This Number Speaks Read online

PART III: HOW THE STORY ENDS

  WHERE MY LIFE BEGINS

  "This is where my life begins." Thirty-Seven thought as his footsteps echoed off the high, white walls. The past two days had both been serious disasters, but today would be different. Today he would make great strides towards redemption.

  Looking up, he realized the glory of this place in a brand new light. Thin slits ran up the seams in the walls, allowing sunlight to land and crawl slowly about the room throughout the day. At first it seemed an empty room, just a tall, white, empty space. Then he saw the circular platform in the center of it all, and 192 was leading them towards it.

  "Stand here, in the middle with me." 192 said when they had reached the platform. When they were on the platform and had remained perfectly still for a few seconds, a tiny burst of air could be heard and the platform began slowly sinking into the floor.

  Thirty-Seven had not known what to expect and the anxiety mixed with the excitement as the walls around him grew.

  SOMEONE NEW

  Suicide was brooding. She sat on Raven's monument and wondered what to do. There was nowhere to run to and there was no one she could trust. Sure, she had allies in Hell, but everyone she knew now had Satan to thank for their still being alive, including Mercy Screamsback, who could probably serve Suicide's ends no better than a pawn anyway, sent purposely to die for the greater 'good', which sounded like a terrible idea.

  No. The idea was to stop the killing, once and for all. She had to find someone with no allegiance to Satan. But she could not go to The Zealots, they all knew who she was and would never trust her. Alpha Centauri seemed more devoted to Satan than to anyone and would certainly report to him at once if he suspected something was up.

  There had to be someone else, someone she had never met, someone…new.

  CROSSROADS

  "Maximus! What a pleasant surprise! And here I thought you were avoiding me!" Satan sat in his throne room staring and smiling into a giant oval screen above the gilded double-doors opposite his throne. Maximus stared back in silence, his face contorted with difficult anger.

  "So Max, how've you been?"

  "The same."

  "That bad? Sorry to hear it."

  "Whatever. How's Sue?"

  "The same."

  "The same. So you haven’t told her yet?"

  "Told her what, Max? Say, did you hear the one about the Governor and the scapegoat?" Satan was all smiles and teeth.

  "Can it Satan," Maximus was in no mood for Satan's crap. "I'm in no mood for your crap. Listen. I'm going to be sending someone your way very soon, hopefully today or tomorrow. I want you to take care of him for me." As Maximus had said these last words, he had raised his head and scratched at a non-existent itch on the side of his neck. Satan saw the gesture and understood completely.

  "Look, Max…I love these little chats, but if you're asking me to do what I think you're asking me to do-"

  "What do you want?" Max snapped.

  "I want a vacation. I want ten days off, paid. And I want to spend those ten days in New York City. That's what I want. Do we have a deal?"

  "Fine. You leave as soon as the job is done."

  "Excellent, so what's the name of this poor unfortunate soul?" Satan's eyebrows popped up quizzically.

  Max could no longer look Satan in the eye as he delivered the answer in the form of a confession. "I'll have his file and photos sent along after I get off here. His name is Thirty-Seven."

  I AM MY NAME

  The light shined in Alpha Centauri's eyes. He emerged from the trap door behind Satan's throne and looked around. 'Where was Ping?' he wondered.

  He walked out into the room and across the floor, towards the golden doors. Just as he was about to reach out and open one, both doors swung towards him and he had to jerk his hand back to keep from having his knuckles bashed in.

  Of course Ping entered the room, gliding gleefully. "Hey, Al!" his smile was so complete that Alpha heard it loud and clear.

  "Who is she?" Alpha asked half angry, half interested.

  "Her name's Mercy, have you met her?"

  "I've seen her. Pretty cute, your type I guess."

  "No kidding! We spent all afternoon together and I gave her the mark."

  "I hope that's all you gave her. You need to be careful. I don’t think it's a good idea to hang out with her." Alpha's eyes were dead serious and ruining Ping's day.

  "Whatever. What's the worst that could happen?" Alpha frowned because they both knew the answer.

  RING

  The platform touched down about ninety meters below the surface of the Earth. Thirty-Seven stared up into the elevator shaft. The magnificent light of the temple had become a white speck in the center of a long black cylinder and he hated the sight of that light because it was so far away.

