Claire led them to the armory, because what else could she do?


    “Here it is,” she announced, opening the drawer.


    “And you neglected to mention this until now?” Wendy said.


    “Saved my ass, didn’t it?”


    “What should we do with these?” Ryan asked.


    Elena said, “I vote no one should touch them. We should put the gun back and leave it shut. This stuff is dangerous.”


    “This place is dangerous,” Josh said. “What if we need to protect ourselves?”


    “From what? It’s not like there are wild bears or anything here.”


    “To protect us from each other, obviously,” Peter said. “Guns are the great equalizer. Would you rather we all have weapons, or only some of us do?”


    “I’d rather no one have weapons!” Elena said.


    “Bit late for that,” Claire said dryly.


    After some discussion, the pacifists were overruled. It was agreed that anyone who wanted a weapon would take one. Even Lucile was allowed a gun, the reasoning being, everyone could keep watch on her if she tried anything devious. In total, twenty guns and thirteen knives were taken. There were only six people who took no weapons at all.


    “Thirty guns, thirty knives, thirty of us,” Elena said. “What does it mean?”


    Wendy shrugged.


    “It means, the Lord provides,” Josh said.


    He cocked his gun as he spoke, probably thinking it would make him look cool. He failed. The gun didn’t need cocking, not at this point, but Claire didn’t feel the need to educate him, or anyone for that matter. Better that she retain as many advantages as she could.


    ~


    I shall have to vote for someone who is sure to lose. So that I don’t use my own vote to help someone else defeat me. Who can I vote for who is guaranteed not to get any votes? Lucile – everyone hates her. And that old guy, what was his name? Loris. There is no way anyone else will vote for him. Then I might as well vote for Avery, since he is sure to win anyway. And lastly, Trinity, as per our agreement.


    Thomas wrote his four votes on four slips of paper. There was a complex system they had worked out over almost an hour of discussion for how votes would be verified, the gist of which being that they would also vote for themselves on a fifth sheet of paper, slide these papers anonymously through a crack to a trusted team of three who would ensure they didn’t see the same name twice, and then move them onward to a bag, out of which they would later be drawn to be tallied in front of the group. This method would cause everyone to get an extra vote for themselves but that shouldn’t change the results at all, since they would just subtract one from everyone’s score.


    It was with cautious optimism that Thomas watched the votes counted. He had his four deals, a vote for a vote, even if he had only followed through on one of them himself. And since he hadn’t followed through on some of them, those people should be getting one vote fewer than him, since he was confident they had indeed voted for him. And on top of that, he felt good about a lot of the schmoozing he had done. For some reason there were a bunch of old ladies here – surely they couldn’t resist his charms.


    It took a while for the votes to all be counted, as each name in the bag was removed one by one, read by anyone who wanted to to verify there wasn’t any dirty play, and a tally mark was added to an ongoing list.


    Even before the list was done, it was clear things had gone wrong.


    When the final ballot was tallied, there was outrage.


    It went like this:


    <ol>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Lucile - 15 votes</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Avery - 13 votes</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Trinity - 10 votes </li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Ryan - 8 votes</li>


    </ol>


    The next highest was seven people tied at four votes. Thomas himself only received two.


    ~


    “This is absurd,” Anita said. “This is even worse than random.”


    “It’s a mockery of democracy,” Mark said. “This is not the rational, informed American democracy I referred to earlier. This is a kangaroo democracy.”


    “I’m not so sure your prized American democracy is much different.”


    “What are you talking about?”


    “I love democracy!” Lucile announced, grinning ear to ear. “The people have spoken, and it is their will that I ascend! Who am I to disagree with the will of the polis?”


    “Shut up,” said Josh, waving his hand at Lucile. “And anyway, how could you all vote for her?”


    “Can you please, for the love of God, not gesture with the gun in your hand?” Wendy said.


    Maya said, “There must be an error. How would over half of us vote for Lucile? It makes no sense. She tried to steal a spot in Heaven, and she is, forgive my language, kind of a fucking bitch.”


