July 13^th, 1986.

In a hospital in London, a child named
Virginia Wichester was born. As to the hospital, everything seemed to be
perfectly normal, and the mother, cuddling her new-born kid, wore a jaded but
satisfied smile. Well, nothing is quite special about this, except that the
infant clearly realized that she was born with memory, the memory of her last
life before she died.

Oh, there’s something else worth mentioning:
That noon, a singing rendition named ‘Saving Lives’ took place in the gym of Whelmbry,
London.

Viginia, a quite common name, bearing the
meaning of ‘Spring’ in Latin,
represents vitality and holds her parents’ best wishes for her new life.

Well before this – in her last life, her
impression towards England existed only in books and films. Traditional British
films always followed tightly the vague and greyish pattern in its making, and
ironically, even if the play itself was frisky, you wouldn’t help but have a
feeling that England was just a black-and-white photo that lacked the necessary
colors and vitality, and that British men were all gentleman-like and
distanced.

Now she has to admit that even in her real
life, London the city is a bit colorless; especially when in fall and winter,
it always appears greyish and damp, partly due to the reason that Britain is
immersed in ancient buildings and thus creates a feeling of history. The only
color that impresses her deeply is the red of the telephone box and the
double-decker bus.

However, she has to say that although
British men are all gentlemen indeed, they are not all such distanced and among
them many are easy-going. Compared to American English, Virgina favors British
way of speaking. Its pronounciation, tone and pace seems to lack the usual
fluctuation of emotion, but the end of a sentence is, nevertheless, always in a
up tone. It’s so special that they use language and pace to express their
emotion instead of tone, thought Virginia.

In the past, Virgina’s only longing towards
‘Space Traversing’ is that one day she would wake up twenty years behind of
time bearing her memory with her and she would still be herself. Life would be
different because she would have known what were to happen. However, after this
incidence, she finally realizes that things happening in the world will not
always compile to one’s will.

Virginia reckons that if she had not always
pitted against herself her last life’s memory and feelings when free, her life
here below should generally be going on well.

She lives in a middle-class family now, and
their financial situation, in regard to their status, is relatively comfortable
and well-being. Dad started the car business quite early and when she was born,
they had already owned a house in the center of London city and a townhouse in
the outskirt of London. Near the townhouse flows a lovely river about twenty
meters wide, and scenery alongside is quite enjoyable. The family used to
travel there from time to time and stay for several days, Dad fishing and Mum
treating neighbors with afternoon tea. Or if they were free, they would go to
Spanish seaside for a sunbathe. Dad bought a cottage near the sea in Spain for
her little princess when Virginia turned three, and she has become a
property-owner ever since.

Perhaps because she is indeed a grown-up
adult deep down inside her bone, Virginia finds it quite hard to play along
with kids of her age. She never stays with them except for class time and in
leisuretime, she often does some reading, reminiscing the past and deliberating
the present. However, except for this, she has never appeared too special. Her
study is just so so and she never displays any amazing talents. Her parents
both love her very much and uses a great amount of time to stay with her. After
all, pretending to be a kid when near those who stay alongside you too often is
probably as difficult as flying empty-handed into the space, and the process
would be too energy-consuming. So she would never pretend to be puerile when
facing them and this makes her a mature and steady child in the eyes of her
parents and their friends.

When five or six years passed, in the
sweetness of her parents life, most of the memory of her last life has faded.
Occasionally, a causal word or a paticular act might still brought up her
memory, or perhaps even a familiar scent, and, of course, those movies she had
watched, but usually, such sadness wouldn’t last too long.

Only several of her old habits were kept,
such as her prejudice towards black tea and dessert. Many new habits are formed
as well, such as listening to news every morning. Dad keeps reading the Taiwu Times newspaper at breakfast and
keeps mentioning a thing or two through the process, or asking for her thoughts
tantalizingly as a kind of entertainment during breakfast.