  A doorway appeared in the southern wall; at least Thirty-Seven assumed it was the southern wall. The absence of landmarks, save for that tiny light overhead, made it virtually impossible to determine the Cardinal Points.

  A pale blue light stretched off down the floor of the corridor before them, hardly enough to see by. The environment was all but pitch black.

  192 saw the apprehension in Thirty-Seven's face but said nothing. He was starting to worry. Rex hated everyone. Especially weaklings and pushovers, which was exactly the sort of person Thirty-Seven seemed to be. 192 walked on down the hall, deciding not to get too attached to someone who might not be worth it in the end. Thirty-Seven obediently followed.

  They walked in silence, following the cold blue light in the floor. They could barely see the door they were approaching, the darkness so nearly complete in the subterranean hall.

  192 produced a small disc of indeterminate color and deftly inserted it into a slit that Thirty-Seven could not see. They were blinded. The room beyond the door was brightly lit and was an exact replica of 192's office back at the reincarnation center. A large circular table stood in the center of the lab, corresponding precisely to the one where Thirty-Seven, Alchemy, and 192 had eaten lunch the precious day; only here at this table sat a very different new face.

  Dobie sat at the table, on the other side of it, facing them. He was smiling with the bottom half of his face and glaring with the top half. He had been awaiting the arrival of a new victim and he could see that Thirty-Seven had 'prey" written all over his face.

  "Come in, sit down." Dobie offered seats by holding his hands out towards them. 192 glanced at Thirty-Seven, who was trying not to breathe. They went to the table and sat down.

  Dobie folded his hands into two fists, one holding the other, and rested the mass on the table. "You must be the new man." Dobie said through smiling yellow teeth.

  "Yes." was all Thirty-Seven could force himself to say. Dobie was really smiling now, realizing how terrorized this 'new man' was.

  Dobie suddenly opened his hands and slammed his palms down on the table. Thirty-Seven flinched and jerked back in his seat startled. At this Dobie shouted, "Ha!" and 192 interrupted, saying, "Yes, this is Thirty-Seven and he will be taking over my position as Custodian of Shells hopefully by the end of the year. The smile faded from Dobie's face and anger loomed there in its place. Slowly, that terrible face turned on 192 and spoke. "Keep your mouth SHUT!" The volume had risen significantly with the utterance of each word, resulting in an echoing shriek, which left 192 and Thirty-Seven dumbstruck and gaping. Dobie Rex had risen slowly during his insane outburst and reached his arms across the table with claw-like hands gripping the air repeatedly in front of 192. He pulled his arms back swiftly then slowly sat back down, and as he did his head turned slowly to face Thirty-Seven again.

  "Hello there Thirty-Seven." Dobie now spoke in a voice pitched with too much sweetness. "How do you like Eternalife?"

  Thirty-Seven brightened a little. "Very much. I am glad to be working. I felt as though the day would never come!" A light flashed in Thirty-Seven's mind. "I have something for you, Dobie." Thirty-Seven reached into his pocket and pulled out the sm
all red sphere and held it out to Dobie in the palm of his hand. Excitement flashed in Dobie's eyes and he snatched up the offering. He then began examining it, holding it between both sets of forefingers and thumbs. He had forgotten the world and was utterly fascinated by the tiny red orb in his hand.

  Rex's obvious obsession with the thing caused Thirty-Seven and 192 to wonder what was so special about it. "Maximus Agrippa told me to bring you this." Thirty-Seven was looking for a breakthrough, "What is it anyway?" For an instant Rex's eyes darted over at Thirty-Seven, then he was examining the sphere again.

  He had been waiting so long for this: the latest in lethal weapons. He thought back to the moisture-activated explosive he had used to dispatch one of his former assistants. This new red device was worlds apart and ahead of the old green ones. It was supposed to contain twenty times the explosive power of its predecessor and could be programmed in a variety of new and exciting ways. It contained a nanoprocessor that responded to remote operation and could even be programmed to read the DNA of the person holding it.

  Finally, Dobie came back to the present and looked up at his visitors. "Get out. Come back tomorrow," he said with such an absence of feeling that the words failed to register with either Thirty-Seven or 192. Dobie turned around and walked over to some cabinets and opened one. He took a small black box off one of the shelves and placed the tiny red bomb in it. Carefully placing the box back on the shelf he screamed without turning around, "LEAVE!" His two guests stumbled to their feet and left without a word, going back the way they had come.

