Sympathy for the Devil

© 2004 Brian Wright
All rights reserved.

Hi, everyone. I'm Ron and I'm baaaaad.

I haven't always been like this. To tell the truth—and that's not a word I use often these days—I was something of a geek before my luck changed. Jaywalking was one of my more dangerous pursuits. To grab a crust, I felt obliged to live my life without any risk, soldiering away at a routine job with a computer software company in Redwood, California. But, deep down, I always thought of myself as a geek with big ideas.

Did I mention, by the way, that I now own the company?

Here's how I did it.

You know those games where the protagonist gets bigger and stronger and nastier as he ascends through the various levels? I wanted to end up like that, top dog. How exactly, though, does a wage slave get to break off his chains and put bread, lots of it, on the table? Straightforward criminality never appealed to me—you can get hurt robbing a bank. There had to be less risky ways to bite the hand that was patting me on the head for being a good boy.

Even when a trainee developer named Stephanie Beazle joined the company and showed signs of liking me, I couldn't work up too much enthusiasm. She seemed a little reserved for my taste, but I got the impression of a warm glow under the cool exterior. A chick with potential. The trouble was, I couldn't take my mind off my interrelated problems of being poor and not being rich.

So there I was, working late to finish off a trivial piece of work one evening. That sounds like typical geekish behaviour, I know, but it gave me the opportunity to do some exploring with noone else in the building, seeking out any info that might give me an edge, like the password to our payroll system.

I signed onto a video-conferencing workstation to contact a fellow slave in our sister company in Seattle (incidentally, that also now belongs to me). However, it wasn't Dougie at the other end. I thought at first it was a new guy we had taken on, and then realized the background scene wasn't familiar, either. The open-plan office had disappeared, replaced by what looked like a plush but old-fashioned study. There was even a log fire burning in an open grate.

I was thinking the connection had somehow been scrambled when the guy spoke in a resonant baritone voice. "Surprised to see me, Ron?" This was either the most amazing coincidence or something was out of kilter. Even as a nobody, I always favoured the laid-back approach. "Excuse me, but do I know you?"

He didn't answer that one. "Just call me Nicholas," he said. I studied him more closely. Bushy eyebrows and bushy hair and bushy grey beard, but with an expensive business suit draped over his portly frame. He looked savvy and mean, and I'd seen those eyes on every sharp operator I'd ever met. But with him, it was real bad. Christ, I thought, Gordon Gecko in Jerry Garcia's body!

"What's this all about?" I asked, starting to warm to the man for no good reason. Maybe because he was bringing something different into my boring life. "I'm here to do you a favour," he said. "Several favours, in fact." I hid my rising interest under a geek's reply. "What makes you think I want your favours?"

He seemed very sure of himself. "Oh, you will, Ron, you will," he said silkily, stroking the shrubbery on his chin. I wondered about disconnecting at that point—the guy looked and sounded several bits short of a byte. But what, I argued with myself, if he was some eccentric sugar daddy handing out cash and God knew what else to anyone he came across in cyberspace? Why should I deny him the pleasure?

There was still a huge question mark over how we had gotten through to each other, but I decided to leave the technical issues for another day. Better to concentrate on what he was offering. After all, I wasn't going anywhere, in every sense of those words. I could tell he knew I'd made up my mind. Although he smiled in a way that didn't reassure me, his question lifted my hopes. "What do you want more than anything else, Ron?" This is it, I thought, this is where Daddy Warbucks hands over a million bucks to Little Orphan Ronnie.

However, I tried playing it like I had ice water in my veins. "Oh, peace on earth, an end to global warming, Michael Jackson for president, all the usual things." "That's crap, Ron," he said. "What you want is what everyone else wants, the best for yourself." I had to stop myself from nodding in agreement.

He suddenly became very businesslike. "Come on, Ron. Let's stop playing games. What you want is health, wealth, and happiness for Number One, right?" "The health part isn't so important," I said, in a last desperate attempt to sound cool. I was disconcerted when he took me seriously. "That's good, because health isn't our strong suit. Now wealth and happiness...!"

He seemed to accept my silence as a signal to go on. "Let's just say I'm in a position to do you a lot of good, but you have to agree to go along with what I propose. Is it a deal?" "What do I get from this deal?" I asked. "You get three wishes." "What do you get?" "Oh, nothing much," he said, disarmingly. "You have to pay a simple forfeit, that's all." "What kind of forfeit?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Just think of it as a Go To Jail card." Yet he was smiling as he said it.

