Jiang Jun gently picked the child up and wrapped him in swaddling clothes. This one had been born here just outside the Grey Wall as Jun’s masters had foretold.

One such as he had not been born outside the Celestial Kingdom in centuries, not since the Reincarnation Engine had been built. The mandarins said that the device was “An important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation” but we all know what it was, really: A way to control the minorities. Most of the citizens of the Kingdom feared those on the path of the Wheel.

Jun’s clan followed where the elders led, and so long as the elders were caught in the Engine the whole clan would be kept under the eyes of the mandarins.

But now one spirit had managed to escape the prison of iron, plastic and silicon.

Jun’s phone rang, it was his wife.

“He’s just as foretold,” Jun said. “Skin so fine and fair that dust rolls off of him.”

“Is he cute?” She said over the secure link.

The buddha smiled and gurgled as he looked up at his great-grandson.