It was bitterly cold inside. That was Kurt's first thought. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing, just blankness. He heard nothing. He tried inhaling through his nose to see if he could smell anything, but he couldn't inhale. There was no air. But there was no sensation of a pull on him, not like how he'd seen guys explode in the vacuum of outer space in sci-fi movies. I'm going to suffocate, he thought, his lungs beginning to burn as he held his breath.

There was a tingling along his skin, growing quickly into pain. It was a sensation of unraveling; his body falling apart, the cells being unknit by nothingness in which he was immersed. He didn't have to worry about suffocating. His body would dissolve into oblivion before the lack of oxygen could cause brain death. Fight against it, he shouted at himself in his mind. Fight, dammit!

Kurt tried to will his cells back together, hold himself in one piece. Getting an image of a cell in his mind, remembered shakily from Biology class, he concentrated on each part of it — the mitochondria, the vacuoles, the nucleus — trying to make his body conform to the manifestations in his mind. It was no use. The pain grew as the void took him apart bit by bit.

He exhaled his breath, the air in his lungs escaping into the emptiness. He was a goner. No, his mind protested, there has to be something.

I've tried, he thought, answering himself. The nothing is too strong. I can't beat it.

Then join it.

Give up? It'll eat me alive!

You're trying too hard to be something. Become nothing.

Kurt didn't understand, or perhaps he did. There was some part of his mind that did, some part that understood enough. Emptying his mind, Kurt relaxed and opened up to the nothing, welcoming it, joining with it. He felt the tendrils of nothingness sneak into his mouth and nostrils, in through his ears, in through his other openings, unraveling him from the inside as it continued to pick him apart from the outside. The pain blurred, dimmed, and was replaced by fascination as his body became a flimsy shell, a dim outline of what he once had been, now only a few cells thick, and like a dissipating cloud of smoke, he was gone, absorbed by the emptiness.

Yet though his body was gone, though his brain cells no longer existed to make thoughts, he was still conscious in that nothingness, as if some essential part of him could not be reached by it, could not be unmade by it. A kernel of what was him had remained, had held form, or whatever it was, but it was helpless, floating in the void of nothingness. Without his body, he felt lost.

Become nothing, he thought. Slowly, he let go. He relaxed even further, like falling asleep, but with no eyes to close, no shallow ragged breaths to grow deep and even. He gave up his will and the seeming shell that enclosed his consciousness, impervious to the nothing, dissolved on its own accord. That which was Kurt, that which was something, dissolved in the nothingness, spreading out from the center and growing diffuse.

He saw a light, not with any eyes he knew. Almost as if it had been too large to see in his kernel form, but as he expanded, losing form and spreading out in all directions at once, that last tiny bit that was Kurt did not lose cohesion, did not lose perception. It was nothing, it grew without gaining mass, stretching like the skin of a drum being drawn taught around the head of the barrel, and at any moment he expected his consciousness to snap, to reach its breaking point and tear, and then it would all be over.

It continued to stretch, though, blossoming out like a ball of fire from an explosion, and he was in all parts of it at once, staring out at the edges from the center while he stared in at the center from the edge. He feared it was enough to drive him mad, but how was he to know that he wasn't mad already? Perhaps he lay in some cell under Pandaemonium, his mind snapped, this his own personal Hell.

The light became three; red, green and blue whirling around each other, condensing to form white dots as he expanded and watched from within and without. The white dots joined with others, which joined with others, some of them bouncing around as other smaller ones whirled around them. The larger dots joined with others at the borders of the orbits of their satellite dots, sharing satellite dots in bonds which held them in positions relative to each other.

Kurt's field of perception grew to encompass more dots, whirling and bouncing in more complex patterns until there were so many that the individual dots merged into something other. All the information coming in would have overwhelmed him, but he was relaxed, letting himself fall away as he seemed to dissolve, minute bits of him being consumed by each thing that entered his perception. Kurt saw strands of grey tinged with red, becoming a tiny patch of the blood stained canvas as the ends of him drifted farther apart.

