Dæmon-elect ESCLAYSA started humming song eleven. There were five other Dæmon-elect in his immediate vicinity, all of whom were chanting today's song, which was called song twelve. For some reason unbeknownst to Esclaysa, he still had yesterday's song eleven running in his mind. Esclaysa was new to the realm, he had only been there two days.

Yesterday another dæmon-elect named Ra-note had given Esclaysa the list of rules. The rules really could have been passed on by word, for there were only three rules. Esclaysa had commited the rules to memory within a minute of having read them. Today the Zun was testing him. It was his first test, for it was only his second day in the realm.

A loud bell sounded and immediately most dæmon-elect turned their eyes toward Zun-lord. Dæmon-elect Esclaysa, being new to the realm was slow to bring his stare toward Zun. The Zun-lord was a huge glowing sphere which hung from metal suspension ropes attached to the ceiling. When looking up from the floor of the realm toward the Zun-lord, one could hardly tell how far away the Zun was, or even see the suspension ropes. Esclaysa could not bring his stare away from the Zun once he saw it, for the Zun-lord drew his stare directly into it.

Ra-note had initiated Esclaysa yesterday and told him about the Zun-lord and the original four. The device called the 'Zun-lord' was really just a giant computer monitor connected to a camera and a high-powered laser. Esclaysa had been told that the Zun-lord communicated with everyone in the realm simultaneously through a means of futuristic telepathy. The Zun had no news for the onlookers today. Below the Zun-lord were half a thousand dæmon-elect. Each of the five hundred or more dæmon-elect had to report their daily findings to the Zun-lord.

The Zun-lord was the most recent addition to the Realm. Zun was a project first started by the original four. Only Four dæmon-elect had ever achieved greatness in the Realm, and resultantly had been redeemed by their lord; these were the original four. Each of the original four was rumoured to have genius intelligence and immortality. That was, they could not be killed by any being that existed in the realm. Therefore, the original four were destined (though some would say cursed) to never be able to leave the realm. They were respected by all dæmon-elect and were unquestionably the lords of the realm.

After the original four had established themselves in the realm and gained credibility, they endeavoured to make rules. The reason for rules was obvious to them, but not obvious at first to the dæmon-elect. Five-hundred-plus existed in the realm and often that number was decreased by rumoured 'deaths due to sorcery'. But there was a constant stream of new dæmon-elect from earth. In order to be brought to the realm from earth, one first had to die, then try to make it into heaven, then commit a crime there, and therefore be banished from heaven and wings forever cut-off. When these four things had been accomplished, when one had been driven back to earth to rot in a grave for eternity, the original four had to send a willing dæmon-elect from the realm back to earth in spirit form in order to convince the earth-bound souls to follow them to the realm.

The Realm was really just another form of heaven constructed to house those who wanted to get into heaven, but who couldn't. It was a resting place for sinned souls. Esclaysa never commited crimes on earth (except one drunk-driving incident where fortunately nobody was harmed), Esclaysa had been in heaven, where they told him he was dead. He did not want to believe that he was dead because he had died almost instantly by a freak explosion. When he was in heaven, they told him he was free to do whatever he wanted in there. So, when he started seeing that he really was in heaven, he freaked out and asked to be sent back to earth. Angels knowing that this was not yet possible for him, decided to send him to a place where he could prepare himself for a return-to-earth journey. Thus Esclaysa was held in place in the realm, to learn about himself and his past.

Now the Zun-lord, created by the original four to be a sort-of monitoring device for those in the realm, had come to be a bit of a nuisance even to the original four. Basically, each time a dæmon-elect commits a crime in the realm, the Zun would force them to report their crime. After reporting the crime to the Zun, the criminal dæmon-elect would be burned to a crisp by the Zun laser only to be raised back to life by one of the original four. Since the only souls in the realm were ones who were kicked out of heaven or earth for committing crimes they were constantly breaking the rules, got zapped by the laser, were raised by one of the original four, and brought back to sit in place and think about what they had done. Esclaysa hadn't been cripsed by the laser yet, though he had witnessed close to a dozen.

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There was an interesting story regarding Esclaysa and his journey from earth to heaven, then to here. On the very day that Esclaysa was pushed from his mother's womb, there was a nuclear attack on earth. It hit a town just a little over two-hundred miles from the infirmary. It would prove to be the last detonation of a nuclear device since nagasaki-hiroshima. The blast was an effort by the local government to quell the existence of the fungal infection that overtook an eastern township. The day that marked the bomb (and also Esclaysa's birthday) became the national holiday to remember internal terrorism, that is, his birthday would be in the years to come a day of rekoning of the paranoid fears of toxicology. Esclaysa, born two-hundred miles away from the disaster site, was not infected. Each year in celebration of his birthday, his family would celebrate with fireworks in the back yard. Little-known to his family, Esclaysa had a more important part in the wars to come and the wars of the past.

By the time Esclaysa's seventeenth birthday came around, the five top universities in the country were vying for him. He would become in the years following his high-school completion come to be one of the top students in the country. His marks were all A+ and his attitude drew him closer to the scholarships that would guarantee him a career of his choice. Esclaysa made great strives in university but did not pick a major until his third year. At that point in time, he chose a double honours major in physics and information tech.

