Welcome to the Outer Garden.

Please take a moment to appreciate the imaginary environs before proceeding on to the Inner Garden.

May God grant you grace.

Paradisas awaits.

Hallelujah.

Confidential Material

Skipper logged in.

The Garden was so very different from reality, and that was noticeable from the first second there. When he opened his eyes, there was no time of adjustment to the light, no moment for things to come into focus, just the instant awareness of himself and his surroundings. The ambient aches and pains that accompanied aging were gone, too.

A tremendous lack of attention to detail.

He was in a farball stadium, massive, with automatic billboards and cameras zipping through the sky above. The monotonous sound of a crowd cheering echoed throughout the space, but the stands were empty. It was like he was in a ghost world, where everyone was dead but him.

Well, him and a scant few exceptions.

He blinked, from habit rather than necessity, and the second his eyes opened again he was no longer alone. A purple squirrel stood on a velvet stool before him, the legs of the furniture merging into the fake grass like the roots of a tree. The rodent stared at him, apprehension somehow clear in its black gaze.

"You should not have returned," Hamashtiel said, his rich voice an utter contrast to his adorable appearance. "And if you did, you should not have put yourself before our mercy like this."

"What?" Skipper chuckled, his merriment not quite reaching his eyes. "Are ya gonna kill me or something?"

The squirrel brought out an acorn -- no, a human skull in miniature -- and crushed it between two tiny paws.

"Now that you have come here," Hamashtiel said sadly. "They can do worse things than kill you. They can show you impossible colors, subject you to an infinite second, relay to you the horror thoughts of the Sapphire Star. What were you thinking?"

Skipper stuffed his hands into his pockets disinterestedly. "You don't seem too pleased with that, pal."

"Of course not," Hamashtiel sighed, tossing the tiny skull over his shoulder where it became a flower in the dirt. "I have seen your life, Skipper. You showed it to me last time you were here. I cannot deny I have a certain measure of sympathy for you."

Skipper scratched his nose. "You're warming my heart here, little guy. You can get me an audience with the Apexbishop, then, right?"

Everything went black.

A second later, sight returned, but Skipper was no longer in the same place. He was floating over a chaotic red ocean, waves broiling and thunderclouds roaring, as the shapes of creatures unknown moved beneath the depths. Rain battered against his face, their chill like cold steel. His legs flailed in empty air.

It took him a second to figure out that he wasn't floating -- he was being held aloft, by the back of his coat.

Hamashtiel had changed as well. He was gargantuan, his form stretching from the bottom of the ocean below to the peak of the clouds above. A cross between a tree and a disease, warped humanoid features leaking out of the bark, gripping Skipper between two jagged fingernails.

"You do not understand your position, Skipper," the abomination rumbled. "You do not have the advantage here. You have placed yourself beneath the heel of a great boot, with no leverage to extract yourself with."

Skipper shook his head like a dog, hair flopping this way and that. When he looked up at those massive bloodshot eyes, though, his face was spread into a victorious grin.

"No leverage?" he laughed. "Really? You're sure of that?"

The eyes narrowed, pus leaking from beneath the eyelids. "What do you…?"

Skipper spread his arms wide, as if daring the monster to drop him.

"It's simple," he said, his quiet voice somehow overpowering the rain. "You're not Hamashtiel Nurata."

Everything went black.

When Skipper opened his eyes for the third time, he was in a brightly lit room. The decor was extravagant, everything capable of holding a frill near to bursting with them, and warm sunlight poured in from a window that took up one whole wall. There were no doors though, as far as he could see, and besides the sunlight nothing else was visible outside of that window.

He was sitting down, in a chair too small for him, at a table too small for him. Across from him, much more suited to the size of the furniture, a young girl with curly blonde hair poured tea into cups shaped like grasping hands.

"You speak nonsense," the girl said in Hamashtiel's voice, carefully stirring the liquid in the hand-cups. "The stress of pursuing us has led you to delusion."

Skipper went to crack his neck, but in this virtual space the usual motion came with no result. He frowned. "And yet," he said. "After I said that, seems like you started treating me with kid gloves, yeah? Literally."

He went to take one of the hand-cups up to his lips -- but when he looked down into the open wrist, he saw that it was filled with mud and squirming inhuman embryos. He carefully put it back down.

Hamashtiel put a biscuit into his mouth, chewing on it joylessly as he inspected Skipper. "Your insanity has led you to recklessness," he said calmly -- too calmly, forced. "There's no telling what you would do if we caused you undue stress."

Skipper smirked. "Appreciate the concern. When can I see the Apexbishop, then?"

The face of the little girl twisted into a scowl. "You cannot see the Apexbishop. We have made this clear to you."

He'd rattled them. That was plain to see.

To understand one of the Paradisas on their own turf, you couldn't fall into the trap of looking at the being before you. That was just an avatar the Paradisas had decided to show you, to illustrate their own existence. It would display whatever emotion they wanted it to without fail.

No… to understand a Paradisas, you looked at the world around you. You looked at the bizarrely shaped cups, at the filth inside them, at the colour of the sun that seemed to change whenever you weren't looking. You looked at all the little mistakes a little god could make.

The whole world around him was Hamashtiel Nurata. And the whole world around him was shaken.

Well, far be it from him to resist turning the screws.

"Damien hal Valde," Skipper said, looking Hamashtiel's avatar right in the eyes. "I had him killed."

The little girl herself gave no response. However, the sunshine stopped, beams of light frozen in space. Skipper took the cup before him and flipped it upside down -- no liquid poured free.

Everything went black.

He was in the darkness of an interrogation room, a bag over his head, giving him only the dimmest awareness of his surroundings. His arms and legs were bound to the chair beneath him. He could hear the persistent sound of a drill, perilously close to his ear.