You're probably thinking I should definitely have pulled the plug at that point. The guy was nuts for sure—and I was nuts for even listening to him. But what if his offer was for real? This could be the chance I've been looking for all my life, I told myself, as my blood suddenly felt closer to boiling than freezing. Something in me, though, the last traces of geek perhaps, held me back. "Come on, Ron," he urged. "Don't be a geek all your life." Interesting choice of phrase. Was this guy a mind-reader or what?

"One little word and it's all yours."

Even as he said this, I was shocked to see the picture start to break up. His voice grew faint. "One little word, Ron." Just before the screen finally went black, I shouted out, "But when will I see you again?" The words seem to reach me down a very long corridor. "When you're ready, Ron, when you're ready."

I remained at my desk—thinking—for a long time after that. We all lead fantasy lives these days: fantasy action on our screens, fantasy money in our pockets, fantasy women in our heads. Were my wildest dreams about to turn real? Okay, he didn't look as I would have expected, you know, like in the old story books. But who was I to criticize someone's appearance, or even dress sense, sitting there in my old sweatshirt?

I gave some thought to the forfeit he'd talked about. It won't be so bad, I told myself, a little on the warm side, to judge from the open fire, but probably no worse than Vegas on a bad day.

I could hardly wait for the next evening, even failing to respond when Stephanie, with an inviting little smile, stopped to chat as I stood by the water cooler. I won't pretend I wasn't flattered. She was a nice-looking chick in an insipid sort of way, more than good enough to grab my attention as a rule. But it felt as if I was no longer living by the rules. I had already volunteered to work late again.

When everyone else had gone, I signed onto the same workstation and hit the buttons for Dougie's number in Seattle. I held my breath for a moment, but somehow I wasn't surprised when the shaggy figure appeared once more in the same mahogany-panelled room. The fire in the background seemed to be banked even higher.

"Yes," I said to the monitor screen.

I could tell he knew what was on my mind, which seemed kind of reassuring. But he only gave me another of his wolfish smiles. I smiled back.

"Good," my strange new acquaintance replied. "Now let's get down to business." He still looked like a pensioned-off hippy, with a sharp suit and attitude. Examining him, I had a stab of doubt, but then recalled the next-door neighbours in "Rosemary's Baby." They hadn't looked the part either. His words, too, were soothing. "No need to be nervous, Ron. This is the first day of the rest of your life. And the sooner you make a wish..."

His voice had become a sort of purr. Even if I wanted to—and I didn't—I had no choice but to go with the flow. Funny that, since it was something I'd been doing it all my life. But at last, I decided, the tide was getting me somewhere. I took it easy, though. That way I wouldn't feel too foolish if I'd totally misread the signs and the guy was just a fruitcake. The wish was also a basic test of his credentials.

"I want Martin Carlson's job," I announced. "Ah, the senior developer." He'd passed that one with flags flying and bands playing.

Now, Carlson was the fittest forty-year old I'd ever come across. He cycled ten miles to work every day, for Christ's sake. He'd been with the company for several years and showed no signs of wanting a move. Someone had joked that it would take a stick of dynamite to shift him.

All it took was a Ford pickup driven by a hungover farmhand, in fact, and Carlson's entry into the big-time trial in the sky was posted the very next morning. I didn't feel any guilt—I'd only made a wish, after all; I hadn't pulled a gun on him or anything like that. I was appointed to his job two days later, chiefly because of my recent track record of working late. Ironic or what?

A bonus of the promotion—almost better than having my own cellular office—was the interest it aroused in some of the young office chicks. As I flirted with one nubile miss, the flush of jealousy on Stephanie's cheeks seemed to confirm my suspicion about the fires burning inside her. Since she looked more attractive with a scowl, I put her on my mental to-do list. With any luck, she'd soon be one in a long queue. My new friend was going to help out in that respect. But first things first.

He looked smug when I next contacted him, more than ever the ageing flower child high on need and greed. "I trust any doubts have now been put to rest," he said. "Never doubted you for moment," I replied, jauntily. We exchanged smirks. The D-word was on both our minds, I could tell, but if he wasn't going to mention it then neither was I. "What is your wish this time?" he went on in his pompous but direct way.

