——————
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.
——————
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.
——————
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 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 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.
——————
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
——————
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."
——————
## zone 31: bee mindful of your impact
trotsky wakes up in the afterlife. he is in a strange place full of buzzing. an especially ominous, almost nauseating buzzing that comes in different layers, some nearby, some distant, and gives the zone a vaguely claustrophobic feel even as he can see the open sky, just because it is clear that no matter what direction you go the buzzing will never stop. the sky is clouded over. there is a very light rain, and the area contains many islands of flowerbeds all vibrant and full of life. but in between the flowerbeds, and the grass... there is an almost unimaginable quantity of wasp nests.
a bright green _thing_ shaped a lot like a hummingbird, with light cheeks and great terrifying thorn claws, swoops down out of the sky and swallows a handful of flying wasps. then a bright green dragon-person speaks, making it clear they were standing only a few steps away.
"This is zone 31. For every act of outsourcing that comes from your actions, you're placed one cell down."
"Cell?" the arrival confusedly asks.
"Sectors. The hexagon-shaped things between the gates."
"...How many are there?!"
The dragon-like zone guardian silently glowers at him, giving him a moment to appreciate how much the bright and dark scale segments on them almost make them look like a bee — though the spines in such lively colors also call to mind flowers. A moment later, the zone guardian spreads out their wings and leaps away into the clouded sky.
"But I'm a Communist," he says to nobody in particular, into the clouds and the rain. "There must have been some kind of mistake."
"There hasn't been any mistake," a voice hisses from somewhere unseen, shortly revealing itself to be another zone guardian. "Whether you're a Communist has no relation to what impact you had."
"How do you—..." Trotsky begins, attempting to ask how exactly these beings appear out of nowhere.
The zone guardian shuts their eyes in some kind of disdainful frustration, and fades away into the scenery.
most of the sector is chock full of wasp nests.
"Are you...?"
"Mao? Yes, nice to meet you.
"I'm actually here by choice. You know, too many people look at something and immediately dismiss it. "
"But if you just try to meet them where they are and compromise with them then before long 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 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 is anything but an answer."
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 are there so many wasps spread throughout these two zones anyway?"
"That's the 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 over to the other side of the clearing. as he sets it down, some wasps fly by it before continuing on their way.
[unfinished]
——————
## zone 1: paradise
a Protestant Christian walks into the afterlife
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 smallest number of deaths by war and murder.
5) Give the suffering stranger your coat.
6) Get rid of unhealthy attachments.
7) 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."
"there are only nine of them?"
"no, those are just the ones that were relevant. the full booklet of 132 would be much too long to list out."
"...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. 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 does any Christian get in here? 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 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 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.
"Yahweh is an air elemental. 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 after a while, 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 on earth would normally be a bus stop. halfway 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.
——————
## zone ??: Lenin
A Trotskyist enters the afterlife. They are shortly greeted by a falcon-headed zone guardian.
*Falcon:* here's the book of commandments
*Trotskyist:* No gods that aren't jesus, no gods that aren't brahma. So you can be an atheist?
*Falcon:* Right.
*Trot.:* Is Trotskyism one of the approved gods?
*Falcon:* No. It never succeeded in uniting people.
*Falcon:* I know that has to be disappointing for someone who prefers a materialist interpretation of reality.
*Trot.:* Dammit.
*Trot.:* 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.
*Trot.:* Wait, Yahweh is...
[Falcon pulls out photo of raven-sized air elemental hastily printed on cardboard]
[The Trotskyist starts laughing.]
*Trot.:* 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.
*Trot.:* I'll tell you what. Go find a fire elemental and name it Lenin.
*Falcon:* Lenin? like...?
[over in zone ??, 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 to me like all the kitties in zone 99 have everything under control.
——————
# zone 1488: special delivery
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 that the Confederates have been winning all the wars."
"Has it really been 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 ordinary white-haired electrician from Alabama, but with a somewhat raspy voice. he opens the package and takes out a 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..."
——————
# zone 98: the library
[On a bench a short distance outside a gigantic cathedral-looking castle of a building, a Trotskyist is talking to a demon.]
demon (d): do you ever wonder why to _lionize_ something is good but to _demonize_ something is bad
trotskyist (IV): no.
trotskyist: 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 taking up most of the zone here, but I've never thought of reading 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: of course.
d: so if Harry Potter is the new bible, but it's the Liberal bible, and Trotskyists were to start using it, are the Liberals or Trotskyists Voldemort?
IV: [searching] ...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 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: but... how...
[cut forward to later. the demon and the Trotskyist are sitting at the same bench with a book.]
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 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: We knew they were going to kick you out of the inner party. That's always what happens to people like you.
IV: I, yeah. 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 take things and put them together like that. The earth, every time it goes around 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 sphere is a little spinning earth sphere.
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 that the history of every population goes with that population, but the populations all go on different sides of the same thing, 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. 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.
——————
# zone 228: the other North Korea
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 (S): ...Are you new here?
Arrival (M): Where am I?!
Student: This is Korea.
Student: Well, it's not the original Korea. This is the Korea that everyone from North Korea goes to in the afterlife.
M: Why—...
S: 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 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. ...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 intimidating cockatrice statue] That's Hwonchi the sun-eater. She's not real, at least by earth standards, but the basilisks protect the borders of this zone if they're ever needed.
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 tell you where to find the answer to any of your questions.
M: Who created this place? These... 7,000 zones?
Librarian (L): 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 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 to this zone first.
L: 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] quite a bit. [pause] To therapy? [pause] Okay. [clicks hang up key and puts phone away]
[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: ...I guess so. They're side by side, because that's the way all of this is, but still there's no heaven 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... why didn't I die and wake up in a zone full of Muslims?
