Chapter 7 - In Limbo

They did, in fact, have a mortal rig. The inside of the shop looked like a cyberpunk nightmare right out of the Matrix.  Sometimes a human who couldn't summon demons would make his way down here to talk to their demon, usually to strike a contract or beg for forgivness.  Shart wasn't real helpful here, but sometimes a human did therefore, they had to have a method to reach that demon, since demons hated entering the mortal realm.  

The rig wasn’t quite a full body VR rig out of movies, but it was so damn close it hurt.  The biggest difference was that the thing had obviously been built to accommodate a variety of different body shapes, from birds all the way to humans, so it had entirely too many straps.

Fortunately, it had been pre-configured for a human because the demon attendant was no help whatsoever.

Doug hooked himself up.  Literally.  He took a large meat hook and slid it into a socket at the base of his wings. The hook violently yanked Doug straight into the air.  Looking up, I saw literally hundreds of demon bodies in the ceiling of the establishment, and there was still room for more.

“Jim, you might be disappointed,” said Shart.

“In Limbo?” I growled.

“No, in me,” said Shart.

“I’ll see for myself,” I said and activated the rig.  Nothing happened for a few moments, and I realized I had to weaken my Mental Resistance to allow the effect to work.  As I felt the effect start to seep in, I noticed some additional commands being sent. Focusing, I filtered out the unnecessary stuff, like if you die in the virtual world, you die in real life. Suddenly, I felt my body start to slip away.

· Your mind has moved to Limbo.  You are protected here, assuming you do not engage in any unauthorized violent acts.  Damage to your real body will cause the effect to end, and you will be dropped back in the cafe.  Limbo Inc. accepts no liability from mortals using this device.

I opened my eyes. For a bare instant, there was nothing. It was like I was in an infinite rainbow void that stretched beyond my puny mortal mind’s capacity to comprehend.  Then, everything snapped together. The rainbows condensed down to a single vision.

I was standing on a platform with a commanding view of Limbo.  Every detail of the platform was painstakingly complete, from an empty newsstand to actual train tracks.

Holding up my hand, I was alarmed to see that it was bright orange. I also seemed to be missing all my fingers.  I could grip things normally, but I was nothing more than a large, orange series of orbs.  It felt normal enough, so I put the condition of my virtual body out of my mind.

There was a city here, greater than any I’d ever seen before.  It was like New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, and London had all merged together to form a single, super city.  There were skyscrapers, bridges over pastel rivers, even an amusement park.

“Don’t freak out,” said a large, quivering, black sphere next to me. The gigantic ball adjusted all three sets of wings attached to its center.  Oddly, the wings didn’t actually seem to have a fixed point. They just shifted on the outside of the central sphere, which itself was constantly in motion.  It almost hurt to look at, so I took a second to tune my Mental Resistance the proper amount.

Had it not been for the time with Sir Badgington, I wouldn’t have managed that degree of fidelity.

“This is what you actually look like,” I said.

“Yup,” replied Doug, flexing his wings.  All three sets spread out. I could see veins of purple flowing into the central mass, causing them to expand further.

“So, this is Limbo, where demons all reside?” I asked.

Doug looked around and shrugged, "Basically, except for the demons who we are required to hand over for summoning, everyone lives here.  This is our actual home, the demons who aren't here are being punished for some reason."

"Like you," I asked.

"I'm more complicated," said Doug his wings constantly adjusting around his body.  "As the demonic general, I'm in charge of defending the dungeon, and Jersey as a whole, from invaders.  There are only a few demons like that.  Bruce, my boss, also is appointed.  He manages the soul retrieval process.  Nearly every demon here is working to keep the Soul Cleanser operational"

There were thousands of demons flying this way and that. All of them looked nearly identical to Doug. They all had some sort of chaotic, round geometric shape with strangely shaped wings. Some looked powerful.  Some looked lithe.  All of them looked wrong.

“How many of you are there?” I asked.

“A few shy of a hundred thousand reside here,” said Doug, staring into the distance. There was something troubling in how he said that, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I stared at the skyline for a moment. A human city like this could hold, at minimum, a population in the tens of millions.

“Is the city empty?” I asked.

Doug shrugged, causing all three sets of his wings to shrug in tandem. “It's not full like a human city if that’s what you’re asking.  We mostly live in the central core around the Soul Cleanser. However, a lot of us venture to the outskirts when we get bored. We like to expand the city.

They apparently got bored a lot.

“The Soul Cleanser is here too?” I asked, remembering the massive piece of unnatural equipment I had seen when first entering Jersey.

