There is a man in hell right now who can explain everything. Or, he is piecing it together. He can’t explain it to anyone because his torture often involves his tongue being pulled from his mouth and he has never talked to the demon with the horns like the Saint Junipero Serra y Ferrer who cried out for someone to listen and shocked everyone when he called their attention to the slow escape of the beast from the abyss. Who knows how the saint came across that knowledge of the beast. Maybe it spoke to him because of his many sins that fed the beast and made it stronger. But the man who understands his position in hell, has not spoken to anyone since his death and departure from the real world. He has just been enduring terrible torture at the hands of horrible beasts who derive pleasure from his screams of agony.
The man is Dr. Fritz Parsons, celebrated theoretical physicist, who discovered that the theory of parallel universes is not only real, but that humanity was maybe a century away from developing technology that would allow them to view these realities. Parsons knows that the hell he inhabits is not one of these parallel universes, but a pocket universe that is as ubiquitous across the universal parallel as matter itself. It is the primordial home of ancient evil that has existed for as long as the universe and it is not a unique realm of existence. Parsons thought that he had developed technology to allow him a chance to peer into an alternate reality, but after checking his computers, he realized that he was detecting energy that did not emanate from a parallel of existence. It was not physical energy in the conventional sense. It was not light as he had ever observed it. It was the darkest light that he had ever encountered.
And then he died when he assisted the CIA with a special individual who manifested abilities outside the realm of human understanding. Parsons was incinerated in a car that went up quickly after the individual wrecked the car they were driving. It has not been determined if the accident and the death of Parsons was intentional.
Parsons was never a religious man in his life and he was stunned to wake after his death in hell. He had no reason to think that if heaven and hell were real places, that he was such a horrible person that he would end up in hell. But maybe the Christians had been right; because he had not accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior, he was doomed to hellfire for eternity. But the others that he saw in hell proved that to be false. He saw everyone he had ever lost in that place, being dragged and tortured by unspeakable demons. His father, who had been the nicest man that he had even known; who had given to charities, never cheated on his wife, and was a chemistry teacher for all of his professional career; was there being strung up like a slab of meat and sliced with tiny blades that eventually left him as confetti on the floor. His daughter, who had died when she was just ten years old when she chased a ball into the street, was there in a hotspring with other children, being boiled like chunks of a soup. This only added to the torture that Parsons felt, that everyone he had ever cared about was being subjected to this horror. And he had the thought that this was just his own personal hell designed to maximize his torture, but almost as soon as he had that idea, the demon with the horns of a ram dragged his daughter from the boiling springs and made her watch as Parsons was tortured. She cried and yelled, pleaded for relief from the vision of her father and begged to be sent back to her own torture for eternity if it meant her father could be freed. And the horned demon smiled at Parsons, communicating the reality they faced without a word.
This is real. This is the fate of everyone you love.
Parsons was perplexed. How was it possible that every soul from his existence that had died was suffering in hell? Was humanity really that bad? Or was there some other explanation that he was not considering?
Even through his torture, Parsons’ mind never stopped working. He figured that the hell he was experiencing must be the place that he had detected before his death. It seemed that every iteration of humanity, at each stage of its evolution from the point of clear reason and sapience, was being tortured there. This wasn’t a parallel reality, but one that had existed for as long as time that was siphoning the souls or life forces of every person who died in his parallel of reality. For this to be true, Parsons reasoned that aliens either did not exist, because he had not noticed any intelligent beings from another planet in hell, or they were not brought to this place after death. It also meant that this place was only for humanity, not any other animal or being that existed on Earth.
And then he saw Silas in hell and it all made sense to him. He did not know Silas, but he saw the man appear out of nowhere and he walked with the horned demon for a while until he just disappeared. This hell is not a punishment for the lives and actions of the souls that suffered there. And it is not necessarily a permanent situation if the man had appeared and disappeared. There had to be some explanation, whether scientific or otherwise, that explained why all of humanity was being drawn to this realm. The whole thing was unnatural.
Silas stands in the apartment of Adam Altman, a man that he had met when he went for a sleep study. Adam had undergone a sleep study as well; he was struggling with dreams that made him think he had a different life somewhere he had made different decisions. Like Silas, he had not had a conventional dream in a very long time, but unlike Silas, he did not travel to hell in his sleep. Adam was convinced that he experienced the life of an alternate version of himself and he had been doing a lot of reading to confirm this.
“I want to show you this book,” Adam explains as he leads Silas into his bedroom. Silas is surprised to see the windows darkened with black sheets that made it feel like a cave that is lost to the light. It smells like Adam’s body had existed inside unwashed for a long time and the stench of the man was palpable and thick.
Adam grabs a book from his bed and hands it to Silas.
“Let’s sit in the kitchen,” Silas says, longing to be free of the oppressive smell.
The two sit at the small dining room table.
“It’s by Dr. Fritz Parsons.” Adam explains. “He died last year. It’s really advanced physics, and I’m not a scientist at all, but he says that the idea of the multiverse is real. When I go to sleep, Silas, I see the life that I live in a parallel universe where I made different decisions. I’m like a police officer or something…”
“What does this have to do with me?” Silas asks as he flips through the book. It is mostly incomprehensible but he stops on a diagram that Parsons included to demonstrate the infinite nature of the multiverse. It was like a rainbow with many different colors and solid lines separating each.
“The multiverse is infinite,” Adam explains, “so there is a parallel of the universe for every possibility of existence. There are some that are so similar we couldn’t tell the difference, and some so different we couldn’t…”
“Is there one that looks like hell? With demons and nasty fucking octopus things?” Silas is agitated.
“It’s definitely possible, Silas.” Adam takes out his laptop and opens it on the table. “But Dr. Parsons thinks that there is something else. A place with dark light, a place not like the parallel realities. He called it a dark place.” Adam shows Silas the screen of his laptop and it shows a similar diagram to the one in the book, only it explains that the spaces between are not just dark lines, but the same dark realm that exists between each parallel.
“Maybe that’s what you see when you are in hell.” Adam smiles weakly at Silas.
Silas looks at everything incredulously. But what other explanation could he hope for? The only thing he can do now is go to hell and see if he can confirm it.
PRL Serials 