A Fable for the Third Millennium
Albert Armstrong was a good boy. He sang in the church choir and was always polite to his elders, especially his parents. He believed that as a result of his good and virtuous habits God would keep him safe within His Mighty Hand. It therefore came as a shock and disappointment when, at the age of seventeen, he sat with his mother in the doctor’s office to hear the bad news.
“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Armstrong, but there is absolutely nothing I can do.”“But why, doctor? I mean, how did this happen?”
“It started before Albert was even born, my dear. The defect was present in his genes, and was there from the moment of conception. It wasn’t anything he did or didn’t do, or anything you could have prevented. I’ve put Albert’s name on the waiting list for a transplant. You must face the fact that without a transplant his heart will not last past his eighteenth birthday.”
“But why, father?” Albert later asked his parish priest. “We cannot look into the mind of God,” the priest intoned. “His thoughts are too mighty for us to understand, and His Ways are too deep.” ‘Very useful,’ Albert thought. “Then what must I do to get God to help me?” he asked the priest. “I pray every night and I always…….” “God does not make bargains, Albert; only the Devil makes bargains, and his price is more than any sane man would pay.”“I’d pay it, father! I don’t want to die. I don’t want them to cut my heart out and put in a heart from somebody’s dead body. I would make a deal with the devil, I would!”
“Now you don’t mean that, Albert. Think of what you’re saying! What if the Devil should hear you?”“I hope he does! I hope he does! Are you listening, Satan? I’ll do whatever you want! Just don’t let me die!”
The Devil, of course, heard Albert’s plaintive cry very clearly, since he has ears everywhere and is always listening. When he arrived that night in Albert’s bedroom the Devil turned out to be a small man, very neatly dressed in a black three-piece suit, black shirt, shoes and socks, with a midnight blue necktie his only concession to colour. He seemed polite and friendly, and Albert took to him immediately.
“Let us understand the bargain clearly, the Devil said to Albert. “I will fix your heart, and in return when your body dies, your soul will belong to me.”
Albert had read Faust and knew that the Devil would try to trick him at every turn. Every word in the deal, each shift of emphasis, could change the meaning entirely. He had to be extremely careful.
“The doctor said I could die before I even turn eighteen. Well I want twice the lifespan. Twice.”“Agreed,” said the Devil.
“And what does it mean, that you get my soul?”
“Only that you will live with me after the death of your body.” “You mean that I will go to Hell and be tortured in the flames?”
“Oh, Albert, you’ve really spent too much time in church. Hell isn’t nearly as bad as they paint it, and we do not torture people. Of course, some folks tell me that the constant 140 degree Celcius temperature can get on their nerves after a while.”
“Agreed, then,” said Albert. “I’ve always enjoyed the heat anyway. Do I sign in blood or something?”“No need,” said the Devil, and though he was still smiling the expression looked somehow sinister. “The deal is made. I will see you in thirty six years.”
Albert graduated from University with a degree in Financial Management and joined a large investment company, where he received a good wage and regular promotions. Despite several promising relationships he did not marry.
The time passed pleasantly, but too quickly. On the evening of Albert’s thirty-sixth birthday the Devil showed up in his true guise, resplendent in a blood red tunic and sporting a magnificent set of horns. His long tail swished from side to side in anticipation of the closing of a deal, and his exposed teeth could in no way be called a ‘smile’
“Time’s up, Albert. I’m here to collect on our deal.”“Fraid not,” said Albert, not stirring from his leather recliner by the fireside. “There’s no getting out of it,” Satan responded, and there was no longer any doubt about the significance of his bared teeth. “You got your double lifespan, and now I get...”
“No I didn’t,” Albert said, unruffled. “Check your contract. I distinctly remember asking for twice the lifespan; the lifespan, not twice my meager allocation. I don’t know what you think is ‘the’ lifespan for a human being, but I believe the bible defines it as three score years and ten; twice that is a hundred and forty years, which means you still owe me a hundred and four.”
From the direction of the red glow came a stream of curses which Albert, given his sheltered upbringing, did not recognise. “Arbitration!” the Devil screamed.
