Phoenix Universe

When he initially saw the pink scrap of paper, there was no anamnesis. It was, after all, the first of the universe’s cycles. He had no past life to remember. The expansion of the universe crawled to a stop billions of years later. Its contraction lasted barely a second. After the next Big Bang, there was a life to remember. For no particular reason, he always remembered that pink scrap of paper.

“Déjà vu,” he would mumble, the paper quickly forgotten until the next life.