Canto 2: The Tunnel
The door slammed behind.
Hell’s miniscule second canto was filled with frigid air, intensified by downward gales. Lava streams on dirt walls emitted enough light to discern they were inside a vertical volcanic tunnel. Looking up then down, Marcus couldn’t detect an end in either direction. Only a door pressed into the wall at the end of the bridge.
With curiosity, Marcus reached for an ice stalagmite near him. Such formations were scattered on the walls, each with sharp points facing upward. Its edge pricked Marcus’s finger and drew blood.
“Ouch!”
“Shh,” Dante hushed him, pointing upwards.
A faint ringing began and grew louder. Moments later, a falling man appeared with a black tie flapping upward and blue dress shirt riddled with red, circular stains.
The man drifted down and impaled his chest through the stalagmite formation beside Marcus, spewing blood across his jacket.
“Save…me,” the man whimpered.
“Holy shit!” Marcus dropped down to help, but the ice fractured, and the man continued his plummet into darkness.
The stalagmite regrew instantly.
“Please tell me they’re recreations too,” Marcus said.
“Nope, human as you were,” Dante replied. Several more tie-wearing free fallers appeared to encounter similar fates as the first man. “But be assured they each have earned their wicked sentence.”
“Jesus! What did they do?”
“As your memory restores,” Dante explained with hands at his back. “You will recall the outside world underwent many trials in recent decades. Trials in no small part the fault of those in this Canto; elite CEOs who swapped employees for autonomous machines at every opportunity, despite an obvious and ever-widening divide between rich and poor. The decisions of these individuals alone left hundreds of millions jobless, starving, and oftentimes dead.”
Marcus was dumbstruck. “But that’s what CEO’s do! Make decisions to increase company profits. It’s up to governments and unions to push back when things go too far. How could that land them here?”
“Quite correct Marcus, and up until the end of the twenty-first century the working class and their labor unions battled hard to prevent exploitation. But in the modern age, exploitation was no longer the issue. Relevance was. Why would these CEOs hire a human worker when a robot could complete tasks quicker, and at a lower cost? The Great Chasm, as it became known, between the haves and have nothings grew too great to bridge and, when it was clear no government aid was coming, the bloody World Revolution ignited globally.”
Marcus was hit with a memory of Barbara and him sitting on a leather couch watching a news report of an all-out war on the streets of San Francisco. Onscreen, an armed soldier pointed his gun towards an angry mob but was swarmed before he could shoot. Marcus turned to his wife, who cried violently into her palms. He shut off the television and reached to comfort her. The memory faded as Marcus as Dante’s voice drew him back.
“The life mission of these CEOs was to cut their bottom line,” Dante concluded. “So now, they fall forever.”
Marcus watched a woman skewer on a three-pointed stalagmite. Her body glitched and reappeared beyond the formation to continue the fall.
“Who chooses these punishments?” Marcus asked. “This is so…extreme.”
“Well, Paradiso’s architects do the design work, but individual verdicts are decided as all things in a democracy are—a public vote!”
“A vote? So, everyone goes to Heaven or Hell when they die?”
“Of course not! Brain code requires significant storage space and Paradiso’s servers can only handle so much. Not to mention the logistical nightmare of judging millions who die every day. No, these simulations are reserved for only the vilest and saintliest of humanity.”
“That’s pretty subjective, isn’t it?”
“Au contraire, it’s highly data-driven! Paradiso’s online platform allows the public to upvote or downvote any individual. If enough votes are received in either direction, then that individual is brought before a panel of globally elected judges for a final verdict. Of course, one may always opt out of an unfortunate election. But with eternal static abyss as the alternative, the vast majority of the condemned choose Hell!”
“They send people here on a social platform?” Marcus asked dumbfounded as dozens of CEOs fell around him. He noticed the man he tried to save earlier returned on a new descent.
Suddenly, the bridge shook and knocked Marcus on his back.
“What’s happening?!”
Dante’s balance remained perfect as the ground shifted. He gazed curiously at chunks of tunnel wall breaking above.
“Judas is happening.”
“Judas?!” Marcus tried to push himself up, but his hand slipped on a patch of ice. He watched in terror as an immense slab of tunnel descended and crushed through the bridge.
Marcus slid through collapsing stone and off the ledge, plummeting through darkness until halted by the piercing of a stalagmite through the back of his skull and out his forehead.
