The idea that the City of Heaven is worse than the City of Hell is not easy to wrap your head around. Especially if you've read some of the old texts, wherefrom these names were obviously taken.

But first of all, this is because Heaven is far deeper underground than Hell. So the route to the surface is longer and slower and more full of potential treachery and pain.

I want to say something about those who named these two cities, now the two largest that are still below the surface of the Earth. These citymakers almost certainly did not read the old literature. This is now obvious, looking back.

But why should they have read it? It was from such a long time ago even then. Who now dares to read the news of distant yesterday but today?

I say, who in their circumstances, or in ours, would dare waste their time, which is so valuable and they need so much, to only learn presumably about life on an earth that is different from our own almost to the point of incomprehensibility and even unrecognizability!

And most likely, too, none of them could read.

Yes, how they survived is another mystery to us today. But so what?

There are too many mysteries in this world. I say, don't bother with mysteries and everything is a mystery.

What about them? To some people mysteries are everything, but to us they are nothing. Yes, maybe even less than nothing.

The world is what it is now. Previously it was what it was. Those who are interested in the mysteries of the world tend not to live long enough to find the answers to them. So do things stand now. I admit, the world is worse than it was. The seeker of answers to riddles can no longer live. A shame, but the world is what it is.

But really considering how many centuries passed, before literacy finally reappeared amongst the Greeks after the collapse of their Mycenaean civilization around nine thousand years ago, so we should not be too surprised that it took us that long.

Rather we ought be proud that it did not take us longer than it actually did.

At first, we had metal but no heat. Then we had the heat of the earth but no metal.

Human beings no longer look like they did in the past. We don't even reproduce anymore.

Are we the same species as our ancestors, it's simply not easy to determine how much we resemble them.

We are both much poorer and much richer; we are simply different.

But it doesn't matter; the world already is what it is. For those who appear too late in history, decisions are already made for them. Could it be that is why nothing good will ever happen?

Furthermore, we people should be immune by now to even the greatest surprises.

The great sun and all the stars in the night sky, too, are apparently living creatures like us. Like us they, too, have periods of waking, and in between these periods they do sleep.

So one fine day our sun apparently decided that it would rather sleep. And then it slept!

It is still sleeping.

What else could possibly surprise you, after you've lived through that?

--- Arlen, Three cycles and seven rivers, 19AB N20

A good question, she thought. The ancients knew how to ask questions. Sure they did. Alas, they also knew none of the answers.

Not quite nothing but ...

And worse, it seemed to her like they feared to find out the answers, as if the news could only be bad.

There's an idea, she thought, that important answers to important questions could only ever be bad. As if important news is always bad and you don't want it, but unimportant news isn't really news and you don't want to hear it.

She sighed. The past must have really, totally been no fun.

Huh, but that was then.

Zaftra tore the book in half along the spine, as if it were a paper napkin. 

After the slightest pause, she tossed one half of the book in the fire.

The room was too cold, she thought. It ought to be warmer.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

And the flames promptly ate the book and grew and the room become warmer and brighter.

She thought: now this is much better.

Then she leaned back.

Printed books had disappeared and then reappeared. On the surface, near the activities of flesh, ice and snow melt and the wet ruins computing machines and displays and the rest. Yet paper pages merely begin to rot. Rotting then ceases when flesh leaves and the heavy pages left behind and they freeze. How much would have been lost, if it were not on paper.

Luckily the ancients could make artificial wood. After the sun did what it did, nothing grew naturally in the world. Now the world really was as the human mind imagined it, because all that there was now was made by human hands under the direction of the human mind, and elsewhere there was darkness and nothingness. It was a fantasy world, because it was a fantasy which reality had force flesh to make real in order to replace it as it died and disappeared.

But this book was common, and anyway, she felt nothing when she tossed it. Zaftra had recognized long ago that nothing really bothered her. What she called regret was no regret, what she called fear was no fear. Loss and waste never bothered her. Paradoxically, in a world where there was almost nothing and everybody fought endlessly over it, insensitivity to waste was quality that helped succeed.

She threw in the other half and the fire was even brighter.

In the light, there were a dozen bodies laying in various poses. The metal on them glinted in the light. Like sweat but not sweat, there was a sour smell in the air. The air shimmered.