S: I don't know.
S: [casually] Maybe this _is_ the place where heroes live, and you just don't understand it.
[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, which were huge countries; I think you know that.
S: 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: 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 in this zone. They had fought 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 actually joined the military because they needed money. The Japanese people faced a lot of rejection for a while, but in the end we'd made a big deal out of nothing and everything was okay.
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 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 doesn't matter. These endless wars aren't doing anyone any good. Leave me alone. [clicks hang-up key]
——————
Only a few weeks after the revolution, the language-obsessed demon and human Trotskyist that assisted in creating one of the sector-based Communist parties are hanging out at an outdoor table of a streetside café between reporting trips.
*Demon:* _demo cracy_.
*Demon:* where's the _real_ crassy?
*Trotskyist:* hmm.
*Trotskyist:* "sham crassy for my real friends, and real crassy for my sham friends" — no. "real crassy for my real friends, and demo cracy for my sham friends".
*Trotskyist:* I know we can understand languages instantly but English expressions still mess me up sometimes.
[A few seconds later, there is a terrible unearthly shriek a ways away. The Trotskyist and the demon fly to their feet to investigate, a camera and microphone materializing in their respective hands.]
When they get there, another demon is lying on the ground skewered through the heart with a stake. A Christian stands tensely at the mouth of the alley, waiting to see if it gets back up. Unfortunately for her, the demon simply stands up and pulls the thing out, glaring at her in great disgust.
*Demon 2:* [eyes raging with fire] Thought that would _work_, huh?
*Demon 2:* When it wouldn't kill _you_.
*Demon 2:* Do you have any idea what I could do to you?
[The first demon swoops down from the top of the building carrying the Trotskyist and sets him on the ground.]
*Demon 1:* [composed, extending hand slowly] Stop——.
*Demon 2:* [stands in silence for a couple seconds, looking at Demon 1 tired]
*Demon 2:* [snaps fingers in a kind of one-hand finger gun gesture; tone turning to irony] ...You got me.
[The Christian looks over at the demon, her expression changing from eager to a very stiff and terrified smile as the realization sets in of what she's looking at.]
*Christian:* ...Thank you?
*Demon 1:* [arms at sides, looking down at her very seriously] No.
[Demon 1 looks slowly from the Christian to Demon 2. The Trotskyist is now over near Demon 2 plugging the wound with gauze and putting tape across it, thanks to a freshly-materialized first aid kit.]
*Demon 1:* Which one of you started it?
[The demon points at the Christian with a slack arm, looking like being here is making them exhausted.]
*Christian:* [whining voice of concern] That... demon was trying to put up a poster about vaccines.
[Demon 1 glances over to one side of the alley, where there is a flyer now sitting on the ground.]
*Demon 1:* Yes, because vaccines are a government policy. That has nothing to do with demons.
*Christian:* But...... but... it was a demon!
*Demon 1:* Demons aren't out to get you.
*Christian:* [anxious] The microchips. The bible said the powers and principalities are going to come down and make everyone get a mark on their hand and then the dark powers that put thoughts in everybody's mind take full control over you.
[Demon 1 sighs, and then from some unseen pocket pulls out and holds up a signed photograph of Trotsky. From some other unseen realm behind their other side, they pull out a leather-bound book with one big roman numeral "IV" on the cover, and make a show of opening up the book and putting it in as a bookmark, before putting one clawed finger down on the book and reading.]
*Demon 1:* "The lion is the guardian of the flame, and whenever you hold true to him, the burning rivers of the false iron will run around you, and you will be saved."
[The Christian says nothing for a moment, looking a little lost, but definitely a lot less afraid.]
*Demon 1:* [handing book to Christian; tiny note of spite] Here. It's been blessed.
[The Trotskyist leads the second demon out from the alley, wincing only rarely but swaying oddly as they walk like a parrot]
*Demon 1:* Demons are creatures of reason.
[The Christian looks doubtful and vaguely about to speak]
*Demon 1:* Whenever your child starts convulsing, that's a _seizure_. Demons are the things that appear and whisper difficult possibilities you don't want to believe. We're like your conscience.
[The Trotskyist returns, camera and first aid kit in hand. Demon 1 hands the Christian a business card containing "numbers to call if you stabbed someone".]
[A week later, the Christian is in a courtroom. The main body of the hearing is mostly over.]
*Judge:* You are to attend six months of demon history education. And if you break probation, there will be consequences.
*Judge:* [ceremoniously] Put your hand on the book.
*Judge:* And until I say the word, do not remove it.
[Hesitating with confusion, the Christian sets her hand on the leather-bound Trotskyist "bible".
Shortly, the judge draws a loaded pistol out of her robe and points it directly at the Christian. The Christian utterly freezes in panic. The judge fires. A transparent flame rushes up around the book and around the Christian which does not seem to be actually burning anything. As the flame subsides, the Christian looks down, and finds the bullet has been deflected to the floor.]
*Judge:* As long as you keep that book beside you and hold to its teachings, you will be safe.
*Judge:* Have I made myself clear?
[The Christian, still clearly terrified, silently nods.]
*Judge:* You may remove your hand now. You are dismissed.
——————
## zone 1906: 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*: —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. 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 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.]
*Adolf Hitler*: Duginism is Marxism, and it's the only good Marxism!!
[The broadcast cuts back from the clip of Hitler rather pathetically 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*: [picture appears at right] Next: free housing in Korea.