Albert’s ears popped and he found himself in an open space in which he apparently had no body. At one end of the space a red cloud was throbbing frantically, and at the other a white light was pulsing slowly. Albert found the white light too bright to look at directly, which he thought strange given that he had no eyes. After some time the white light stopped its slow throbbing and spoke. Albert heard the voice quite clearly through ears which he didn’t have, and the sound seemed to echo in his head, which was also missing.
“I find for the defendant Albert Armstrong,” said the voice. “The human lifespan is indeed threescore years and ten, give or take a decade or two, and may be amended only in specific instances with the explicit permission of Our Lord. Under the terms of the agreement you therefore owe Mr. Armstrong an additional one hundred and four years. I am surprised at you, Lucifer, leaving such a loophole. You should use the services of a capable lawyer in these transactions. God knows, you’ve plenty down there to choose from.”
Albert wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a chuckle in the voice.* * *
In the early hours of the following morning Albert awoke suddenly from a deep sleep to see an Angel sitting on the end of his bed. At least it looked like an Angel. Before he could clarify this the apparition spoke. “Of course I’m an Angel,” it told him. “In fact I’m your Guardian Angel, and you can thank your lucky stars I’m here! I wasn’t told the details, but apparently you’ve really pissed off Old Nick. All the Fiends of Hell are going to be after you!”
Before Albert could register surprise that an Angel would use the term ‘pissed off’ the being continued. “And if you think you’ll get any protection from Above because you did some fancy legal footwork, you’d better think again. There are limits to what Nicodemus can do to you while you’re on Earth, but they’re very wide. If you’re lucky you’ll only lose your job, your health and all your worldly possessions. You’ll still end up in the gutter, but you may get to keep your mental faculties and at least some of your five senses. Or how would you like to fight cancer for an entire century? Or MS? Maybe some nice mental illness like schizophrenia? All of the above? Oh, nothing would kill you, though you’d surely come to wish that it would.”
Albert was now fully awake, and fully terrified. He had not thought this through, he realised. He had never considered such possibilities. “What can,,,,,,,,,,,”
“What can you do about it? Precious little. You really should have thought about who you were dealing with before you picked this particular fight. All I can promise is that if you do exactly as I tell you, I think I can protect you from the worst of it. So that’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”
“First I want to know....” Albert began. “Take it or leave it!” the Angel insisted.“Ok, I accept,” Albert said, “But first I have to know….” The Angel blew him a kiss, and when it landed on his eyes he was returned instantly to the deep sleep from which he’d been awakened.
When he next awoke the Angel still sat on the end of the bed, looking somewhat less substantial in the morning sunlight. “There’s no point going into work,” she told him. “You’ll only find that all your cases have gone sour, the taxmen are doing a surprise audit, your secretary is suing you for sexual harassment, your partner is missing and a large amount of money has disappeared from your business accounts. More importantly, when you’re in a crowd I can’t always sort out your spirit from those around you, and if I’m distracted for a fraction of a second you could end up under a bus or falling out of a high window. Nicodemus has to give you another century of life I understand, but nothing says that you can’t live it out in a wheelchair or a hospital bed.”
Albert was shaking again. “But if I don’t go to work how will I live?” he asked. “My savings are good for a year, maybe two if I economise, but……”
“We really have no choice in this but to run and hide,” the Angel said, ignoring Albert’s plea for attention. “That’s not going to be easy on this tiny planet, where Nick has eyes and ears everywhere. At the very least we must get out of the city. I think I know a place deep in the South American jungle which should be fairly safe. Now call the office, resign, sell your share of the business, don’t leave any ties and don’t drop even the vaguest hint about where we’re going.”
“I don’t know where we’re going,” Albert positively screamed, “or what I am going to use for money!”“Oh, stop your wailing, boy. We can’t risk having bank accounts in your name, and anyway money is the very least of your problems; everything you want or need will be brought to you, wherever we go.”
“Everything?”The Angel sighed. “Ah yes. It’s been a very long time, and I’d almost forgotten how young flesh makes so many demands.” She snapped her fingers and the doorbell rang. “Go and let her in,” the Angel said. “If you don’t like the blonde there are brunettes and redheads in the car. Excuse me if I don’t stay for the debauchery.”
