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Episode I: Boiler Room (1498 AD)
Slam! Slamslam! Slam. Slam! Slamslam. Slam!
m…y / n … a … m … e / i … s / m … a … l … a …
“My name is Malacoda, underfiend of the Fifth Circle, and I am surrounded by idiots,” I started to spell out, in an unfathomable code of my own invention, as tiny souls howled past me, deep in the boiler rooms of Hell. The slow souls had to go through the left slamhatch, and the fast ones, through the right, and thus were the ice-caverns and firepits of Hell maintained at their proper temperatures. Grunt work, frankly.
A reply could take hours. The demon-powered heat pump I called home consisted of forty thousand crucibles, and each crucible was manned either by a miniaturised demon who was regretting their life choices, or by a copy of Eric — three-times winner of a ‘Hell’s Most Disposable’ award, and zero-times winner of ‘Hell’s Most Scintillating Conversationalist’. The rest of them weren’t much better. The cleverest was probably Vulx, three hundred crucibles away, whose witticisms over the past centuries had included ‘Buzz off Beelzebub’ and ‘Dagon is a fishface’.
Slam! Slaaaam! Slam!
c … o … d … a / u … n … d … e … r … f … i … e … n … d …
Transmission was interrupted by the only particle I’d seen for hours that was fast enough to make it worthwhile opening the right-hand slamhatch. But it didn’t leave. Instead, it started asking questions.
“Who taught you that?” it asked, while zipping casually around the crucible. “That’s actually something new.”
Despite being smaller than a down quark, the particle had personality. Most damned souls tried to look as much like each other as possible. This one had a snazzy red tinge that marked it out as different.
“Who the Heaven asked you?” I sneered as it sped past. “And how did you know what I was saying? This is unfathomable demon code.”
My sneer lacked bite, for I’d spent years in the crucibles without even a backhanded compliment. When you’re working the slamhatches in the boiler rooms of Hell, with no company but souls who got lippy enough to learn that there are worse fates than pitchforks, you get bored. And lonely.
Slam. Slamslam! Slam. Slam! went the hatches of other crucibles, but the red mote didn’t take the hint.
“All right, so it is demon code,” it continued a few minutes later, “but it’s not unfathomable, ‘cos I’ve fathomed it. Your name is Malacoda, underfiend of the Fifth Circle, you’re surrounded by idiots, and you’re particularly annoyed with one called Vulx, who I suspect you have a bit of a thing for.”
“Do not!”
“Look, I believe you,” said the red light, now glowing in a spectrum that had to be infernal, “but thousands wouldn’t.”
“So, you’re a demon,” I said to the particle. Slam! Slamslam. Slam! “Peachy. Who are you, and what the Heaven are you doing here?”
The red light twinkled. “Call me Crowley. I’m looking for a soul called Tomás de Torquemada, lately of the Spanish Inquisition. He escaped from the Filing Office and bolted to the Fifth level, when by rights, he should be down in the Eighth, and I nobly volunteered to get him back.” He paused. “All right, so, Dagon volunteered me. Apparently, they think I must know him. Bit awkward, that.”
“Crowley as in ‘Serpent of Actual, Literal Eden’ ? Don’t you work Earthside?” I said, in mock-amazement. “Isn’t this infra dig for you?”
Another twinkle. “It’s not so bad down here. Knowing what you think about Mammon’s jokes or Beelzebub’s dress sense is fascinating.”
What did they say about the Serpent of Eden? Never engage the slithery sod in conversation. “Well, fuck. Is this a stab at blackmail?”
“Let’s call it enlightened self-interest — but I don’t suppose your fellow crucible-fiends could help me find Torquemada?”
“That lot couldn’t find the point in a pitchfork factory. Also, Vulx is not my friend, I hate every Eric I’ve met, and for your information, I’m an Underfiend in in the twenty-seven thousand, three hundred and twentieth crucible of the seventy-second heat pump of the Fifth circle of Hell. It’s not as if I’ve got much to lose.”
The red mote zipped about inside the crucible, as if checking I was telling the truth. “You’re right. Would you like there to be something?”
I was working out the most withering reply possible when I caught a hint of far-off screaming. That’s not rare for the crucibles — what marked this screaming out was that a) it was still mostly intelligible, b) it was swearing alternately in both Spanish and Latin, and c) the level of righteous indignation was off the charts. The burden of it was a serious beef with the Almighty for sending a soul to Hell after a lifetime of loyal service, and occasional call-outs to the Virgin Mary, who seemed pretty unlikely to intervene at this point. The imprecations were faint, but growing nearer.