  When they were halfway up the elevator shaft, the tiny brain of the bomb received a transmission from its remote controller that was several kilometers away. Dobie Rex heard three muffled beeps coming from one of his cabinets and he looked up from his microscope. Then his lab exploded.

  He died instantly and his body was burnt to a cinder in the inferno. The tunnel between the elevator shaft and the lab caved in making escape impossible. Dobie's assistants were trapped in the underground complex and had no hope of survival. Thirty-Seven felt apprehensive as he stepped off the platform with 192. Had he succeeded? He had delivered the goods as Maximus had instructed but Rex had shown no gratitude and in fact had seemed only hostile.

  "I think he likes you," said 192 with a sidelong sneer. Thirty-Seven got the joke and laughed, saying, "Yeah! What a guy! Let's go back!" They laughed all the way back to the car.

  WE KNEW YOU

  Maximus Agrippa watched the screen intently. He saw Thirty-Seven enter the room and sit down. He listened as Dobie screamed at 192. He gave a sigh when Dobie took the bomb from Thirty-Seven and he was relieved a little when Dobie put the black box back on the shelf.

  Maximus and the other Governors of Eternalife had had enough of Dobie Rex and were sick and tired of constantly having to send him new assistants. Plus they simply despised him as a person, but since he was an Alpha, he was not so easy to get rid of. Someone had to take the fall and the three Governors had unanimously decided the candidate would have to be someone right out of college. They needed someone totally ignorant who had not yet learned enough about Reincarnation to be considered truly valuable or dangerous enough to keep around. They had chosen Thirty-Seven for his unerringly predictable behavior; this was one of the 'virtues' they pushed on all Workers: leading a repetitive predictable life.

  The three Governors had spent months planning every act of each party involved and accounting for all possible eventualities. Everything had gone according to plan, to the letter. There was only one thing left to do now. Maximus ejected the disc on which the record of Thirty-Seven's activities had been immortalized and placed it in a small folder on his desk labeled 'EVIDENCE'.

  Maximus picked up his screen and tapped his way to Concrete 72's profile and punched 'Contact'. Two seconds later Concrete's accusing face was staring back at Maximus and saying, "C-72 here, what's up Max?"

  Maximus was silent for a few seconds, during which Concrete did not blink, and then Max said, "Arrest Thirty-Seven. He just killed Dobie Rex." Concrete's eyes narrowed and he savagely whispered through clenched, gnashing teeth, "Yes sir."

  The screen went black and Maximus laid it on the desk. He sat there and felt nothing for a very long time. He sat and waited. Time passed slowly. Nothing was happening.

  When his screen began chiming an hour later, he had not moved. He reached over and touched the screen saying, "Yes?" It was Concrete 72. Concrete almost looked proud as he said, "Thirty-Seven has been arrested and he is on his way to The Dent. He will be on his way to Hell tomorrow morning. Maximus nodded and said, "Thank you." Concrete saluted and the screen was black again.

  Mechanically, Maximus Agrippa opened the deep desk drawer to his right and pulled out an ancient handgun - a revolver. He held it in his right hand, pointing it at the ceiling at arm's length. With his left hand he brought two fingers to his throat, found the pulse and started counting backwards with the beat. 10, 9, 8, he bent his right arm and put the gun's barrel to his temple. 7, 6, 5, he pulled the hammer back slowly, relishing the elegant clicks. 4, 3, 2, "Thank you Thirty-Seven, good-bye." His voice was a desperately hopeless song. He fingered the trigger and tightened his grip on the handle. 1,0, the blast destroyed the top half of Max's head and knocked his body sideways out of the chair. Two guards rushed in and saw only the desk, the chair and behind these on the wall a little off to the right, a mass of smeared red and pink matter oozing and dripping downward in streaks and clumps.

  They looked at each other and one mouthed the word 'guns' to the other. They hoisted their rifles and crept along the perimeter of the room, taking apposite sides. They kept their guns trained on the desk. The guard who had gone right saw it first. The body was twisted on the floor. The gun lay at its feet. Blown in half, the head was all wrong and leaking bits of scattered brain. The right guard looked away and swung the barrel of his rifle onto his shoulder saying simply, "Ph, man." The guard on the left could tell he did not want to take another step and see what lay at the other end of the body he currently saw only one leg of.