The canvas expanded. It became the ring and Kurt was over it, under it, and within it. Every fan in the crowd, every piece of trash they'd thrown, every speck of dirt on their shoes consumed a piece of Kurt, absorbed him, absorbed his perception. He felt as if soon there would be nothing of him left, as if the finite being that he must be would eventually run out of bits of itself to give to these tiny bits of matter, and it was okay because he had given himself over to becoming nothing, to dissolving. Yet still the ends of him drifted farther apart, passing through the arena's roof and floor until the whole of Pandaemonium lay within him, each denizen in the casino visible even though the roof covered them, each gambling chip, each child-soul in the cells. He drifted outward, into the rock and into the air, the ninth ring opening to the eighth, the eighth to the seventh. He could count every soul, every stone. He felt every joule of the heat, smelled every molecule of oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur in the air, leaving to each particle he passed a tiny bit of himself. The seventh ring opened onto the sixth, the sixth onto the fifth. He could taste the foul water of the Styx, hear the pop of every air bubble passing up from the damned souls gurgling below its surface.

He engulfed the jet of flames and still he was not consumed, he didn't run out of bits of himself to give to the heat, to the fire, to the rock. He expanded through the miles of rock that composed the roof of the cavern.

Eternity spread out before him like slices in a pie. The landscapes of Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, and thousands of other supernatural vistas revealed themselves to him. He could see every soul, every cloud, offering each a bit of himself as the ends of him passed. And then he saw galaxies as the natural universe entered into the scheme. It was amazing, level upon level, all seeming to occupy the same section of space at the same time, all vibrating to a different frequency. There was a sound to the vibrations. All the atoms and molecules moving, all the voices of all the beings, all the waves crashing against all the shores. And there were more than the planes of natural and supernatural. The universe opened onto another universe and another, each filled with wonder, each filled with sound, each taking and incorporating a bit of him as he stretched, waiting for the final bit to be consumed, waiting for nothingness to settle upon him with an end to his perception.

As Kurt moved toward the apex, the shell of the multiverse which contained all that was, the sounds blended into an amazing harmony, into a music unlike any he'd ever heard, growing to a crescendo as every bit moved into the realm of his consciousness...

And then it was gone. Kurt sat on a curb, in the middle of a city street. The perception was gone, limited to the distance his nerve endings stretched from his brain as he found himself once again trapped within his body, looking out through two eyes. The buildings rose up around him, blank. The leaves on the trees sat still, no breeze to move them. "Congratulations," a voice said beside him.

Turning his head, Kurt saw the man. Same brown coat, same drinker's nose. "I was..."

"I know," the man said.

"Am I dead?"

"No, you won."

Kurt looked around, incredulous. He was half-in shock from the whole experience. "How?"

"You filled nothing with everything. They cancelled each other out."

Kurt was so confused, so lost, he almost wanted to revert to childhood and cry like a little kid. He remembered being in the pit, feeling it slowly unraveling him, and then he'd thought to become one with the pit, become nothing... "Nothing is everything and everything is nothing," Kurt muttered to himself, comprehension coming in small shards like a broken mirror reassembling itself. "But how did you know what I did?" he asked, turning to the man.

"From here, one sees quite a bit. We're at the origin point. Before the universe was anywhere, it was nowhere."

Kurt reached out a hand to touch him, but pulled it back. "Are you God?"

"No," the man said, chuckling. "I'm just an old friend of Alain's."

Kurt shook his head in confusion. "What? I... don't..."

"I don't understand it either," the man said, cutting Kurt off. "One day I woke up and I was here. I couldn't leave. So I just dangled my feet over the edge, where the sidewalk ends, and started watching... But I can't keep you here to listen to me ramble. You have to go back now."

"How?"

"Just realize where you are. When you know that you're Nowhere..."

Kurt smiled as comprehension dawned. "Then I have a location, and I'm somewhere, and..."

"Tell Alain that Jean Louis says hello," the man said, and then everything disappeared.

---

"...I'm not here anymore," Kurt said, feeling the mat under his rear end. The crowd roared as he looked around. He was in the arena. Reese's lifeless husk lay a few feet away, Alain lying next to it, face down, and Vinnie lay crumpled next to the broken post.