“Luck of the devil,” observed the annoying red mote meaningfully, and twinkled at me again. I made my decision, and opened the slamhatch.
“Madre de dios!”
The soul of Torquemada zipped so fast into the crucible that it rebounded off the wall and took a few moments to get its bearings. When it got them, it wasn’t happy; I’d shut both hatches, leaving it no escape. The soul switched to Latin, the better to lament its fate.
“Eheu, fortuna spurcissima! Vae mihi! Deceptus sum!”
“Well, hello there, Tomás,” said Crowley. “You don’t know me, but it seems that I know you. If only by reputation.”
The former Inquisitor, better equipped than most to realise when the jig was up, gave up the lamenting and spat miniscule defiance. “Fuerza negra! Que te folle un pez!”
“Dagon’s booked for weekss,” replied the sub-atomic Serpent, “so I get to essscort you myself.”
The particle that was Crowley flung itself on the particle that was the soul of Torquemada, and there was a brief, undignified squeak. I opened the right-hand slamhatch, and the pair of them were sucked through it, to emerge Satan knows where in the Eighth Circle. I guess one soul fewer in the crucibles won’t make my job any harder. Hell’s central heating system is too good for some people.
………
Disaster!
Well, dear diary, the tapping code is spreading through Hell, and in consequence, Vulx and I are utterly fucked! Oh, and the Erics are also fucked, but they don’t count; there’s always a spare Eric knocking around somewhere. But me and Vulx? We’re screwed, because some person or persons unknown had taught our code to the souls of the damned. A few of them were bright enough to memorise it, and they taught it to their fellow damned, who taught it to more of the damned…and you can guess the rest.
Eheu, as Torquemada would say. Fortuna spurcissima. Of course I don’t suspect Crowley: I’m bloody sure he did it, but he vanished Earthside again just as this Behemoth-sized shitpile hit the windmill.
This! This is how the blessed Serpent of Eden repays me! Traitor!
The code has now reached the Ninth Circle, where the locked-in-ice, God-really-has-forsaken-thee damned were clever enough (for a time) to disguise it as the creaking of their glacier. I suppose they didn’t have much else to occupy themselves. Well, now they do, Dear Diary, and they are trying their frozen hands at small talk. Eventually a Certain Person overheard their conversations, and asked Beelzebub and Dagon to investigate. We’ve been summoned to their presence in our True Forms: Vulx as a hell-fox, yours truly as a scorpion, and Eric as the world’s most evil rabbit.
(Beelzebub and Dagon. Did I mention before that we are fucked?)
Eric will have a bad time, but he’s pretty safe from extinction. A Legion-class entity won’t ever be wiped out completely, they’re too useful to Hell. If Vulx is lucky, he’ll be flayed alive. If he isn’t, he’ll be flayed alive and turned into the scabbiest specimen in Dagon’s taxidermy collection. But that’s nothing compared to what’s coming to me. Beelzebub is on my case, and Beelzebub knows how to hurt someone with a exoskeleton. Never mind getting Medieval, they will get entomological.
They’ll make me do the backstroke though a tank of formaldehyde.
They’ll focus Holy refulgence at me through a magnifying-glass.
They’ll shove a fixing-pin where the sun don’t shine.
They’ll do all three, and Dagon will sell tickets. Farewell, dear diary, and may any demon who reads these words bless the name of that rat bastard Crowley.
………
Glory!
No fixing-pin! No formaldehyde! No years of writhing while jeering fiends pass round the devilled chickpeas!
It turns out that the damned souls of the Ninth Circle are just the same in death as they were in life: unregenerate arseholes who use their ability to communicate for curses, insults, and trying to get each other into even more trouble than they are already. Their communication is exquisitely slow and error-prone, and since they are damned souls, they never cut each other any slack.
Being able to communicate has, in fact, increased their torment, and a Certain Person finds the background crackle of angry frustration relaxing. Rumour has it that he occasionally plays a little game of his own with the inmates of the Eight Circle: he starts a rumour that promotion to the Seventh Circle is available to any damned soul who can persuade the greatest number of their fellows that one of them should be flung down to the Ninth.
There’s a reason he’s our Infernal Lord and Master. What a guy.
