[1] Spirit of Eternal Negation

Hell was depressed—economically. Statement from Satan said there would be no cullings based on end-of-year quotas, so everyone knew there would absolutely be cullings based on end-of-year quotas. It was November.

Behind a cherry desk that looked older than it was, Perfidia Bal Berith—who looked much younger than she was—stared a hole through her office's front door. She pulled back the cuff of her pinstripe suit, checked her diamond wristwatch, and drummed her long nails on her desk.

Just as she thought This guy better fucking show, the door opened.

"Mr. Waringcrane!" she said, rising with courteous gesture and broad smile. Her hip bumped her desk; she stumbled slightly. (Tactical. People preferred to deal with devils they thought they could outwit.) "Perfidia Bal Berith, but call me Fidi. So glad ya made—Oh."

The guy slouching through her front door carried an aluminum baseball bat.

It took effort to suppress her immediate instinct to reach for her desk drawer, where she kept her best method for dealing with angry customers. But this guy had no reason to be angry with her (yet), unless he was a religious nut. He probably brought the bat for protection. Suggested he was serious about being here, not doing it as a prank, but also implied skittishness. She'd tread careful.

"Ah—don't worry," she said, inflection trembling to let him think he intimidated her. "You won't need that here."

"I know." Without another word he dragged a chair from in front of the desk and plopped into it.

Perfidia kept smiling. Tried to figure him out. He wore a brown baseball cap with a picture of an orange football helmet on it, pulled low over severe, sleep-deprived eyes. Expression otherwise unreadable. Blasé. Just a face. Like he was bored to be here—an atypical demeanor.

"Sports fan?" She gestured at the hat.

"No."

Was he nervous? Many people got nervous meeting devils—their bright red skin and sharp horns made an immediate impression, on top of their reputation. But nothing in how he thoughtlessly threw himself into his chair suggested it.

She learned about this guy from a contact at a local college. Jay Waringcrane. He attended classes for two days—then dropped out. Wasn't grades, health, or money, so maybe it was something more, something deeper, something only she could help with. Among many other prospects, she sent him an advertisement, and in the past month, only he responded.

"Well. We gonna do this?" he said.

"Sure thing." Perfidia took her own seat behind the desk, unfolded a pair of reading glasses, and rifled through some papers as an excuse to formulate her strategy. "Jay Waringcrane. You don't strike me as a guy for ceremony, so why don't we get the crux of it right out there on the proverbial table." She knocked a fist against her desk and grinned. "What do you want most? The thing ya just can't live without?"

Desires. Dreams. Wishes. These were the wares all devils peddled one way or another. Things human nature craved but God's corrupted Earth denied them: Wealth, power, love, freedom. All devils required in exchange for these human cravings was Humanity. The soul, some called it, but Hell's official position was that the soul did not exist and no human went to Heaven upon death—merely a fairy tale God sprinkled for good behavior. But humans did have an essence, a je ne sais quoi that made them human. Usually Perfidia would explain this aloud, altering intonation and gesture to match her mark, but she suspected this guy, Jay Waringcrane, didn't give a shit. So she watched him with a smile and waited for his response, which took, unlike his previous terse statements, a long time coming. Jay heaved a half-breath, half-sigh, fiddled with the knob of his bat, and stared past her, out her office's broad window, at the decrepit post-industrial fringe dropping off into the turgid slop of Lake Erie, all under a dismal, sickly sky.

"I'm tired of this world," he said.

Perfidia nodded sagely. "Me too, lemme tell ya. Been saying to myself for centuries: Once I get enough in the bank, I'll skip town and head back to Hell. But I've been stuck in Cleveland since 1868." The truth of the statement was incidental to why she said it. In an instant she became the tired old veteran, an image of the desolate future that awaits all bright-eyed youth when they totter into the real world. A cautionary tale—something to nudge him the direction he already wanted to go.

"What exactly can you do," he said.

"Well, basically anything—"

"Your ad said you grant wishes. But you obviously can't grant any wish."

"What makes ya think that?" She spoke smilingly, but her eyes narrowed.

