The afterlife had always been a huge mystery to me. I of course had a few theories but I never thought I’d be reincarnated into a chicken. I’d always loved chicken, I just never thought I’d become one. I talked to the others in the coop to see how they’d arrived. All had followed the same transformation process, except John Stevenson. His metamorphosis involved a brief stint as a wild fox. He had a theory about the reincarnation; he believed that each organism would be transformed into the life-form they destroyed most. He gave the example of a man that ate a lot of potatoes returning as a potato. As a human John Stevenson had been a fox hunter, as a fox he had targeted chickens, and as a chicken he was eating corn; he said that it had the most desirable lifespan of the grains available. His theory seemed to make sense; it even adhered to the supply and demand rules of economics: if people ate more beef more cows would be born.
“Why don’t you kill the farmer?” I asked John Stevenson; “then you’d be able to return as a human.”
“Because I’d have to kill many humans to counter all the corn I’ve eaten,” he replied.
It was a very good point but as a chick I had the upper hand; I hadn’t yet eaten grain. All I had to do was concentrate my attention on poisonous spiders and I’d be a single intermediate step from rejoining the human race.
“Why don’t you kill the farmer?” I asked John Stevenson; “then you’d be able to return as a human.”
“Because I’d have to kill many humans to counter all the corn I’ve eaten,” he replied.
It was a very good point but as a chick I had the upper hand; I hadn’t yet eaten grain. All I had to do was concentrate my attention on poisonous spiders and I’d be a single intermediate step from rejoining the human race.