Vulx and I are hereby released from boiler-room duty. We have been Commended! (second class, but who gives a fuck). Apparently, the Boss thinks we show promise, and we’re being allocated a broom cupboard. Heavens, we’re getting more than that. We’re getting corporations. A human body! Each! I’ve never actually had a body before, I’ve only heard about them from Eric, who (being a Disposable Demon) hasn’t managed to stay in any of them long enough to take in much of Earth.
Our first posting will be a the tropics, where we’re supposed to encourage piracy. I think I’ll manifest as a classic buccaneer: smouldering, psychopathic, cruelly handsome. I’ll swing a cutlass, stick tapers in my beard, and strike mortal fear into all who behold me. Yarrrrgh!
Episode II. Captain Pinchy, Scourge of the Seven Seas (1522 AD)
So, the cupboard I’ve been allocated is huge. Big enough so that I can stand up in my human corporation, when I’m not Earthside — or Seaside, to be exact, for the oceans up there are enormous. I can change my hairstyle (in which my scorpion aspect is easily concealed), my clothes, my nearly everything, just with a snap of my fingers.
One thing I can’t change is the bloody gender. Apparently underfiends don’t merit that little perk, and it turns out that when you swing a cutlass and stick smoking tapers in the one place you’ve got to stick them (not having a beard), people don’t think it’s fearsome. They think it’s saucy, at least until you run them through.
Granted, you can harvest a fair number of souls as a pirate with more up top than the Marie Rose, but it’s hardly prestigious, is it? And guess who got to go a-pirating at the exact same moment I did? Captain Eric the Indestructible, that’s who. It also turns out that it you bring a few spare copies of yourself Earthside, and they get shredded by grape-shot, eaten by sharks, impaled on bowsprits, and hung in chains on three different docks, but you keep coming back, your human crew is wildly impressed and word gets round that you’ve struck a deal with the Devil. Which I guess is technically true.
Outclassed, Dear Diary, by a Disposable Demon. The shame of it.
In other news, Vulx has been assigned to the same broom-cupboard as me, which is less than great. In the time I spent in Hell’s heating system, it had slipped my mind that because Vulx’s animal form is a fox, he consequently pongs like wrestler’s codpiece. He’s less aromatic as a humanoid, but he takes up a lot more space. It’s hard to explain how the idiot managed to snag the corporation I’d been eyeing up myself: broad of jaw and shoulder, ferociously tattooed, and male in all the ways that’d be handy on sorties to the Surface. Frankly I preferred him as fox, especially since no sooner was he installed in his new corporation than he started talking down to me. To me!
A sample of his incisive wit:
“Honestly, Mal,” says he to I, after I was once again gnashing my teeth over the success of Eric the Indestructible, who’d raked in Commendations like doubloons. “We’re alive, we’ve been Commended too, and we’ve got corporations! Aren’t you ever happy? Lighten up.”
“Lighten up!” says I to him. “I look like some tart from a morality tale. The one who gets her gizzard slit in Chapter Eight.”
“I’d like to see anyone try. ‘sides, Hell were always going to make you female. Malacoda is a girl’s name.”
Vulx sometimes tries to simultaneously flatter and undermine me, in a way that he seems to think is clever. Why? It is a mystery.
“Malacoda is a demon’s name,” I corrected him.
“Still ends in an ‘A’, though, doesn’t it? Girl’s name. Quod Erat Demonstrand — Ow!”
“This may have escaped your powers of observation, Vulx, but my True Form is a five-tailed scorpion.”
“A girl scorpion.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“If you’re so clever, Captain Pinchy, why did you get damned along with the rest of us? ‘Cos I don’t see you wearing a halo.”
Score one point to Vulx, I guess.
Incidentally, though, the world’s smallest species of scorpion is Microtityus waeringi, found on a remote island in the Caribbean known only to the pirate trade. I can’t explain how six of the little charmers inexplicably found their way into a certain demon’s short-hose later in the week. Rumour has it that you could hear his yells as far as the Third Circle. Ha.
Episode III. Tulip Boom (March, 1636 AD)
In Hell, Dear Diary, success is its own punishment: once you’ve got a win in the bag, your high-ups raise the bar. It also turns out that once you’ve got something to lose (namely, a corporation), you do kind of dread losing it, but it’s too late now. Anyway, Vulx and I have been instructed to Get Up There and Make a Little Trouble on a medium-to-large scale in the Netherlands. No problem, I said to most pungently stupid fox-demon in Hell. I’ll easily concoct a foolproof plan to get thousands of people to commit one or more of the Seven Deadlies, and I’ll only take 80% of the credit for myself. We’re a team.
