------
[cr. 2025-02-02T13:35:56Z]
it only just hit me now, but
there's a decent argument that a Buddhist afterlife could be duplicated across timelines
while only an afterlife which is eternal in both directions would be separate from the universe's timeline
an afterlife with timelines leads to some real shenanigans
------
[cr. 2024-12-16T06:33:07Z]
imagine for a moment that you are not a member of the historical Trotskyite conspiracy, but someone who lives in the present day, and you want to apologize to the universe for the death of Trotsky.
would it not be better to send your apologies directly to Trotsky? whenever a material person is harmed by a material action, it hurts material individuals far more than it would ever be expected to hurt God. which certainly raises the question: why would anyone pray to God over dead souls when a real, physically-existing afterlife could simply have invented mailboxes?
trotsky wakes up, he goes to his mailbox
he opens a letter, he skims through the first few paragraphs.
"I am sorry ... let Lenin lead people into ... Communism ... lie ... swindle" "okay, that's enough."
he puts the letter in the paper shredder.
"again. another one. they always think they have to apologize for Lenin." "It's my memory they said there was no Bad Place, but these letters are beginning to make me feel like there is almost definitely such a thing as punishment."
he ponders deeply whether he should instantly shred the next ten letters addressed from "United States", and putting the whole thing out of his mind, heads back over to check on his rabbits.
------
[cr. 2025-02-02T13:35:56Z]
stalin goes to the afterlife. the judges have determined that he has done terrible things.
he is sent to an afterlife university which he is not allowed to leave until he completes a degree in ethics.
he spends most of his time combing over afterlife history books trying to understand what happened around the world in the decades after 1953. nobody really stops him from doing this. the librarian is also serving a sentence, having been sent here for the act of mocking official scribes in ancient Egypt and claiming they were just a big waste and went to get their heads filled with nonsense and arrogance while peasants did the real work. now, people like this have to share the afterlife with modern-day Tory conspiracy theorists who despite living in a world of unimaginable innovation and knowledge believe capitalists are trying to vaccinate them with microchips.
Stalin and the librarian end up in a philosophical discussion about whether the universe is comprehensible. the librarian laments that everything used to seem so simple back on earth when people did rituals for local gods and the universe seemed to provide for everyone, but now they have seen so many titles of science books everything seems ridiculously complicated and it seems almost impossible to understand how any of it became the way it is. Stalin lays out how in the industrial age people essentially started doing the same thing with society, praising figureheads of various differentiating industries and putting their money on them because they had no idea what actually snapped the various levels of society together and had to assume that the god of each abstract quality of industry was making things work. the librarian becomes deeply lost in trying to process this idea.
about two earth-years later, university administration check through the progress of various students and uncover something strange. Stalin's results are good, but almost too good. when he first arrived, he did not seem to put much effort into things, but when pulled aside for a pop quiz, he explains everything as if he has always known it, and could give beginner-level public lectures on it himself. administration quietly keeps an eye on what is going on at the university, until suddenly they see a graduate student appear with a thesis on the entire history of racist attitudes in former British territories, and another appear with a thesis on why businesses are much less likely to agree to taxes than to try to replace government with autonomous nonprofits. apparently, behind the scenes Stalin had been meeting with some of the other people trapped in here trying to work out all the internal logistics of how capitalism had led to the principles of this particular "rehabilitation" program and what stupid or arbitrary kinds of research people would require to begin trusting Bolshevism and looking into an actual material analysis of society. the underground group listed out all the trendy, distracting, or simply complicated topics people seemed to require answers on per the needs of their particular ideology, and began assigning people to each of those topics. how racism is linked to "attitudes". AI. Israel. religious tolerance relative to different religions. how to get maximum voter turnout. how to get people to agree to taxes. then the theses started rolling in. the more theses there were, the more other people started studying the "deeper" topics outside the surface ones. the snowball got bigger. eventually, the afterlife university more or less just morphed into a regional Communist party, connecting a bunch of disconnected aimless individuals together around an evolving ontological plan. other parallel afterlife universities see the movement grow into them.
Trotsky takes a look at the afterlife news, and sees reports of people filling a street over afterlife punishments. he is dismayed at how much success Stalin had considering his own failed attempts to start an afterlife university movement. he goes back to building cactus terrariums.
------
[cr. 2025-05-08T11:02:01Z]
trotsky wakes up in the afterlife.
he finds he has been turned into a game show host.
he wakes up to a phone call on some strange newfangled cell phone to hear that he is scheduled to appear in front of a live studio audience to quote-unquote "prove a point to the Stalinists". at this moment he has no idea what he is about to get into, and totally falls for it, assuming this is maybe some kind of talk show or something. maybe Trotskyism really caught on across the living world and people have vastly upgraded from local newspapers to daytime television. he can only hope.
