None of them took long to dream. And they all dreamed the same thing: “What now?”

So many people! It was only the second time the void had welcomed travelers. But it was the first time it had welcomed so many.

Then Henri, without dwelling on details that might delay the recovery—the salvation of paradise—summarized the situation. He did so softly, as though he wished to avoid being overheard by all the souls.

— I suppose there are no devils left in hell. Hell no longer exists as we imagined it. Uncle will drop us into paradise. In any case, all our new friends have spent enough time in hell to atone for their sins. And as a famous contemporary once said, “Who am I to judge?” Thanks to Uncle, we are also bringing back all the expatriates from paradise. We will face that terrible army of devils. But we are far from alone. Let us not forget that the souls we have saved are certainly not inclined to defend Rose of the Winds and his fellow conspirators.

— We think this is an excellent ide... What am I saying?!... idea!

Marilyn added, in a dimmed and thoughtful voice...:

— One thing must not be forgotten. They can no longer fall victim to temptation. This has to do with material things. Surely they no longer wish to relive the hell of being profoundly deprived of love.

— Imagine an island where there are billions of Robinson Crusoes, all longing to spend the weekend with their Fridays, and never finding them again, Henri added in his fanciful dream.

— We see that, and we find it heartbreaking. But if God has decided it so... added the angel, “in the potatoes,” who was dreaming.

— Have you ever seen God? Henri asked.

— No. From the very beginning, He delegated everything through telepathy. He was simply too busy. And then, it was as new to Him as it was to us.

— I have seen Him already!

— You?… Uncle!

— Yes, and I believe that this supreme being would never have accepted all this. But by the way, how is it that we have not seen Him, with everything that is happening right now? What am I saying?! Never mind.

— What does He look like? We all want to know.

— Even if I told you... I mean... What am I saying?! I said it. He sometimes changes shape.

— The great perfectionist is probably resting after yet another busy week of activity, Marilyn dreamed.

Had Henri Toutrec become a valiant warrior? He dreamed of many other things, this time aloud, so that everyone could hear.

— ...The goal is to distract all of Rose’s assistants, those detestable little devils steeped in evil. Their conquest is probably not over yet, since the extended dimensions of elsewhere are incalculable.

Within the void, everyone contributed, offering an idea, a complementary plan, a new trick. Everyone except that woman of extraordinary splendor, who had resumed her search for a soulmate, voodoo doll in hand.

Meanwhile, in paradise, despair was absolute. The agents of good still present—angels and half-moons—had become, in one way or another, the tortured scapegoats of the forces of hell.

The general’s attack continued. For his own amusement, he had begun relocating the artistic works of God that were found in paradise. He scattered them all across that once magnificent place, which had now become a disastrous and pitiable site.

Rose made considerable alterations to them, as with this reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. He had always had it on his mind! He had never liked the chance resemblance to Judas in that Italian genius’s painting. That tempera mural had been itching at him for centuries. He retouched Christ’s face, giving it a pale and sickly look, with complex and precise details. Let us say that, by complexion and morphology, it now bore the face of Rose. Paradoxical, is it not? After all, is it not said that the devil is in the details?

As for Judas in that work, after Rose’s retouching, he now looked like Henri Toutrec. Strange!...

Everywhere Rose retouched sculptures, paintings, or anything else, everything turned into endless revels with the air of decadence at the end of an empire.

He even organized a Roman chariot race with hideous devils disguised as centurions, mounted on angels—race angels, for the occasion. They also competed by whipping their finest saintly teams.

Rose would have liked to have Christians devoured by lions and other wild beasts. But the animals of paradise are not aggressive. His black magic had no effect on them. So that part of the spectacle was replaced by a bullfight with saints as the bulls. The demons used their tridents as picadors, driving in their banderillas.

Before pushing further into eternity to conclude the festivities surrounding the relocation and retouching of the artistic works, they smoked grass. Or rather, the aura of the blades of grass... The general’s minions always ended those celebrations with one of the most devilish orgies.

What an orgy! One could say that, in their excess, they were devouring the Good Lord. They drank spiritual elixir from the white river as though it were nothing more than holy water. The devils abused unwilling saints.

Angels too were forced to play poker with Rose’s disciples—but they were always plucked... A troupe of cherubs danced the belly dance, each with a small scoop of mint ice cream in the hollow of the navel. The same cherubs, fine gourmets, had prepared it.