That’s where the first snag arose. I present a list of Normal Human Names according to Vulx, a notable idiot:
* Doctor Murdernipples
* Vidrulph Facemeat
* Rip van Kloothommel
* Ivan the Quite-Nice-Until-You-Get-To-Know-Him
In short, my partner in sin has little notion of what humans are, apart from meatsacks with souls inside, but after some argy-bargy, we settled on the name of Sebastian Vulkx. It sounds kind of Low Countries, maybe Flemish, which is great because even after a miraculous crash course in Dutch, Vulx’s accent remains helaas pindakaas. But he looks a million guilders in Utrecht velvet and a lace collar, and that’s what counts. That big rookworst energy will get the humans green with envy in no time — and that’s when we’ll suck them into our bulbous investment scheme.
Happily, the task isn’t hard. All Vulx has to do is hit up the tulip-dealing dens of Haarlem, give the impression the source of his fancy togs is the tulip trade, and buy, baby, buy. He’s already run half-a-dozen missions, and his favourite spot is a tavern near the Amsterdamse Poort, run by a red-haired shyster called van Diemen. Mynheer van Diemen doesn’t dabble in tulips himself, but he sounds a man after my own heart: his place serves free drinks to traders…then charges them a fee of two percent on each bulb sold.
Since Vulx can miracle himself sober, within an hour he’s the smartest person in the room. For once.
And also for once — please, please, please — can this job go according to plan? All I want is to stoke a ruinous speculative run on a commodity that’s innately hard to value and has no practical use. Satan’s sentient nadgers, is that too much to ask?
………
(February, 1637 AD)
Dear Diary: it was too much to ask.
On the upside: the tulip job went better than our wildest dreams. Envy, Greed, and shattered dreams as far as the eye can see. A glorious sight.
On the downside: we’re getting the credit for none of it. Guess who — or more precisely, guess what — the mysterious Mynheer van Diemen turns out to be?
And yes, now I think about that alias, I do feel stupid. Anyone capable of a pun like that is bound to be one of our lot, but in my defence, ‘Antoniij van Diemen’ is a renowned expert on seeming human, even to other humans. Apparently, he’s passed most of his time Earthside for thousands of years, and pops down to Hell a few times a century; that time we met in the crucibles of Hell’s heating system was a one-off.
And now, he’s stolen our thunder. Mr. Lucked-out-in-Eden-and-cruised-on-it-ever-since, Personally-met-Caligula, Too-cool-for-school Crowley, has been credited with fomenting tulipomania and bringing down the most sophisticated banking system in Europe, when in reality he just ran a drinking dive in Haarlem and spent half his time asleep.
By the Powers of Hell, I, Malacoda, Formally Bless Anthony ‘Noodle Legs’ Crowley, Serpent of Eden, Bane of Eve, and Tutelary Fiend of Themed Accessories.
He outranks me, but what the Heaven, I need to vent.
May the demon Crowley be consigned to boiler-room duty for two thousand fascinating years.
May he then do time as a doorman for a convention of rabbis, bishops, imams, pujaris, and archimandrites, and may each of them bless him as they enter.
Also, may he get an infestation of scale mites, and may those scale mites get religion, and have schisms, and write theses on those schisms, and may it never, ever, ever stop.
Postscript: As a final scattering of croutons on this turd casserole, I discovered the Serpent’s getting a Commendation for the Haarlem job. Joy! Joy! Joy!
Episode IV. A gala performance of The King in Yellow… (1920 AD)
Dear Diary, that lovable moron Vulx has sniffed out a lead! A proper Commendation might be ours this time, if we can get a drop on Crowley, not to mention every other kudos-hungry fiend in Hell.
The lead involves a cursed stage play. Or rather, it involves the rumour of a cursed stage play. Or the rumour of a rumour or a cursed play, inspired not by one of the famous names like Mephistopheles or Beelzebub, but by Hastur, who’s a Duke of Hell, but not nearly as infamous as he wants to be. But he is ambitious, and as a patron, he’d have his points. Though no looker, he has genuine shark eyes, he can boast a few human worshippers (all mad as brushes) which annoys the Top Brass no end, and his party trick is turning into a legion of maggots, which even I admit is fancy.