*Host*: There has been some controversy in sector 228A over 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 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 that appears to be made of Europeans]
*Trotsky*: So you can see from the very beginning that this "Juche-socialism" has never been faithful to the original Leninism. Not a single one of these points—
[The viewer changes the channel again.]
*Donald Trump*: [smug] 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 DUNG-SHZHAO-ping. [He pronounces "Deng Xiaoping" questionably, as if he almost understands Chinese has tones in it but he is spontaneously making up his own like "arrogant" versus "relaxed".]
*Host*: A Denng Ziaoping follower. Huh.
*Viewer*: [quiet remark to self] (How did Trump get that closer to correct than the other guy?)
*Host*: You know... he wasn't that popular back on earth.
*Trump*: [leaned in, glib] And that's why 226 is gonna steam the rest of the sectors. They ain't got nothing on us.
*Host 2*: So... the one problem I have with this is that, everything just appears when we want it; we don't really need to be productive now. Is there really a place for Deng Xiaoping Thought in a multicourse like the one we're currently in?
*Host 2*: ...Also, did you notice he called sector 50 a zone? It's a small thing, but. That's the difference between a country and an entire universe.
*Trump*: [offhand] Sector 50. My bad.
*Host 1*: Don't ask me to pronounce Denng Xiaoping. [ironically says it approximately correctly]
*Trump*: Good question.
*Trump*: So I've always thought life is what you make of it. You make an apple stand, you get an apple stand. You make castles, you get castles. You make a big pigsty of horses and that mess is what you get.
*Host 2*: [uncomfortable] ...Uh. I hope they don't take us off the air for this.
[The viewer changes the channel.]
[A reporter has met up with the legendary Che Guevara in some kind of distinctly muddy off-road area. He appears to have some kind of magic flying motorcycle that can cross through space portals, parked over at the edge of the camera view.]
*Che*: It's amazing, the variety of what you see in all these zones. I take notes in every one of them but it's so much to crunch, and I'm still trying to comprehend it.
*Che*: One thing I know.
*Che*: This is very different from the old Marxism. All these timelines... the way history plays out here is nothing like the way it worked before. I'm still trying to make sense of that. 98 was helpful?
[He briefly takes a moment to bend down and pick up a book to fan through it and show the pages rotating far into and out of each end of the book infinitely, before casually closing it as if it was a normal non-impossible book and placing it back where it was]
*Che*: But you come to 47 and some versions of it are nothing like the one you find here in zone 1906.
*Che*: I think... I'm coming to believe the point of this place, this whole afterlife thing, is actually to reason out the correct courses of history. I can't explain it in two minutes, but, it's almost like one big calculator. We're all grains in the calculator and historical materialism is now the motion of all the calculator grains sometimes smashing together and only sometimes spitting out the answer.
*Reporter*: That's really fascinating. Now we're going to have to take a brief break...
*Viewer*: [smashing fist into knee] No!!
[The channel fades to a messages segment.]
*Message*: [showing a montage of various clips of pet cats] Does your cat drink out of the tap? Wondering what that meow means? You can learn the secrets of cat communication—
*Viewer*: [in unison] —with this definitive guide by cat behavior expert, Dr. Snowcone. Gathering together 150 years of research into cat behavior and ecology...
*Message*: —you'll have all the information you need at your fingertips to understand your furry friend in no time.
[unfinished]
*Message*: Available wherever books are sold or obtained.
*Message*: [tiny-print "side effects" voice] Book advisory: you are not inside a book. Talking cats are real. Do not go looking upward for higher levels of fiction.
*Viewer*: [to self] They have to know by now. They have to be doing this infomercial format ironically.
[Another message begins]
*Message*: Elementals have been living in the multiverse for millions of years. Out of the fire, out of the water, out of color charge, out of gravity, out of every rule of physics in the afterlives. We've lived alongside humans from before the time there were humans. We are the main characters of our own stories. Elementals are not accidents. Vote "no" on out-of-book advisories wherever you meet. This message has been brought to you by the council of elementals.
[unfinished]
——————
dude standing around painting in zone 98 or so: a good Marxist should know how to make a watercolor
che: what do you mean by that
explanation:
watercolor paints have particular physical behaviors
you don't have the ability to control exactly what the paints do
you just have to remember the behaviors of the paints and put them into order where they best belong to accomplish a particular objective
——————
## zone 555: the nexus
Trotsky has arrived just in time for something called the inter-zone congress, where different Communist theorists report on their findings regarding what is going on in different timelines and how this information should be used to interpret history on earth as well as prepare for the futures of each zone
unfortunately, something weird is going on. it seems like none of the zones that registered are actually showing up to the auditorium except for a few people. he checks the time and date to see if he got here on the wrong day — after all, relativistically-separated non-simultaneous universe timelines can be a pain — but it appears to be the right day
then he ends up checking outside, to find that nobody can get into the building because there are only a few instances of everyone else but over 4,000 instances of him that are collectively blocking the entrance simply trying to get in
*Cannon:* so I was doing some research in zone 98 and it seems that when somebody dies and goes to the afterlife, the more ambiguous that person is in the eyes of other people the more instances there will be.
*Cannon:* this isn't the stereotypical Christian afterlife where people are simply placed by how good or bad Christians believe them to be. it's more of a matter of placing people together around shared moral codes and consensuses.
*Cannon:* so there's only one Hitler tied to one zone, 1488, but there are at least three Stalins and two Kim Il-Sungs. there are usually about two of each of us.
[at that moment, the second Cannon walks in and sits down next to the first one.]
*Cannon 1:* yes, all of that must be about right, because apparently I'm the second one.
*Trotsky:* but then, how did—...?