    “Obviously people love me!” Lucile said. “Just look at the votes!” She did a little dance. “But if you idiots really haven’t realized yet, what happened is you are all selfish, and you all broke your promises or whatever, and voted for the person you thought least likely to win, which was yours truly, because you didn’t want to vote for someone who might surpass you. Except you didn’t realize that most of you are this devious, and you all voted for me. But so it goes! Sucks to suck. Should have used ranked choice, losers.”


    “Is that really right?” Josh asked. “Did everyone really vote for her?”


    Everyone kind of looked at each other, no one wanting to admit that they had in fact voted for Lucile. “It… seems plausible that that occurred,” Thomas said eventually.


    “Well something is definitely wrong,” Peter said, “Because she, Trinity, that is, said she would trade votes with me, and yet I have zero votes. ”


    “She said the same for me! And I only have three votes, when I should have at least four.”


    “Same with me!” Thomas said. “I thought we had a deal!”


    Trinity shrugged. “Votes are counted, aren’t they? It’s dawn soon, so the four of us should go to the Breakroom.”


    “We can’t allow this,” Anita said. She looked to Wendy. “We can’t allow this, right?”


    Wendy shrugged. “I don’t think it’s up to me. You all wanted democracy, and this is what we got. As far as I can tell, the voting was fair, even if some people didn’t get the votes they wanted. So unless we decide democratically to do something else, I’m not sure what we can do.”


    “Forget democracy,” Josh responded. “If anyone steps over that line, I will shoot them myself. Our original, democratically decided method was the random ballots –”


    “Shut up about your random ballots. No one else cares anymore.”


    “This method is even worse! Think about the kinds of people who won the voting! Lucile, who tried to steal a spot in Heaven. Trinity, who did much of the same, just by lying to people and tricking them into voting for her. Avery maybe deserves it, but even then, it’s suspicious that the two largest, strongest guys were also voted for. Makes this seem like a popularity contest more than anything.”


    “Voting is a popularity contest!” Trinity shouted. “That’s exactly what democracy is!”


    “No,” Mark said. “This is not democracy.”


    “Why, cause you only got two votes? They call it tyranny of the majority for a reason. Just because you don’t like the results doesn’t mean there is something wrong with the system.”


    At this point several voices rose, overlapping each other and shouting about how unfair everything was.


    But a hush fell as everyone noticed what was happening:


    Avery was stepping forward, across the line.


    ~


    Avery knew that people often thought he was stupid, just because he didn’t talk much. When he was young, he had thought they were right.  But as he grew older, he realized his thinking and communication were just of a different sort than that of most people. This was neither a good nor a bad thing. Sometimes it was a disadvantage, when he needed to communicate something specific and words were the only way. But other times his way of thinking was an advantage, and let him see things more clearly.


    Now, he was seeing things clearly. He would get everyone’s attention, stand in front of them for as long as it took him to find the words, no matter how hard it was, no matter what they said.


    Because there was a simple answer, it just required trust and communication, and none of them would have to ever go to Hell. They could send up to three more people to Heaven, chosen according to whatever method the group determined, and then they could leave the last slot open, and the rest of them could live in indefinite peace and harmony, without need for food or water or even sleep.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Avery wasn’t stupid. He had figured all that out, when everyone else had been arguing about voting. They were missing the big picture. He just had to figure out how to explain it to them without the words getting stuck in his throat, without their meanings getting confused and jumbled and wrong.


    ~


    Thomas still didn’t quite understand what was going on with Avery. During mingling, he had tried to converse with the big man, thinking that since everyone seemed to like him, he would be an extremely valuable ally. But Avery had said nothing at all. In fact, Thomas had never heard Avery speak, except to say his name. He had determined that the big guy was mentally slow, although he clearly at least somewhat understood what was going on, as evidenced by him attempting to break the window and his removal of Lucile from the Breakroom.