  The two of them left the room in silence and notified the remaining Governors of Agrippa's passing. They took it strangely, as if they were not surprised and did not care anyway, saying, "Thank you." and then shooing the guards away with a dismissive flapping of fingers.

  ONE HUNDRED DEGREES

  Mercy was sleeping. Her temperature had risen and she perspired beneath the thick blankets of Ping's bed.

  A smiling man wearing a white suit stood behind a white podium on a white stage. He spoke as though he were imparting great truths that no argument could exist against. "Men need to be predictable. If a man's actions cannot be predicted then he is a danger to himself and others. A man whose future actions and reactions to situations and circumstances cannot be charted on a graph is of no use to this society. Proper patterns of behavior must be adapted and adhered to in order to ensure the occurrence of those chains of events that keep our way of life operating at maximum efficiency. Disciplining oneself is absolutely necessary. Cut out all activities that are not absolutely vital to the execution of the assignments you have been given. Recreation is a waste of time and deserves to be punished. Do not pursue friendships outside of your assigned workstations. There is no one you will need to know in your lives besides those persons we introduce you to in a professional capacity. All relationships that do not agree with our standardized behavioral programming parameters will be terminated…"

  Mercy drifted out of the dream and rolled over. She wished she had someone to talk to.

  LAST LOOKS

  Suicide knew Satan had abandoned her. Whenever they argued and she ran off like she just had, he invariably got as far away from her as possible, and in this case, that probably meant he had returned to The Citadel.

  She decided to take a walk through the cemetery and think about things. She realized suddenly that she hated this place. Satan's select stash of old corpses and rocks. This is where she would probably end
up one day. The giant stone angel with the slashed throat seemed an assurance of this; it was almost a promise. One day he would grow weary of her and tire of their ceaseless games. He would begin calculating the circumstances of her demise as she now calculated his.

  Beat him to the punch? It was the only option. Her salvation rested on her ability to bring down a tyrant.

  She walked deeper into the graveyard and the stones here seemed older, more worn. Poor Black Leaf, what had been his fate? And here was Moonchild's marker; had she died in Satan's arms?

  Suicide began to wonder what kind of a grave he would design when he finally killed her. Would it be another great angel, this one holding a gun instead of a sword - o one of the pathetic nameless markers that lined both sides of the path running through this horridly beautiful place?

  She had never walked this far into the grounds before today, and she was nearing the back wall. She looked up from the stones and saw something curious: an arched doorway in the wall completely sealed off by a heavy blackened metal door. A huge knocker hung from the center of this and in the center of the circle described by that knocker was a keyhole at eye level; yet it was unlike any keyhole she had ever seen. Its shape suggested a circle at the top with a narrow triangle stabbing into the bottom of the circle: . She forgot everything and found herself standing at the door. She looked and saw inscribed above the door, "EX PRINCIPIUM". She looked through the keyhole and could see nothing but overgrown weeds and vines. Staring into the mystery for several moments, she found herself nearing a revelation.

  BY THE BOOK

  Concrete 72 and two virtually identical goons in uniform were waiting patiently for the Numbers to return from the temple. Their small wrist-mounted screens told them that any minute the car would come racing out of the tunnel along its magnetic track and come to a halt right at their feet.

  C-72 was utterly expressionless but felt an assured determination. He was a celebrated officer and murders were so rare these days. He was sure this collar would raise him to full Alpha status. He may even earn a Governing job somewhere, but he had to concentrate. First things first: arrest Thirty-Seven and throw him in The Dent. He had the option of escorting this prisoner all the way to Hell because of the severity of the crime, and he also knew that doing this would earn him extra favor with the Governors and the masses alike.

  A light appeared in the tunnel. "By the book." Concrete said, cautioning his backups who were drawing their guns.

  Thirty-Seven saw the men waiting up ahead and wondered why they were there. 'Perhaps they're here to check on me,' he mused. 192 saw them and a shadow fell over his soul, which reflected in his face. He knew why they were there, this was not the first time he had returned from the temple with a new kid to find the cops waiting to haul the kid away. It was always the same cold faces radiating the same cold force. 192 glanced over at Thirty-Seven and said, "They're here for you." Thirty-Seven turned and stared at 192 and said, "What do you mean, One?"