"If devils like you have been granting wishes since forever"—using the first thing approximating punctuation that wasn't an end stop since he entered—"then eventually someone would've wished to end world hunger. End war. But all that's still around."

"Oh, well, it's a bit of a technical explanation, would take a long time to—"

"Tell me. I don't mind."

"Hunger and war are fundamental laws of this world. Nobody can wish them away. But anything regarding personal enrichment, I can do that, no problem."

"I'm not interested in personal enrichment. And that didn't take a long time and wasn't very technical."

"Well, there's more to it than that, I shortened it to just the pertinent bits."

"Unshorten it. Tell me what is and isn't possible. What's a law and what's not. And why. Tell me exactly how these wishes work."

Before, Perfidia might have judged Jay Waringcrane as impatient. Many who came to her office were; desperation did that to a human. But this wasn't impatience, it was someone cutting through marketing fluff to demand the behind-the-scenes mechanics. Those people were tricky. Everyone fancied they could outsmart the devil, and the humiliating truth was sometimes they did. Perfidia had been humiliated before. Humiliated too much, more than any self-respecting devil ought to be, humiliated before she even got into the wish business in 1455. Never been humiliated by a human, though. Only heard stories of other, stupider devils who were. So she would not be humiliated now, not with that end-of-year quota looming, not at the worst possible time to suffer humiliation.

"Sorry, kind of a trade secret," she said.

"Then I'll leave."

"You don't look like you're gonna leave." It was true. He had settled deep into his chair.

"Because you're going to tell me."

Perfidia hated that he was right. Business was bad; she needed this guy. Needed his Humanity. Couldn't let him leave. Worse yet, couldn't let him see her stumble after him to stop him from leaving. She made the decision not to belabor the point.

"Fine then," she said with a lighthearted shrug, looking like she had nothing to hide, hiding the roiling of Pride in her heart. "Just cut me off when you've heard enough."

She cleared her throat and began:

"So the essence of being human is called Humanity. Capital-H. I'm not saying that in a literary sense: Humanity is measurable and quantifiable. The amount each human's got varies, but generally people with more Humanity make a bigger impact on the world. So for instance, Napoleon Bonaparte—you know Napoleon right?—Napoleon commands a country, conquers a continent, wages wars that impact millions. He's gonna have a lot of Humanity, let's say 10,000 Humanity for the sake of example. Compare that to a French peasant, same time period. Born on a farm, dies on a farm, goes nowhere his entire life except the nearest village. That guy might have, let's say, 1 Humanity. No human's got less than 1. Following?"

Although she paused to give him time to spit a quick yes or no, or even just nod, he only stared. His eyes barely showed under the brim of his football helmet hat.

"Wishes," Perfidia continued, "the kind I grant, don't happen out of the aether. Can't get something for nothing, that's a fundamental law. How it works is, I take your Humanity, use some of it to make your wish come true, and pocket the rest as a fee for my services. Because of that, the exact nature of your wish is limited by how much Humanity you have."

She paused again, this time hoping he'd ask how much Humanity he had, which would provide an excellent segue out of the explanation. (He had enough. Enough for her at least. Enough for her quota.) But he said nothing.

Next part was tricky. Perfidia needed to pick her examples carefully to avoid using something he actually wanted—that'd give him bargaining power. Did he look like a money guy? Money guys were common. But money guys didn't ask for specifics. She took an educated gamble.

"Wishes require more Humanity the more they change the world. Say you've got terminal cancer and wish to be cured. Easy. Zap some bad cells and presto change-o. Minimal impact on the world at large, 1 Humanity is more than enough to cover it. Now say instead you want a lot of money. Hundred million dollars. Well, to get a hundred million dollars I'd either have to steal the money from someone who already has it—bad idea—or make it myself, which requires fabricating a bunch of bills, altering national record-keeping systems to recognize those bills as real, plus other technical details like that. There's impact on the world, because I have to change stuff outside the domain of a single human. Might cost, say, 10 Humanity. Get it?"

(But she could do it cheaper by just giving someone winning lottery numbers so they won already legal money via an already legal method. That way she wasn't changing anything in the world, so the wish became cheap again—1 Humanity tops. Methods like that let her game the system and snag a higher profit margin for herself. She withheld him that info.)