    But now, he was stepping across the line, walking towards the Breakroom to his rightful spot in Heaven.


    There were a series of bangs.


    Avery fell to the floor. He made no noise, but blood flowed from his chest and head. Everyone averted their eyes as the maw of Hell appeared and took his body and soul.


    There were no fewer than four guns that had fired at him. Josh, Claire, and Peter. And Thomas, himself. He hadn’t even realized he had lifted his weapon. Hadn’t consciously thought to pull the trigger. Had his bullet been the fatal one, to hit Avery in the head? To consign him to Hell for all eternity?


    “Okay everyone, listen up!” said Wendy. “No one move! There are too many guns. To avoid a bloodbath, everyone stay right where you are until dawn is over.”


    No one else said anything. The guns were still out, ready to shoot anyone who might cross the line. It was minutes before the hourglass drained completely, flipping over to count down another five hours till the next dawn.


    “Okay,” Wendy said, “Now everyone listen up. I want to propose a new rule, to avoid indiscriminate violence.” Wendy herself was one of the few people who had elected not to take any weapon.  “This really should go without saying, but we should have a rule that you can’t kill anyone who doesn’t cross the line. And anyone who breaks this rule should themselves be killed. That way, the group can enforce justice and order. Are there any objections?”


    There were no objections.


    “Okay. Let’s go back to the conference room, and figure out what the heck we are going to do, since our methods thus far have clearly not been working.”


    They shuffled back to the conference room. Thomas was tired, but it was a weird sort of mental tired. Physically, he was in perfect shape. He didn’t hunger, didn’t need sleep, possibly didn’t even need to breathe, although his lungs pumped out of habit. But he was exhausted and stressed, and craved the mental reset of sleep, sleep that seemed impossible in this place.


    When they got back to the conference room, there was something written in blocky letters on the whiteboard:


    NEW METHOD IDEA: WE VOTE OUT ONE PERSON EVERY DAWN. THAT PERSON IS KILLED, GOES TO HELL. THAT WAY THE MAJORITY CAN AGREE.


    ~


    Loris wasn’t sure what to do. It was all very horrible, but he couldn’t talk to anyone about it.


    The issue wasn’t so much that he was dead. He had made his peace with that. Hell, he had almost made it to ninety, and experienced plenty of what the world had to offer.


    But now it turned out that the afterlife was real, and as far as he could tell, whether you went to Heaven or Hell seemed to be pretty much arbitrary. Depending on how things went here, he might wind up with an eternity of torment. Which was certainly an issue.


    But the real issue was, where had Thelma gone? She had died a few years before him, passing peacefully in her sleep. Had she wound up in an office much like this one, still in a frail old body, forced to compete with devious strangers for a limited number of slots? She was a kind soul, Thelma was, and he had been certain that if God did turn out to be real, she was a shoe-in for Heaven. But he couldn’t imagine her stealing spots from strangers, couldn’t imagine her politicking and scheming her way into a coveted Chair of Ascension.


    Was Thelma in Hell? It was awful to imagine, but he couldn’t stop himself. Was she there being tortured? And if so, should he join her? If Loris’s understanding was correct, there were already billions of people in Hell, and he had no guarantee that even if he went to Hell that he would be allowed to find Thelma, to spend time with her. She wouldn’t even want him to. If she were in Heaven, she would want him to join her, and if she were in Hell, she would want him to go to Heaven anyway. That was just who she was. Still, a part of him wanted to go to Hell just for the chance of being with her.


    Where was she? Was there some way he could find out where she was? Maybe talk to her?


    He wished Ciriel was still around, so he could ask the angel. Loris didn’t dare ask any of his compatriots, because he feared that if he confessed his situation, they would immediately consign him to Hell.


    “Hey,” a voice said.


    “Hello.”


    The young man said, “Remind me of your name again?”


    “Loris.”


    “I’m Peter, nice to meet you.”


    Loris inclined his head.