“It is multi-dimensional. The great device also goes into Newark and the SEPTA,” said Doug.

“SEPTA?” I asked.

“Soul Experience Processing Transmission Amplifier,” explained Doug from no particular mouth I could find.  “I believe your type calls them the fast lanes.  It is a processing level for souls that are too difficult to channel through the main Soul Cleanser. It speeds them up to drain them of Experience more rapidly.”

“I thought the fast lanes were just a quick way to travel. Are you telling me they are a byproduct of the Soul Cleanser?” I asked.

“Relax. Lots of things are,” replied Doug.  “It's an incredibly powerful, ancient artifact that the <admins> can build en masse. Those lazy assholes use them on every world in creation.  Newark is where they dump the more toxic waste. You are in for a real treat if you make it there.”

“And you only care what I do if I try to get into the dungeon?” I asked carefully.

“Yes, I’d be really upset if you changed your mind now,” said Doug sharply.  I brushed him off. I didn’t want to go to his stupid old dungeon anyway.

Something caught my eye, and I turned my head. That’s when I saw the kneeling statues.  There was one massive, bug-like demon. There was also another even larger, more powerfully built, vaguely humanoid demon.  For lack of a better description, Shart’s natural body looked like a deep red gorilla with wings and a tail. The legs were too short, and the arms were too long to call him human-like.  Both statues looked about like what I’d remembered them being, except, of course, that the horns on Kevin’s statue looked terrible. They were crooked and not equal in length. Also, neither Elder Demon would ever kneel.

The base of the statues was covered with gelatinous goo. I wasn’t certain what the substance was, until I watched a flying orb zoom by and deposit more at the base. Doug looked on approvinly.

“So, I take it you guys don’t like the Elder Demons?” I asked.

Doug’s skin vibrated violently. “Oh, no, we just adore those two chucklefucks. They had us placed in this prison forever to do grunt work for the <admins>.  Michael is wise, and Kevin is strong.  If they were to appear here, we’d show them exactly how we feel about them.”

“In the mortal world, they both seem powerful,” I said.

“Sure, up there the traitorous turncoats have the <admins> as backup.  We are in Limbo, and the <admins> never check down here,” said Doug angrily, flying next to me.  “What are they going to do to us down here?  We can’t really be killed, and, even if we could be, this is where we would be sent.”

I had nothing to say to that. As we spoke, a train pulled up to the platform.  I realized it was a train that was entirely unnecessary. Everyone here could fly.

“Anyway, I have some business. I’ll be about half a human hour in real time, but there is a massive time acceleration here.  Whenever you decide to leave, I’ll be out within a few minutes,” offered Doug.  “This train goes through most of the interesting stuff.  When you want to leave, just say ‘Leave,’ and try to pull off the helmet. That will interrupt the session.”

“Is there anything here I should be worried about?” I asked.

“Nah. If you take any Damage here, I’d be impressed. “I don’t think the orange safety goobers have Hit Points,” answered Doug. He hovered for a moment before blasting off into the distance.

The train sat there patiently. I realized that it wasn’t going to move until I got on.  I was likely the first customer it had seen in months, if not years.  Someone had spent a tremendous amount of time designing it, and their work was going to waste.

I was in a nearly abandoned world. It was like some server population of hundreds had built a massive city because they had been bored, only to abandon it to the handful of people who occasionally played.

Checking my mindspace, I found Shart pressed up against my eyes.  He was devouring every detail he could about the city.

“Can they detect you?” I asked.

“Not with you hooked up like this,” said Shart. I felt such a strong urge to look at the river that I actually turned my head.

“This is where you were banished?” I asked.

“In the city? I wouldn’t dare,” replied Shart gesturing away from the massive glowing nimbus of power that was the city in Limbo to the vash rainbow colored nothing that streated on endlessly in all directions.  “I appeared a few million miles that way, and then started flying away as fast as I could.  I have no authority in this place. Not to mention, they are all still very angry at me.”

“Over a war that happened billions of years ago?” I asked.

“For them, it’s subjectively more like thousands of billions,” replied Shart, “but yeah.”

I had been seriously thinking about disconnecting from the rig and waiting half an hour for Doug to finish his business in the demons’ real world.  It was a truly wondrous place, but it was strange. I had an eerie feeling that I was going to find some stuff here that wasn’t going to sit well with my soul.

However, I had Shart to think about. This was probably the only chance I had to give him something he couldn’t procure for himself. Plus, he hadn’t been screwing me over lately. Perhaps he deserved a reward.

“Let’s go,” I sighed, heading for the train.