The Reincarnationist Papers - Origins Prequel: INFINITE, #0

By D. Eric Maikranz

Discovered as three notebooks in an antique store in Rome in the late 1990s, The Reincarnationist Papers offers a tantalizing glimpse into the Cognomina, a secret society of people who possess total recall of their past lives.  

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Eric Maikranz
• Release date: Nov 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393825913

D. Eric Maikranz

D. Eric Maikranz lived in Italy in the late 1990s where he authored two Italy travel guides and was a correspondent for UPI.  The Reincarnationist Papers is his first novel, which has been adapted into the Paramount Pictures film INFINITE, starring Mark Wahlberg.  

Book preview

Author’s Explanatory Note

The Reincarnationist Papers came into my possession while living in Rome at the turn of the millennium. I noticed the three plain notebooks in an antique shop on the medieval Via dei Coronari, just off Piazza Navona. At the time, I was conducting research for my first book, Insider’s Rome, a travel guide to some of the city’s more obscure but interesting sites. The notebooks seemed out of place in an antique store, weathered but not quite old enough. Idly picking up the first one, I was surprised to find it filled with Cyrillic handwriting. Being a speaker of Russian, the pages intrigued me, and I purchased them for a meager 20,000 lire, about $10 US at that time.

Despite lengthy efforts, I could not fully translate the text of the notebooks and eventually determined that they were Serbian or Bulgarian, not Russian.

Following a hunch, I first went to the Bulgarian Embassy on Via Pietro Rubens in north Rome. I struck up a conversation with Marina, an embassy staffer, and she confirmed the handwriting was Bulgarian. Intrigued by the first few pages, she agreed to help me translate it. Over the summer, Marina Lizhiva and I set to work translating, and we became enthralled as the story unfolded for us. When the translation was finished, I titled the compiled and translated work, as the original notebooks came with no title and were only numbered one, two, and three. I then set to work to verify what I could of Evan’s incredible story. That research is detailed as footnotes to the text, the only editorial work required after translation.

This short work is a detailed description of those discovery events in Rome and is a prequel to The Reincarnationist Papers.            

D. Eric Maikranz

You can start reading the first notebook of The Reincarnationist Papers for free immediately by joining my Reader Club through the links below.  All you have to do is tell me where to send it.

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Chapter 1

"The primka looked ridiculous, she mumbled to herself as she ran a long, elegant finger over the first handwritten lines in the first notebook. Primka, primka, she repeated as though trying to find the right word. It is Bulgarian, she replied without looking up at me, but I do not know the English word for primka. She looked tall and dominated her small desk in the front offices of the Bulgarian embassy in Rome. It is like a when you execute someone with a rope," she said in a thick Eastern European accent that sounded well steeped in the authority of service to the state.

Hanging? I offered, clutching the second and third notebooks in my hand.

No, not exactly. Primka is the loop in the rope. The loop that you put around the neck, she explained while mimicking a hanging rope with her long arm.

A noose, I replied.

She narrowed her dark eyes at me as though she did not understand. News? she challenged.

No, not news, I corrected with a smile. Noose. That is the loop at the end of the hanging rope. Noose, like goose or loose but with an N.

Noose. Noooose, she repeated and focused on the long U sound. She turned her eyes back to the first handwritten sentence in the notebook and then read aloud, ‘the noose looked ridiculous.’ She stopped and looked back up at me. Does that sentence sound strange to you?

I looked at her attractive face and its collection of odd angles at the intersection of straight nose and sharp cheekbones. Yes. It doesn’t really make sense. What does it say after that? I prompted.

She turned her head down to the page and began to read again. It is Bulgarian for sure, she said after a few seconds, a native speaker.

All I know is that it is not Russian.

Do you read Russian? she asked without looking up from her reading.

Yes, that is why I purchased the notebooks.

She shook her head as she read. This was written by a man. I know this from the gender case he used as he wrote this. I think this man might want to end his life, she continued. He writes about thinking of different ways to kill himself, one way with the primka, the noose, as you say.

I remained silent in hopes that she would continue reading. I was eager to know what was in the notebooks after struggling for weeks to translate individual words, single names, and a few phrases that were similar to the Russian I knew.  

This man talks about living again and remembering how he might die in this life, she continued. Let me read that part again. She retraced her finger over the sentence and read to herself. "Yes, it says, ‘if you knew you would live again, not just believed it, but knew it, why would you not put your neck in that noose? She looked up from the page. What do you think he is talking about here?"

I don’t know. What you are reading now is all that I know so far.

There is something here about a perfect memory and not wanting to relive the horror of dying alone with his head in the primka. She stopped reading for a moment and furrowed her brow. "There is an old Bulgarian saying here that he hints at in this sentence.