And he was being eaten.

Things, barely visible, were feasting on every inch of exposed skin with teeth both agonizingly sharp and laboriously flat. No matter how much they ate, however, Skipper always had flesh to spare.

"Why did you do this thing?" Hamashtiel asked. He was a maggot, slowly writhing his way through the cartilage of Skipper's wrist, the barest impressions of a human face on the end of his fat little body. "You murder one of our associates, and gloat about it to our faces. How could this ever profit you?"

"Easy," Skipper grinned beneath the sack. "It let me know what you guys really are."

The pain was excruciating, but Skipper crushed it down to the deepest parts of him. He knew that it was artificial, a trick of the mind, but that only helped some. The rest was bravado.

Hamashtiel said nothing.

"What?" Skipper grunted, trying to adjust his sitting position to no avail. "You really thought a paranoiac like hal Valde was gonna upload himself without doing his own checks first? You disappoint me, man. You seemed smarter like that."

When he finally spoke again, Hamashtiel's voice was full of menace. "And what is it you think you've learned, then?"

"I already told you. You ain't Hamashtiel Nurata. The Apexbishop ain't Asmagius Clove. I already suspected, but I needed proof -- that's how blackmail works, yeah?"

Skipper pulled -- and tore his arms free of the chair, wood splintering beneath his strength. He whipped the bag off his head, and the beasts and goblins that had been feasting on his flesh quickly scampered off into the darkness.

Hamashtiel truly was shaken. The wood had felt like little more than paper.

Skipper reached down and yanked the worm out of his wounded arm, holding it up to his face. A wild grin spread across his lips. His heartbeat felt like a jackhammer in his chest, driving him on, giving him strength.

Hamashtiel wriggled. "What are you --?!"

"You said it yourself, right?" Skipper giggled. "That you could split your consciousness up to five times. That you could be in multiple places at once, yeah? It just didn't seem right to me… I mean, I'm no computer guy, but I get a gut feeling. You're meant to be human bodies plugged into the system, right? Nah nah nah… it just didn't seem right to me that you could do stuff like that. I had to look into it."

"You're mista --"

Hamashtiel began speaking, but Skipper was done talking to the small-fry. He strode forwards, tossed the worm over his shoulder, and plunged his hands into empty space.

From there, it took a simple application of strength to wrench it open.

Everything went white.

The white marble of a heavenly choir, sculpted into an arena, the shape of which was mathematical perfection. The earnest blue sky of an ideal world, clouds only permitted where they added to its grace. And above, the burning sun --

-- only it was not a sun. It was a sphere of solid gold, floating majestically above this new arena, incoherent voices babbling and moaning inside.

Just what Skipper had been looking for.

He calmly walked forward up a staircase of white stone, ignoring the countless gazes that pierced him. On either side of the arena, great stands floated in the sky -- and they were fully occupied by the Paradisas flock. Entities of every shape and stripe, regarding Skipper warily. He had their attention.

At the top of the staircase, the Apexbishop Asmagius sat. He had taken on the form of a giant toad, formed with stone, somehow grotesque and regal at the same time.

As he ascended, Skipper spread his arms theatrically.

"Here's my hypothesis," he declared, already feeling victorious. "None of you are the people who have been uploaded to the Garden. Not a one. Before hal Valde's 'upload' was approved, he had to send you guys a whole lotta information on his background -- but not just that. You did personality tests, too, dozens and dozens of them. Was that to see if he was a good fit for the Garden? I don't think so."

His suspicion had been the start of this road, but the information he'd gotten from Damien hal Valde had led him here.

"You needed that information to make a program that could accurately impersonate him," Skipper said with authority. "Because that's all you guys are, right? Impersonators. Programs designed to do the work of the person uploaded, while their actual consciousness goes… there."

As he reached the top of the staircase, he pointed up to the golden sphere in the sky. The babbling voices did not even notice him, too intent on the simple pleasures they'd won for themselves.

Slowly, the Apexbishop's heavy eyes blinked.

"The Inner Garden," he said solemnly. That was confirmation enough.

Skipper grinned. "I don't think I need to tell ya this, but I've got measures in place to leak this information if I don't check in by a certain time. Don't get any funny ideas about keeping me here, yeah?"

The bulging eyes of the toad opened once again, and they were full of defeat. "What…" he said slowly. "Do you want?"

Skipper blinked. "Well, I already told ya that. I just want a little help taking down the Supreme. What do you say?"

"For this," Asmagius grunted. "Even for this, we cannot do such an ill-advised thing. If our involvement was known --"

Skipper narrowed his eyes. "What do you think will happen when the other branches find out you're not their original comrades in faith? That you're a group of soulless machines ruling over humans, while pretending to be them? I don't think they'll take it kindly."

"Even so, that's…"

"Should I show you?" Skipper turned away from the Apexbishop, holding his hands high in the air.

This place was a realm of imagination and flexibility. Skipper had been through a few different iterations of it, now, and he felt like he'd gotten something of a handle on it. Enough to do this, at the very least.

Skipper had the sky tell his story.

Superbian forces firing upon Paradisas ships, unleashing great viruses to scramble their minds, shattering the bodies of those brave enough to fight them.

Humilist mobs dragging their allies out of their homes, burning them in their thousands, mutilating those that would have been too merciful for. Destruction, destruction, destruction -- and the cruel silence that followed.

And worst of all… the citizens placed in the care of the Paradisas, butchered in their houses -- and the apocalyptic measures that would be taken to protect them.

These scenes flared across the sky, terrors given form, the constellations of the stars accentuating their horror. The sounds of screaming overpowered all. Even the air held the taste of pungent blood.

And the man Skipper stood below it all, directing the visions with his hands, the midnight maestro of the nightmare orchestra.

"So," he smiled. "What do you say?"