Two years following that, he started his own business in the software industry. His business rolled in the money for the first ten years of operation, while he employed almost a hundred of the brightest individuals. They were preparing for the release of their newest, most secure software package ever, when, while making a presentation before a thousand people at a convention, a local group protesting software company greed, detonated a bomb at the auditorium. Esclaysa was giving a speech when just over one thousand people died while observing Esclaysa and his new software platform.

Esclaysa next found himself standing before a podium in a large, dark auditorium. He continued his speech, "And so as I was saying, the new 'Y.X.A. 733' offers more stability during complex calculations..." He paused for a minute to get his bearing. He knew the speech well, and knew his software better than anyone else, but for some reason he could not concentrate... He started to sweat as he glanced at the dark faces staring at him in the auditorium. "One moment folks we seem to be having trouble with the lights..." he said into the mic. He paused and turned to his assistant, "The lights! What is happeni..." he only got halfway through the sentence when he started to panic. His assistant was not behind him like he thought. He glanced around behind himself once again. He saw faces lurking in the dark not more than thirty feet away, but his co-workers were nowhere in sight. He bellowed a command, "Someone fix these lights, you can't even see the white-board." As soon as he said that, a bright light illuminated the auditorium.

"Better," he muttered. He continued on into the microphone, "sorry about that folks just a minor technical difficulty. Now so where was I?" He fingered through the notes he had placed on the podium. He grew angry at himself for having screwed up the presentation, wished he could remember where he was before the interruption. It was at this moment that he started to scan the audience. He paused again and sorted through the faces. He spotted three faces right away that he could recognize, his older brother was there... Strange he thought, brother Lewis should be away on vacation, why is he here? He saw as well his assistant... Why is she in the audience and not behind me preparing those notes? He saw stan too, his former roommate from campus. He became puzzled at this, not expecting to have seen the familiar faces in the crowd.

A man in the audience shouted out when Esclaysa returned his glaze to his notes, "Talk into the microphone Es, we can't hear you!" Another woman in a business suit holding a notepad and pen raised her hand as if to ask a question...

Esclaysa looked like he was stalling at this point, and a few people in the audience started to raise a clamor. Esclaysa looked down at his notes and realized that they were hand-written, which was out of place because he had his assistant type them the day before. Stunned at this, he thought it must have been his company getting back at him for all of those extra hours he made them put in. He reluctantly pointed to the woman whose hand was raised and spoke into the microphone, "You have a question Miss?" Esclaysa glanced down at his notes again, and saw that they were typed... The woman in the audience continued with her question...

"Yes, uh, what new features have you implemented in version Y.X.A. 733? And what comments do you have about the capital-city bombing?" The woman asked her question, with an emphasis on the capital-city bombing, of which Esclaysa had no knowledge. Esclaysa thought he was reiterating when he said, "As far as new features go, I have put a full explanation of each new function in the readme file of the free disks that each of you will get when you leave. With regards to the capital city bombing, I have not heard of this, although all bombs are inherently bad."

With this there was a murmur from the crowd, and Esclaysa picked out one shrill voice from the crowd saying "he doesn't know about the bomb? He must have been hit hard by the debris." With this Esclaysa felt like he was being torn apart by two waves hitting him from each side. There was a loud noise ringing through his head, and something reminded him of fireworks. He continued his speech from where he had left off, suddenly being compelled to finish.

Five minutes of presentation passed uninterrupted, then everything came grinding to a hault. Esclaysa ended the presentation, and was faced with a room full of a thousand people each with a question. He answered what seemed like a thousand questions, wrapped up the convention, gathered up his notes, and headed for his car.

It was when he was walking to his car that he realized... There was a loud whirr of sirens coming along the highway. Two firetrucks, followed by a police car and an ambulance all drove past him on his way to his car. When he looked back toward the auditorium, he was stunned. Esclaysa saw that all the vehicles that just passed him were parked in front of the building he was just in, only the building was no more... Charred ruins lay where he was just making a presentation only two minutes earlier. A chill ran up his spine, and he took two deep breaths before walking back toward the auditorium. Smoke was thick in the air. The auditorium looked like some of the buildings from the pictures he had seen when the nukes flattened a whole town on his birth date. Esclaysa abandoned his notes and briefcase and walked back toward the auditorium, and heard the sound of a nearby low-flying helicopter. He walked up to a policeman and casually asked, "What the hell happened to the auditorium?"

The policeman turned his head slightly toward Esclaysa then took two steps toward him, "Were you a witness sir? We may require a statement."

Esclaysa responded, "I was in this building not more than two minutes ago giving a presentation for the Y.X.A. 733. I don't understand what happened here, I just walked out of this building... Oh no, all those people were prospective buyers... I must have walked through the..." with that Esclaysa felt impaired. He knew at this point that there was a reason his notes changed. Esclaysa never thought much about God before, but at this particular moment, he was a believer. He thought he was dead and made it to heaven...

The policeman vanished at this, so did the auditorium, and all matter seemed to condense into a pinpoint of flickering light. The Zun, he thought, it's all a program right?

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Esclaysa found himself in a large cubic room, which had black walls, and a spot of light hanging from the top. This was the realm. His head was transfixed, staring to the ceiling at a glowing ball of light. The Zun-lord was questioning him about his death, but for his life, he could not remember dying. The Zun asked him what were the three rules, and quickly he recited them as best as he knew, "The first rule is no killing, the second rule is no stealing, the third rule is no trans-existence(1) without permission."



(1 - transexistence means to exist in more than one realm, ie. earth and 'the realm')