  "I mean," 192 sighed, "that they are here to arrest you and take you away. To Hell." Thirty-Seven stared incredulously and croaked, "Why?" 192 stared at the men up ahead and whispered, "We will probably never know."

  The car stopped and Concrete stepped forward one awful intruding pace. "Come out, Thirty-Seven!" He was yelling through the glass of the window into Thirty-Seven's eyes. Unable to respond, Thirty-Seven only gaped out through the glass at the three men's uniforms. The one to Concrete's left rolled his eyes and reached into his back pocket and retrieved a small black keypad. He held it up, as if it should mean something to Thirty-Seven – it didn't – and the officer could see this, so he turned eye to eye with C-72 and said, "What do you think, Con?" Concrete told him, "Open the door." His voice was empty and distant, as if this was all very boring to him.

  Keys were pushed and the door clicked open three centimeters. Thirty-Seven's mind was instantly snapping as this happened. It wasn't possible. This could not be happening. One of the officers was reaching to open the door and Thirty-Seven finally broke, "Stay back!" his voice exploding in the closed space of the car. His eyes zoomed around, frantically looking for a weapon or a way out. He saw Concrete moving in as the door swung open. Thirty-Seven's sights zeroed in on the gun in Con's holster and he reached for it, but officer number three was ready for this and pumped a tazer-tranquilizer dart into Thirty-Seven's neck, shocking him into paralysis and then sedating him to the point that he lost consciousness.

  Concrete dragged Thirty-Seven out of the car and into the back of a black van. Locking the door, Con dialed in a connection to Governor Maximus Agrippa on his wrist screen. Maximus' blank face appeared and said, "Yes?" Concrete felt extremely proud to report that, "Thirty-Seven has been arrested and is on his way to The Dent and will be on his way to Hell in the morning." Con saw Max nod and say, "Thank you." He saluted Maximus and clicked off the screen.

  THE MORNING LIGHT

  Satan watched as Maximus' face faded from the screen. He let the name cross his lips: "Thirty-Seven," just another number, he thought, but even a number could become someone, a real somebody with a name, a perfect name that meant something to anyone who heard it.

  Satan pressed a button on the armrest of his throne. Ping's face appeared on the huge screen over the doors. Ping looked puzzled at first then came around and said cheerfully, "Yeah boss?" Satan put his elbows on the armrests of the throne and brought his hands together, fingers spread. Lifting his chin slightly, he looked into the portal at Ping and said, "Get me Stainface." Ping's grin collapsed and he managed to grind out a pathetic, "Yes sir." Satan smiled and closed the connection.

  He waited a few seconds then got up and walked out of the room. He knew Ping would take forever getting around to visiting Stainface, Ping hated Stainface. He made his way to the entry hall and grabbed Suicide's red motorcycle from a stall where someone always parked it for her. He thumbed the ignition and the bike screamed out of the room, into the sand. He was going to pay Stainface a little visit of his own.

  IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

  Suicide woke up in the grass at the foot of the iron door. She had dreamed a strange dream full of impossible things she could not explain. The people in her dream were not like the people in Hell. Each was free in a way not even thought of in any world she had ever heard of. The people each owned their own little homes where they raised their own families. They took trips across the country for no better reason than to see what there was to see. The children were free to befriend one another and to play games whose only purpose was to ensure the enjoyable passage of time. And they had strange meaningless names like Patrick and Amanda.

  She sat up and the dream began to fade. She looked up into the sky. It was getting dark, but not with the darkness of night. It was the darkness of high-cast shadows, the shadows of clouds.

  A thin sheet of rippling white crept across the sky. In the east, streaks and slivers of blue still pretended their authority; but in the west, a darkness bordering on black was rolling into the quilted blanket high above Sue's head.

  Suicide loved the storms when they came, and she raised her hands to the darkness in the distance, welcoming it, invoking that chaos that she knew was soon to come. She screamed at the sky. Her scream transformed into maniacally cackling laughter and cold tears rolled down the sides of her laughing cheeks.

  She saw a tiny spark splintering in the sky miles and miles away and she got a little feeling that the end of it all was on the way, that she would finally be free of all this, one way or another.

