After a few hours the hangover was subsiding, and Doug sat himself up on the cot. He went to his washroom and splashed some water on his face, which was refreshing. “If I can get scotch, I bet I can get coffee.” He reached for the phone, but hesitated. He’d feel guilty having Jane overhear him order room service. Doug remembered the pig-faced demon saying he was in charge of the kitchens on floor three where they punished Gluttony, and decided to go there himself. He walked out of his office and down the hall to the nearest elevator, and asked it to take him to the Gluttony floor. When the doors opened he realized where Gulandar got his smell from. The floor was split between a massive kitchen pumping out trays of food, and the other side aisle upon aisle of refrigerators where that food was filled and left to rot, and then sorted by damned souls. Gulandar stood in the middle, arms crossed, overseeing it all. Doug approached and nervously asked, “Uhh hello sir, do you have a coffee machine?”
Gulandar huffed and then called over to a soul. “You there, get this man a coffee”
“Yes Chef!” the soul replied, and ran into the kitchen.
Gulandar looked over at Doug with an angry look on his face. “Hope you enjoyed that whiskey,” he growled. “Cinder took that from my private stock without my permission.”
“Oh…sorry, I didn’t tell her to do that” Doug stammered.
“Yeah yeah, don’t expect that going forward.” Gulandar grumbled. There was a large crash in the kitchen as a massive pot of chili slipped out of a man's hands, spilling gallons across the floor. Gulandar became enraged, leaving Doug behind to tend to the incident while yelling “WORTHLESS SCUM! CLEAN THAT UP IMMEDIATELY”.
The soul who went to get the coffee ran up to Doug with a large to-go cup, handed it to him without a word and got back to his work. Doug took a sip. It was strong coffee, but cold and tasted like it was made yesterday, which he didn’t really mind. Coffee is coffee. He strolled back to the elevator and got in. He thought of going back to his office, but thought maybe he’d peek in on another floor. “Envy” He said, thinking maybe the IT department could have something more interesting than a cube farm that doesn’t smell so bad. When the doors opened he was disappointed to see a cube farm until he saw the machine in the middle. It looked like a modern-day super computer, and had a massive spaghetti system of wires criss-crossed between the racks. It gave off a pulsing hum which accompanied the sound of souls and demons typing away on mechanical keyboards. The cubes on this floor were the only he’d seen that had computer terminals, all older than Doug. Doug wanted a closer look at the super computer and started to casually stroll towards it.
At about 20 feet away he heard a panicked yell from behind, “ARE YOU CRAZY GET AWAY FROM THERE WITH LIQUID IN YOUR HAND!” Doug stopped and turned to see Invidias running towards him waving his hands. “What are you doing here in the first place?” Invidias demanded.
“Sorry, just bored and curious…What is that thing?” Doug asked.
“That’s our primary interface with the Bardo, we receive incoming soul information through it, and then we upload soul data after remediation to properly route them to an appropriate life.” Invidias answered impatiently. “Unless you need something else, please return to your office, this area is restricted.” Doug wanted to get on one of those terminals and poke around, but Invidias seemed pretty adamant so Doug complied and started back to his office escorted by Invidias. He passed an empty cube and had an idea.
“Can I make a quick call from here?” Doug asked. Clearly annoyed, Invidias gave a go-ahead gesture and Doug got on the line. A man’s voice answered “IT Operations, how may I direct your call”
“Hi, I am looking for Cinder” Doug replied
“I’m sorry, this line is not authorized to access that resource without an executive override code” the voice said dryly.
Doug looked at Invidias and held the receiver out to him. “Need your override code”. Invidias was angry but wasn’t able to refuse Doug. He snatched the phone and grumbled into it “This is Invidias, override code RTX5080” then handed it back to Doug. The voice confirmed that Cinder was on their way and Doug hung up. Cinder appeared moments later. Invidias interjected before Doug could speak. “Cinder I’m very busy, please get Doug what he needs as long as it's not restricted then escort him to his office.” He then turned and walked away briskly.
“Hi Doug, what do you need?” Cinder asked cheerfully. Doug waited a moment for Invidias to be out of earshot then asked,
“When I first got here, one of the guards said something about a form I could submit to change my accommodations, do you know which form that is?”
Cinder was giddy to help. “Of course! That’s an R5503, I can print one right from this terminal!”
“Show me how to print one, I want to learn all about this system!” Doug said with an equal amount of giddiness.
“Sure thing! Technically these terminals are restricted for you, but not for me!” Cinder said as they logged into the machine while Doug shoulder surfed. He was thinking if he could transfer up to this floor maybe he could get access to a terminal somehow. He watched as Cinder started navigating through the directories containing all the various request forms. It looked like you needed a form to do just about anything there, but that gave Doug another idea.
“Cinder, instead of an R5503, are there forms where I can request access to one of these terminals, and have it installed in my office?” Cinder thought for a moment, “There is the EQ903 request for the equipment, but I don’t think Invidias will sign off on the AAR2702 to give you access to the network or mainframe.”
Doug thought fast “What about just an unconnected terminal with a local copy of all souls currently being punished? I just want to uhh, do my appeal research faster.”
“Sounds like a legitimate business use case to me!” Cinder said cheerfully as they typed commands to the system. After a few more minutes of searching Cinder was able to find all of the needed forms and sent them to printing, a section at the back of the floor filled with printers, half of which were always facing driver issues which souls are forced to diagnose. As they waited for the delivery of the forms, Cinder showed Doug how to navigate and query the databases involved with soul data. The forms arrived just as Cinder was explaining Soul-Chain technology. “So when a soul leaves here, the bardo takes everything the soul has experienced in its current iteration, and packages it as a Soul-Block and embeds it into the essence of the next iteration. That Soul-Block contains the essence of all previous blocks as well, so it creates a link between all past lives while maintaining the independence of each life! It is so cool! Ok so you’ll need to sign these three forms. After that I can deliver them to facilities and Invidias for approval.”