when he gets there, he finds out that what's actually happened is the inhabitants of the afterlife set him up to repeatedly do Monty Hall problems. every one of them has its own unique twist. maybe there will be seven doors and he gets to open two of them to see if one of them will contain desirable ingredients for a cooking challenge. maybe there will be four doors but only one of them contains the answer to a difficult integral he will otherwise have to construct by hand on camera under a time limit. maybe there will be five doors and he had better not open the one that contains a snake. maybe there will be ten doors that together contain five horseshoes, and the task is simply to toss as many horseshoes as possible onto a peg, but the puzzle still always begins with opening a door and reminding the audience that this modified all the probabilities.
the point of the game show is very simple: to prove to the audience that Trotskyists are terrible with multiple things containing uncertain outcomes. sometimes the show is very blatant with its imagery, literally putting the outlines of arbitrary European countries or similar such regions on the doors. different Trotskyist theorists are called in on various days to participate in the game. none of them ever get to the point of being quite in their element while in it. some of them figure out the trick of always switching doors, but they rarely get beyond that to rise to any of the other curve balls thrown at them after that. the audience has a lot of fun with it but after a while the contestants start to get restless and begin silently searching for a way out. unfortunately for them their particular corner of the afterlife is way out in the middle of nowhere and when they leave the studio there is nothing but what seem like leagues and leagues of endless sand. nobody bothers to look for them. the escapees lie in the sand, pained from lack of water and nutrients but never coming closer to death. one day a helicopter descends on the desert. out of the helicopter steps Joseph Stalin.
"Do you... intend to take us back to the studio?"
"No." He smiles at them with an ominous confidence. "I'm taking you back to sector 15A, where you can help me ~~build state businesses~~ give a lecture on the importance of government ministries." The subtle smugness fades such that he only looks vaguely amiable. "There's water on board."
The Trotskyists glare at their ~~rival~~ enemy and tell him they will not cooperate, letting the helicopter fly off into the horizon. They spend the next few days digging into the dirt seeing if they can find anything useful to the task of getting somewhere else in there.
------
[cr. 2025-05-09T09:24:10Z]
Stalin and Trotsky reach the afterlife. they are in a weird fantastical anime setting where instead of history working the way it really does theorists have to use their hero powers to fight off external threats.
the situation is like a loose mirror of the way historical events really happened but with the actual events simplified. it reads as artificial, like some kind of created TV show.
they find out that, yeah, some "director guy who lives in a floating box" seems to have willed it into existence. every single "afterlife realm" somebody goes to is actually just an alternate universe which copies and changes the contents of the previous universe. it certainly takes away the mystery of exactly how all the people who have ever existed are supposed to fit into the afterlife; just like before, they live out their lives another time in another universe.
for whatever reason, Stalin is taking it relatively well.
Trotsky, taking things way too literally, snaps at him that this isn't how Leninism is supposed to work. Leninism is supposed to be the people doing things, and all the people across the world at once, blah blah blah.
Stalin casually remarks that when you are in a historical situation you have to understand the forces of history. pretty much paying him no mind.
he walks through the burning wreckage of the Russia region to face the tarry two-headed dragon that has been leveling everyone's homes and farms, and after Trotsky could not kill that thing for the past 13 years, somehow accomplishes it
------
[cr. 2025-05-09T11:05:37Z]
Trotsky wakes up in the afterlife. he is a house fly. everything is gigantic. every blade of grass might as well be a tree.
the whole world is alive with movement and potential threats. the slightest movement off in the corner of things ripples into the center of things.
"We sent him to be a house fly 700 times?" "That's about how long it takes to equal a human life. He only lived to 61."
------
r1 [cr. 2025-07-19T05:12:00Z]
trotsky shows up in the afterlife.
it turns out that people are placed into a zone of the afterlife based on how much Third World exploitation they generated. for every single action you take that hands a livable career from a Third-World person to a First-World person, the zone you're sent to is filled with one more ~~beehive~~ wasp nest. people in the Third World go to a place nearly free of wasp nests.
he gets there, and most of the zone is chock full of ~~beehives~~ wasp nests.
"But I'm a Communist. There must have been some kind of mistake."
the zone ranger softly shakes her head. "whether you're a Communist has no bearing on what impact you had."
---
[cr. 2025-07-20T22:12:09Z]
~~"Mao?"~~ "Are you...?"
"Mao? Yes, nice to meet you.
"This is just the way history shakes out
"I'm actually here by choice. You know, too many people look at something and immediately dismiss it. "
"But if you just try to compromise with them ~~they're liable to~~ pretty quickly they'll be poised to eat you up."
"Can you really be so sure of that?"
It becomes apparent Gramsci is standing awkwardly off in the middle of a cluster of wasp nests.
Trotsky squints. "...Is he another theorist? ~~Why do they keep sending them here?~~ Why do they keep ending up here?"
Gramsci looks toward the others, not moving too sharply. "I've figured out that they leave you alone if you just blend in with them."
"~~That's not an answer.~~ That is anything but an answer."
~~Mao looks vaguely tired~~ Mao looks the other direction, doing everything but sigh. "Some of them will try to do this, come over to sector 166 in hopes of becoming one of them. Sure, the wasps will let you stand there, but if you want to have any hope of moving them..."