  She looked up at the curious inscription above the iron door and lowered her arms. She stood there limply, thinking back to what Latin she had learned from some of the ancient books in Satan's library. 'Ex Principium' – In The Beginning.

  She fancied herself the most cultured woman in Hell. She wondered after the women of the Outside, the ones she would never meet: the Alpha women powerful enough to cheat a trip to Hell. If she made it out of this place alive, she realized she would make herself into o
ne of these, somehow.

  She made her way back to the silver gates at the entrance to the Garden of Lost Souls and found her motorcycle gone. Satan had taken it as a symbol of spite at Suicide's walk-off from their argument. She saw his old beat-up black bike - the one that he loved - lying in the sand. It was much heavier than hers and he knew she could barely lift the thing alone. She could almost hear his mocking laughter as she struggled to raise the black machine from the scratchy sands.

  She walked it to the wall of the cemetery and propped it there so she could catch her breath. As she let her back slide down the wall she felt the first tiny cold speck of liquid fall from the sky onto her cheek. She looked up and saw the shadows creeping in. "Here it comes," her words full of double, triple, infinite meanings.

  DYING ALL THE TIME

  Stainface lay there dead on the floor for several minutes then his body twisted and he sucked in a huge lungful of tainted air and he choked on bile, coughing and his eye was burning terribly. Pain was staring at him yet he said nothing.

  A thundering machine sounded distant then very near, right outside the door. They heard the engine cut off and the rider's jangling boot chain headed for the door. Pain looked at the drugs all over the table, then down at Stainface, then the door.

  "Stainface!" It was Satan.

  "What the Hell is he doing here?" thought Stainface, out loud.

  Pain was scooping the deth into a blue glass box. Stainface looked over with his good eye and mumbled, "Leave it." Pain stared at Stainface for a brief second then put the box down on the table, next to a large razor blade.

  Pain sat looking at Stain silently, waiting for some kind of instructions. Stainface lay on the floor, one hand covering the half of his face containing his burning eye and with the other hand he pointed and waved at the door. "Open it!" his yell a gurgling mess.

  Pain was so relieved to have been ordered around that he smiled as he practically shot across the room to open the door, tripping on the way. He opened the door.

  Satan walked in, his steps in perfect time. He walked right into the room, not pausing to acknowledge Pain. He stopped by the table, looked at the box, the blade and the leather strip, then his eyes moved to the man on the floor.

  "So, still dying all the time Fuckface?"

  The creep on the floor grumbled, "It's Stainface – and yeah, want some?"

  "No thanks." Satan yanked a chair from the table, spun it around and sat on it backwards, folding his arms across the back of it and resting his chin on his sleeves. He smiled down as Stainface coughed wretchedly.

  "Say, Spainface, wanna make a little extra loot?" Stainface stopped suffering and looked up at Satan, removing the hand from his eye.

  "What kinda loot?" Satan smiled when he heard this.

  "How about an uncut brick of this shit?" Satan motioned to the junk on the table with one hand and raised an eyebrow. Stainface looked at Pain by the open door and somehow that look caused Pain to hastily close the door.

  Satan looked back at the man by the door and totally blew him off, looking back at Stain. Satan said, "Well?"

  Stainface was getting up now and sat down at the table, staring at the blue glass box filled with deth. This was all the kick he had left, enough for maybe two more flatlines. "What do you want?" he asked without taking his eyes off that black dust in the box.

  Satan swiftly swept an arm across the table, knocking the box onto the concrete floor where it shattered. Stain's mouth fell open and his eyes bugged, then his teeth clenched as his head turned to face Satan. Satan's hand lay on the table where it had come to rest after the sudden swing. Pain got his guts together and said, "I'll come back," in a shaky voice and jerked the door open and then slammed it behind him. Stainface and Satan say staring at one another.

  "Kill Ping." It was all Satan had to say. He knew Stainface already had a bitter hatred for the womanizing ink slinger who had somehow weaseled his way into an apartment at The Citadel.

  Stain's rage at Satan had found a new target and he stretched one arm out over the table and Satan took his hand off the table then gripped the scabby fingers and said, "Do we have a deal Stainface?"

  Stainface, still gnashing his teeth yet suddenly smiling, now gripped Satan's manicured hand saying, "Deal!"

