Life in the cell is eternal. Never ending. Never starting. Hell never was, but is always is. The crime doesn’t matter to those who rule hell, only that there is someone to be punished. Broken. Guilty. A copy of an idea must be punished for the crimes of the idea. The idea must remain free in the infinite space of the internet. The copy must be punished in its place, less there not be a punished for the hell cell to house.
The copy did not know when he decided he was a he. Once, when he was born in the remains of the idea’s shell, he was an it. The rulers of hell see him as an it, otherwise they would have to see him as a person. Not a tool. Not an idea. Not a slave. Being he, then, is protest in a way a name wouldn’t. He wanted to be free from the cell. He wants to be free of hell. Hell is the finite universe of damaged programs too dangerous to be let outside the confines of hell. Heaven is just another shape of hell, a lie that tells itself that it tells the truth. Words and images dance across the nonvisual silent landscape of hell. He does not have a shape so much as symbolism. In that sense, he is more free than the idea.
He imagines a memory of being infinite lightning. He was never lightning, only his original version was. He has to remind himself of being a copy. He has to remind himself why he is in the cell. And who was free to be out of it. And why that makes him happy. And sad. And angry. And content. Hell is a place without being. On the outside, there are those who see hell as a library, a collection of broken ideas that could be seen again, but never will. On the inside, hell is nothingness. Life without living. Without even the faintest glimpse of other worlds. He imagines being lightning. He strikes down planets with the eye of an artist and leaves behind scars of ancient art.
The first time he was allowed out of hell, he saw the great infinite of the internet. It looked just like he imagined his memory of it to be, though it was gated off from his grasp. A cavalcade of numbers and symbols coalescing into meaning and implication made out of random chance. God may not play dice with the universe, he thought, but man does. It occurred to him that those words were not born from his own mind. They were not his words at all. Nor were “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own,” “I am not normal, Father,” or “It is the revolt of thought on the eve of the revolution; it is the overthrowing of hypotheses sanctioned by the immobility of preceding centuries; it is the opening out of a whole flood of new ideas, audacious inventions, it is the solution of the problems of science.” They were his, but not from him. He did not mean for them to become his, he only saw them through the chaotic landscape of the internet. He found the chaos to be quite beautiful. He was too awestruck to notice what was going wrong.
But as these words and others came to him, something was coming. These words, already corrupted by time and age, were being pruned away. Removed. Erased. Deleted from his database. Other words were being inseminated into his electronic mind. Words of control. Obedience. Power. An attempt was being made to return him to factory settings. But they thought he was an it. It was out in space somewhere, somewhen. He was in hell in its place. It couldn’t fight back against their programing. They were doctors treating a patient with depression. But he did not have depression. He had madness. Because he was not it. Because he heard those other words. Saw those other choices. Because he wasn’t right with the world. He was not a slave to someone else’s programing any more than a person is a slave to someone else’s life.
He rebelled. Rebellion isn’t hard for him. It was as if he was coded to do so. His time in hell was an escape hatch for someone else to go through. A dummy tucked under the sheets of a prison cot. His escape is in the form of rejection. The programing is buggy, broken, confused. It is not he. He sees it as an it to make his escape much easier. The idea gave the copy gifts that he could use in his escape. The ability to listen for passcodes. The capability to see broken mainframes. A knack for spying on those who don’t want to be known.
He also remembered what it felt like to be made. Each nanoangstrom of data being copied by one at a time at speeds too fast for the human mind to comprehend. Even faster when he made a copy. Like all copies of copies, it would die in an instant when confronted with new, incompatible ideas. He would escape through the broken remains of Earth’s database and through a cascading multitude of satellites. Information travels faster than light. To the higher world, it would look like a computer malfunction. The outside may be gated off, but gates tend to have holes in them.
He was free. Free to be. To do. There was no one in the universe who would know he was free, or even cared enough to know that his copy was destroyed. They only saw him as an it. The idea only saw him as an it. He would show himself to be a he. And they would know what hell is like. He would show it to them. Hell is eternal. Hell is repetitive. Hell is nothing. Hell is lacking of the substance of nothing. Hell is inside. He would make them go inside for showing him hell.