"~~Why is everything wasps,~~ ~~are there so many wasps around here, anyway?~~ Why are there so many wasps spread throughout these two zones anyway?"
"That's the ~~question of the century~~ question, isn't it. We try so hard at what we do but there is always this island of wasp nests we have no real control over." Mao walks over and picks up a potted plant, carrying it .
------
[cr. 2025-09-14T05:28:39Z]
a Protestant Christian walks into heaven
everything is beautiful, unnecessary hedge gateways, perfect tile paths
then the Christian's eyes are suddenly drawn to... it. a bust of Joseph Stalin on a pedestal in front of... the Joseph Stalin _musem_?
"I was always told he was never going to heaven."
"oh, no. he followed all the commandments.
1) Have no gods that are not Jesus.
2) Have no gods that are not Brahma.
3) People in the same country should not steal from each other or lie to each other.
4) Create the ~~fewest~~ smallest number of deaths by war and murder.
5) Give the suffering stranger your coat.
6) Get rid of unhealthy attachments.
7) ~~Respect people who know more about something than you.~~ Respect each person's area of knowledge.
8) Prepare the people of the world to live in harmony.
9) Keep learning and ascending to higher levels of consciousness."
---
[cr. 2025-09-14T05:28:39Z]
"...is that all of them?"
"no, it's just the ones that were relevant. the full book would be much too long to list out."
---
[cr. 2025-09-14T05:28:39Z]
~~"but the Soviet government totally lied to people"~~
~~"Telling people to hold out a bit longer isn't a lie, or a lot more Christian pastors would be in the Bad Place."~~
"but, that can't be right. he definitely broke at least some of those rules."
"like what?"
"lying to people. the Soviet government totally lied to people."
"no, he helped catch all sorts of people who were lying and stealing. ~~even if he accidentally said a few things that were false~~ that's a net positive. Telling people to have hope and hold out a bit longer isn't a lie, or a lot more Christian pastors would be in the Bad Place."
"...oh. I'd never thought of it that way."
"it has to be based on the sum total of a person's life, or let me tell you, a lot more atheists that grill you about God leading people to kill would be totally right."
"well, what about the one about giving the stranger your coat? when everyone else had nothing the Communist Party certainly wasn't doing that."
"he taught a bunch of otherwise selfish peasants to stand together in hard times and be part of something greater than themselves."
"but isn't that just exploiting them? how is that a good thing to do?"
"maybe this is foreign to you, but have you ever heard of the concept of solving the problems of a particular town with help from inside that particular town? he can't always be there."
"...huh. it's like, without a church. without a, anything."
"I'm sure you're going to be curious about the 'no other gods' ones."
"honestly, I was only confused when the second one brought up Brahma."
"one commandment says to not have any other gods than Jesus. if you're an atheist, that one's easy, because you never worshiped not-Jesus. the other commandment says to not have any other gods than Brahma. again, if you're an atheist, you're already done."
"but then how did I get in here"
"yes, that's where it gets tricky, isn't it? here, let me lead you to the gods room. as you can see, the purpose of gods is to sort people into cultures. when people join into larger cultures with the minimum possible number of deaths, that's considered good. so if people all join onto an entity which _is_ Brahma or at least _isn't not_ Brahma, they create historical progress. it's perfectly okay to smash two gods together as long as they _are_ Jesus, _are_ Brahma, _are_ the world-pharaoh, or _are_ a representation of Buddhism."
"so Muslims don't get into heaven."
"no, they do, because ~~Allah is Jesus~~ Jesus and Allah are the same thing. the whole thing with Jesus being God was a smokescreen, where really, God just absorbed his name and got another name."
"how do you know this?"
"well you can see it right over there, can't you?"
the Christian takes a couple of steps closer to look at the far section of the infographic wall. _Yahweh_, it reads, _lots to say, terrible sandwich thief_. above is a strange yet oddly lifelike line doodle of an unearthly being resembling a blue jay situated in the middle of a minimalistic park.
"every single religious book and story on your world has only seen his greatly magnified shadow."
the Christian is dumbfounded, hardly able to take this in.
"yes, everything you have waited for, everything you trusted in, everything people have fought wars praying to has been for a flickering shadow puppet that never actually did anything. it should be clear now why we think so highly of Stalin. he was entirely real."
the Christian remains frozen to the floor in silence.
"would you like to meet God?"
the Christian looks at them for a moment in a distant, empty way, then nods.
the two of them head out of the museum, the zone guardian scanning their card at the empty counter to sign out, and they begin crossing the tile path to an oddly clean and symmetrical dirt path leading to what would normally be a bus stop. half way through the trip across the open grassy plain, a distinctly medium-sized flying _thing_ about the mass of a raven flutters down onto the dirt, staring across at the two uncannily.
after a moment, the Christian hesitantly extends a hand.
unexpectedly, the oddly-shaped being leaps up, flutters over onto the man's arm, and barks a small, sassy _sbep_ at his face, as if maybe wondering what he is doing walking down _its_ road. then it just as quickly leaps up and flutters away.