Meanwhile Jay Waringcrane continued to stare. Perfidia maintained her loquacious fact-rattling, but his stoniness upped her anxiety. She wasn't normally anxious. She'd been around long enough, dealt with every type of human imaginable. But the quota. The end of the year. Damn the Seven Princes, damn their shitty policies! They overproduced new devils and now it bit everyone in the ass. Why did she have to suffer for it? Her, with almost six hundred years of high production?

"Most people seek only personal enrichment." Concealing her thoughts, she diminished into a more somber style. "Personal enrichment often means only personal impact. So most wishes don't cost much—relatively. Other wishes, like the ones you described, like ending world hunger or stopping all wars. Well. Hunger and conflict are fundamental laws of the world. Our oh-so-loving God, despite claims of flawless omnipotence, has somehow created a world flawed in its very design. Rectifying those flaws, that'd take all the Humanity in the entire world—even that may not be enough. Aaaaand that's the whole explanation, more or less. Now why don'tcha tell me what exactly you want and we can workshop a way to make it happen?"

What would she do if he shrugged, said all he wanted was to end world hunger, and left? What would she do if another month passed like the last? But outside she was calm. Meeting his level gaze, refusing to flinch.

He only looked at her.

"You can speak freely," she said. "I'm not a genie. I'm not gonna make the first thing you say your wish whether you want it or not. Devils work with contracts. Nothing's final till you sign a dotted line."

"I want," he said finally, "to leave this world."

"Travel the stars? See Jupiter, Venus, galaxies beyond this solar system? Doable. Totally doable, I can—"

"No." Jay fell silent. Fiddled with the knob of his baseball bat, which he balanced against his thigh like a cane. Perfidia reclaimed a modicum of calm. He was nervous about something. Something he wanted to say but couldn't. He wasn't a statue, he had qualms, quibbles, insecurities of his own, and when a human had those—all humans did—Perfidia could squeeze.

"No need to worry, Jay. I'm a professional, everything we discuss is strictly confidential. Doesn't leave this room."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Still Jay stared at the sour edge of Cleveland past her shoulder. Perfidia's office fell deathly quiet, devoid even of ambience, until the silence rested long enough for the outside to seep through: a distant plane roaring, a distant siren wailing, a gurgle in a buried pipe.

Finally, Jay spoke. "I want to go to a fantasy world."

Because she awaited eagerly—too eagerly—his response, upon hearing it and upon not immediately sorting it into one of the possibilities she expected from him, she repeated his last three words like a robot and felt foolish for doing so.

"Yes. A fantasy world. Swords and magic and crap like that." He hissed it, halfway under his breath, like he was loath to say it.

His explanation made everything click; it took Perfidia effort not to display her relief. A fantasy world. Swords and magic! After all his gruff statements about war and hunger and being sick of the world. She could laugh. Laugh in his stupid, human face. Here she thought he was going to ask something impossible.

Still, he held a few advantages on her. She rued having given that longwinded explanation of Humanity. Had she known beforehand, she could've abbreviated more of the particulars. A misstep, sure. Not a fatal one. Key was not letting him know exactly how much his wish was worth. If he did, he'd try to haggle the price. And she needed every drop of his Humanity.

"I totally get it. Makes perfect sense. Huge fan of fantasy myself," she lied. "Only natural for humans to dream of a world better than this imperfect one. A paradise where good triumphs over evil, where there's always a happily-ever-after. If you can't change this world, might as well make a new one, am I right?"

If she was right, Jay didn't let her know it.

She ended an awkward moment by clearing her throat. "Now, let's discuss the particulars. Creating a whole world, of course, isn't the easiest endeavor, but I think we can make it work—"

"I don't want paradise," Jay said.

"Henh?"

"If I wanted paradise, I wouldn't sell my soul for it. I'd do whatever the Bible says."

"Yes, well, actually, it's interesting but, there's no evidence to suggest that even the most virtuous Christian goes to Heaven when they die—"

"I want a worse world."

It was Perfidia's turn to fall silent. She blinked, uncomprehending.