    “How is it going?” Peter asked.


    Loris gave a slow shrug and a grimace, indicating the surroundings in a vague way.


    “Yeah,” Peter said, “This is all crazy, isn’t it.”


    “It is indeed.”


    “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d put much thought into who you are going to vote to be eliminated?”


    Loris didn’t answer immediately. Of course he had thought about it, but the concept was so horrible he hadn’t come to any concrete ideas.


    “I’m not sure,” he said.


    “Well,” Peter said, “In that case, I was hoping you’d be down to join your vote with ours. Me and a few others, we are rustling up support to vote for someone, and it would be great if you would join us.”


    In the years since Thelma had passed, Loris had been a victim of elder abuse. It had happened at least twice that he was aware of, and who knew how many more times that he was unaware of? Each time he had spent hours on the phone with the scammer, with his bank, with the post office, struggling to understand and navigate the world. What made it so incredibly frustrating was that he knew how much more competent he had been in his youth.


    Here in Limbo or wherever this was, his body – his eyes and ears, especially – were in fine condition, and his mind was clearer than he remembered it. But he was still an old man, and he was still wary of the world, having been burned too many times.


    “Okay,” Loris said. It wasn’t quite a commitment, but Peter seemed to take it that way. The younger man gave him a nod, spoke a bit more, then went off to go scheme with others.


    Hours later, when dawn had nearly arrived, Loris stood gathered with the others, a pen and slip of paper in his hand. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to vote to kill someone – never mind a young woman, although he figured age didn’t mean much when they were all dead already anyway and wherever they went, it would be for all eternity.


    What was he supposed to do? He missed being a decisive young man. He missed being an older man, when he had Thelma to be decisive for him. It had caused a lot of conflict, when they were young. They were both strongheaded, rash people, and they had often fought, but over the years, Loris had learned that giving way to Thelma almost invariably worked out for the best. Even now, he looked to his side, expecting her to be there, to console him, to tell him what to do in her gentle but firm way. Sixty years of habit did not break easily.


    In the end, he did wind up voting for Lucile, more out of lack of ideas for alternatives than any other reason.


    The votes were tallied by the Arbiter, which they had previously voted on. The Arbiter was Wendy, even though she had protested her appointment. The group had come to a number of rules, including that a new Arbiter would be voted on every day, and that the Arbiter would be immune from votes.


    “Okay,” said Wendy, “I’ve tallied all the votes, and afterwards, anyone can feel free to check my tallies to make sure that everything is in order. Now, in order to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, I’m going to act according to the procedure we determined. First, everyone stand in a semicircle. To ensure fair play, if anyone makes a break for the Breakroom, or attacks anyone without provocation, you are authorized and encouraged to execute them. Second, I will read the names of the three people who received the most votes. If you hear your name, do not freak out or attack anyone, as I will read the names in a random order. If you are named, you will slowly discard any weapon you have, walk to the middle of the semicircle, and lie on the ground. The rest of us will aim our guns at those people. Only then, when everything is secure, will I reveal which of the three people actually received the most votes. At that point that person will be given the dignity of sharing any last words, and then we will eliminate them. The other two people will be free to retrieve their weapons and we will proceed to the next day. Are there any questions?”


    Loris hadn’t entirely followed the logic of it all, but he supposed he had the gist of it. It seemed a horrible brutal thing to do, to vote and kill off their own number one by one, but it was a horrible brutal situation they were in, and it wasn’t like any other methods were working. He had tried, back when they were discussing what to do, to suggest that no one go to the breakroom at all, and that they all just live here in limbo in peace and harmony indefinitely, with no need for food. That idea had been shot down pretty quickly. Apparently everyone distrusted each other, and thought that people would sneak into Heaven until all the slots were taken, and they would all be consigned to Hell. Besides, no one wanted to live forever with this group of random people, without any food, stuck in a gray office building. They wanted to take their chances at the land of eternal bliss, however slim those chances might be.


