"What if I told you that you could get her back? Exactly as she was. And the two of you could live together forever. What would you say?"
I'm not at all surprised by his arrogance and bullshit. What's so strange about Mason is how young he seems. Like he's exactly the same little show-off he was all those years ago. Has he really been sitting here alone for eleven years? That's worse than what happened to me. I'm the old man now, but I saw and did a few things. I didn't just crawl up my own teenybopper ass for a decade. Imagine eleven years, sitting in a dollhouse version of your childhood home, reading magic books and not talking to anyone but your pet thug and talking roaches. If Mason wasn't crazy before, he's definitely joined the banana army now.
"What are you talking about? How could I get back Alice?"
"That's why I had to make you solve a puzzle to get here. I had to know if you could keep up once the project got rolling. Stage one is why I formed an alliance with the Kissi. To take control of the world."
He smiles at me like he just got all A's on his report card.
"Why would anyone want to run the world?" I ask. "It sounds like a huge pain in the ass."
"That's just stage one. If all I wanted was to take over the world, believe me, the Kissi and I could have done it already."
"What do you want the world for?"
"In any military campaign, you need a few basic things. Troops. Equipment. Support staff. Supply lines, that kind of thing. Earth is the perfect staging area for that."
"When I knew you, all you wanted was to prove that you were the best little magician in Candyland. Now you want to be Patton, too? What is wrong with you?"
He goes to a large ebony desk, piled high with books, writing paper, and maps of the universe like Aelita had, from Heaven looking down and from Hell looking up. Mason grabs an old book about the size and weight of a bag of cement and shows me the pages he's been studying. A single word crosses the two pages of the spread: L'Infernus. Below that is a detailed map of Hell's topography.
"We're invading Hell. I have the troops and the plan. You know Hell's strengths and weaknesses. You've already softened the place up for invasion. How many of Lucifer's generals have you killed? A dozen? Two? More?"
"You want to rule this world, a not particularly great place, so you can take over an even worse place? Is that basically it? That's why you ruined me, killed Alice, and fucked over everyone who ever trusted you?"
"Firstly, fuck all those people who trusted me. Except for Parker, every one of them was greedy and then turned jellyfish the moment you stuck your nose out of the grave. I gave all of them their heart's desire and they folded the moment things got a little weird."
"You didn't exactly give Kasabian his heart's desire."
"Yeah, I did sort of screw him, didn't I? But admit it. There's the opposite of love at first sight. There are people walking the earth that the moment you meet them, you want to punch them and keep punching them."
"I can't argue with you about Kas, but what do you want with Hell? It's already on the verge of a civil war. You want to walk into the middle of warring Hellions?"
"With the Kissi and you to back me up, yes. I really do. Because with our combined strength and your contacts with Lucifer's generals, we could find which to kill and which will make good allies. Then march in and take Hell, just the way we took Earth. Once we've secured the place, we'll combine the armies from Earth and Hell with the Kissi. Then go to stage three."
"You want to invade Heaven."
"I want to storm Heaven. I want to rip open the Pearly Gates and throw them from the firmament. I want to see all nine ranks of angels on their knees bowing down to the humans that conquered them. And I want to throw out that senile old fart that runs the place. Ship Him off to a retirement home for old deities. He can get a duplex with Zeus or Odin. He ruined the universe at the beginning of time and He's been ruining it ever since. He needs to be off playing golf in Boca and power walking at the mall, not running the fundamental laws of time and space. One day, He's going to forget where he put the remote, get all distracted, and forget about gravity. Then where will we be? I know you know I'm right. I know how you think."
I look at him. I don't know what else to do. He's right, of course. I agree with pretty much everything he said about Heaven and Hell. I wouldn't mind seeing God and Lucifer stuck on a cruise ship-shuffleboard, all-day buffets, a decent band in the bar, and a passable magic act in the lounge for all eternity. But the idea of replacing the current fuckups with Mason? That part doesn't scan and he knows I'd never go for it.
"So, I help you become the new Yahweh, and what do I get out of it?"
"The world. It's yours. And Alice. You and she can live forever. If you want her to. Once we're in charge, we'll control that kind of thing."
"Who gets Hell? The Kissi?"
"Who better to run the place of torments than a race of natural-born torturers and killers?"
This isn't what I was expecting. I don't know what I thought would be waiting for me here in Never Never Land, but it wasn't this. I came ready to fight Genghis Khan and I walk in on a shut-in playing the biggest Dungeons and Dragons game in history.
"You're right. I can't think of anyone better suited to run Hell than the Kissi."
I walk around the room, admiring how detailed his memory must be to have built this place. I stop at a bin full of maps that runs from the floor to the ceiling. City maps. World maps. Maps of time and celestial mechanics. Maps of the edges of the universe. I'm still holding Mason's lighter. I flick it and hold it to one of the maps.
"What are you doing over there?"
Old maps are printed on good, heavy paper stock. They burn well. Old ones are dry enough to burn fast. When Mason runs to the maps, I use the lighter to fire up the books and papers on his desk.