On the downside, he has zero sense of humour, he makes Beelzebub look like a fashionista, and he kind-of does smell like poo.
Naturally, Vulx is a Hastur fanboy, but the Duke doesn’t even know he exists. All this could change, though, if we manage to find and stage The King in Yellow, in which the Summoning of Hastur is the climactic scene. Merely reading the script is rumoured to drive mortals loopy; who can say how things might go if we managed to stage a performance? Heavens, we might even win the Theatrical Achievement Award.
Since The King in Yellow is more cursed than Erzebet Bathory’s bathtub, getting one’s claws on the script isn’t easy. But the word among the recently-deceased demi-monde, who I offered slightly cooler quarters if they knew anything about The King in Yellow, was that there was a copy knocking about Paris. I had my work cut out manifesting in old theatres, haunting occult bookshops, and lurking at estate sales of ruined actors. No dice.
I’ll say this for Vulx, he doesn’t quit. He volunteered to go to Paris with me in vulpine form, if I did my best femme fatale and fluttered my eyelashes at any mortals who might know where to find a copy of Le Roi en Jaune. Needs must, so I gave him an industrial-grade shampooing (as a fox, he scrubs up nicely), then put my new pet on a satin leash and attended the most decadent parties in Montmartre, sporting a corset, riding boots, and not a lot else. We started some rather fabulous fashion trends, drank a poet’s ransom in absinthe, and eventually, we got a bite. A vice-raddled occultist on the Rue de Rennes offered to sell me his copy…for the outrageous price of my irreplaceable fox familiar.
Sold? Motherfucking sold!
All yours, I said, before Vulx could whine any objections. Just don’t feed the little darling after midnight.
Vulx was gone for six weeks, as it turned out. I’d be disappointed if he’s not plotting some payback — but the important thing is, we got out hands on a copy of Le Roi en Jaune. We’ve scouted out a recherché little theatre and Vulx is busy recruiting actors of the more experimental sort. My job is type the script into sanity-checked chunks, so the cast don’t go insane…at least, not until Opening Night. Allons-y!
………
…for one night only
Well. That certainly went with a bang.
In hindsight, I should have been clearer with Duke Hastur about what’s meant by the phrase ‘audience participation’. I’ve never seen so many immaculately-clean skeletons in my damned existence. If only there’d been time to flog them to a medical school, Vulx and I would’ve made a mint.
Tragically, L’Affaire Roi Jaune had to be covered up as far as miraculously-possible, which in Hastur’s case means setting everything on fire. Don’t get me wrong, he’s as evil as they come, but subtlety is really not his thing. In any case, he wasn’t completely successful. Last thing I heard, a sealed police report has been filed in the Quai des Orfevres, and the Detective Inspector who wrote it up quit his job and joined the Church.
You’d think this would mean we were a shoo-in for an award, but the devourment incident also led to our project being category-shifted from ‘Theatrical Achievements’ to ‘Paranormal Massacres’, and that meant the Theatrical Achievement Award went to Noodle Legs Crowley, for persuading a playwright to title his next production ‘Closed for Refurbishment’. Alright, it’s clever, but does the finale of ‘Closed for Refurbishment’ end with people screaming in the cheap seats while a sea of maggots rises higher and higher, eager for their terrified flesh?
I think not, Dear Diary. At least Hastur enjoyed himself.
Robbed again by that noted arse-wipe, Antony Crowley. And we came fourth in Paranormal Massacres, which just rubs salt into the wound.
Episode V. Going DIgital
The Logic Gates of Hell (1974 AD)
It was a day of ill-omen (does Hell have any other kind?) when Duke Hastur summoned me to his presence in my scorpion form, then rested his hand on the desk and indicated I should perch on his knuckles. At that level of size disparity, his eyes were obsidian globes, and his teeth rotting sepulchres — but I’m used to his charms by now. What I can never get used to was that there are toads that like to eat venomous scorpions, and Hastur keeps one clinging to the crown of his head.
“Ah, Malacoda,” murmured the Yellow Duke, as his pet amphibian gave me the once-over. Even when you’re two inches long, the fact that each of your tails is tipped with a different form of agony usually earns you a little respect. Not from Hastur’s toad, though, which was eyeing me like I was a condiment tray.
“Your Disgrace?” I chittered.
“I’m hoping you can advise me on a technical matter,” he said, as the toad slowly licked its own eyeballs. “I couldn’t get a straight answer from Crowley.”