Kurt crawled over to Alain, putting his hands underneath Alain's shoulder, and rolled him over. Alain's mouth had swollen, there was a dark swelling over his right eye, and the gash along his abdomen remained, though the bleeding seemed to have stopped. As Alain took in a strained breath, Kurt sighed in relief and shook him lightly. Alain's eyes flickered open, not seeming to focus on anything. "Did we win," he asked, the words coming out weak and breathy.

Kurt smiled, his throat growing thick and his eyes misting. "Yeah," he said. "We kicked their butts."

Alain closed his eyes and his body relaxed further. "Cool."

---

Kurt sat in the hospital room as Alain lay in bed. They'd only been given an hour to talk before Kurt, George and Junior would have to leave. Alain was conscious, whatever they'd given him helping keep the pain at bay for the time being, his wounds wrapped and bandaged. He had spent the last forty-five minutes filling Kurt in on what they could expect in Purgatory. "Now remember," he said, "Dante seemed to have the general gist, but there was a lot he got wrong or left out. Maybe on purpose, maybe things have changed... I don't know. Just don't expect everything to conform to what I told you."

Kurt nodded, scribbling a last note in his journal. "What do I do when I get to Heaven?"

"I don't know," Alain said, a small wince crossing his features. Apparently what they'd given him was slowly wearing off. "Marie will be there. Find her. She'll help you."

"Okay," Kurt said, closing his journal. "That seems to be it." He stood from his chair, putting the notebook in his pack.

"We've still got a few minutes left," Alain said, tiredness in his voice. "Stay and talk to me. It's going to be a lonely wait while you and George take care of business."

Kurt zipped the backpack closed and sat again. "Do you honestly think we're going to succeed?"

"I have to. It's the only hope I've got."

A silence filled the room and grew with each passing second, becoming uncomfortable. "You never told me how you beat that thing," Alain said, breaking it.

Kurt recounted the story in as much detail as he could. Much of the memory was already getting hazy. "There was a man there," Kurt said, the memory coming back to him. "He said he was an old friend of yours. His name was," Kurt paused, trying to remember, "John something. No, like John... Jean Louis. He said to tell you that Jean Louis said hello."

Alain laughed, a small chuckle that caused him to wince as it aggravated his broken rib. "It figures," he said, smiling.

Kurt stood and moved his chair closer to the bed. "I don't want to pry, but who is he?"

"You wouldn't believe me."

Kurt looked into Alain's eyes. "I've pretty much had the cynicism beat out of me on this trip. You'd be surprised at what I'm ready to believe."

"Jean Louis Kerouac," Alain said, "Jack Kerouac."

Kurt's eyes went wide. "You knew Jack Kerouac? You were friends?"

"Yeah," Alain said. "Dangling his feet off the edge of eternity and watching absolutely everything." Alain smiled. "I could see him enjoying that... for a while at least."

A million questions formed in Kurt's mind. Who else had Alain known? What other Beat authors had he been friends with? How... "Time's up," Mammon said, coming through the door. "Say your goodbyes and let's go."

Kurt stood and leaned over Alain, clasping his hand. "I won't let you down," Kurt said.

Alain squeezed back. "I'm counting on it."

---

Kurt looked at the green glow on the cliff face of the ninth ring. It was circular, about ten feet wide. He was in his own clothes again, his backpack slung over one shoulder as he clutched the strap with his right hand, holding Junior's hand in his left.

"Now don't forget the deal," Mammon said. "You have a week to get to Heaven and get an audience with... that guy... and plead your case. If you fail to win Beaudreaux's salvation within that time, you come back here."

"You don't need to remind me," Kurt snapped angrily. Mammon retreated, an arm raising as if to ward off an attack.

Kurt turned, leading Junior toward the glowing portal on the wall. George joined them, making the last adjustments to the straps of his own backpack.

"You ready?" Kurt asked. George nodded. Junior looked scared, but he nodded too.

"Then we're off to see the wizard." Kurt smiled, squeezed Junior's hand, and stepped through.