She yawned. Not that she would ever sleep ever again.

In the light, obviously less than half of the bodies were humankind.

Not basic humankind but any kind of humankind.

Before she came to this region, she had no idea that such beings existed in the world. That life could look like that.

So previously, in her mind, they did not exist.

Then she had come here and they had come here.

Now she knew, but they no longer existed again. But in reality.

It was actually too easy she thought.

She had come here and they had come and there was a fight. They attacked after they saw her. She didn't know why, but once the fight began, and the outcome mattered, she didn't care.

Very well, she won.

One moment they simply as if fell dead. The one that didn't was flung head first into the wooden ceiling. It was still hanging from there by the neck, near the corner of the room, by the door. It neck was broken and cut and it was hung and dripped on the packed earth floor. The ground drank deeply of it. 

But if they attacked her only because they ate people and she looked like good meat, even had they succeeded, they would have found nothing to gnaw upon.

There was too little flesh and bone in her.

How shocked they would have been. That they were so much closer to the basic spec than she.

* * *

She won.

No surprise. She had overprepared to an astonishing degree really. Every ounce of her was crafted to slay towering giants holding their shields and swinging vast cudgels. But instead there came birds, frogs, and rats. Merely vicious birds, frogs, and rats that attacked everything that moved that wasn't them and for no reason. Even when they could not possible win. Like they had no minds.

At moments like this, she felt she was recognizing a big truth. That life on earth sure never actually adapted to a lack of most of its energy. It couldn't. Nothing actually adapt to that. There wasn't variation for that, even if there was selection. Unlike to all previous changes to its environment, life didn't adapt, it just went crazy.

* * *

She briefly wondered if there was really a single basic spec anymore.

Alas, it was these upgrades cost the most, however.

She owned a great debt. But, like some debts, it was a good debt to have. She flexed her metal fingers and made a fist. It was tight. She felt nothing. When she made a fist, all feeling vanished. That was a feature. A hammer should not feel the nail that it hits.

Zaftra knew that most denizens would never, ever have been offered the credit.

They could never talk their way into being given such a credit. And yet she had gotten it without saying a word.

She had asked nobody. Only what it cost. She sighed. If she'd have known it would be that easy, she would have done it earlier.

But again, how nice to have the single most common and most pleasant regret, so far as regrets could be pleasant. How much worse, if she had tried earlier, and found it was too hard or impossible. Better late than never is true, where there is no deadline.

And outside the warm city walls all deadlines themselves died. Indeed, this is why she upgraded. Why she really left the city, that ancient womb. And not merely to travel to its twin for a change of scenery.

Oh, she was told the price and offered credit and accepted and two years later was all done.

Which was nice. Alas, that also suggested she was marked and was being watched. Selected, yes, but observed. Certain to be manipulated.

Heaven gave nobody anything for free. Selected.

It only made her want to go sooner.

Since it could be given so easily, that meant there was a hundred time that, a thousand times that in the city, in the hands of the givers. And such force would ultimately be used obnoxiously. After all, how did she use what she had gained?

Then she finally went past the city walls, as prepared as she would ever be.

She totally overprepared. Now she saw it clearly. She was more than ready.

Five bodies stacked up were her chair.

She leaned back further, repositioned one, and put her feet up and they clicked.

Ah, there were claws on those feet. Could it be that people now had claws, like beasts?

It could, she had them; but it made here wonder what kinds of people she would meet.

And if beasts, then so be it, but what kinds of beasts?

* * *

Yes, she overprepared. While some things, to be done, must be done quickly, too many things, and most great things, can only be done slowly.

It was the same problem, everybody always could use more time. Everybody always needs more time.

But a lot more. That was the problem.

Almost everything really great takes forever. Very well, so you needed forever.

Even three hundred and thirty years, the typical life, passes like so many beats in a song.

Really, if you wanted to do anything really interesting, you had to get forever first. Then do everything else.

Once she finally understood this, it was forever she went finally seeking.

Now, after she knew what could be done, since she had done part of it, she knew how to go about getting forever.

In a world in which almost nothing is left, which was living longer but dwindling, she was going to buy forever.

She looked around the room. Then she stood.

She was going to buy forever, while people still knew how to make it, and it was going to be easier than she first thought.

Is what she thought.