"It doesn't have to be awful," he continued, gripping his baseball bat's handle tight. "But it needs to be broken."

"But why?" said Perfidia. "After what you said earlier—"

"It needs to be a world I can fix. A world I can change. Meaningfully change. A world where I matter. A world where I'm the protagonist."

"I see."

"In our world, who cares. Nobody can change anything. Every battle's been fought and won. Doesn't matter what I do. What anyone does. There are no more Napoleons."

"That why you dropped out of college?"

"I wasn't learning shit." He tapped his bat against the tile floor and a clear, bell-like peal rang out. "Why bother? To graduate and get a job as an accountant or something, like my sister? Work fifty years and die? Having done absolutely nothing? Fuck that."

"Understandable—perfectly understandable," Perfidia said. "It's true, mathematically you know. Thanks to the amount of people nowadays, it takes a person with much more Humanity to create a meaningful impact. Pretty unfair. So how's this. I put you in this fantasy world, make you king or something—"

"No. No. Don't just make me king." Jay leaned forward. His previous speech was the first time he displayed any real interest in the conversation; now he was undeniably hooked. "Make me earn it. I don't want it handed to me."

Then why come to someone who grants wishes, Perfidia wanted to retort. She held it in. Whatever annoying stipulations he desired—sure. Fine.

"I think I've got a perfect world in mind, then. Something you're gonna love. Unless, of course, there are specific fantastical elements you want. Dragons, elves, et cetera..."

He waved the back of his hand and sank back into his chair. "Surprise me." His period of interest was over. In fact, he clenched his jaw as if in annoyance for having said too much already. How funny. People like him, people who demanded to know specifics of how it all worked, usually made extremely particular wishes, every detail explicated in formal legalese allowing for no ambiguity of interpretation. The kind of people who specified they wanted a billion dollars in USD, thinking if they didn't a devil would hand them a billion Zimbabwean dollars instead. Devils got a terrible shake in human media, but the depiction of such faulty wishes rankled Perfidia's Pride. She might overcharge, yes. She might push people to make a decision more quickly than they liked, yes. But if they wished for something, she gave them that wish.

Nonetheless, his apathy aided her. She tapped her pile of papers with a quick whip of the spade-shaped barb on her tail. Immediately, what was once a few documents of basic information about her client transformed into the stringent typeface of a formal contract, ten pages long, the first nine a standard litany of disclaimers and stipulations. He had not, as she feared, attempted to haggle, so the exact amount to be paid was enshrined on Page 9, Box C.

"Here's your contract. I advise you read it thoroughly, but you won't find anything objectionable. The final page outlines the demands of your wish, and also has the place for you to sign."

She pushed the contract toward him, tone and manner casual, as though signing were no big deal. He pried it off the desk and read.

About halfway through, without indicating whether he was particularly pleased or displeased with anything, he said, "Your ad claimed satisfaction guaranteed."

"Right—Right!" Perfidia rose and leaned over the desk to point. "Our warranty is outlined on Page 7, Box A. At this time I can only offer a one month warranty, but you'll be able to read the terms and conditions—"

"What if I didn't pay you until one month from now."

"Er. Well. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that's not how it works," she said in her best corporate tech support voice. "We only accept payment up front, since it requires your Humanity to make your wish happen in the first place. If you're not satisfied with your wish, we provide a partial reimbursement as per the warranty."

The warranty, of course, was a joke. As the contract stated, satisfaction was defined by whether the wish was executed correctly. So if you wished for a billion dollars, received the billion dollars, and realized having a billion dollars didn't make you any happier, too bad so sad that was your problem, not the devil's. Jay Waringcrane's wish was a bit more subjective, sure, and he gave her enough stipulations that he could conceivably find some weaselly way to claim she failed her end of the bargain. Even then, though, he'd have to take the Hellevator and argue his case in devil court, which as one might expect was a tad biased.

This business of withholding payment until the warranty period eclipsed, though. She couldn't immediately see how it changed anything, but it made her suspicious. One month placed her right before the end-of-year deadline. If even one thing went wrong, even temporarily—

"That's not true," Jay said.

"What?"