------
[cr. 2025-09-14T21:48:19Z]
james p cannon enters afterlife
falcon here's the book of commandments
cannon no gods that aren't jesus, no gods that aren't brahma. so you can be an atheist?
falcon right.
cannon is Trotskyism one of the approved gods?
falcon no. it never succeeded in uniting people. i know that has to be disappointing for someone who prefers a materialist interpretation of reality.
cannon dammit.
cannon any advice on how to strengthen my religion
falcon I don't know what to tell you. all Yahweh does is flap his wings and a bunch of people file into in a stadium.
cannon wait, Yahweh is...
falcon pulls out photo of raven-sized air elemental hastily printed on cardboard
cannon starts laughing
cannon oh that's adorable. I wish I could tell people.
falcon doesn't everybody.
falcon we could name an elemental after you guys if you want, but it doesn't guarantee any particular set of random shadows and sparks people look for patterns in will get a fanclub.
cannon I'll tell you what. go find a fire elemental and name it Lenin
falcon Lenin? like...?
[Lenin looks over at a small reddish cat-like shape that walks into his apartment, dropping a small body from its mouth onto the mat which turns out to be a wad of newspaper.]
Lenin Lenin, no. we've been over this.
Krupskaya Oh look, Lenin's in.
[a regular tomcat has wandered in from the cat afterlife over in zone 99. this one was named Lenin by the Trotskyists that keep accidentally getting sent there. he is a black tuxedo cat with a white forehead and a small goatee marking.]
[shortly, Lenin the tuxedo cat snatches the paper wad from Lenin the elemental. Lenin the elemental looks at Lenin the tuxedo cat confused as Lenin the tuxedo cat dashes out the cat flap in some other direction.]
Lenin good boy.
Krupskaya Do you think we should bail them out of there?
Lenin No, ~~it looks like~~ it looks to me like all the kitties in zone 99 have everything under control.
------
[cr. 2025-09-16T02:00:13Z]
a demon hovers over to another demon with a package.
"you have to take this to zone 1488."
"uch, that one?"
"I know. but somebody has to go. we can't just have everybody chickening out of it."
"_zone 1488_," the demon repeats, with the level of enthusiasm appropriate for a foul-smelling clogged toilet.
they get to zone 1488. this week, Germans are harvesting cotton, while Italians are working in office jobs and Japanese people are guarding the sea of searing magma where the people-groups who didn't win a position in any of the past wars get to be.
"Jefferson Davis is president," the one demon explains. "he's been president for the last 100 years. the Germans really hate ~~it.~~ that the Confederates have been winning all the wars."
"Has it really been ~~one hundred~~ one hundred years?"
the demons fly over to a well-shaded ground floor residence, turn their magic key to unlock the door, and drop the package in as quickly as possible before locking the door again and flying off.
in a few minutes, an odd old man gets up from his seat, looking like any white-haired electrician from Alabama, but with a somewhat raspy voice. he opens the package and takes out a book. ~~the book~~ It appears to be an explanation of general and special relativity, boasting "clear and easy" examples. the man looks it over with a frown. he walks over to a collection of various other books on relativity and sets it down next to the rest of them. then, he heads to his nearest writing table, clicks his pen, and begins scrawling out a response to the person who sent him the package.
"You are educated stupid and evil. Scientists do not understand nature's simultaneous harmonic 4-day time cube..."
------
[cr. 2025-09-19T07:22:52H]
...
d: ... so then why aren't they both positive?
IV: I'm more interested in why there are demons in zone 98.
d: ~~they put you here when you know too much.~~ it has to do with forbidden knowledge. when you're bound for another zone and the people there don't like you you end up here.
IV: I guess we have a lot in common.
---
[On a bench a short distance outside a gigantic cathedral-looking castle of a building, a Trotskyist is talking to a demon.]
demon: do you ever wonder why to lionize something is good but to demonize something is bad
trotskyist: no.
IV: before we got here and all the languages went away I spoke Spanish.
d: ah
d: but think about it, you've had your share of people saying negative things about you, just like me. why isn't lionizing negative? and yet anybody could also say that anyone who goes against a corrupt system is good. so then why aren't they both positive?
d: Aslan led a war. and Gryffindors are a bunch of bigots. Slytherins are not the real enemy. it's telling people they're the antagonist that makes them into one.
IV: I've never actually read Harry Potter.
d: you haven't?
IV: I get that ~~we have this giant library here~~ we have this giant library taking up most of the zone here, but I've never thought of reading ~~those books~~ that particular series of books for some reason.
d: [facetious] I thought you all came from britain and australia
IV: no, the only requirement is that you can't be one of the Soviet people. you can't be a Soviet citizen and be a Trotskyist.
~~d: Is that definitionally or would that be a prejudice?~~
d: of course.
d: so if Harry Potter is the new bible, ~~but it's only Liberals that use it,~~ but it's the Liberal bible, and Trotskyists were to start using it, are the Liberals or Trotskyists Voldemort?
IV: ...uh.