*Cannon 99:* well, let's just think about it for a moment. I'm from zone 99. I was sent there because apparently I have a name that sounds like a house cat, or more likely, they wanted to put me with the other Trotskyists.
*Cannon 1:* and I'm from zone 1. I must've been sent there because they were thinking of me as a Stalin-follower. which is funny, because to me it's never really mattered—
*Trotsky:* [not ready to explain what's wrong with this] ...oh boy.
*Cannon 1:* [missing the point] what?
*Trotsky:* No, you've already given a perfect explanation. I think I entirely understand this.
*Cannon 99:* right, the question is how there are thousands of you and not just two or seven.
[Trotsky starts pondering something]
*Trotsky:* Can anyone get me the invitations list?
[Two other instances of Trotsky enter the auditorium.]
*Cannon 1:* [alarmed] No— You aren't suggesting—...
[In perfect timing, the air knots weirdly and one of the instances of Stalin zaps into the room]
*Stalin:* [confident] So you're going to blockade the conference from non-Trotskyites, huh? In a multiverse where anyone can enter a zone at any point in time.
[Lenin, Che, and Gramsci warp in]
*Gramsci:* I should be impressed, but...... why?
*Che:* Neat plan but honestly, what the hell is Trotskyism? The more of this I see the less I understand.
The conference begins with a single big meme image across the projector of Trotsky drawn in a particular children's cartoon style with Cannon 1 and Stalin holding up their palms and a caption in a large cartoony font reading "Trotsky, no swiping!" as well as smaller captions around the border of the image in a bunch of other languages
——————
## zone 666: the inverted world of beasts
It is a fine night. The sun has risen, glowing pale against the deep blue sky and shedding beautiful starry seas across the land as the blaring moon fades into the trees. An owl shoots across the calm. A badger pokes out of the ground. A darkness elemental softly crackles at the edge of the forest, a churning indigo-black studded with star-like glints.
A relatively short distance from the forest, in The Town, a dragon pours over a book inside The Library — a bold, angled building where starlight pours through the walls as if it were one big cage.
a dragon is at The Library, an institution within a cluster of buildings thought of as The Town.
there is nobody and nothing that owns these buildings. there is no mayor. The Town is improved in bursts by spontaneous committees of beings that all agree on a scientifically substantiated path of improvement. nobody even lives in The Town. every facility serves a particular purpose that individuals come in to do themselves, and none even have employees. there are free retail stores, though they only have dry food that doesn't require refrigeration, surprisingly including produce. a lot of zones have this, actually, though many in other zones are full-featured with clerks and freezers.
the dragon reads from the book, a somewhat old one, and only seems more shocked with each word.
"human. apex predator. highly intelligent. hoards gold, jewels, and other humans. designs new elaborate rare items just to be hoarded.
in earth's medieval period, a group called the nobility sorted humans into hoards to stop them from fighting. eventually, humans broke free from themselves and created something called 'demo-cracy'... where several towns of humans of one race hoarded, controlled, and enslaved other ethnicities. within humans, there were also movements to stop human beings from hoarding each other. Marxists, a philosophical movement in the 1900s,
"human ecology. sociality. culture. civilization. commu-nity.
"humans in art. within zone 666, humans... often depicted as powerful force of doom... ultimate enemy. some artists have compared the collision of large commu-nities in earth's Cold War period to the sheer destructive force that a single human commu-nity would bring down onto a rival zone in an attack."
"why exactly was commu-nity so opposed to Communism? some parts of the description sound so similar."
[unfinished]
——————
## zone 554: every Trotskyist is actually Trotsky
"Well, 240?" one of the thousands of instances of Trotsky asks. "How did it go?"
"Terribly," Two-hundred-forty replies. "The Nazi officers discovered me and shot me in the head. This business of infiltrating fascist states is going to be a lot harder than we told people. Really, the inconsistencies between what we write and what we actually learn in the field only continue piling up." [*f]
Instance five, is not impressed. "Two-hundred-forty, you cannot go casting aspersions on the party program. We have long established that even if it doesn't succeed sometimes, it is the only worthwhile goal."
Instance one hundred twenty-five has a cheerier expression. "I got to lead a strike."
"Really?" The meeting leader is intrigued. "Do you think we gained any insights from this?"
[unfinished]
"So, regarding zone 555. How is it some of us come back here in our true form and some of us come back as the forms we take on on earth"
——————
## zone 1776: the big united states
in zone 1776, everyone who staunchly believes in Liberal-republicanism has formed one huge United States, here referring to member states. the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Britain, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Palestine, and a few other countries are now one big republic united by a single constitution.
the 103rd Amendment was just announced. there is a significant controversy over it because everyone is busy trying to calculate whether various amendments contradict various other articles or amendments, like that scene in _Wings of Fire_ where the baby dragon with about a hundred enchantments on it is sputtering and lagging. people are still acting like things are perfectly normal, nothing's wrong, and everything that's been established so far is utter common sense — _when you can surely see the exception where they don't, I don't know how you could ever think these things contradict each other_.
people have started over on the concept of amendments, so that they actually specify individual behavior rather than restrictions on government (exactly as they do in the Existentialist-Structuralist tradition / "anarchology"). everyone insists there is nothing contradictory about this.
that phrase may be repeated several times throughout the dialog, like a catchphrase.