“Do you think he’s going to push back at all?” Doug asked nervously.
“He may, but as long as you have a legitimate need and we’ve filled out the proper forms we are required to facilitate to the best of our abilities, it’s all in the handbook! Let’s get you back to your office and I’ll get these processed.”
Doug followed Cinder back to the elevator back to the fourth floor and back to his office where she left him to deliver the paperwork. It wasn’t long before his phone rang. “This is Doug” he answered.
Invidias replied curtly, “Invidias here, I’m going to approve this request, but I don’t have time to make a local machine. Whenever you need to use it, call down to central switching and tell them to connect you to port 666 then plug the line into your machine. You will be monitored and if I find you snooping on my network you will lose this immediately. Soul data only! Your username is doug@hell.inc, password is Doug123 which you will update the first time you log on. Got all that?”
“Yes, thank you Invidias” Doug replied. Invidias hung up, Doug waited a moment.
“Do you need to be connected somewhere?” Jane’s voice came through the line.
“Uhhh no, have a good day” Doug stammered out.
“We are literally in Hell, don't think that’s going to happen.” Jane replied bitterly, and hung up. Doug hung up as well, feeling like an idiot.
Doug putzed around his office impatiently for an hour or so, and at last there was a knock at his door. He opened it to find two demons, one pushing a cart with a terminal on it. They both got to work quickly, moving the terminal to Doug's desk and hooking up power and peripherals. It only took them a few minutes, after which they bowed and left. Doug took a deep breath and picked up the phone. “Central switching, how may I direct your call?” Jane asked.
“Hi, sorry for the stupid comment earlier, didn’t mean to offend.” Doug said sheepishly.
“It’s whatever, who do you need to call?” Jane replied a bit impatiently.
“I’m trying to connect my terminal to the mainframe, Invidas said I need to be connected to port 666.”
“Got it, connecting you now” she replied. Doug thanked her, unplugged his phone line, plugged it into the back of the terminal and powered it on. He was presented with a login screen where he typed his credentials and followed steps to update his password. He was finally in! Originally, he had just wanted to look up Jane’s past life, but now he was also interested in this soul-chain thing and looking up his own past lives.
He decided to start researching Jane. It took some time to find the right soul. He queried the database to show him all souls with her name whose current assignment was in operations. That narrowed it down to a few hundred, which Doug decided to just click through one-by-one. Luckily the data included intake photos, and he found her about halfway through. He first looked up her current sentence, which was 900 years for Wrath.
He then dove into the files detailing her life. She had a normal upbringing in New York City, and married her college sweetheart who was from Texas. A few years into their marriage they were on a trip to New York City for the first time. On the second night of their trip, they were walking through Central Park and passed a group of teenagers. Jane had just bought a nice handbag that day and her husband was wearing his nice cowboy hat, which one of the teens noticed and started ragging on. The group started following the two, which the couple noticed a bit too late. They were close, and one of the boys yelled for Jane to drop the bag. The couple turned around, and her husband told her to give him the bag, and run to the hotel as fast as she could. Jane wanted to protest but did just that and ran off. The man tried to negotiate, trying to ask to remove things like her ID. One teen wasn’t having it and charged at the man, who reflexively threw a fist, breaking the teen’s nose. A second teen pulled a gun and fired three shots into Jane’s husband, killing him instantly.
The incident broke Jane, who only wanted revenge. There had been some police nearby who heard the shooting, who were able to detain some of the teens but not the one who had shot him, and were only able to charge one with possession of marijuana. She tried hiring a PI to dig up dirt on them, but none would take the case as they were all minors. Jane used the one name she was able to get from the possession charge to find that teen on social media, and from there infiltrated his social circle with a fake profile.
She put together a master plan, where on one Friday night she invited each teen to a hotel room with staggered arrival times. When they arrived she would be in the bathroom with the shower running. She told them all through the door to grab a drink while she finished up. She had spiked the bottle with cyanide, and would drag each dead body into the bathroom and then wait for the next victim. She was able to kill eight in total. After the last one she knew that she wouldn’t be able to remove eight bodies from a Manhattan hotel room, and just called the police on herself. She spent the rest of her life in prison.
Doug felt horrible after reading it. He’d hoped that she was in for something less severe, so that he might be able to advocate for her, but murdering people who were just at the place when her husband was shot did seem a bit extreme. He closed out her files and started searching for his own. After some digging he came upon the Soul-Chain ledger. He pulled the records from his life iteration before he was Doug.
He started reading, and was soon hit with deja vu. There were parallels with Jane’s early life. He quickly scrolled to the end of the file which described his death. Shot three times in Central Park defending his wife. He was Jane's husband in her past life. Doug’s heart was pounding and hands were shaking. He started querying more of his past lives, looking for lives he had relationships. Once he found five, he went into Jane’s soul-chain and cross referenced the timelines. Sure enough, they had lived multiple lifetimes together, and the lives where they were together they both lived happy, fulfilled lives.
This was too much for Doug, so he powered off the machine. He unplugged the phone line, and plugged it into the phone. He wanted to tell Jane right away, but needed to figure out the best way to deliver the news. As he was steeling his nerves and considering ordering another bottle, the phone rang. “Uhhhh…hi” Jane's voice came through nervously. “Were you aware that I was the one assigned to monitor you?”