Frankly, dear Diary, I doubt that anyone on Earth, or Above, or Below, could get a straight answer out of Anthony Crowley. But what I said was —
“What do you need to know, your Disgrace?”
Hastur leaned back in his office throne, which was constructed (possibly from budgetary reasons) from defleshed bones. “Tell me, little scorpion: what’s a computer?”
“A servant employed to perform long calculations, your Disgrace. They used to be humans, often women — but now, they’re getting replaced by machines. They link them up with wires.”
“Machines shaped like human women?”
“Maybe at some point, Sir. At the moment, they’re boxes with blinking lights on them.”
Hastur brightened. “Like fax machines? Young Eric had a hit with those.” He raised his hand so I could see two reflections of myself in his sharky eyes.
I could have done without the reminder. Eric the Ubiquitous had found fax machines a perfect match for his self-copying skills, and junk faxes had spread Hellish frustration across the Earth. He’d won a minor Commendation for it, bless his derivative heart.
“Sort-of like those. Sir. But cleverer.”
“I see. A computer is a box-shaped mathematical servant invented by humans. Can these things be warped in their purpose? Subverted to the service of Hell? Can we travel down their wires?”
I shivered to my tail-tips. “Has Crowley managed to do that?” Is he stealing a march on the rest of us already? The absolute bastard.
“It is hard to be sure,” admitted the Duke, as his toad patted him soothingly on the brow. “I am not Earthside often, and Crowley is vain and boastful, even by the standards of Hell. My crunchy little Underfiend, can we make a computer?”
I looked around Hastur’s office, in which no piece of technology was less than forty years out of date. A bucket in the corner was filling with ichor dripping from the ceiling, and a bookshelf of rotting ledgers sagged in one corner. Eternal torment is severely analog scene.
“Um. Well. Make one from what, Sir?”
Hastur raised an eyebrow. “Vulx tells me that you’re prone to bouts of ingenuity. Surprise me.”
Ah, there it was: payback for that little business in Paris. I clicked my mouthparts in what I hoped was an inventive manner, but inwardly, I was bricking it. If you can’t stop demons licking the walls, there’s no way the daft bastards won’t drool onto circuit-boards. Meanwhile, Hastur’s head-toad was watching me like I was a burger with five different relishes.
“Well,” I said. “Um. The thing about computers, Sir, is that they’re not necessarily complicated. Humans have worked out that you can make them from lots of tiny parts. And those parts can be simple — but the simpler they are, the more you need of them. We could do it the way the heating system works, maybe, with gates and souls. But we’d need a lot.”
“How many is a lot? Hundreds? Thousands?”
“Millions, your Disgrace. And the demons in charge have to be smart enough to know the difference between zero and one. It’s not as if Hell can spare that many Underfiends, unless — ”
“Eric,” he said, and his mouth curled like a worm on a hot brick. “Very well. Make it work, and we’ll see about a surface posting.”
Unexpected upside of the new project: more chores for Eric. Gotta balance out all that swashbuckling and photocopying with a bit of grunt work, Captain Indestructible. Unexpected downside of the new project: Hastur is not exactly stupid (more like blunt, in the way a maggot avalanche is blunt), but he only has a nodding acquaintance with Earthside technology. So far, I’ve had to explain that a (handwritten) memo headed ‘Change Log’ is not about woodwork, nor is a parity error a matter for a vet.
I can live with that. Despite his head-toad, Hastur has two things going for him. One is a strong competitive streak, and the other is a understandable loathing for Noodle Legs Crowley, whose days of raking in Commendations from the digital revolution will shortly be behind him. Listen up, Noodle Boy: I spent bloody centuries in singularity form in Hell’s central-heating system. Travelling down wires will be a cinch for me.
And when the humans start linking up their clever boxes in earnest, I’ll be ready. Those Commendations in digital technology will be mine, Crowley! Mine!!!
[note to self: one’s evil laugh could definitely use some work. I sound like Barbara Windsor.]
………
Green Eyes and Spam (1994 AD)
Dear Diary,
After two decades of research, a groundbreaking discovery: there’s something more embarrassing than getting discorporated!
Twenty years, Vulx and I had been working on our Hastur-sponsored project. Five to set up a soul-powered computer, five more to get it to return consistent results and muffle the screams, and then ten blessed years spent Earthside, recruiting humans capable of unleashing digital mayhem. Ten years of flattering, tempting, and (Satan help me) flirting with mortal nerds. And not just nerds, but American nerds! Endless, endless nerdery, from sea to shining sea. Whoever claimed Hell is other people wasn’t specific enough; Hell is other nerds, and demon or human, they know one of their own — then ask you to hang out with them on usenet.
