Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

The Devil shook his head. “That’s a new one on me,” he admitted. “But-” He frowned. “You’re sure? No second thoughts? You want to waive your mandatory fourteen-day right of cancellation?”

“Aye. Dae it the noo.” Davy nodded vigorously.

“It’s done.” The Devil smiled faintly.

“Whit?” Davy stared.

“There’s not much to it. A rock about the size of this pub, traveling on a cometary orbit-it’ll take an hour or so to fold, but I already took care of that.” The Devil’s smile widened. “You used your wish.”

“Ah dinnae believe ye,” said Davy, hopping down from his bar stool. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw Tam dodging through the blackout curtain and the doorway, tipping him the wink. This had gone on long enough. “Ye’ll have tae prove it. Show me.”

“What?” The Devil looked puzzled. “But I told you, it’ll take about an hour.”

“So ye say. An’ whit then?”

“Well, the parasol collapses, so the amount of sunlight goes up. It gets brighter. The snow melts.”

“Is that right?” Davy grinned. “So how many wishes dae Ah get this time?”

“How many-” The Devil froze. “What makes you think you get any more?” He snarled, his face contorting.

“Like ye said, Ah gave ye a loan, didn’t Ah?” Davy’s grin widened. He gestured toward the door. “After ye?”

“You-” The Devil paused. “You don’t mean…” He swallowed, then continued, quietly. “That wasn’t deliberate, was it?”

“Oh. Aye.” Davy could see it in his mind’s eye: the wilting crops and blazing forests, droughts and heatstroke and mass extinction, the despairing millions across America and Africa, exotic places he’d never seen, never been allowed to go-roasting like pieces of a turkey on a spit, roasting in revenge for twenty years frozen in outer darkness. Hell on Earth. “Four billion fuckers, isnae that enough for another?”

“Son of a bitch!” The Devil reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an antique calculator, began punching buttons. “Forty-eight-no, forty-nine. Shit, this has never happened before! You bastard, don’t you have a conscience?”

Davy thought for a second. “Naw.”

“Fuck!”

It was now or never. “Ah’ll take a note.”

“A credit-shit, okay then. Here.” The Devil handed over his mobile. It was small and very black and shiny, and it buzzed like a swarm of flies. “Listen, I’ve got to go right now, I need to escalate this to senior management. Call head office tomorrow, if I’m not there, one of my staff will talk you through the state of your claim.”

“Haw! Ah’ll be sure tae dae that.”

The Devil stalked towards the curtain and stepped through into the darkness beyond, and was gone. Davy pulled out his moby and speed-dialed a number. “He’s a’ yours noo,” he muttered into the handset, then hung up and turned back to his beer. A couple of minutes later, someone came in and sat down next to him. Davy raised a hand and waved vaguely at Katie: “A Deuchars for Tam here.”

Katie nodded nonchalantly-she seemed to have cheered up since the Devil had stepped out-and picked up a glass.

Tam dropped a couple of small brass horns on the bar top next to Davy. Davy stared at them for a moment then glanced up admiringly. “Neat,” he admitted. “Get anythin’ else aff him?”

“Nah, the cunt wis crap. He didnae even have a moby. Just these.” Tam looked disgusted for a moment. “Ah pulled ma chib an’ waved it aroon’ an’ he totally legged it. Think anybody’ll come lookin’ for us?”

“Nae chance.” Davy raised his glass, then tapped the pocket with the Devil’s mobile phone in it smugly. “Nae a snowball’s chance in hell…”

I went to Los Angeles to burn down a house.

It was a low-stress conflagration. Just a run-of-the-mill house-burning sequence for a television miniseries. It was working-titled Tribulation Alley-set in a post-Rapture world populated by a lot of recently reformed agnostics and the odd Anti-Christ.

Because it was television, we wouldn’t be filming the fire in any serious way.

You see, real flames don’t look good on TV.

Most of the high-budget holocausts you see on video these days are computer generated. With a real fire, it’s too hard to get the continuity right, even with a multi-camera shoot. It actually takes about an hour to burn a house down properly, so you have to jump cut too many times. But the vast rendering farms employed by Falling Man FX (mostly located in Idaho, I think) can reduce a house to cinders in an attention deficit disorder-friendly twenty seconds.

On top of the timing issues, the yellows in a really kick-ass blaze are too sallow for digital video. They have a sort of jaundiced reticence, which we punch up to a hearty crimson glow. It’s not reality, but it looks better.

Despite the limitations of the physical world, Falling Man still burns down the odd house now and then. We study the results carefully, just to keep ourselves honest. For reference, basically, and to get a few fresh ideas. So out to LA I went, matches in hand.

The Tribulation crew had evidently used the house only in exterior shots. It was empty of furniture, completely unfinished. It had a Potemkin-village flatness, the walls paper-thin and bereft of plumbing or wiring. For the first day and some, I had the crew install paneling, to keep the walls from burning through too fast, and spread some rolls of old carpet on the floor, to get the smoke right. Even though most of us haven’t seen a house burn down, we know instinctively what it should look like. And if we don’t, our kids will. That’s our Golden Rule at Falling Man: every generation of movie-goers needs better and more expensive special effects.

It’s a philosophy that keeps the money rolling in.

About lunchtime on the second day, I was satisfied with the flammability of things, and we wrapped until that night. This house-burning scene was in daylight, according to the script, but we always burn at night for better contrast. Sunlight’s one of the easiest things to add: full spectrum, parallel light. An idiot can make the sun shine.

Besides, real sunlight doesn’t look good on TV. Except for the golden hours of dusk and dawn, the sun is a tacky, garish creation, which blows out what little contrast exists on digital video.

I should have gotten some sleep before the big burn. I was still on New York time; passing out would have been easy. Maybe if I’d been better rested, I wouldn’t have gotten myself killed that day.

But I was on the company dime, so as I was driven back to my hotel, I contemplated the tiny minibar key that was attached by a tiny chain to the smartcard that admitted me to my room, the rooftop sauna, and the ice machine.

I’ve always been fascinated with mechanical keys. I guess a lot of computer geeks are. Very early crypto. And a fascinating email screed had recently been forwarded to me. It proclaimed that one’s status in society bears an inverse relationship to the number of keys in one’s possession. The lowly janitor has rings and rings of them. The assistant manager has to get in early to open up the fast-food restaurant-the boss comes in later. And as we climb the economic ladder, more and more other people appear to open the doors, drive the cars, and deal with the petty mechanics of security. So here I was, boy millionaire in the back seat, armed with only my hotel smartcard and that tiny signifier of minibar privilege, as miniscule as the key for some diary of childhood dreams.

Much like the empty pages of a blank book, this small key had limitless power over my imagination. I felt in its tiny metal teeth the ability to consume six-dollar Toblerone bars and twelve-dollar Coronas. To pick through exquisitely small and expensive cans of mixed nuts and discard all but the cashews. Indeed, in my initial reconnaissance of the bar, I’d spotted a child-sized humidor in the back, no doubt offering cigarillos of post-Fidel provenance and jaw-dropping price. And all these miniaturized delights would be charged to Falling Man.