Two weeks later Albert thought that he’d found heaven. The Angel had assured him that from the air the compound appeared to be just another stretch of dense jungle, and,since Satan did not work well with wild animals, his eyes and ears in this place should be severely limited. While the Devil’s minions would be searching every city on earth from gutter to rooftop, the Angel believed that Albert’s chances of living out his lifespan undiscovered here were very reasonable. And he had everything! Everything! He was the master of a sizeable estate. He had a smart sailboat on his own private lake; a huge mansion, with an Olympic sized pool; Satellite television — one way signals only; the Angel had warned that Satan is no stranger to high technology and was probably monitoring every telephone call on earth for news of Albert’s whereabouts. His home theatre was the size of many commercial installations, and his huge party room opened onto the swimming pool, which looked lovely in the evenings with its underwater floodlights turning the water turquoise.
If Albert missed the company of his few close associates, the many new friends supplied by his Angel provided ample reparation.* * *
Looking back, it was hard to put his finger on the exact point at which things had started to go sour. Neither did he know when his occasional evening glass of brandy had become a two-bottle-a-day habit, but he suspected that it had developed rapidly over his second year of captivity. He had started to think in terms of ‘captivity’ as an apt description of what he’d previously called his ‘witness protection program’. Certainly, his Guardian Angel was doing everything possible to make his forced isolation as comfortable as possible, and if he ever doubted the soundness of her plan he had only to call up the picture she’d described of the revenge that Satan had in mind. He saw himself in an Intensive Care ward, semi-conscious, tubes in every orifice, a cocktail of drugs dripping into his veins and puzzled doctors clucking over him, whispering “It’s a miracle that the man is still alive.” Albert blessed his Angel daily, and the Good Lord who had sent her. He could well believe how the Devil’s wrath increased by the minute, and shuddered to imagine what it would be like to face such anger. His Angel had made it perfectly clear that, should Satan discover their whereabouts, her small powers would be a candle flame against a gale.
Albert hated feeling trapped, at the same time thinking that such feelings were an affiont to the being who went to such enormous efforts to keep him safe and happy. Nevertheless, his surroundings looked more and more like a gilded cage, and he felt daily more and more like a prisoner within it.
His new friends brought gifts to him, powders to be sniffed and smoked, liquids to be ingested or injected, but his Angel intervened to prevent their effect. She warned him how such substances could corrupt him, and how the ease of mind which they initially brought would rapidly turn into something which could consume him. Unaffected by these pills and powders Albert returned to his beloved bottles.
His first suicide attempts came halfway through his third year of captivity. He climbed into a hot bath and slashed his wrists. They did not bleed. He climbed to the highest peak of his mansion and hurled himself to the concrete a hundred feet below, where he lay for a while and then rose and walked away, unbruised and unscratched. Firearms in the house would not fire for him; no blade would hold an edge sharp enough to cut his flesh. In the end he gave up, and reluctantly accepted life.
He lost his appetite for the fine food and drink which had so pleased him earlier. He ceased to enjoy the company of his ‘friends’ and stopped calling for them.
And the disapproving glances of his Angel shamed him to the core.In the end he took to his bed. He realised that his emaciated body had become so weak that if the house were to catch fire he could not rouse himself to escape. He didn’t care. He lay on his bed, not eating, not drinking, wanting to die, but knowing that his Angel would not allow that to happen.
He lapsed into fitful sleep, fearful of the nightmares which always came. And as he closed his eyes he saw a strange thing; the golden radiance which surrounded his Angel seemed to turn pink, and then red; her golden halo was replaced by a set of large, pointed horns.
“Damn,” the Devil realised that he had relaxed a little too early. It was difficult, keeping up this outward appearance day after day. But it was worth the effort; he now had the Armstrong fool exactly where he wanted him. “It was only an hallucination; a trick of the light” He slid the thought easily into Albert’s mind and watched the man sink into a deep, troubled sleep.
“Sleep well, fool,” he murmured. “Enjoy the dreams I will send you. And tomorrow you are mine again. All of your tomorrows for the next hundred years.”
* * *A Chinese proverb warns “Beware of what you wish for; You may get it.”