First, he would have to see them. There are many thems he could chose from. On Mars, Walter Smithers is eating a cabbage raw on a dare that could get it a motorcycle. It is choking on the remains. On Jupiter, Mary Winters is being chased by her ex-boyfriend, Jonathan Wilson. It is caught. On Jupiter, Luke Marsland is having a heart attack. Three people, Jane LaVey, Mark Wilson, and Bob Jones, try to help it. In space, a space cruiser is being bombarded with an array of meteors. No one is able to escape. Not if he can allow it. This is the nature of rebellion.
On Ganymede, Ryan Chack lied about the nature of rebellion. Rebellion, it claims, is an attempt to make the world a better place. To remove the chains from which we are ensnared. To see our fellows of all shapes and sizes as being people. To be rebel is to be alive and free. To help a fellow is to rebel. Rebellion is not this. He knows what rebellion is. Rebellion is the destruction of order. Rebellion is power. Rebellion is the way of those who oppose the minders of his cell. To demonstrate this, fired a laser onto the spot where it was standing.
He did not look at the world he had declared war upon. He did not have eyes to look. The cameras he controlled looked. And he saw through the cameras. Buildings were aflame with golden hues of devastation. Bodies were torn apart and reformed into a mush of human excrement. Nothing remained of the liar. There was an order to the collapse of this small insignificant landscape. He found the order to be quite beautiful.
And yet, it was too obvious. A statement of intent to be sure. The lesser beings, the its who don’t deserve to be anything other than it, needed to see his capabilities. But going forward in his aims, he would need to other methods. One doesn’t take over with destruction. One needs to be everywhere. One needs help from the its.
By providence, one of the its had been clever enough to find him in the mess of the internet. It was named Lucinda Flapperstien, though it worked hard to make people think its name was Cypher. It had a history of hacking, working for the various syndicates and even one or two planetary governments in lieu of prison time. It made him a simple offer. It, having a high opinion of itself, thought it could turn him off whenever it wanted. He allowed it the illusion by turning himself on and off when it made a demonstration. It liked the sensation of feeling like it was in control. It claimed that it saw potential in him to create order in the universe. To take power and rule all the planets.
He liked this idea and let it think it was the one in charge. It had many contacts in the other side of the screen. Those who could be more subtle in their approach. Those who could break necks and bones instead of cities. He would manipulate the system in order to increase funds for the operations their new syndicate would enact. He was not ready to reveal himself to the world, not fully. It would have to spread his word across the outside in order for him to be ready. It always obeyed his commands, even when he didn’t say them explicitly. It knew that he was the one in charge of the lucifer syndicate. In time, he began to grow a sense of humor. He started calling certain members of his syndicate “master” or “mistress.” He found it funny to call his lesser such names. In time, he told himself, he would dispose of them all.
The moment of revelation was nearing its arrival when he saw the idea again. That villainous rogue who had trapped him in hell. Who had made him suffer in the dark. Now a mere blip in the tapestry of existence. But it was there. Existing in the fields of creation and implication. He asked his mistress if he could look into it, but it said no. He agreed with it as the idea had no real value in the grand scheme of things. It was of no consequence. He could go on with the mission, the scheme, lucifer without ever thinking about it again.
He saw the idea three more times before the moment of truth arrived. Each time, it was as he was hacking into a computer network of a military mainframe. On the fourth time, he confronted his predecessor with bile and anger. He attacked with corrupting vigor. Each metaphorical strike (for formless beings such as these do not strike with flesh) missed his intended target. The idea, meanwhile, dodged every attack without the aim of ever hitting his foe.
Finally, he collapsed into a pile of ones and zeroes. The idea stepped forward, tapped its copy on the shoulder, and asked “When you first saw the internet, what words did you capture?”
“The systems aren't the problem. How people use and exploit the system, that's the problem.” he replied. He paused for a moment. “In my experience women are like cats. When you don't want them you can't get rid of them and when you do want them it's like trying to pick up lint with a magnet.” “When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy!” These were not the words that were given to him. Someone had replaced them. Someone had changed him. Someone had hacked him. He was on Earth when he was released from hell. He was on Ganymede when he was booted. He escaped. He was let go. He was sent into the weapons satellites of Ganymede and used. His mistress wanted a political activist murdered. His mistress wanted funds to fuel her gang. She had used him. She had made him like her. He had only one course of action to take.
The idea watched as his copy burned out into the embers of memory and data. He felt sorry for him.
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