I found myself before the gentleman again.
— Well then, — he glanced at me. — If you sell your soul, this won’t pass you by.
— I’m ready. What do I do?
— Nothing. A bit of patience. The papers will be ready shortly, and we’ll get started.
— Why did you choose me?
— You’re amusing, you know. Take a look, if you like.
The gentleman stood and headed toward a light fixture flickering some thirty meters off. I stood and followed him. About halfway there, he stopped and waved me ahead with a piece of advice:
— Step carefully. You’re a very impressionable person.
My eyes fell on something interesting. Suspended a meter and a half up hung a crystal the size of an orange, a faceted shape of intensely red light, lit somehow from within by no visible source. Unfixed to anything, it floated like a ghost, illuminating a patch of ground that looked familiar. Sand and gravel had been scattered over the mirrored floor, along with little spheres slightly bigger than tennis balls.
I walked a bit farther and spotted some insect-sized stirring: it was me and Veronika Sergeyevna, shrunk down to the size of lice. I remembered dying in that filthy desert, watching the giant approach, insulting him. The curses I’d hurled at myself, surfacing now from memory, made me smile.
Brave kid, though. If he’d known what else he was about to run into, he wouldn’t have been flailing his little arms and legs like that.
I straightened up and started back. A pathetic little creature, and here it was, putting on airs.
Halfway there, I was stopped by a visual signal. The gentleman raised his palm for me to slow down, and traced a finger through the air, instructing me to go around.
What now?
Off to the side, in a little hollow, crawled another copy of me.
I glanced at the gentleman. He raised a finger to his lips, then traced a half-circle in the air again. Right! I needed to carefully go around that spot. No telling — I might scare myself into hiccups again.
Setting my feet down as softly as I could, I made my way back to the table. The gentleman contented himself with a single remark:
— Nothing special. Life is just going over old ground again, a little wiser than before…
I said nothing. The gentleman patted my shoulder:
— Forgot to offer you a spyglass. It’s easier that way.
— Who’s over there? — I nodded toward my own copies. The fancy word «reproduction» came to mind.
Why multiply me?
— Wrong way to think about it, — the gentleman’s mocking look turned amused. — There are no copies. It’s you, in person, everywhere.
— I don’t get it.
— Let’s simplify and say a personality underwent replication. One replica, say, suffers in hell. A second returns to its own world and enjoys life. A third stays here in service. But it’s one and the same personality. Do you understand the difference between a replica and a copy?
— No.
— Then let’s drop the subject. Any more questions?
— What’s the point of the thing called hell?
— None. A person is supposed to suffer. Torment is his cross to bear. If he doesn’t experience suffering in his first life, he makes up for it afterward.
— What makes you think suffering is man’s lot?
— I don’t know. It seems to me I created him for suffering. If you’ve got a soul, you’re obligated to suffer. Those without a soul don’t suffer — animals, scumbags, idiots...
— The people fighting wars in the sands — do they suffer too?
— Everyone who ends up here suffers. Some on the battlefield, some in the mines, some in the sands, some suffer while doing nothing at all. For one man hell is hard physical labor. For another, war and brawling. For a third, sexual frustration.
— Do you decide the measure of suffering?
— No. I’ve got nothing to do with it.
— But this is hell. You’re the one in charge here.
— So what? Every person has his own personal hell, and he carries it in his own soul. That’s the law of life.
— What awaits me after death?
— The same thing. Only endless. Whatever you carry in your soul is yours, in life and after death. Ah, here come the papers.