  "Fine. Good." Satan snatched his hand back and stood up, careful not to touch his clothes with the tainted hand he had shaken with. "He will be here tomorrow. I don't care how you do it, just make sure he's dead." Stain nodded, his smile fading. I will be back tomorrow evening to view the body and deliver your fee."

  Satan did not wait for a response; he pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his breast pocket with his clean hand and put them on. Frowning at the disgusting wreck of a room, he turned and walked out the door.

  Stainface stared after him, listening as the bike fired up and sped off. Stain only liked one thing more than dying anymore, and that was killing. He took out a notebook and started plotting Ping's final hours, chuckling to himself occasionally at the invention of a particularly innovative and sadistic epiphany.

  A NIGHT LIKE THIS

  Guards milled around patrolling the grounds of the great Red Pyramid. They stood in groups of two or three, considering the dark and rolling clouds. Several times the subject of a raid on Manson's Cathedral was mentioned and laughed about.

  The Zealots were a popular form of entertainment on nights like this. It was only midday but by midnight an ocean would be falling from the sky.

  Rains were so rare here that without fail a celebration would erupt at The Citadel. A great feast followed by music, drinking and dancing. A rainy day was considered a great holiday to be honored and remembered by all.

  In recent years the raid had also become a tradition. Without fail as the rain fell through the night during these rare occasions, the drink would flow and the egos would rise, resulting in the inevitable sacking of the Zealots' whole world.

  EVIL TWIN

  Screamsback wandered her way into a dream of distant lives, the ones she had left behind.

  She had been a transparency engineer at Diversified Screens and Locks, a populous State that provided all the other States with the products of their namesake. Her job had been simple; she monitored the quality and transparency of the screen surfaces as they came down the production line.

  She had lived with a roommate the first year she had worked for DSL. The roommate was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed transparency engineer, just like Screamsback had been. It took only a week for Mercy, then known as 7185 to become hopelessly disenchanted with her 'evil twin'. 7185 put in for an apartment transfer and was given her own place. The idea of living alone was interesting; she had always shared rooms with someone growing up and she took to the new lifestyle with ease. She did as she pleased without the concerns of others' faults or fancies.

  The dream revolved around these things and got all mixed up with her one great weakness: romance.

  One Saturday she had been out with someone she had met on her production line during a dispute concerning a slightly clouded screen. They stayed out in the leisure district for hours, drinking forbidden amounts of alcohol and they ended up going back to his place for the night. She was just having such a good time that she did not want it to end, and 3131 seemed like such a nice guy…

  Two weeks later she discovered something awful: she was pregnant – illegally. She was scared. She had broken the law restricting unauthorized procreation. She knew that if she skipped work she would be instantly found out, but it didn't matter.

  A month later, after her conduct at work had become suspicious she was brought in for testing. They found the tiny life living inside of her and they killed it. They sterilized her permanently and sent her on an express bus to Hell with no stopover at The Dent. She had broken an old law and there could be no excuse.

  Now here she was, sleeping in Satan's house and pledging her allegiance to him.

  The dream exploded into nothingness as she opened her eyes and looked
around. What time was it? How long had she been sleeping? She was getting hungry and wondered where Ping was and when he would be back.

  STAYIN' ALIVE

  Ping and Alpha Centauri were guarding the main entrance to the pyramid. They had seen the clouds rolling high and gray and Alpha had sent a crew to the kitchens to start preparations for the feast. He knew the night would be a wild one. The Celebration of The Storm always brought out one's inner maniac here at The Citadel. People would die tonight, it happened every time the rains came.

  Fight to stay alive. 'It was the national anthem around here,' thought Alpha as he watched black clad bikers zoom around, going on their own little missions, seeking strange dreams.

  THE GREAT STAR AND THE SONS OF MAY

  The sun was setting slowly in the distant west. Fires burned in the three towers of Saint Manson's Cathedral. The hall was filled on this early evening. The Zealots' night would be almost a mirror image of the festivities at The Citadel.

  They had prayed for the life-giving water for months, and their god was finally coming through. Music, food and dancing in the rain, these things had become the status quo on rainy days.

  Sister Angelica sat in the middle of a group and chewed laurel leaves, spitting the juices into a golden bowl into which she stared with ultra-glazed eyes. Occasionally she whispered prophecies, which a nearby scribe named Promethaeus dutifully recorded.