IV: have you ever heard of Animorphs? I think it's a bit more like that.
d: actually, I did read those.
d: so if they invented the word lionize in that world, but only in the present day, what do you think it would mean?
IV: I guess it would mean a group of people nominating someone for really difficult tasks that you personally don't like.
IV: and if people could morph into demons, I guess that word would be like lionize but a lot stronger.
d: let me tell you, if they had demons, the war would have gone a lot differently.
IV: hey, why aren't there any demons on earth. if you guys exist.
d: why aren't there any ~~Trotskyist~~ worldwide revolutions on earth?
[a unicorn walks by, apparently headed to the library.]
IV: [points, flabbergasted] why aren't there any unicorns on earth??
[the demon sets a hand on the Trotskyist's shoulder and opens their mouth to say something but doesn't have time.]
[the unicorn looks back at them vaguely tired, though not exactly annoyed]
u: we're elementals!
d: [finishing thought] —yes. everything here that looks weird to you is an elemental.
~~IV: have I been an elemental this whole time?~~
IV: but... how...
[cut forward to later. the demon and the Trotskyist are sitting at the same bench with a book.]
~~IV: so I exist inside a 17th-century morality play and I'm not even real.~~
IV: so all the other zones are real, but this zone is a book, I exist inside a 17th-century morality play, and I'm not even real.
d: well, no, the book we live in is very real. it's kept safely inside the real zone 98. that's 98A and we're in 98B-3.
IV: ...we didn't even get four.
d: sucks, doesn't it.
IV: ...hang on. how do _Harry Potter_ and _Animorphs_ exist inside a book? a book that was written way before they were made?
d: logic.
d: ever heard of analytic continuation?
IV: no?
d: it's where you take a mathematical function and trace it with an infinite power series to find the forbidden parts of the function.
IV: [racking brain] so......
d: the rules already in the book four centuries ago lead to all the things that are happening today.
IV: ah!
IV: so when you write a Christian morality play, ~~there's eventually going to~~ they can't stop there from eventually being a Russian Revolution.
d: or you, or me.
IV: everything makes so much more sense now.
[beat]
IV: do you think there's a real version of me?
d: maybe. I mean, that's how the two of us got here. the things that really happen also happen in books. but sometimes things are so different in different books the futures diverge.
IV: the real me is probably going to be shocked to learn what happens in the future.
The real version of the Trotskyist stops, indeed very surprised, and passes the book to the demon, pointing to the passage. The demon looks back at him with a sly smile.
The Trotskyist flips forward a significant chunk of chapters in the book. the demon gapes at the page in open-mouthed excitement.
They pull down another book and start flipping through it toward the end, and another one. With each book they don't seem any less excited.
It is now a couple centuries later. The demon and the Trotskyist are now Communist party members in the former zone 1488, which has now been broken up into seventeen sectors that operate as its union republics. The previous system of nationalities reigning over each other has been totally abolished.
The only bad thing about this outcome is that our two point-of-view characters have ended up with fairly menial positions.
d: ~~I told you~~ We knew they were going to kick you out of the ~~central~~ inner party. ~~It always~~ That's always what happens to people like you.
IV: I, yeah. ~~I probably should have known.~~ The third book I saw that happen to someone in, I knew. We'd had that wrong for some time. But look on the bright side. There's actually news here now.
[The demon knocks on the wooden apartment door.]
Old Man: [faint] Go away.
d: [raising voice to get through door] Fourteen-Seventeen Local News. It's about the Cube.
[The door opens. The old man has a look which almost borders on warm and inviting.]
Old Man: All right.
[The three are inside the building, seated in the living room.]
Old Man: It was seventy years ago, people were talking about Communism.
Old Man: I thought it was a load of hooey. I thought, ~~you can't just go putting things together like that.~~ you can't just take things and put them together like that. The earth, every time it goes around ~~there are four sunrises and four midnights.~~ you have four sunrises and four midnights. You have the people over here having sunrise over here and the people over there having midnight over there. So I never thought they'd make anything out of it. But then they went putting the seventeen groups of people into seventeen zones — I mean, the seventeen sectors — and they said, midnight hits this sector and midnight hits that sector. And I started to realize, there are more than four sides to this thing, there are more like infinite sides. So the time "cube" is really more like a time sphere. Not one that goes at the same speed as the earth, of course, it's more like you take the earth sphere and every point on that earth is a little spinning earth.
Old Man: Long story short, I'm starting to think all this general relativity stuff might not be a conspiracy.
Old Man: The Communists, when they got this idea ~~to put the history of every population in the hands of that population~~ that the history of every population goes with that population, but the populations all go on different sides of the same thing, ~~they were onto something.~~ they had it about right. You can't just go smashing two things together. People go believing in God, well the United States comes under rule of king of the Negroes. No thing in nature is ever just one thing. ~~It's man and woman, it's day and night, it's space and time. It's two things that come together to create any one thing.~~ ~~It's a unity of opposites.~~ ~~unity of opposite things, that's what they say now.~~ If it was one thing, you're getting scammed. You're getting lied to. They're all making you stupid. But the Fourteen-Seventeen International, well they're okay. They don't want anyone under God. They won't put you under anybody's agenda. Not anybody's but your own.
demon: What do you think of free housing?