Their dance ended when the dessert had melted.

It took the general only moments to alter both the appearance and the location of God’s artistic creations. For him, it had become an endless party. Rose of the Winds’ war looked more like hell than hell itself. His army continued its savage invasion. As for him, growing somewhat weary of those repetitive, noisy, and ultimately bland festivities, he continued his exploration—this time alone.

It was during one of those orgies, with fewer clever ones present, that Uncle Maxime dropped off the group by opening his mouth. Out poured an abundant crowd, now protected against evil. Uncle Maxime had opened his mouth so wide that the group emerged in barely a minute. Those many rescued beings, survivors coming directly from hell, then scattered. The first to land were Marilyn, Henri, Potato Peels, and the Black Venus.

But there they saw souls from paradise who had not been sent to hell. Those souls lay stretched out before them on the ground, almost motionless, delirious, their eyes closed in extreme hallucination.

A few demons, now passive, were waiting for new instructions from Rose, who had stepped away. No longer doing harm—nor any good, of course—they were simply loitering here and there. The devils and imps were not even chasing the poor cherubs anymore. No, they were doing absolutely nothing, because they were receiving no further orders. Had the contest ended, with no one caring any longer for Rose’s tail?

In reality... during his solitary wandering, the commander-in-chief had discovered a cave in one corner of paradise. It was hidden behind immense glass dolmens. It was through those rustic mazes, somewhat like the labyrinths of glass and distorted mirrors found at travelling fairs, that he slipped. Rose had discovered a very singular transparent computer. He seized it without asking questions. Settling himself comfortably, he decided to put his brain to work...

Was this thing some material creation that God used in His leisure time?

“Being a devil is wonderful—one always likes to rest, to relax a little,” he had told himself awkwardly.

That machine had the astonishing ability to put to sleep, from a distance, any being capable of dreaming. Moreover, it allowed one to view everyone’s dreams, but above all to write them. It was something like a video game and a programming program joined together. This quickly became an endless amusement for him. By modifying the machine, he even managed to discover a way of generating dreadful nightmares. The first to suffer from this technical perversion were the inhabitants of paradise—those very ones whom Marilyn, Henri, and Potato Peels had just seen. Rose did not stop there... He extended his malice to all the living on Earth, among others. All those who could dream, he compelled to endure nightmares. Brutal ones.

Fortunately, Rose of the Winds had not noticed those immigrants just arrived from hell, protected and isolated by the void and Uncle Maxime. He had therefore been unable to make them suffer by forging nightmares for them.

Thanks to this fascinating apparatus, Rose could also go back in time. He infected the past, which in turn affected the present and future of mankind. Thus the general invented the projection of harmful effects, and sowed misery on Earth.

In earlier times, men had good ideas, and those happy notions came to fruition. Projections of harmful effects, on the other hand, are ideas in which misfortunes inevitably occur, and everything aligns for them to come true. Rose’s method consisted in introducing “prophetic” stories into the dreams of certain humans of the past—poets like Nostradamus, or the schizophrenic from Patmos, among others.

Had Rose overloaded the computer? A red object, resembling a clown’s nose, was moving rapidly across the dome-shaped screen.

The devil’s leader was having such fun that he no longer noticed eternity passing. He was enjoying himself immensely. Yet he stared so long at the luminous screen that he became almost blind. His vision weakened, and still he continued to indulge in inventing cruel jokes. He moved closer and closer to the screen. He rubbed his head against it so much that it was sucked in, trapped by a red Catholic cathode resembling a clown’s red nose. His head was instantly decapitated. For a few moments, that head wandered from dream to dream. But the computer had a rejection drawer. And it was through that feature of the machine that the nightmare of Rose of the Winds almost came to an end. His head managed to recover itself by levitating back out.

— But what is this cursed device? Rose’s head said to itself.

That head, which might never again reconnect with its body, while the body—headless and groping, sometimes on all fours, sometimes upright—staggered in confusion, had managed to leave the cave awkwardly and with little dignity, but without bleeding.

Outside the cave, Rose’s body moved among souls trapped in nightmares. No demon recognized him. Headless, Rose of the Winds passed unnoticed. Demons may be clever, but they are also very foolish.

They had lost track of their leader, who had quite literally lost his head. The head set out in search of the body. But the computer had created a curse especially for him, like an antivirus. The head and the body took opposite directions. They no longer followed the same path.