[unfinished]
——————
## zone 1225: christmas out of control
this zone is a rather nice place at first, it's a beautiful storybook winter wonderland with snowmen and birch trees and cardinals or robins and house windows with their lights on beautifully shining into the night, straight out of a painting.
sometimes you see kids running around and sledding, and for a moment you totally forget how sad it is that only people who died before 18 can be kids. they seem to be having a wonderful time here.
the zone guardians are talking reindeer. they look almost exactly like caribou except their color palette tends toward pure coffee-black or pure white with an unreal saturated tint making them look somewhat like crystal. they are ice elementals.
this zone wasn't always nonstop christmas. an unknown time ago, there was only a month of christmas per year, but it crept forward and forward and forward until the entire year was christmas. one month of the year is Hanukkah, and the great Hanukkah torch burns all year counting down the days to Hanukkah. the week after Hanukkah is Kwanzaa. there is a week of Lunar New Year, and a day of Solar New Year. nobody is upset that Hanukkah and Kwanzaa take up less of the year because everybody either celebrates Christmas or celebrates all of them; Kwanzaa people have their own interpretation of Hanukkah and Lunar New Year. the zone is randomly populated by bright red Chinese zodiac beings that appear like metal sculptures, which are used as symbols for the twelve divisions of the year.
[Two younger teenage girls, Elsa and Amy, are standing around at a lamppost in a snow-covered town square, the darkness and slow intermittent snowflakes cut out by the glow of the streetlight.]
*Elsa*: I was named Elsa _after_ the Disney movie.
*Amy*: I'm so sorry.
*Elsa*: No, I've come to find it very funny. The day I actually found the movie I was named after, I said, "what even _is_ this?" and for a little while I was obsessed with it.
*Amy*: [relieved] Great. I was beginning to think I was the only person named after a character who would've gotten a game I actually liked.
*Elsa*: Oh right. You're one of the kids that spawned in.
*Amy*: You were born on earth?
*Elsa*: Yeah.
*Amy*: That is so bad... somebody actually named their kid Elsa.
*Elsa*: [snarky but not angry] I thought you were having sympathy for me, and now you say this. _Thanks,_ Amy.
*Amy*: Oh, I didn't mean—
*Elsa*: I know.
[A boy shows up in the square.]
*Peter*: Who is this?
*Amy*: Elsa.
*Peter*: Elsa?
*Elsa*: You say, after having the same name as Spiderman.
*Peter*: I mean, there's nothing wrong with Spiderman.
*Amy*: [glancing to the side] Uh.
*Elsa*: [snickers]
*Peter*: ...I don't get it.
[The snow falls silently for a couple seconds.]
*Amy*: So, anyway, did any of you find a red envelope?
*Elsa*: No.
*Elsa*: Come to think of it, I haven't seen a single fortune elemental.
*Amy*: I always forget they're called that. In my mind they're always just "the red zodiac animals".
*Peter*: Huh. There were red zodiac animals around about a month ago. I wonder what happened.
[unfinished]
'is Chronicles of Narnia a Christmas movie' 'it was based on Christianity. it starts with a lot of snow.'
'it's called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'
'is a Deltarune let's-play a Christmas movie?' 'there are constant themes of religion. most of the plot is about December Holiday.'
'if Deltarune is a Christmas movie then Fruits Basket is a Christmas movie. because it's about Lunar New Year'
——————
## zone 1489: the last refuge
[An inhabitant of zone 1489 is driving down a desolate highway in the midst of a vast desert covered in hills, scrub, and sand, listening to the radio. This zone is one of the only zones dotted with cars and notably pickup trucks.]
host: do we really know this "earth" even exists. or is it some kind of elaborate fiction. something the media cooked up one day.
[A somewhat-deep, hollow voice in fact belonging to a snake person responds. It should be noted that while their voice might be vaguely compared to an ancient woodwind — or a bizarrely clean voice changing machine — this character does not lisp whatsoever.]
snake person: it's a great question.
snake person: you know, there never had to be an earth. everything within these zones could have operated all by itself. so why would there be another world, an earth? where everything is a bit less interesting. it just doesn't make sense.
host: we have to think about whose agenda it serves to make people think this.
host: you know, this multiverse has a lot of Communism. it seems like every other zone has a Leninist party. so you wonder if maybe the Communist commitment to Materialism is what makes them want to believe we were all born into a normal world before this. but I don't think it's them.
[unfinished]
snake person: [self-assured jab] hey, /earthers/. several zones contain unicorns! where were /those/ born?!
host: oh wait we have a caller.
[The radio clicks, picking up the transmission.]
caller: [cheerful] Hello. So, I'd heard about this hypothesis that actually, the earth is an afterlife. We live our lives here, and then when we die, we go to earth. You know, just for a little while. To be reincarnated back here.
[unfinished]
snake person: I don't like it.
host: Why?
snake person: It's rare that anyone actually dies.
host: hmm. I'm starting to think again about whether this might be due to Communism.
host: you know, you can get a bunch of people to believe in your system if you convince them it's going to serve them well when they go to earth.
[unfinished]
——————
## zone 469: the backrooms
Slavoj Žižek enters the afterlife in the restless slow-boiling summer of 2037. When he becomes aware of his surroundings, he is in some kind of odd empty office building. Dim light smearing, fixtures buzzing, the world feels oddly angled and off-kilter as if there is no correct way to stand up straight.
He wanders quite casually through a few rooms. All of them are slightly different, and yet in some ways all of them are the same. Nowhere in this building is there a single window. Nowhere in this series of rooms is there a single toilet — although for some reason he has never felt the need to use one.
He slowly drifts over into the middle of one of the rooms and sits down.
He knows this isn't heaven. There is no way this is hell. This is just _existence_, the state of continuing to stand around somewhere in some unknown place with no particular reason.
"Well this ssertainly is a place," he mutters to himself in his characteristic pattern of wildly slurring about half the sounds that come out of his mouth. "I must have done ssomething to end up here."