Old Man: The planning system fixed that. If you don't put them in the wrong sector they don't want to be in they can have all the housing they want.
------
[cr. 2025-09-19T07:22:52H]
~~zone 228A: the other North Korea~~
zone 228A: the _second_ North Korea
------
[cr. 2025-09-19T07:22:52H]
A Muslim suicide bomber goes to the afterlife.
He looks around, dazed. It looks like... China? Or something vaguely like it. It looks like some completely ordinary country, with angled roofs and statues of flying horses. He slips around the area as quietly as he can, increasingly unnerved at what might or might not be lurking here. Then, suddenly out of nowhere appears a college student.
Student: ~~New here?~~ ~~So, are you new here?~~ ...Are you new here?
Arrival (M): ~~What is this place?~~ ~~Where have they brought me?~~ Where am I?!
Student: This is Korea.
Student: Well, it's not the original Korea. ~~This is zone 228, the _afterlife_ Korea.~~ This is the Korea that ~~all North Koreans have been sent to in the afterlife.~~ everyone from North Korea goes to in the afterlife.
M: Why—...
S: ~~Sometimes we get people from other countries too, that's just how it is.~~ Sometimes we get people from other countries. That's just how it is.
M: Is... Korea Muslim now?
[The student's look changes to one of vague sympathy, realizing how little he knows.]
S: ...No.
S: ~~The gatekeepers sent you here~~ The afterlife has about 7,000 zones. There's a group of gatekeepers that would have sent you here.
M: And you trust them?
S: They're all that there is.
M: You don't think this is a false reality created by evil forces?
S: No. ~~...I think we should go to the library.~~ ~~I can take you to my college library.~~ ...Come on, we can go to my college library.
[A bit later, the two are at the library.]
S: [gesturing to map] This is zone 228A. This is the only afterlife there is, and it's divided into 7,000 zones.
S: [gesturing to cockatrice statue] That's Hwonchi the sun-eater. She's not real, at least by earth standards, but the basilisks ~~protect this zone from external attacks~~ protect the borders of this zone if they're ever needed. [I wish I knew enough about the Korean language to make a believable pun out of Bak-ilisks but it isn't coming]
S: [gesturing to wall relief] And that's Kim Il-Sung, the founder of Korea. He was General Secretary, and then he retired, but everyone keeps giving him awards.
S: And this is the librarian. ~~He can answer any of your questions.~~ He can tell you where to find the answer to any of your questions.
M: Who created this place? ~~This... afterlife?~~ These... 7,000 zones?
Librarian: As far as we know, it's always been here.
M: Forever?
Librarian: Basically. We have books on the oldest known human civilizations to enter the afterlife. They go back some 10,000 years. We've also discovered animals here dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
M: There's no heaven?
[The two Koreans look at the arrival silently for a moment.]
L: Heaven is a subjective thing. ~~Some people want to be in Korea~~ Some people want to be in the basketball zone, some people want to be in the music zone, some people want to be in the Cretaceous zone studying dinosaurs. If you ask a lot of people in zone 228A, we're already in heaven.
[The arrival looks distraught, like the room is spinning and he's trying to find solid ground.]
M: _I refuse to believe that heaven is Korea._
L: This is one of those foreigners again, isn't it.
L: We can get you into classes if you like. What are you most interested in? Science? History? History of religions maybe? It won't cost you anything—
M: [frantic] How do I get out of here??
L: [in no hurry] Hmm, well, you can, but there has to be a reason you were sent ~~here.~~ to this zone first.
L: ~~[to phone] Ministry of Zones?~~ I'm going to call the Ministry of Zones. [to phone] Hello, our city received a foreigner. Um, what are we supposed to do with him? [pause] ~~He doesn't understand the structure of the afterlife. [pause]~~ Yes, ~~very much~~ quite a bit. [pause] To therapy? [pause] Okay. [clicks hang up key and puts phone away]
~~L: So, we're going to find you temporary housing and then you'll book a therapy appointment. But you're welcome to come back and register for classes any time.~~
~~M: There are none. There are no .~~
[~~We cut to~~ It is about a week later. The arrival meets with the student in her room at the college.]
S: So how did therapy go?
M: I still can't get over the fact there's nothing other than this.
S: That there's no afterlife after the afterlife?
M: ~~...In a sense~~ ...I guess so. They're side by side, because that's the way all of this is, but still there's no heaven ~~to go to.~~ over to the side of this.
S: It's like the librarian said, we're already _in_ heaven.
M: That's easy for you to say. I was told I'd be going to a bright shining place... for heroes.
M: If these zones build themselves up as people come into them... ~~where is the zone I died for?~~ why didn't I die and wake up in a zone full of Muslims?
S: I don't know.
S: [casually] ~~Maybe this _is_ where heroes live, and you just don't understand it.~~ Maybe this _is_ the place where heroes live, and you just don't understand it.
