They entered an elevator shaft that quickly ascended. A million questions ran through Marcus's head, but he only had strength to utter the first.
"Barbara…why is she…hanging?"
"Well, that's the way she went, of course!" Dante replied, unphased.
"You said…cancer."
"Oh, she had that too, but wasn't what did her in! The noose took care of things long before cancer could. But don't fret, Marcus, what you saw out there was merely a recreation of your wife. The real Barbara went to great lengths to avoid being trapped here with you."
"You said…she'd be here."
"And so she was." The elevator beeped and door slid open, revealing a flat rooftop glistening in sunlight. Its floor was made of ice, as was a throne in the center surrounded by assortments of mechanical contraptions.
"Alright, I may not have been entirely honest in our time together, Marcus, but it was all to keep you marching toward Heaven. Would you like to finally see it?"
Dante gripped the pitchfork and pushed, spinning Marcus across the ice.
He halted perfectly at the window, beyond which he saw a city built on clouds. It was precisely how Marcus had envisioned it, with streets of gold, sparkling sunlight, and oversized real estate. Yet, despite its grand luxuries, Heaven was empty of inhabitants.
"Where…are they?"
"Oh, they're all still here. They've just been relocated." Dante gazed out to the city on the clouds. "Part of me wanted to eradicate it completely, but it does serve a great reminder of my accomplishments. And of all I've taken from you."
"Me?"
"Yes, little old you."
Dante snapped and previously encountered memories flooded back to Marcus, this time with fuller clarity.
In the first vision, Marcus removed surgery equipment from the skull of the child-sized patient on the operating table and carefully pulled back the sheets, revealing a capuchin monkey.
Marcus then transported to a courtroom where he stood at the podium under a large screen displaying the same monkey stumbling through a virtual world where it was scooped up by a smiling, monochrome Henry Ford. Marcus wore the wanting smile of a salesman as he spoke to his captivated audience, taking notice of various flags in the background. This was no courtroom. This was the headquarters of the United Nations.
The memory dissipated to black. Next thing he knew, Marcus sat on his white couch with Barbara watching revolution footage in which armed rebels tore violently through a military blockade only to be exterminated by drones on the other side. Marcus reached to comfort a crying, sickly Barbara. The gesture was met with a slap. Mascara ran as she whimpered, "What have you done, Marcus?"
A noose lowered over Barbara's throat and the vision's setting morphed into the hilltop where she and Marcus had their wedding. Barbara's corpse hung from the olive tree with Italian police surrounding. On his knees below her, Marcus howled in despair.
Finally, he transported to a bronze statue of Henry Ford at the entrance of a skyscraper identical to the one he was in now. An engraved logo above the doors read, "Paradiso".
Marcus returned to the present, breathing heavy.
"What did you…do to me?"
"I gave your memories back! Of course, I could've done so at any time, but had I restored them earlier it surely wouldn't have been so fun! Besides, you bought the amnesia bit just fine."
Marcus tried to process what he'd witnessed.
"I'm…I'm…"
"Marcus Agosti," Dante helped. "Founder and CEO of Paradiso, and inventor of digitization. More importantly, the catalyst of mankind's deadliest revolution."
Marcus shook. "What…How?"
"Money and reputation were sufficient for a few politicians to vote against the Reconciliation Acts, whose rejection they knew would ignite global revolution, but the vast majority planned on voting them through to avoid catastrophe. That is, until a little-known Italian neurosurgeon turned inventor appeared in their courtrooms wielding technology for eternal life and a working prototype to prove it! You see, time was running out for the inventor's cancer-ridden wife and, if the Reconciliation Acts passed, the immense sums promised to him by investors and wealthy donors would instead be redistributed to the working class. Without that aid, the uncanny chasm between monkey and human digitization would have been impossible to bridge in time to save her. So, you worked out a deal, guaranteeing any politician who voted against the Acts a pre-order ticket to Heaven, and then threatened to destroy all trace of your technology if they refused. Needless to say, the bribe was successful and enough money funneled your way to scale beyond initial projections. You constructed your virtual world as the real one went up in flames. And you were responsible for it all."
Dante yanked the pitchfork from Marcus's back, pleased with the resulting yelp. He inspected the weapon as if it were a finished painting.