Give the guy his due, he didn't waste any time on useless ceremonies like hello and goodbye. Following his example, I came to the point. "I want to be rich." "No problem," he replied.

As the picture vanished, I half-expected to see a bag of gold materialize on the desktop.

The next day I was sifting through a load of stuff in one of the cupboards in my new office when I came across a CD in a brown paper envelope addressed to the U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese company, a main player in the computer games market. A letter in the same envelope explained that by my late colleague Martin Carlson was offering them a game he had invented.

As I scrutinized my find, Stephanie was making liquid eyes at me from across the room. I tried to ignore her—after all I'm the boss man now, I thought—but she kept glancing over. She was dogged, I gave her that. In the end I had to shut my door.

I downloaded the disk onto my PC at home that night and gave the game the once-over. I realised its potential almost at once. A whole generation of nerds are growing out of Doom and yet retain an interest in fancy graphics and stupid electronic music and virtual mayhem and violence. It gives purpose to their lives, I suppose.

Carlson's game was designed to attract the older, more sophisticated nerd. The extra ingredient it offered was sex, what else? Not only was the main protagonist a gorgeous Amazon, but many of her opponents were also drop-dead babes, growing outrageously pneumatic and shedding ever more clothes as the game went through its various levels. There were kinky little touches everywhere.

He may have been a programming genius with a shit-hot imagination, but Carlson was still a geek. He'd have received peanuts for his program, even if it went on to make millions. Instead, I took the software to a friend of mine, a salesman with a small but progressive company based near 'Frisco. He was as excited by it as I was and we decided to go into partnership to patent and market the game. He sold his house to help start up the business.

The rest is history. The game, with the name I'd given it of "Bullets and Bazooms," was a killer from the off. Within months it was a bestseller on the West Coast and then across the States. We soon moved out of our one-room operation into a palatial office suite, taking on a number of bright young designers and programmers to develop new products.

With my newfound wealth I was getting all the action I could handle—of the blonde, brunette and redhead variety. But Stephanie was still giving me the moo-cow look. I promised myself I'd get around to her eventually. I'm all heart.

I resigned my job when the business really started to take off, but not before I spoke to Nicholas one more time. As well as my final wish, I wanted to have a full and frank discussion with him. Get things out in the open. Ask a question or two. After all, we were men of the world—or netherworld, in my benefactor's case—and surely nothing he said was going to surprise me.

In fact, I was in for several shocks.

Although the blaze at his back was now stoked high enough to cast a sinister radiance across the room, I could tell right off he was in a good mood. "Hello, Ron," he said, smiling. That was shock number one. "You'll be a millionaire inside six months." He was just voicing my own thoughts. "Yeh, thanks." "No need," he said, cheerily. "Tell me, what is your final wish?"

Now I had thought long and hard about that one—it was a toss-up between being irresistible to the opposite sex and another of my cravings. Money can buy me love, I'd finally decided. "I want to be the most powerful man on earth," I said.

"No problem."

This time the picture didn't disappear. As he continued to gaze benevolently out at me, I let rip with the first of my questions. "You're the Devil, aren't you?" "The very same," he said, looking pleased with himself and stroking his beard until it curled into a point. In spite of myself, I couldn't suppress a little shiver.

"No need to worry, Ron," he reassured me. "I've received bad press, that's all." He was still smiling, so I tried the one that had really been bothering me. "Why are you doing this? For me, I mean." "Let's just say you've received good press."

Now that really threw me.

When he saw the look on my face, he said, "You see, Stephanie likes you. In fact, she likes you a lot. She's always singing your praises, but trouble is she's shy. Kept on at me until I said I'd speak to you. Underneath that prissiness she can be mind-achingly persistent." I just sat there stunned. "It's quite simple," he went on patiently. "Stephanie is my daughter." As I digested his news and wondered why I hadn't spotted the family resemblance, he carried on talking and told me that Stephanie had decided to leave 'home' and take up temporary residence in California.

"Perhaps it was the closest she could find to hell on earth," I joked, weakly.

He laughed at that one, but then grew serious. "It would be nice to think of her going down there as some sort of payback for what the other side did all those years ago," he said, "but it's nothing of the kind. Do you know, she actually likes small furry creatures." He shuddered briefly.

"Unfortunately, she hasn't got my nature," he continued. "She never liked it here, thinks all the people are trailer trash or worse." His voice dropped. "She was an accident, you know. Her mother was a Borgia girl, I think. It's never happened before or since."