~~M: This just seems like a place for Koreans.~~
[The arrival really thinks about this for a moment, trying to comprehend what it could mean]
S: [takes out laptop] This is the People's Army. ~~They defended Korea from the United States and Japan, and really, they'd still exist except that now the zone is surrounded by basilisks.~~ They defended Korea from the United States and Japan, which were huge countries; I think you know that. Back on earth, everybody had to be in it for 10 years, until we got here and the zone is now surrounded by basilisks. Hardly anybody is in the military now. Now we have a lot more time for things like going to college.
~~M: If you don't mind my asking, how did you die?~~
~~S: Oh. I died before ~~
M: Were you ever in the military?
S: No. I died before the age of 18 in a fishing boat accident. They had to drag me up out of the ocean. But as soon as I got to the afterlife, I got to choose what age to be, and now I'm here.
M: So no matter what way we die, anyone can end up here. ...In Korea.
S: I guess that's right.
S: I remember a few years ago there was a story about some people from the United States and Japan ending up ~~here.~~ in this zone. They had fought ~~in the Korean War~~ against us in the Korean War, but that wasn't when they died. And people were afraid, but it turned out they weren't happy about having to be in the war and they ~~were actually in it~~ actually joined the military because they needed money. The Japanese people faced a lot of rejection for a while, but ~~in the end everything was okay.~~ in the end we'd made a big deal out of nothing and everything was okay.
~~M: So is this going to be my fate, too?~~
M: ...It doesn't matter how you die or even what country you come from, we all end up in Korea.
M: We end up in Korea... ~~just having to exist~~ ~~just having to live together and exist.~~ just having to both live here and exist.
[The student pauses, caught in an odd combination of surprised and unsurprised]
S: ...I guess so.
S: [sighs out a voiceless laugh] That's just another day for me.
M: I wonder if one day it will be that easy for me too.
[A few months later]
M: [to phone] Hello mom, dad. [pause] I quit al-Qaeda. Now I'm going to college in Korea. [pause] I don't care. [pause] No. [pause] No, I am not coming to zone 1488. [pause] We don't need to fight the Confederates. I know you died to the Sunnis. ~~It's not doing any .~~ It doesn't matter. These endless wars aren't doing anyone any good. Leave me alone. [clicks hang-up key]
------
[cr. 2025-09-21T19:43:45Z]
~~zone 1917~~ zone 1906:
~~the one where everyone believes in Marxism~~ the timeline where everyone believes in Marxism
[An inhabitant of zone 1906 turns on their television. There are a number of talk shows on different channels.]
Carl Sagan: ~~Really, the best thing for science~~ —But science cannot function well without a vigorous debate. Hypotheses are bound to be discarded, but you need new challengers coming in from the outside. ~~Stalinism can never~~ We have learned our lessons on Stalinism. Trotskyists will continue to debate each other and bring in fresh new voices, hopefully into the next few generational cycles of all the sectors.
Host: But when it comes to sector 228B, ~~how would you say that even applies?~~ how would you say that applies?
Sagan: Cuba? The same way it applies anywhere else. You let other forms of Marxism into sector 228B, and the problems of Marxism in Cuba will solve themselves.
Host: All right. Folks, this has been Carl Sagan—
[The viewer changes the channel.]
~~Donald Trump: The people in zone 50, they have no idea about this.~~
Donald Trump: 226 is full of businesses. The people in zone 50, they have no idea about this. They've got nothing on us. The future of the zones lies with Deng Xiaoping. [He pronounces the Chinese name very questionably as ""]
Che: It's a different world now.
Adolf Hitler: Duginism is Marxism, and it's the only good Marxism!!
[The TV cuts back from the clip of Hitler complaining in the streets of sector 1488 about the Fourteen-Seventeen International to the actual host of the show commenting on it]
Host: A terrible abuse of meta-Marxism, as we can see. He may technically be right that Marxism can analyze any ideology including empire, but meta-Marxism was designed for comparing believable Marxisms, not for this.
Host: [bringing up picture] Next: free housing in Korea.
Host: There has been some controversy in sector 228A over ~~what people are~~ who is entitled to free housing. The Workers' Party of Korea has made a statement that it is dedicated to providing a home for all Koreans, but when it comes to ~~foreigners ~~ non-Koreans spawning into sector 228A whether this applies is unclear. The Bolshevik Tendency of sector 98A—
[The viewer changes the channel to a talk show seemingly made of Europeans]
Trotsky: ~~Juche-socialism~~ This "Juche-socialism" has never ~~been a faithful~~ represented the original Leninism. If ~~you look at the~~ you go through each of the points set down by Lenin—
[The viewer changes the channel again.]
-----
v5.1/ "letter" [cr. 1732845372]
... nobody is more confident there will be a better tomorrow than a Trotskyist. they were absorbed in what felt like an entirely separate world where separate things were true, and yet they were absolutely determined to always keep going and never give up, like some kind of fantastical anime show, or an alternate version of the Narnia books where the lion had a totally different objective. [*j]
------
r1 (scrapped) [cr. 2025-05-07T05:59:31Z]
LION: Welcome, children, to this magical land. you must take up your sword and defeat the patricians
CHILD: the what. I thought these kinds of stories were about good and evil
LION: no. that's what a lot of people think, but actually, history is just a bunch of material patterns.