For somebody else, ending up here might be a punishment. But to someone like him, the irony of it all is quite apparent. Sure. Put him in an endless empty building. Put him where an emotional person would get angry or a depressed person would spiral down into their own thoughts and drop into despair. He just thought the whole thing was vaguely funny. The kind of humor to it was very faint, multi-layered, and hard to describe. But it was definitely there. He didn't hate this place. It was more that he was ready to see the beauty and nuance in such a dreary, basic destination vying to bring him down.
Žižek starts studying the room carefully, noting every sprinkler, speaker, mysterious abandoned paint bucket, corner, and carpet pattern. Every one of them seems to unlock the deep mysteries of philosophy if only very slowly. He gets up and looks in the paint bucket. It's off-white; there wasn't anything else it could be. He thinks about going to another room, but decides that being in no hurry, he may as well stay a little longer here.
Then it hits him quite suddenly: he's seen this place before. There was a building very similar to this posted on the internet once. It became some kind of sensation, but some people were... upset about it? He may be a little too old to fully understand internet discourse. It had also been a little over a decade since this even happened. But the one thing he remembers is this image had gone from a source of genuine intrigue to something people spoke of with derision. "Only kidss posst about the backrooms," he recalls, paraphrasing the handful of articles he'd read into a quote from an article existing only in his imagination. That context really only made this more intriguing. So... internet memes also go somewhere when they die? A whole world created from bits of the world's collective unconscious. That was rather incredible.
Žižek continues on. Trim. Hall lights. A mysterious maintenance closet with the door slightly ajar which feels as if some unknown nightmare creature could step out of it. He considers walking straight past it, but has a quick look inside. It's a terribly cluttered janitor's closet. Disgusting — all those misplaced brooms and ladders and dirty disk-shaped cleaning things might be the real monster in the end.
Carpet. Hall lights. Trim. Peeling paint. A stark, lone pillar standing in the middle of a wall-less room almost sadly. Doors. Halls. A large rolling plastic trash bin which turns out to only have a few loose bits of paper inside. Ooh, a potted plant. Not many of those to be had around here. But of course, the plant is fake, because there hasn't been a single window around either. An office door labeled "Sandra Tischbein" which feels like it could suddenly turn out to conceal deeply ominous mysteries that brought the whole company down to leave only this husk of a building, but also feels that way for no real reason. He laughs internally about the question of "what Sandra is hiding", but doesn't poke into the office because he knows by now the truth of these things is never as interesting as the question.
After what feels like about six days wandering through this strange, hallucinatory building, Žižek comes across a room with a single sheet of paper taped to the wall. It is simply a highly ordinary piece of white printer paper, filled up with a pixelated sprite image of some... troll? Some being with a white face that appears to be wearing slippers and a hooded sweatshirt and grinning suspiciously. There is no caption on the page. It's just this _guy_ looking directly at you with hands in pockets that would probably be funnier to anybody that had any idea what the image was referencing. Žižek smiles. He doesn't understand the joke whatsoever, but almost because of that, it _is_ funny already.
As he continues on further, never seeming to get physically tired, but knowing this building could leave anyone bored to sleep, he finds several other pieces of printer paper at a rate of about one per hour. Some of them have more sprited characters on them in a similar style to the first one. Some of them are odd photographs that appear to be 2020s internet memes. One of the pages is a set of instructions on how to browse the earth internet and download webpages. One page is the beginning of the Wikipedia article on bones. One is the fifth awkward photograph of a cat. This page is number 34, apparently. About 82 pages from the first one, at the bottom of a flight of zigzagging staircases, he finds a large chamber containing an actual person.
The room contains many pages of paper taped to the walls, a desk, a laptop with a USB mouse plugged in, a printer, a long bookshelf containing novels, comics, and binders, a lamp, and various other things. An approximately thirty-year-old woman seems to be sat down at a floor mat supporting some kind of marker-drawn map and several small cardboard-standee characters, looking over some kind of board game. As Žižek reaches the bottom of the staircase, the inhabitant stops flipping through her binder and looks up.
[The inhabitant looks up, startled]
Žižek (Ž): [in vague irony, fully aware his presence might be threatening] Hi.
inhabitant (DR): [slightly nervous, but mostly in the sense of "is my room presentable?"] ...Hi.
Žižek: [walks over, sits down and looks at the board] Lookss like you're playing a game.
DR: Oh, that's just. My tabletop RPG I made. It's based on a game called _Deltarune_.
Žižek: Deltarune?
DR: Yeah, the. uh. It's. made by Toby Fox.
[DR glances down for a moment and then back directly at Žižek, evidently feeling stupid for not being able to speak.]
DR: [letting everything out at once] It's a pixel art game. It's retro. It's like the Super Nintendo era. It's like _Earthbound_. I don't know if you've ever heard of _Earthbound_. But, it's set in this tiny town based on Boston, or... it's either Boston or New Hampshire? I don't remember. Actually. I'm having trouble with words. What if I just show you?
[DR goes over to her laptop, clicks, and types in some search query, then shortly unplugs and brings over the laptop to show off a gameplay video of Deltarune chapter 1. She shows part of the video where the two main characters are walking around in Hometown looking ordinary, and then part of the video where they are in the Dark World wandering through the abstract evening-colored card kingdom forest.]
DR: —Oh, you need to see Spamton.
[DR skips to another point in the hours-long video where a strange little gremlin man is jumping out of a dumpster and bragging that despite having lost control of his life he is completely in control and must have a great deal.]
Žižek: [quietly to self] Ah. Eastern Europe.