"You don't need all of my humanity," he said (she could tell he said it with a lowercase h). "Not to make the wish happen. You take some humanity for the wish and pocket the rest. I'll give you what you need up front. The rest I keep until a month from now."

He was, of course, correct. And she had, of course, been stupid to explain it earlier.

"Why does it matter?" said Perfidia. "If you successfully invoke the warranty, you'll get your Humanity back whether you paid up front or not."

"I don't trust your warranty."

"I assure you, our warranty is given in absolute good faith. Likewise, I intend to take every effort to provide your exact desire—"

"And I want to make sure you do."

"How does whether you pay up front or not change that? It's the same guarantee of satisfaction either way."

"If I pay up front and I'm not satisfied, you'll find some way to screw me. If I don't pay up front and I'm not satisfied..." His lips curled into a smile, the first trace of anything other than stone on his face the entire conversation. "Then I'll kill myself before you can collect. And you won't get a cent."

He said it with a nonchalance that suggested either he was completely full of it or dead fucking serious and Perfidia couldn't tell which. That was a lie. She was lying to herself again. She knew exactly how much this dead-eyed guy meant it.

"Dying doesn't make anything better for you," Perfidia pointed out dully, already foreseeing his next move.

"But it makes it a lot worse for you. Which incentivizes you to do it right. If you do it right, I'll want to stay there the rest of my life. If you do it right, you'll get what I owe you." He flipped the baseball bat around in his hand and pointed it over the desk at Perfidia's nose. "So just do it right."

"Sir," she said, polite as possible, your humble servant Perfidia Bal Berith, no offense intended, "you can pay up front, or you can leave my office." It pained her but. She would have to let him leave. Let him leave and hope after a few days stewing in this world that so sickened him he'd come crawling back. Ready to stoop to her every demand.

His careless, disinterested shrug instilled her with little confidence. "So I guess you really are trying to scam me."

"No! It's a matter of principle. Of security. You can't go to a restaurant, eat a meal, and say you'll pay in a month."

"Disingenuous. This isn't a meal. For a house you put money down and pay the rest in installments."

"You hate this world, Jay. You really want to turn your back on an opportunity like this? Nobody can do what I do, Jay. Nobody can give you what you want except me. I'm your only option."

"And you're so insistent on this point it makes me think I'm yours."

Despite his being completely correct, Perfidia refused to let him know it. "I'm insistent because it's policy."

"What if I paid up front but demanded a two month warranty."

Perfidia brightened. "That works." Obviously it opened her up to some risk, but no devil with half a brain ever lost a mark due to the warranty. "We can work with that. I'll give you an even longer one if you'd like."

But the glint in his eye chilled her. "So I was right. The warranty's useless."

"How—why would you think that?"

"When it comes to paying up front, that's policy. Nonnegotiable. But the warranty you're more than happy to change even though you first said you'd only give a month. So one of those things actually matters to you, and one doesn't. None of this is about policy. It's about what you need and when you need it."

"It's an issue of security. You already admitted how you could fuck me with this withholding payment scheme—"

"I wonder why you said a month." Jay rose, stopping Perfidia's heart. One moment he remained rooted in his seat, splayed out as though ready to take a nap—the next moment upright, with seemingly no intervening state of motion. The baseball bat went back to its spot, resting on his shoulder, as he turned toward the door. "So here's what. I'll go home and mull it over. You're right, I do hate this world. Hate living in it. But I can wait another month or two. How about I come back January—maybe February—and we talk again."

Fuck.

He fucking got her.

A few seconds after she realized he fucking got her she knew she should have said something, anything, any lie or bluff. Normally she could dissemble. Any devil could. But if she hadn't been so desperate. Hadn't been put in this position. Those fucking Seven Princes and their depression. A random human named Jay Waringcrane walked into her office and played it cooler than her—than her!—and now he got her.

She had one final card up her sleeve.

"Okay," she said, hanging her head wearily, expressing surrender in every fiber of her being. "Okay. You figured me out. Sit down. Sit back down."

For a moment he looked like he might keep walking. But he paused midstep, glanced back at her, and in one motion slid back into his chair. Not sunken though. He hunched forward, leaning against his baseball bat, as though he knew what remained would not take long.

