It's an afterlife, but life goes on exactly the same.
- people start out with an apparent age of about 10 years old, coming into consciousness away from observation in forests or back alleys or library alcoves.
- They're moderately well provided for survival, not requiring food or water for several days, and being wrapped in a membrane of shaggy fur like a muskox.
- the place you die on earth corresponds to the place where you will be reborn. The continents of this planet are radically different, but remains 71% ocean.
- The stars are different, and all the animals and plant species are different, but essentially every niche is filled with the same genus of organism as on earth.
- Domesticated food gets a bit wonky; imagine if Coffee arabica didn't exist, but they do have a plant life Coffee Robusta. or if they didn't have common wheat, but do have a wheat like spelt. a very common animal for meat is a domesticated snake(actually a herbivorous legless lizard)
- Every great genius in history had an entire 2nd life of accomplishments in this world. of course you have cliches like Beethoven's 10th Symphony.
- Likewise, it's impossible to carry cultural artifacts from the previous life into this one. The most famous works were obviously copied. many works of literature and music are fairly confidently reproduced, but there can certainly be contentious debates. remaking movies, sculptures and paintings however is known to be more approximation.
- Many people assume after this life, they'll be reborn a 3rd time. some hurry to get to the end. The world is imbued with a kind of anxiety of being on the first revealed step of an eternally long chain, or just a brief hiccup before oblivion.
- People naturally are much more mature, but also rather laid back. Technically they are more advanced, but they lag behind earth in mega infrastructure and industrialization.
- mass deaths on earth influence society in this world. Where many people died young and violently, the reborn bring grudges and vigor. The territories corresponding to the Russian Empire have been in "the great Turmoil" since 1905.
- a recently killed Russian girl sits in a barn, bundled in blankets and illuminated by candle lights. The entire Kolkhoz has come to listen in silence as she recounts the horrors she saw when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Her story matches stories they've heard from other villages. across the territory, it becomes common to kill any reborn who speaks German. The Foreign minister of the Russian People's Republic is in Nueu Nuremberg to establish a unified policy regarding the Second World War
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- leaning towards them not being there. such a vast number of people die in infancy, it would really alter history.
- Yes.
- Every point on earth is linked to another point on land, and are contiguous where possible. so it's like every continent was transposed and stretched into their current shape. Some countries from the southern hemisphere are now in the north, some continental countries became achipelagos. I don't know about people who die at sea, but probably they're reborn on the closest non-desert shore.
- Dogs go to their own planet full of rabbits. Rabbits go to their own planet full of alfalfa.
- some pidgins might develop, but I think most people will just stick to their first language, so assimilated cultures would only remain for an extra generation. but that is something to consider since many of the Eurasian steppe peoples' power through history came from their access to horses, so Scythians to Turks would need a new identity.
This is such an interesting idea, I'd love to see how religion would change and develop in such a world.
I would read this book/ world. Cool concept.
If you haven’t read it. The long earth series by Terry Prachett is fun and deals with subsequent/ parallel worlds (uninhabited). It oscillates between lib and cool tho.