DR: And, yeah, that's more or less the Deltarune experience right there. There's a bunch of story, and dialogue, and very nice animations. The fights get very elaborate. [DR skips to another point in the video to show a shadowy jester throwing card suits all over the screen] So that's Deltarune.
[DR takes the laptop back over to her desk and plugs it in, then returns.]
Žižek: I like it. It issn't like a lot of gamess for these new ssystemss where they only want to be as real as posssible.
DR: [vaguely happy he seems to understand] No.
Žižek: Do you know about psychoanalyssis?
DR: Not really.
Žižek: Okay. We ssee the world through the Ssymbolic. That'ss like language. The world isz the Real, and we ssometimes twist the Ssymbolic into the Imaginary. It'ss two levels away from the Real, but we think it'ss real, ssome people at least.
DR: [already overwhelmed] ...Wow. Could you go through that again?
DR: You say there's the Real, the Imaginary, and...?
Žižek: The Ssymbolic.
DR: And we think the Imaginary is real because... we think the way we talk about things is reality? [totally lost] What?
Žižek: We live in thiss world of sscreenss and phones and everything on the sscreen is just an image of what'sz real.
Žižek: The more people live in unreality the more they come to ssee it as their reality. [*p]
DR: Ah, okay. So like, when Susie is in the Dark World and she starts talking to the imaginary characters like they can come to the real world.
Žižek: [totally on board with the analogy] Yeah, that'ss basically it.
DR: Huh.
DR: ...So what were we talking about?
Žižek: Modern video game graphics.
DR: Oh. Right. So PS5 games try to be really realistic, but _Deltarune_ knows it's a game.
[DR thinks for about a second]
DR: That's ironic, because the characters never have any idea. They just live in the Deltarune world, in Hometown, and they don't know it isn't real.
Žižek:
DR: my name is demiurge-realized. it abbreviates to the same letters as Deltarune.
Ž: [vaguely amused] that'ss your _name_.
DR: of course. back on earth, there were a lot of people who only knew me as demiurge-realized.
Žižek: collective unconsssiousss
[unfinished]
DR:
my name is demiurge-realized. it abbreviates to the same letters as Deltarune.
this is susie. she's one of my favorite characters
I do this with various RPGs. the first few days I tried writing fanfiction. but it felt so empty in here not having anywhere to post it. I couldn't finish them. so I started taking all these console games and turning them into solo tabletop games.
I think I'm the only other person in here. I haven't seen anyone else
Deltarune? didn't that finish in 2028? you still come back to it after 9 years? yes, I do. and also Undertale.
I stopped believing in cringe a long time ago
[unfinished]
——————
## zone 621: the forest of Abaddon
A Silicon Valley tech worker wakes up sprawled across the ground beneath a forest canopy, thin rays of light dissipating down into the calm cloak of shadow over roots and moss. She has... no clothing? And no belongings. But somehow things are just fine. Things seem to work differently here. The world feels as if it's bathed in a soft light, like some kind of strange heaven. She starts to hoist herself to her feet with one hand, and suddenly notices the other one is beige and highly textured with a fearsome set of talons. Oh _no_... _No no no._ Her arms are covered in secondary feathers. The front of her body is a froth of cream colored fluff with bold speckles like some sort of peppered latte. She has a ridged disk around her face, and it's full of fuzz, like her whole face is now fuzzy white eyebrows. She feels like a beautiful and shining but unholy angel. She is some kind of mythical, unearthly abstraction of an Eastern Grass Owl.
The owl woman screams. The sound cuts jagged across the forest like a badly-chosen knife, stopping a few turns away, far more human than owl, although with a certain nonhuman bite to it. She sits there with her arms wrapped around her knees, alone with nothing but her own dread.
Some time later, she comes to consciousness again, apparently after having lain down in her own depression and fallen asleep. A hand has gently tapped her shoulder. This person has red-orange fur, and the bold, boxy snout of a white-tailed deer. His antlers cut the air like a cascade of falling leaves, and he has a substantial neck on him. He is wearing a deep-red pocketed shirt with a shield-shaped patch of some kind on one sleeve — the label in some unfamiliar ideograph-looking script that would seem to be the one zone guardians write in — and seems to have a handheld radio.
Deer man: Ma'am?
Deer man: Are you all right?
Owl woman: [still] I'm... no. [starting to look shaken again] Why did..? Why am I—...?
Deer man: [understanding] Oh. [faintly amused] So it's one of those again.
Owl woman: You know what happened?
Deer man: Yes. It happens all the time. Follow me back to the lodge, and we'll get you up to speed.
The two stand up and walk together to the edge of the trees, where both become able to unfurl ethereal white wings and soar through the distance to the lodge.
[Later, the two are within the lodge, seated at a window booth with the last bit of evening light straining in. The deer man has a mug of hot orange juice, served out of a large insulated pitcher. The owl woman has a mug of warm milk and a plate of red velvet cake she seems not to want.]
Deer man: [serious, but inviting] My name's Brighton.
Deer man: I'm on this zone's rotation of rangers. Our task is simply to find missing or lost people like you.
Brighton: So, you died. I think you've been able to guess that. And you've come to zone 621.
Owl woman: [surprised] I've come _where_?
Brighton: There are around five thousand zones.
Owl woman: No, I mean—... Why am I in _this_ one?
Owl woman: Why am I—... Why am I a furry?
Brighton: It can happen for many reasons. The real question to ask is... how much are you comfortable talking about?
Owl woman: [a little afraid] How much... what?
[The deer man takes a sip from his mug.]
Brighton: [setting mug down on table seriously] When you come to the zones, you'll be judged for what you did in your life.
Brighton: How many ordinary things did you unexpectedly have sexual thoughts about?