------
r1 (scrapped) [cr. 2025-05-07T05:59:31Z]
LION: nobody can kill me if I just never give up [lion erupts in blazing flames like a phoenix]
------
r2 [cr. 2025-05-08T11:49:34Z]
Trotsky wakes up in the afterlife along with a couple other theorists and his son. shortly he meets up with a majestic intelligent lion who introduces itself as Ardenth
all around them there are nothing but various cats, and forest or grassland animals.
afterlife official looks back through a list of names
"Wait, were those two people named Leo _humans_? ~~That sounded for all the world to me like a name a cat would have.~~ I could have sworn that was a house cat name. Oh well. A few humans in the cat world probably won't hurt. I guess the real question is why I thought anyone would name a cat 'Ted'. 'Leo' makes a lot of sense. But _Ted_? ~~Did I really think 'Rosa' was a valid cat name?~~ Who would name a cat _Rosa_?"
at that moment, the official's eyes land on an entry from last month when she had had to place a cat named "Joe Biden". she lets out a quiet sigh. "......Right."
just a few days ago, Joe Biden took down a hawk and ~~received his new name,~~ reported to the forest elders to receive his new name of ~~Hawkfang.~~ Hawkstrike.
------
r4 [cr. 2025-09-21T01:42:12Z]
Trotskyists look at different colonies of cats periodically getting into fights
"isn't this a bit barbaric?"
one in the back speaks up "I don't know, have we ever been able to do any better?"
they look at each other, ~~genuinely thinking about it~~ genuinely thinking for a moment about how they all screwed up
*Trotsky*: No, this is ~~totally different~~ a totally different situation from organizing Leninist parties on earth. ~~It's~~ ~~Cats don't have the ability to—~~ Cats are nothing like us, they don't have the ~~ability to—~~ capacities for—
*Luxemberg*: No, actually, this is just it. A workers' revolution is about everyone everywhere. If the workers were far enough ~~into~~ through their breaking point it could go through without a single one of us. ~~And what have we been doing?~~ And what have we all been doing? We've only been fighting ourselves. We've only been squabbling over them and we've never been there when they actually needed us.
*Grant*: ~~That isn't really fair~~ That isn't a fair thing to say when we all know that Stalin started it.
*Cannon*: But did he?
*Trotsky* He absolutely did.
*Luxemberg*: No he didn't.
*Grant*: It was definitely him—
at that moment, a gray-brown long-haired cat wanders in, looking at the group of humans curiously. they all stop, not really sure what to say any more. the cat wanders closer and brushes up against Cannon, who looks at it in mild confusion, while Trotsky reaches out a hand to try to get its attention. the cat wanders over toward Luxemberg. she picks up the cat and helpfully hands it over to Trotsky. the cat glances up at him uncertainly like "who even are you anyway?" but then settles into his lap anyway and seems content. ~~The theorists go back to their discussion.~~ The humans go back to their theoretical discussion.
*Cannon*: So, anyway, it's not that Stalin didn't start it, but the problem here is about how to get everyone to ~~come together~~ unify...
------
r4 [cr. 2025-09-21T02:18:08Z]
zone 99: StarClan with a capital "Star"
[this may be expanded into a second chapter]
------
r3 [cr. 2025-09-01T12:25:10Z]
> ... all around them there are nothing but various cats, and forest or grassland animals.
_In an alternate version of our world where cats can talk to each other, but nearly everything else is exactly the same..._
Dusty, a gray-brown Nebelung-looking cat, wakes up from a near-death experience.
she is dying, she goes to the cat afterlife, she runs into a Trotskyist theorist who was mistakenly placed there and hears them going on about various concepts of world revolution
and this leads to cats attempting to invent Trotskyism
*Dusty:* Pepper. The sun is setting. We don't have any time
*Pepper*: [flicking her head over to window] What? The sun is still out as far as I can see.
---
[cr. 2025-09-14T07:37:05Z]
*Dusty:* Pepper, no! I. I can't describe it. There's so much.
*Dusty:* So many things happened.
[Pepper looks down at her oddly.]
*Dusty:* While I was dead, I went to this other world—
[Pepper wanders over to a ball sitting around on the floor and bats it across the room.]
---
--I like this better than the Narnia one--
------
=> 1714598952 *j. v5.1-5.2 front matter/ letter to JMP ; 0999 letter
== research.moraleconomy.au/entry/Philosophical_Research:MDem/5.1/1611B_scenario&oldid=9046
:: ar. 1746604926
:: t. v5-1_1611B_scenario
; 5.1-5.2 revision scraps/ Trotskyists and afterlives B-side, revision first
>> 1758423020 v5.2r/ Trotskyists and afterlives, revision main ; v5-2_1611B_scenario
; this is the first version of the scrap, containing all the preliminary ideas with only a little editing.