    Wendy cleared her throat, and said: “In arbitrary order. First, Lucile.”


    This surprised no one. “Hooray,” Lucile said, deadpan. “First you vote me to Heaven, now you vote me to Hell. Guess I’m just really popular.” She seemed too exhausted to really plead her case.


    “Drop your weapons,” Wendy reminded her.


    There was the thud of a knife hitting the floor, and Lucile walked into the center of the semicircle of people and gave a deep mock curtsy to the guns pointed at her.


    “Next, Kyle.”


    Kyle was a nondescript, middle aged man, and he sniffed, holding back tears, as he dropped his gun and knife and walked into the semicircle.


    “Finally, Loris.”


    ~


    “Please drop your weapons.”


    “I don’t have any.”


    Loris stepped into the center of the semicircle. He was shaking, and was oddly relieved to see that the other two high vote recipients were shaking too. His eyes found Peter in the crowd, and the young man looked away.


    At Wendy’s instructions, Loris, Lucile, and Kyle lowered themselves to the ground, lying with their bellies on the ground. It was horribly undignified.


    “No one move,” Wendy said. “I will now reveal who received the most votes.”


    Loris’s heart was beating at an absurd rate. He wondered if it was possible to have a heart attack in Limbo. Probably, since it was also possible to die.


    “With thirteen votes, the person who will be eliminated is… Loris.”


    There was the sound of crying, and after a second Loris wondered whether it was coming from himself, but after another second he realized it was Kyle, sobbing in relief as he slowly crawled to the periphery of the semicircle.


    “Any last words, Loris?” Wendy asked from above him, not unkindly.


    Loris shook his head. The first time he had died, back on Earth, his last words had been about Thelma, but now he couldn’t think of what to say. There was nothing he could say or do that mattered. It was a relief, in a way.


    The gunshots ripped into him. There was a brief moment of pain – age had dulled his senses, but his sense of pain was still very acute – and then a second of nothingness, of true death, and then he was falling, falling, falling down, leaving the office building and the people there behind, and it was getting mighty hot. There was the roar of fire and screams of anguish, and he moved at an absurd pace, screaming masses slipping past, and then there she was. Thelma.


    “Loris?” she shouted in surprise and awe, her voice just as he remembered.


    “Thelma!”


    He stepped forward and she stepped forward and their eyes met.


    “Loris. There’s something wrong, I need help.”


    “What is it?”


    “I can’t get it out, help!”


    He ran now, running towards her, but with every step he slid backwards, as if in a dream, getting no closer, and she reached for his hand but couldn’t quite grasp it, and then she said, “It hurts, Loris, I need you, it hurts so much!” And something was coming up out from under her fingernails, something metallic, and it was forcing her fingers to bend back until they made audible snaps, blood running out of the nails, and the same thing was happening all over her body, the metallic thing inside of her contorting her body into unnatural positions, her face a rictus of anguish.


    “I’m coming, I’m here!” he screamed, even as he slipped further away.


    Then all he could hear was Thelma’s scream as the metal ruptured her skin at every point in her body, curling and flailing like it was a living thing, and with horror Loris saw that it wasn’t metal at all, but bone, the bones of some creature that was inside of his wife, that pierced out of her and ran into the artificial landscape, spearing her to the ground and holding her in place.


    And he barely noticed the tubes that now ran out of his own heart, connecting him to the vast machinery of the landscape, didn’t hear the voice behind him saying, “Let’s hit him with intermittent maximum pain, get a standard calibration reading so we can begin optimizing output,” all he could see was Thelma and the thing inside of her, causing her to writhe and scream to no avail, and he reached out but his hand but the more he reached the more he burnt, and there was pain, pain like nothing he had ever experienced, and he knew he would never be able to save Thelma, that she would be subjected to torment no matter what he did, and his world was pain, and he didn’t know how he could endure ten seconds of this, much less an eternity, but it wasn’t like he had an alternative.