Talking about breakfast, it’s worth
mentioning that having been accustomed to rice and tea, Virginia finds herself
unberable to the sudden change into potato, and moreover, food is much more
monotonous now: except breakfast, almost all the meals are consisted with
beefsteak or lamb chop, except perhaps some fruit, and she hates dessert; even
the butter bread is unbearable now. So she simply calls for meal of all
countries, eating one kind in a turn: French, Italian, Japanese, Indian,etc. As
to Chinese food, most of them are Guangdong style. Virginia enjoys salty and
flavor-rich food, thus finding Guandong food a bit unwonted. She takes French
dished mostly, but she has had enough of chips and mashed potatoes, which are
main dished in French culture. She misses rice and buns deeply and her face always
twists in a sorrowful way when seeing bread or potatoes.

Finally one day, she pushed her dad out to
buy a small package of rice in chinatown and mum to buy a electric cooker in
the supermarket. They tried to cook rice that night and Virginia, standing on a
chair, cooked a traditional Chinese dish. She was only five then and had not
enough power to settle the pot, so finally she was giving orders to her parents
to do this or that. At long last, everthing was ready. The family, sitting
around the table, seemed to have dazed, and only Virginia was eyeing rice with
great excitement until mum asked her tentatively, ‘Gini, let’s call some French
dish, all right?’ Virginia turned red and accepted.

It has been clear that until that baffling
day to come, the only thing that bothered her was rice, or the weather, or some
incurred memory, or her primary school classmates planning some pranks. In
general, her life had been easy, colorful and comfortable.

1995.

This year Virginia is nine, and one more
thing seemed to have bothered her. In fact she had almost forgotton until one
day the newspaper had some saying about British cattle problems that mad cow
disease was going to spread. So she began banning beef in the family and
unfortunately found that she was the one most influenced by this, because most
of her dishes consisted beef and now she had to change into chicken or poke.
Then she remembered bird flu and wine flu. It seemed that only sheep and fish
are safe. If these two were to be proven problematic one day – well, it would
be horrible even to think about.

Happy time always passes quickly and
Virginia has turned ten now. To be honest, she has developed a good sense of
belonging to her family. Dad, though strict and earnest during work, always
dotes on her and trys to satisfy her demands. His most frequent words when
going out is,’ What does my little girl want when Daddy comes back tonight?’.
And mom is always the virtuous ‘accomplice’.

But basically she had little demands. At
first she would randomly ask for some childish toys to walk through her dad,
but gradually she found that no matter what she asked for, it would appear in
her bedroom at night, or even things that she never required, such as dolls or
toy houses that she might be able to understand, but what really drove her made
were things like transformers, model cars and toy soldiers, or even toy dinasours
that surely belong to boys.

Finally she realized that such action
cannot be allowed and in one charity show, she sent out all the toys, packed in
delicate packages. In the praising eyesight of her parents, Virginia believed
that all these things would reappear in her bedroom unsealed that night, so she
had no choice but to have a talk with her dad, saying that if she really needed
anything, it would be children books or cookbooks. She even illustrated that
she loved the tellurion her dad sent her once, and then she had a sudden idea –
this year a new type of computer system, Win95 is coming out, so she could have
a new computer. Though computers of that age were heavy and dull, she could not
expect more until Win 98 comes out in the future.

So she demanded a new computer to Dad, and
by the way talked a bit about her ideas of computers and the future development
of IT industry. Dad listened quite carefully. Virginia didn’t know that Dad’s
friend Uncle James had similar thoughts about IT industry and was strongly
advising dad to invest in it with him. Dad hasn’t decided yet, but having heard
her little princess’ ideas, mature or not, it would be a important signal.
After all, if he misses the business opportunity that even a ten-year-old girl
could see easily – well, it would be so embarrassing.

So that settled the matter and the family
were all glad about the decision. Viginia would never see her bedroom culttered
with toys. Dad started his significant investment in his life. And of course,
with a happy husband and an equally happy daughter, Mum is quite satisfied as
well.