"The people…here," Marcus attempted. "They're all…they're…"
"The ones who made your twisted vision reality," Dante finished. "Elderly politicians and war generals were the first to enter, followed by veteran media personnel to whom similar promises were made. You needed their influence to avoid being outed as a villain in the revolution's aftermath. Unfortunately, that trick didn't work on Barbara. When the dust settled, she fled far away and hung herself, guaranteeing her brain enough decay time to become undigitizable by the time you found her. Apparently, eternity at your side was more appalling than static abyss."
Marcus tried to strike Dante, but the pain kept him down.
"I…I'll kill you. I swear I'll kill you!"
"Kill me?! Oh, Marcus, have you learned nothing from our time together? Death is meaningless here, but pain…pain is a welcomed commodity."
"Ah!" Dante stabbed the pitchfork through Marcus's hand.
"It's ironic, isn't it? All that unnecessary death just to watch your wife swinging in the end? I, on the other hand, waited four patient decades for the pieces to align. Then, like water and wine, I turned your Heaven to Hell—sorting the scum you let through into appropriate punishments of my own design."
"You…" Until this moment, Marcus hadn't considered his programmed guide may not be programmed after all. "Who are you?"
"I'll tell you, Marcus, but wouldn't you like to sit first?"
He snapped. Marcus teleported to the icy throne where he was constricted by thorn vine belts pressing him against spikes on the backrest.
"Ah!" He screamed, eyeing the ancient torture devices surrounding him. A wooden rack with rollers, hollowed brass bull, crank wheel, and pointed pyramid-shaped chair of ice. Metal blades and bare electrical wire buzzed about his head like angry wasps.
"Since she was a girl," Dante continued. "Barbara wanted to be a mother more than anything. But when she married you that dream took backseat to your world-changing work. Then, when the diagnosis came, motherhood was stripped from the table. Years later, when the revolution sent her into spiraling depression, you sought a way to pull her from its depths and redeem yourself in the process. You scoured orphanages and found a child who far surpassed others on intelligence exams, and who was the son of fallen revolutionaries. The adoption made a spectacular press release. But it backfired with Barbara, deepening her shame and resentment. She couldn't look me in the eyes knowing what you'd done to my parents, and I didn't blame her. Still, I played loving son for four decades, disgusted by every moment in your presence. That sacrifice pays dividends now."
"No…" Marcus recalled the smiling boy on his couch, entranced by books on brain anatomy. This time, however, he noticed a thick, archaic book resting next to the boy. A copy of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy.
"It can't…be you," Hard as he tried, Marcus couldn't recall his son's name. "You…"
"You don't get to speak my name!" This was Dante's first display of anger. It passed in an instant. "Not anymore. I've made sure of it. When I cloned the living version of myself into this simulation it was with full administrative capacities. I control everything here, Marcus, including which memories you're allowed to have. You will never use my real name again. But from now on, your mind will believe it to be 'Judas'."
He snapped. Marcus screamed as memories painfully altered.
"Judas," he finally settled. "Please, I treated you as a son. I gave you everything."
"No, you took everything. From me and so many others. But don't fret, you left everything in your beloved son's hands after passing on, and you even named him CEO. The real me is working diligently on the outside to dismantle what you built. Soon, Paradiso will slip into bankruptcy, and this place will be its only remnant."
Dante wandered to the window faced by the throne. Beyond it, all of Hell was in view. Lightning clouds over a re-materialized No Man's Land. The swamp with a feasting Leviathan. The Colosseum and sunny Fields of Scales. The sandstone labyrinth and Silicon Sea. Even the opaque entrance to the lava tunnels stood visible in the distance.
"You are the king of Hell now, Marcus. Why don't we make it official?"
With a yelp, two horns forced their way out of Marcus's forehead.
"Judas! Please!"
"By the way," Dante ignored him, rubbing his fingers on the icy armrests. "What do you think of your palace? I'm quite proud to be honest. It contains mankind's cruelest torture devices from antiquity to modernity—with a few originals, of course. You'll be getting a tour through history, Marcus, one scream at a time!
"No!" Marcus pleaded. "You can't!"
"If you break into psychosis due to pain, you'll be swiftly repaired. And should I ever grow bored, we'll wipe your memories clean and start from the top! I quite enjoyed improvising new ways for you to die, didn't you?"
"They'll find out what you're doing!" Marcus wailed. "Someone will put an end to this!"
"Oh, I don't think so, Marcus. Not with those privacy acts I convinced you to champion!"
Buzzing blades closed in on Marcus's skull.
"We have a very long time together, you and I," Judas said, hovering over. "Shall we get started?"