When it came to nudging them towards Satan’s side, I had some help from pop literature. Ten years into the project, a sci-fi novel came out where the sidekick was a cyborg assassin girl with mirror shades and razor nails. If ol’ Noodle Legs could rock a biker jacket and sunglasses, I reasoned, so could someone who doesn’t have a wonky nose and legs like quick-cook zitoni.
As a look, it had a 99% hit rate. On nerds.
But I kept at it. Back in the day, we had sorcery to ensnare the too-smart-by-half; now we have programming. So I learned the ways of Humankind, the better to subvert them, and I also learned their naughtier arts: backdoors, trojans, keyloggers, fork bombs, and their ilk. I wound up with an East Coast accent, an associate professorship, a Harley-Davidson Sportster, and a team of beautifully arrogant hackers called the Skorpi0nZ.
Downstairs, on Hell’s one and only soul-powered computer (clock rate 666 kHz), several hundred Erics had been painstakingly trained by Vulx. I took the Harley on a road trip and spent weeks releasing my disposable demons Earthside, not in human form, but on a series of floppy discs abandoned in the libraries and cafeterias of high-powered research establishments. Studying Crowley’s methods has taught me one thing: an appeal to damn-fool curiosity works wonders.
The attack itself wasn’t complicated. All the intelligence organisations in the US had ironclad security on their mainframes, but their humans? Their humans all used email, even if it was Super Sekrit email, and all we had to do was introduce a program that could replicate itself with rabbit-like efficiency. Vulx and I had settled on a launch date of April the 12th — on which date I would find my way into a certain computer lab in Boston, dismiss my corporation, and lead an army of virtual Erics down like a wolf on the fold.
The Department of Justice would blame the CIA, and the CIA would blame the U.S. Air Force, who would blame the FBI, who would blame the Department of Justice. It was gonna be fire…
…but in a humiliatingly simple twist, heuristic threat detection turns out to work on demons. Humans have sophisticated filtering to stop them noticing too much occult business, but programs? Programs are stupid, and now I’m the first of Satan’s minions to be deleted, rather than discorporated, from the Earthly plane. I wasn’t even wearing a body, unless you count a custom program called sin_ferno.exe hidden in an overcompressed gif of counter-rotating nipple tassels.
My lovely, ambitious project. Gone. All gone, Dear Diary, because some newfangled antivirus wasn’t distracted and classed me as a threat. The next thing I knew, I was in the Re-corporation queue, my evil plans in shreds. Vulx thinks this is beyond funny. Even Hastur got a chuckle out of it, and now I never, ever want to hear him laugh again. And guess what? A few copies of Eric, the least imaginative demon in Hell, are still out in the wild on floppy discs, ready to infect future computers and insert some winning line like ‘Hi! I’m Eric!’.
You might have thought that despite this clusterfuck, we were still in with a chance for a tech Commendation. But...this is Hell, Dear Diary, nor are we out of it.
That very same day, a grubby little law firm called Twiner & Appelbaum (tagline: Tip the scales of Justice) had bombarded every newsgroup on the internet with offers to secure you a Green Card, using their foolproof and Highly Sekrit method. Their name was mud, but word got out that they’d got hundreds of clients out of it, and that’s all you need to get a Tragedy of the Commons rolling. The banhammers swung heavy over usenet, but the advertisers just switched to email, offering hot noodz, fortunes to be made on The Information Superhighway, and erections so majestic that they’d shame the Taj Mahal.
After six months of this, there was a name for the stuff. It’s called spam, and everyone hates it. Exposure to just one piece of spam before morning coffee puts a mortal in a foul mood for the rest of the day, and that knock-on pettiness really adds up. The advisor to the grubby law firm has been Specially Commended…if ‘advisor’ is the right name for the PR side of something called Twiner & Appelbaum.
Well, fuck.
I blame myself. I’d overlooked the implications of ‘Antoniij van Diemen’ back in Holland and lost a Commendation to the Serpent, I don’t know why I supposed the noodly bastard would leave the Benighted States of America alone. Tip the scales of Justice, indeed.
But one day I will find you, Anthony Crowley, and I will introduce you to the concept of a fork bomb.
And mine use actual forks.