Rebirth or rather reincarnation. It was not an unfamiliar concept to me. Not because I often read web novels and light novels, but also because I was a child of two devoted Hindu parents. The specifics of my rebirth eluded me. The reasons and the cause were unknown.
To be perfectly honest, even staying awake felt like a gigantic chore at the moment; amidst the shock, relief, bodily discomfort, and many other things. I was not thinking about the possibility anytime soon. It was only natural to compare my state with the experiences of many web novel protagonists who had similar circumstances.
I believe nothing that I ever read could have prepared me for the situation I was currently in. It was frustrating, to say the least. Hard to tell really, but I would assume that it had been approximately a week from my birth.
I had no interest in biology in my past life, thus all I knew about babies was superficial at best. Unless I want to count all the novels that I read in which characters were Isekai'ed. Being a baby helped me learn a lot of things about them. First of all, babies sleep a ton a lot. Around fifteen to eighteen hours on an average.
Similar to cats, babies also sleep in frequent sleep-wake cycles. It sure was hard to be a parent. Maybe I should refrain from having babies once I grow up. All of my senses were on drugs. Different drugs. My sense of smell, touch, and hearing were very heightened.
I would subconsciously react to the smallest of noises. God, it stinks when I need to have my clothes changed. I would feel electrified from the smallest touch to caresses. A tingle would travel all over my body. It would usually cause me to giggle or cry. I hate that part.
As for my eyes, they are dumb as hell. All foggy and only limited to eight to twelve inches. The less we talk about my motor skills, the better.
***
The protagonists would pop out of the womb and then start narrating finer details of their surroundings, or their hate for the nurse who slapped their butt. All. Bullshit.
The life of a baby was as hard as playing a soul game.
I had a hypothesis. I think my baby mind could not process my much older soul properly. It felt as if my body was a dual-core i3 6th generation PC with minimum RAM while my soul was the next-gen video game on max graphic settings. Every mental capability felt restricted to the highest degree. I could only retain my proper mental capabilities for twelve straight minutes, or so, in a day before I had to switch on the safe mode of my operating system which was only capable of uncontrollable body functions and instinctively suckling the occasional nipple.
Basically, I was only properly operational for twelve minutes so far in a day before I reverted to a normal baby. Yes, it sucked.
***
In my small moments of rationale, I was able to extract sufficient information to wager with a seventy-percent-guarantee that I was still human. This information came from my barely functional eyes to see my body parts as well as trying to move my body unsuccessfully. My body has only reacted to external stimuli so far.
I lacked any of the controls but after several times when I subconsciously grabbed my mother's finger, I could safely say that I had a similar number of fingers to a human. Either I was human or something humanly equivalent. Thus, only a neat seventy percent guarantee on the bet.
No signs of scaly skin, tail, or flippers.
The people I assumed were my parents should be human too unless I was adopted. I hoped not. While my vision was severely foggy at best, my hearing was perfectly normal and I have not yet heard them make any non-human sounds.
Sure, the language was unknown. One of the reasons for me to assume that I did not get born on Earth, as I know it, atleast.
While I was unable to identify any fantasy-like elements so far, there were a lot that looked out of place.
I have not heard or seen any electrical instruments. Nor have I seen or been subjected to general medical procedures that a baby on Earth usually has to go through.
The technology that I was oh-so-familiar with was non-existent. I had questions but until I was at least able to support the weight of my head I must wait.
***
Days came and went. My activities were dull and similar. Largely due to my dependency on others. My time was spent either sleeping on my wooden crib or getting nipple fed by my mother.
She looked like a giant from my perspective. I could not make out the finer details of her face but she seemed to have a beautiful figure by my estimates.
Golden hair, soft white skin. I think the irises were a shade of light blue. Plenty in the breast department and a slim figure.
Though it mattered not how she looked. Whether she was fat or a supermodel. A mother was a mother.
She would rock me in her arms, with a gentle smile on her lips whenever she took me out of the crib and in her arms.
It would awaken a warm bubbly feeling in my heart. She loved me a lot. I could tell.
It warmed my heart instinctively. I think I loved her too.
I could not deny that fact. There was something in her eyes, her smile, her embrace that compelled me to love her.
True, I used to have a different mother before. A different family and I could never deny the fact that my old mother would always have a place in my heart.
But the fact couldn't be denied. This woman loved me with as much passion as my old mother did. How could one deny such motherly love?