"It's not about scamming you," Perfidia said. "I just have certain deadlines to meet and I wanted to be absolutely certain I got paid."

She gave him a chance to say something, but he didn't. Watching her under the brim of his hat.

"One month from now is December 20." She tapped the contract on the desk, already open to the page about payment, and the little black letters shuffled around to form a few amendments. "Creating a whole new world is a pretty significant undertaking, so I'm still gonna need three-quarters of your Humanity up front. The rest you can pay on December 20, assuming you're satisfied with the world I've given you."

"Liar."

At this point, she didn't want to even ask. But she did. "What do you mean?"

"You said how much a wish costs depends on how much it changes this world."

"And I'll be creating an entire world. That's a big change."

"It doesn't change this world at all. And if this new world counted the same as our world, no one person's humanity could pay for it. That's what you said."

Why bother arguing. It would only destroy her more utterly. She tapped the contract again, rearranged the words again—this time demanding only ten percent of his Humanity up front—and continued, explaining the rest of the contract in an empty tone, eventually handing it over for him to peruse at leisure, which he did.

No further negotiations. He didn't even quibble about the wording of the final page, which outlined the world in which he was to be "the protagonist," which even explicated that he was to be made to "earn" the right to change it. He didn't have to quibble, to make the language more exact, because it didn't matter. She must give him a world that satisfied him. Or else.

Jay Waringcrane, age 19, signed the contract.

With a pen—signing in blood merely a propagandistic bit of human whimsy, relegated to human media and to idiot devils who watched too much human media. Perfidia extended her hand over the desk to shake, which he expressed zero intention in matching, until she explained she needed physical contact to extract the ten percent Humanity agreed upon.

Slowly, taking his time, using the baseball bat for support, he lifted himself from the chair. Maintaining knifelike eye contact, he extended his hand and clasped hers.

A brief moment of intense heat and a flare of ruddy light manifested between their palms, but she couldn't even revel in how the heat crumpled his stony face into a genuine wince. She extracted only the ten percent; if she broke the terms of the contract too brazenly, not even a devil court in Hell would side with her. Of course, he didn't know that. But the look in his eye and the look that was surely in hers communicated it well enough.

The handshake ended.

"Return tomorrow. Same time," she muttered, devoid of any pep. "Your world will be ready then."

Despite a glimmer of disappointment in needing to wait, he turned for the door.

"Oh yeah. One last thing," she said. "Since you're leaving this world so suddenly, people may wonder where you went. I got connections with the local police, so I can stonewall any missing persons case, but is there anyone who'd have particular interest in tracking you down?"

He was already at the doorway. "Just Mother. But she's helpless."

"You mentioned a sister."

"She doesn't care."

"And your father?"

"He blew his head off with a shotgun when I was six."

"Sorry for your loss," Perfidia said, unable to suppress a slightly smug smile.

He smiled back, pointed his bat at her, and squeezed one eye into a wink. Then he vanished, and the door shuddered shut.

Perfidia Bal Berith sank. Into her chair, into herself. Wasn't her fault. Under normal conditions she'd have handled even someone like him. Did it a hundred, thousand times before. The ones who thought they were so smart were easiest to pretzel. He didn't even do anything that clever, she just bungled everything unforced. Mistake after mistake she recounted in multiplicative misery. Saying one thing, not saying another. This damn depression. The fucking Seven Princes. The cullings. This much stress, how was she supposed to bargain with a cool head?

Instantly she realized she could've won the argument in one strike if, when he said he would kill himself, she lied and said that wouldn't stop her from harvesting his Humanity. Didn't think, though. Didn't think. Didn't fucking think. Now too late.

Well. It wasn't a humiliation yet. She would get that Humanity, every single fleck of it. She didn't need to make a world at all—she already had one. His wish was not the first of its kind. Nobody's was. Didn't even need the ten percent Humanity she took. John Coke, 1642, back when she still worked in England. She never forgot a deal. She'd use his world. And, regaining some confidence, she realized she knew exactly how to keep Jay Waringcrane alive for the next month.