a fitting description. What is this? An alien lifeform?

”I’ve been stationed here to use your species as energy producers. Do you know how much power one of your souls has? The problem is, they can’t be produced outside of a living being. It’s like a parasite that feeds off of your mental energy. I guess you’ve felt smarter since you got rid of it, yes?”

I just nod. It’s a lot to take in.

”Nothing I can do about it now … Except for destroying your body for good.”

I look down on myself. No burns, nothing. That’s weird.

”Didn’t I die in an explosion?” I ask. The creature rolls its eyes.

”Technically yes. But time is not linear. You died, and then we pulled you out. It’s impossible to explain to something as primitive as you.”

I want to protest but the alien creature raises its … arm?

”Enough! Your kind has done enough damage. We will need to intervene. But first …”

As it walks towards me, I spot something in its … Hand? … that looks like a weapon. There is nothing I could reasonably do to avoid dying, even though my mind races to find a solution. In the end, I give up and close my eyes. There’s still hope that the others will figure something out.

There’s still hope, that those without these parasitic souls find a solution.

There’s still hope

There’s still

There’s

Nothing.

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Pictures, as usual, all taken from pixabay.com and thus CC0

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_{GIF was created for me by @saywha and @atopy , rest of the signature by @overkillcoin}