LUCIFER'S FOLLY

Soon as the guards left, the Devil returned. I could tell without looking, because of the faint popping noise he made every time he blinked into existence, and the low, static crackling hiss that occurred throughout his visits. He was hard to look at anyway. Even though he was transparent, it hurt my eyes to gaze on him; like frying eggs. His novelty had worn off quickly once I had deduced that he was less a magical creature than a technological one. His appearance was generally identical to medieval representations of him, but the horns were obviously not real horns, but only his means of transport, as they gave off UV rays and an ozone stench as they made the sizzling noises. Man had gotten a lot less gullible since the dark ages. Lucifer read my injuries with his staff as I lay, half conscious and broken, on the cold concrete floor in a pool of mucus, sweat and blood.

"You're going to die", he advised. "That last jab of the stick ripped your duodenum. It's leaking stomach acid into your abdominal cavity. You'll feel the burn worse and worse as your senses return. This pain will become unbearable. You think you're tough, but, same as all the others, you will scream and beg for medical attention for about 16 hours before you die. They'll say you died of "ulcers", and no one will pay for murdering you. The surveillance tape of your agonizing death will be shown at parties for entertainment, same as any animal trophy slaughtered for sport.  You will not be allowed any dignity, not even in death or after it.

He was trying to goad me into one of his schemes. He could not affect our world except through us. From what I could gather through our conversations, he was like a social scientist playing the ultimate video game. He got some kind of reward for pulling history off its natural path. He could move to any location in history, but not into the future. This year, 2084, as the present, was a roadblock to his powers, since nothing beyond this had occurred yet. He could not affect the past, either, except through the present. This is why he needed me. He wanted to take me back to a crucial fork in history, save some man's life, and thus irrevocably change the world in a cascade from that point forward to this present. This one good deed, he said, would redeem my mortal soul and guarantee an everlasting life of joy in heaven.

There was nothing on my soul that needed redeeming, and likewise nothing on it that warranted a lake of fire. When I told him this, he spat a mild curse, became pensive for a moment, then tried to appeal to my self interest. "YOU want to survive, though, don't you?" he asked. "By helping me, the changes you will have wrought result in your never having been beaten by these guards. In fact, prison life for everyone here vastly improves: better food, less harassment, fewer beatings, more work, more purchasing options, better visiting, more space, health and longevity."

"That equals nothing to me," I croaked through chapped, swollen lips, my breath blowing dust and filth up from the cement floor. "I want to have never been lied into prison. Or just freedom," I hedged.

"Or those guards could beat you some more with their rubber hoses," Lucifer threatened. "YOU should take my offer before you are too weak to perform the task."

Lucifer was handicapped in who he could manage to enlist for his crimes. Most everyone he approached went insane with terror upon recognizing him. (I assume his intent was crime, despite his explaining it as saving a life. Four thousand years of folklore tends to make this the more logical assumption.) Still, mere survival has the hope that further improvement is possible. The white-hot pain in my side spread up to my left lung. Hurting too badly to get up, I simply replied, "Let's go do it."

Lucifer bent down to touch my shoulder, his horns made an electrical BURZAP! sound. We appeared in an opulent, old-timey-looking room, full of curtains, wooden furniture, lace doilies, plastic lamps and oil portraits from a century ago. An ancient HDTV blared football noise and lights. An expensively attired man of late middle age sprawled on the thick carpet where he had fallen from a plush recliner. He lay unconscious and twitching, blue-faced and gagging. A bag of pretzels spilled nearby, some of them crushed from the man's thrashings. Crumbs were everywhere around and on him. Both hands still clutched at his throat.

Suddenly I recognized the place and time. This is the point in history where everything about America abruptly took a sharp left turn due south. This man had died, and another had taken up the reins of power, causing an explosion of war, military attacks, mass murder, lawlessness in govt, prison-building, torture, psychopathy of authority, mindless pursuit of profit, smothering pollution and every other conceivable social ill borne of extreme selfinterest and unquenchable greed. All the history I'd read, listened to or had piped into my cranial datasac marked this event as a major tragedy of greatness cut short.  When Son-o-Bush died, so died America's promise of a new golden age. Morality was not restored; corruption and graft continued and increased in depravity to the present. Somewhere Lucifer had gotten some bad information, and I was going to be the one privileged to set things right!

This happy knowledge energized me. Despite the broken ribs, searing gut and host of other hurts and pains, I dragged myself over to Son-o-Bush. My fingers fished the pretzel out of his windpipe. His lungs sucked and gasped. The blue drained out of his face. His eyes cracked open to gaze dully at my horrified expression. I scrabbled around desperately, collecting several pretzels to jam down his throat, but Lucifer yanked me up in his iron grip. "None of that:" he commanded with a deep-throated chuckle.

Soon as I had removed the pretzel from Son-o-Bush's throat, an additional history had appeared in my mind. Both were much the same, except for one big difference: prisons had gotten more humane, exactly as Lucifer had promised, but life outside of prison had gotten a lot worse. People were dirty, poor, diseased and ignorant. It was like prison had expanded, replacing freedom with surveillance, industry with dispair. Cops and the military were everywhere, forcing production out of a grudging citizenry while a wealthy, elite few flew the skys overhead to and from a network of heavily guarded cities that contained every vice, privilege and pleasure known to man. A two-class society of miserable workers and luxury parasites had been achieved, separated by heavily armed and armored, uniformed psychopaths, trained from birth to crave their duty of forcing obedience upon a thoroughly cowed populace. Comparing the two histories side by side, it was clear that the overall misery was far less with Cheney having taken over from a choked Bush than with Bush being saved to ravish mankind. No one deserved such a fate, so I determined to undo my act somehow.

This new history made me strong, same as if I had never been beaten by the guards, as indeed I hadn't. Lucifer did not seem to realize this, or notice the resolve in my face as he gloated before taking us back to the present. That sneer of his rankled. He did not see the lamp coming until its heavy brass base bashed into his forehead. Lucifer grunted, staggered backward, then fell. His horns flew off his head and clattered across a long, polished table. By instinct, I dashed after them. They were like a hat, so I put them over my temples. They crackled with static.            Blue lightening struck. They took me to the last time they had been used for temporal transport. The sun was exceptionally bright, as if the air had been scrubbed clean. I was in a big city, among hordes of people standing, sitting and lying around on the sidewalks and grass as far as I could see up and down a curving, four lane road lined with tall buildings. Some steely-eyed cops roared by on heavy, obsolete motorcycles to arrogantly park in the middle of two feeder-streets, deliberately blocking access. Two more cycle cops took up positions, their radios squawking loudly as they scowled and grimaced alertly over the crowd and into the distance. Many people readied ancient cameras as they craned expectantly up the street. Far ahead, three black limousines approached. A tall man with a movie camera stood high up on a stemwall, patiently waiting his turn to make a very famous , very short film. An overwhelming wave of joy and pride washed over me as, suddenly, I knew where I was and what I should do. I'd make this the BEST day of the 20th century, though on one would ever know it. Politicians would fall. Statesmen would re-take the field. Altruism and fraternity would banish incompetence and malice. The true golden age would resume:   I would make Mr. Zapruder's famous film become ordinary and blase'. I sprinted up the road to warn Jack and Jackie.  .           .