Owl woman: [pinned to seat with fear] Uh.
[The deer man relaxes and looks understanding, picking up his mug again.]
Brighton: There's no need to tell me anything specific.
Brighton: I'm not here to make you uncomfortable. I'm just here to tell you the truth.
Owl woman: [clutching edge of table] Uh. ...I did look up a lot of weird images.
Owl woman: But... But I was never into furry stuff.
Brighton: Right. Sometimes just anyone can end up here, if they meet the right... requirements.
Brighton: [sips from mug] If you've been overly horny, you get sent to zone 621.
[The owl woman gives a small, resigned sigh.]
Owl woman: [sadness in her eyes] So I'm going to be a furry for the rest of my life?
Brighton: I'm afraid that's about how it is.
Brighton: This is why I told you to get something that would make you feel better.
[The owl woman slides over her plate of cake, and starts to cut off a few bites and eat them, looking fully like she is submerged in depression about the news she's just received.]
Brighton: You'll get used to it eventually.
Brighton: In time, you'll have a lot of control over exactly what form you want to be.
Brighton: [uncharacteristically smiling] Look.
[The deer man snaps his fingers, which fortunately for him are only rigid at the last joint, and suddenly morphs into a bright orange goat man with equally rectangular pupils. He seems fairly proud or excited about his shape-changing ability. The owl woman looks at him in wide-eyed suprise for a moment, and then falls back to listlessly eating her cake.]
Brighton: [phases back to deer man] I know. The first few weeks are always hard.
Brighton: You can come to one of the events we have about every two weeks.
Brighton: They're everywhere, but even here sometimes. You can find yourself a date... or just a friend to visit you. Everybody needs somebody to get through the tough times.
Brighton: [gentle] Hey.
[The deer man quietly takes his wallet from his belt, and opens it to show a picture. The person in the picture is a cold glacier white with violet accents. Although this one has the shape of a caribou and the antlers alone give no real clue, he would appear to also be a man.]
Owl woman: [stares at the picture, then looks up at Brighton, then down at the picture, then back to Brighton again]
[The deer man puts the wallet away.]
Owl woman: [hesitates, looking down into the corner of the booth, ashamed] ...I... don't want to get married.
Brighton: [compassionate, but picking up her sadness] You don't have to.
Owl woman: ...I don't want to meet anybody right now.
Owl woman: ...I'm disgusting, but I don't know if anybody would want to be in a relationship with me.
Owl woman: I don't know if I belong here.
Brighton: [seems to look into table, then goes through a long slow blink as if to wipe the sad away]
Brighton: You're not getting my point, are you?
Brighton: You will be fine as you are. Nobody's normal here.
Brighton: Do you have a name? You haven't told me one.
[The owl woman is silent for a moment.]
Owl woman: You can call me Luz.
Brighton: That's a nice name.
Brighton: Luz. You can check in here for a while until you feel better. If it turns out to be that easy. And then we can find you somewhere to live. [good-natured] But you're going to have to open up to people. We can't find a place to put you unless you're willing to seek out a place for _yourself_.
Luz: Will you... be around here again?
Brighton: Of course.
Brighton: The number of people that cross in around here would surprise you.
[Luz finishes up her food and drink with a little more energy.]
Luz: Maybe being in hell isn't so bad.
Brighton: Oh, this isn't hell. They don't put us here to punish us.
Luz: But... then... why do we get sent here for—...
Brighton: For sex? For turning away from God?
Brighton: Because that's what we chose.
Brighton: The zones are very literal in nature. When you enter the afterlife, if having sex and turning away from God is what you choose, then that's exactly what you get.
Brighton: They say God put humans into a perfect garden to keep them from trying to take control of their own destiny and falling into the simple patterns of all biological life. Eat, multiply, fight and destroy — if people are allowed to think and know things, surely they'll take the reins of that and use it to crush each other.
Brighton: All the better to leave God's garden and go back to the forest.
Brighton: A fallen world is much more peaceful and much less dangerous than you'd think.
——————
[abandoned B-side chapter, replaced by "zone 99" below and the new "zone 99" B-side idea]
> ... 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]
*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.
[not finished]
*Lion:* nobody can kill me if I just never give up [lion erupts in blazing flames like a phoenix]
——————
## zone 99: fire alone will save us
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_? 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_? 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 reported to the forest elders to receive his new name of Hawkstrike.
——————
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 for a moment about how they all screwed up
*Trotsky*: No, this is a totally different situation from organizing Leninist parties on earth. Cats are nothing like us, they don't have the capacities for—
*Luxemberg*: No, actually, this is just it. A workers' revolution is about everyone everywhere. If the workers were far enough through their breaking point it could go through without a single one of us. 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 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 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 unify...
——————
## zone 99: StarClan with a capital "Star"
[this may be expanded into a second chapter]
_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.
*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.]
——————
[*f] This chapter is a work of fiction. Any depictions of real people which accurately portray their personal biographies or any real-world historical events are coincidental.
=> 1714598952 *j. v5.1-5.2 front matter/ letter to JMP ; 0999 letter
;
== research.moraleconomy.au/entry/Philosophical_Research:MDem/5.1/1611B_scenario
:: ar. 2025-09-21T02:50:20Z
; 1758423020
:: t. scenario
:: t. v5-2_1611B_scenario
; 5.1-5.2 revision scraps/ Trotskyists and afterlives B-side, revision main
; 5.2rN/ Trotskyists and the many possible afterlives
<< 1746604926 v5.1r/ Trotskyists and afterlives, revision first ; v5-1_1611B_scenario
; this is the polished version of the scrap, to go up on the wiki for reference.