He sounded sad and disappointed and looked every bit his age—whatever the fuck that was. It's the only time I can recall feeling sorry for anyone but me.

There was a silence when he finished. "So how do you feel about things, Ron?" I thought about them for a nanosecond. "Fine with me," I replied, making a vow to be extra-nice to Stephanie when I saw her next. I asked if he wanted me for anything else.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" he prodded gently. "The forfeit," I remembered. He nodded gravely. "No problem," I joked. "I look foward to meeting up with you when I die."

"Oh, you'll do that anyway, as a consequence of accepting my offer in the first place. No, the forfeit isn't your soul." My thoughts were dwelling uncomfortably on tortures that involved red-hot pincers, or perhaps pokers, when he said, "Your forfeit is to spend time with my daughter."

What could I say? I didn't want to upset the old boy, after everything he'd done. There was also the danger that the wrong answer would cause him to hurl a thunderbolt up my arse. Anyway, I told myself, she's not such a bad-looking chick. And surely, given her antecedents, she would have no objections to my playing around while we were seeing each other.

"Fine with me," I said. Nicholas grinned through his beard. "You know something? You could be the best thing that's ever happened to my girl." His next words were almost the most shocking part of our discussion. "She'll expect you to marry her, of course."

So much for living in sin.

There was one consolation: some of the sexiest—albeit most wicked—women who have ever lived were waiting for me over on the other side. I've always had a thing about that chick who liked partying and killed off half the population of Rome. Yeah, Messalina. I put on my casual voice. "I imagine, um, marriage is forbidden down there?"

"Oh, no, you'll be with Stephanie through all eternity," he said. Mention of her name was accompanied by a grimace. "Though I have to warn to warn you that it might seem much longer than that."

As it happens, Stephanie has been content to stay in the background while I have my fun. Just as long as I say now and again that I love her. But I can see what her dad meant. There's nothing more wearing than a chick who likes people and, worse, thinks bunny rabbits are cute. At least she keeps out of my affairs (of every kind).

I plan, in fact, to have one hell of a time during the remainder of my stay down here. I've discovered all sorts of talents I never knew I had; they just needed to be kick-started into life.

I bought my old company within twelve months of handing in my notice. I had to force the owner's hand, it's true. Some industrial spying here, computer viruses there, a spot of jiggery-pokery with share prices, and almost any company, no matter how big, can be brought to its knees. After much practice, I have the technique down pat. When gentler methods don't have the required effect, a little brute force can work wonders, so long as it's dressed up to look like an accident or act of God. Ironic or what?

I'm growing richer and more important with every day, every hour, every minute, that passes. Computers rule: yesterday America, today the world. Everything has been mine for several years now, ever since my partner and I had a falling out. Well, he did the falling to be exact, several thousand feet from a mountaintop. As always, I was somewhere else at the time.

It hasn't just been hard work—I've had a load of laughs along the way. For instance, there was our takeover of a major software house down in Mexico. The head honcho had been particularly obstinate until an incident involving a car, a hairpin bend, and faulty brakes ended his resistance. His two young sons were in the vehicle with him. How we roared when I told my father-in-law that the owner's first name had been Jesus!

We talk all the time these days. I no longer have to call him up by computer; he's in my head whenever I want to chat. Since he uses the same method to shout at Stephanie, it's truly made me feel part of the family. I know I'm only related by marriage, but it means I have a whole lot to live down to. Rest assured that I'm doing my worst.

Being the richest businessman in the world is simply for starters. Not long now before my last wish comes true. I'm a shoo-in for the next presidential election.

I think Stephanie understands that what I'm doing is preparation for life over on the other side. Meantime, she stays at home and out of my business—and is no doubt at this moment planning what drapes she wants for the White House.

She's a sweet girl—all the more remarkable given her background—but she can be surprisingly stubborn. I would like us to have a child together; and I'm sure nothing would give Nicholas greater pleasure. I don't know why, but she seems reluctant. It's about the only time she looks like her father's child, fire in her eyes. I'll talk her around, though, because my powers of persuasion are getting stronger all the time. I'm even developing a purr like her old man's.

In fact, I'm getting to be more and more like Nicholas. I've even thought of growing a beard, would you believe? It reflects my admiration for him. And, in return, he shows me a good deal of affection.

There's no secret to our relationship.

I'm the Son he never had.

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