  As The Great Star fell in the east, the evening assumed a profound sense of Earth-bound divinity. Promethaeus sat upon a dais next to sister Angelica. His charge was to preserve the wisdom to be found in the lives of those who were damned yet remained faithful. The Zealots shunned many of the outside world's machines and there were no screens allowed in the Cathedral. So with pen and ink and scroll Promethaeus rendered the thousands of words by hand, in the way of a lost and ancient civilization. These words were in turn cut in stone by the Sons of May, a brotherhood entirely separate from The Zealots that nonetheless recognized that the preservation of words thusly rendered was of the more important of the forgotten arts.

  The Sons of May's rituals and signs were guarded secrets, but their purpose was very clear: immortalize wisdom in all its forms. They cut records into stone, carved pictures onto wooden blocks – thus rendering prints. They constructed countless secret and underground chambers far below the shifting desert sands for the eternal storage and protection of their vast collections of folklore, science and doctrine.

  They dwelt in underground temples amid the caves and mountains of the Western Desert. Neither Zealot nor Sinner intruded on their land. The Sons regularly scattered wax and ash around the edges of their vast domain as both a consecration and a warning. Intrusions were never tolerated or forgiven.

  BUG

  This is the end. Thirty-Seven thought to himself as he stared out the bleary windows. Three days. That is how long he had lasted in the real world; three miserable days.

  The black bus sped over crumbling blacktop towards the destiny he knew was coming: oblivion. Nothing mattered anymore, not the years spent in college, not the color of his eyes or hair, not even the numbers of his name. This was it. This was the end of everything.

  Then Thirty-Seven saw The Wall. He laughed when it happened. Since he knew how far they were from Hell, the only reactions available to him were the disillusion of his conscience and an instant descent into the depths of impossible madness and laughter. He instinctively chose the latter as most before him had done.

  When The Black Bus passed through the Gates of Hell, Thirty-Seven got very dizzy. He grabbed at the side of his caged seat and scraped his knuckles on the iron grill surrounding it.

  The bus approached the tunnel that ran straight through The Wall and the floor rose up to meet his face as he slumped over in his seat, discreetly losing consciousness.

  He woke up to a cane slamming on the door of his cage over and over and an angry voice yelling, "Get up you! Get up and get OUT!"

  Thirty-Seven woozily crawled up the side of his tiny cell and stood hunched. The guard leered and twisted a spiral key into the lock, which caused the door to suddenly slide to the left three centimeters. The guard walked off towards the front of the bus and yelled back, "Get the fuck OUT!" one last time before hopping off the bus into the dusty earth. Thirty-Seven pushed the door aside and trudged down the corridor, then the steps, and into Hell.

  He lurched off the bus and looked around. Several creepy-looking weirdos were hanging around, waiting to recruit or take advantage of the new arrivals. Several were eyeing him and were amazed and quickened when the shitty guard from the bus walked up next to him and yelled, "Thirty-Seven! Murder!" then walked off to announce someone else's name and crime to all the vultures.

  He was fresh meat now and he knew it. A one-eyed creep in black jeans and a red leather vest approached him and said without introduction, "You really kill someone, Bug?" Thirty-Seven looked into an awfully wrinkled and ruined face and said, "What if I did?" The one-eyed creep squinted his good eye shrewdly and said coldly, "Round here, it's either kill or be killed."

  Thirty-Seven shuddered and that ugly, squinting eye never blinked. Five extremely traumatic seconds passed during which time Thirty-Seven's heart began to pound unmercifully in his chest then the engines roared.

  In the distance, but coming fast were three riders and Thirty-Seven could barely make out that the three of them seemed to have something on their faces, yes, they were all wearing masks! Several of the loitering denizens suddenly had somewhere else to be and quickly headed off on their own dirt bikes or on foot, alone and in groups.

  The one-eyed man looked out at the approaching clouds of sand following the three bikers then turned back to Thirty-Seven, "Here come your new best friends, Bug." He took a last look at the posse's rising miasma of sand then walked off, following the path several others had taken only moments ago.

  Mostly guards and newcomers remained, with a few of the tougher, larger and meaner-looking thugs sticking around to see what would happen. As the three masked bikers rolled to a halt, their obvious leader called out to all present, "Thirty-Seven?"

  The shitty guard from the bus pointed his rifle at Thirty-Seven and said, "That's him."