***
I found solace in the fact that I was only rational for a dozen minutes at the best of days. It helped a lot with boredom and shame when I soiled my clothes. Things were getting better but they were slow as a snail.
There might have been some benefits of being a baby but I refuse to acknowledge any based on all the discomfort I was dealing with daily. All of them combined could not make up for the boredom I was subjected to. Life as a baby was a black-and-white world compared to the memories of my past life.
No music in the background, no television, no internet. All I had were a few stuffed toys in my crib. I would have played with them if only I could command my body. I tried to move an arm and one of my legs would kick in the air.
The stuffed toys. Yes, let's think about those. They appeared to be dolls. It opened a can of worms. I was quite liberal minded. I did not believe that only girls could play with dolls. But that was not the point here. The point was, and I could not stress this enough, that my parents gave me dolls at a stage when I was so small that I could not decide whether I would like to play with dolls or robots.
What were the implications of this?Am I a girl now?
The lack of stimulation left me alone with uncanny thoughts I didn't want to have, so I did the mature thing and ignored them.
***
One normal yet boring day toward the end of my first month in this body, I had a discovery. It all started with meaningless thoughts floating in my head. It was hard to convince myself that I could return to my life back on earth. Not sure if I was correct but what happened to me did not look like a usual event.
How many people died and were reborn with their memories intact?
It was beyond anything I deemed possible after being educated in a scientific structure of education. It was magical which bordered on a miracle. Magic.
And thus, I wondered…
That inconsequential, little thought ignited something inside me. I used to be an avid fiction reader.
In those books, magic was presented in quite a few ways. Most of those ways were impossible for me to test right now.
There was one that I could try right away though. It used to be a popular trope in an anime. It was something that most protagonists tried to confirm as soon as they opened their eyes.
I calmed my heart and with almost a zealot concentration thought only one word.
Status…
[
Time Until First Awakening:
1799: 16: 34: 18
Skills:
IDE
]
It worked. It f***ing worked!
To my relief, a faintly transparent blue screen flickered into existence just in front of me.
A breath that I was holding without my knowledge left me. Magic. The implications were far and wide. So many possibilities to contend against.
I was not thinking straight for the next thirty seconds. I noted the exact seconds by comparing it with the ticking clock inside the status screen.
[
Time Until First Awakening:
1799: 16: 33: 48
Skills:
IDE
]
I wondered what might happen once the clock reached zero.
…
…
Not something to think about at this moment, I judged fairly quickly.
I rather focused on the other thing that stood out to me. My only skill.
Was it common for babies to be born with skills? Why did I possess only one skill? Was it a good or bad thing? Oh my God/Gods! So much. So many things to ponder and panic about.
IDE. I hoped it was what I knew it to be. Integrated Development Environment.
{It's a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development.
An IDE typically includes a source code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. It may also offer features like code completion, version control integration, and project management capabilities.
IDEs are designed to streamline the development process by providing a single interface where developers can write, edit, compile, debug, and deploy their code efficiently.}
What use could I have for it in a world with most likely no electrical machines?
I looked at the screen in front of me and focused on the skill name.
I wished that status screens also described what a particular skill could be used for or was capable of; a hint, so to speak.
Sadly, nothing happened. The only change was the tickling down of seconds in the timer. The skill window did not expand to provide a description or any other info.
Thus, I tried to mentally click it. That worked but something else happened instead of what I envisioned.
An entirely separate transparent screen flickered into existence in the air before the status screen. I was right. The skill was indeed what I guessed it to be.
Integrated Development Environment.
This new screen was like the screen of my laptop. Just in a floating projector form. Augmented reality of sorts. I think Banana launched a similar product called Banana Vision Pro that would have worked similarly to this.
The GUI (Graphical User Interface) of IDE was similar to Visual Studio Code.
Maybe, the skill was using that tech-equivalent because I was most familiar with that IDE.
By looking at the Explorer slide window, I was able to confirm that I was inside a folder called Help. It only contained one file. A .md file called Documentation.
Before I could try to figure out how to access and control the application manifested via the skill, A wave of sleep overtook me and I immediately fell asleep.
***
On the night of that same day, all astrologers were left dumbfounded.
All the five moons in the sky aligned into a straight light which was not supposed to happen for at least fifteen years according to their calculations. A lot more had happened that were kept secret among closed groups of people that stood over the masses. This was new for many.