American psychologist Abraham Maslow long ago explained how a man has many needs, and will strive to satisfy them according to a sequence of priorities. Basic needs are for food, water and air, without which he will die. When these are satisfied he will seek to fulfill higher needs, such as a finding a warm, safe place to sleep; and then above this are social needs which can include a spouse, a family and a circle of friends. But his highest needs, at the very top of the pyramid, relate to the need for meaning in his life. He must achieve success by his own efforts, and he must know that his achievements are respected and revered by his peers. It is essential to a man’s well-being that he should feel needed, wanted and appreciated by the society in which he moves.
The Devil knows well that in order to destroy a man you need only provide all of his basic wants and needs and then make it clear that nothing is expected of him in return. Eventually he will come to feel unneeded and unwanted; he will feel his existence to be pointless — as it will be.
And he will live in Hell on Earth.* * * THE SHOEMAKER’S CHILDREN
A Fable for theThird Millennium
Like his father before him, Tom Lastman made fine shoes. They may have cost a little more than the footwear you could find down at the market on a Saturday morning, but everyone said that a pair of Lastman shoes would easily outlast five of the cheaper ones. Some claimed that Tom’s shoes were handed down from generation to generation in their families, and that their children wore Lastman-made shoes which once graced the feet of their grandparents. Others said that this was a story put about by the Lastman family to sell shoes, and fights had started over this issue in many a bar on a Friday night after work.
Tom did so well that he opened a second shop in a nearby town, and then a third. The three shops did well, all operating on the Lastman principle that it was good economy to pay a little more for a pair of shoes which would probably outlive you.
Tom Lastman had three sons, and when he made his will he thought how splendid was the numerical relationship of son to shop, and so he left one to each. He then promptly died, passing out of the story before we even got a chance to get to know him properly.
At the wake the sons drank well and not too wisely from old Tom’s cellar, and afterwards they went down to the pub, where they toasted and roasted the old man by turns, generally agreeing that he had performed well in the role of Dad, and had left them with few complaints. The three were on the point of calling it a night when a fresh flagon was brought to their table not by the serving maid, whose beauty and desirability had been increasing throughout the evening, but by a well dressed young man who poured four steins, including one for himself, and joined them at their table.
“Forgive the intrusion, gentleman,” the newcomer said, “But I knew your father by his excellent reputation, and I feel it remiss of myself that I did not contact him with a view to establishing a professional relationship. This I hope to rectify by establishing such a relationship with the three of you. My card.” The card read:
TechnoMagics Corporation
Hi-tech Solutions for Industrial Problems Richard Chipset: Sales Representative.
“Quite right, too,” said Mr. Chipset. “Magic to amaze you. Magic to make your lives easier. Magic to make you rich!”
“What kind of magic would that be, Mr. Chipset?” asked Don, the youngest Lastman .
“Any kind you like, dear fellow. Any kind you want. Any kind you need. Call me Dickie. Everybody does.”
Pushing back his chair with a loud squeak, the salesman stood. From the inside pocket of his smart blue blazer he drew a slim wand, black and tapered. Holding the wand in his left hand he twisted a control on the end with his right, and pointed the implement at a distant dingy wall at the back of the inn. The few other patrons, as well as the innkeeper and his barmaid, were by now watching as intently as the brothers.
“TEK-NO-MAGICS,” intoned Mr. Chipset. “Gigabite and Megahertz, Microchip and Pixel.”The lamps spluttered and went out, leaving only the dim glow of a streetlamp which seeped in through a dirty window. In the darkness the body of the TechnoMagics salesman seemed to gyrate slowly as he continued his incantation.
“Cable-network-online-printer,” he hissed. “Shared-logic-intelinside,” The last words were the merest whisper. The room was deathly silent, save only the innkeeper’s asthmatic breathing.“LASER OUTPUT!” screamed Chipset. From the tip of his wand a bar of scarlet fire lanced across the room to burn its message into the dirty yellow plaster.
“MINIS! MINIS! TECHNO HAS ’EM”The lamps spluttered back to life, although the room was now eerily illuminated by the light from the blood red letters, which glowed in the wall like hot coals.
“You’ll be paying for the repairs to yonder wall, Chipset” said the innkeeper.The salesman ignored the comment and resumed his seat at the table. “Now gentleman, let us speak of the conversion of your footwear factories into paragons of productivity by means of the miracles of Technomagics. And, you lucky lads, if you sign today you’ll get an additional home computer thrown in free, a video game entertainment unit for the kids and a five percent kickback under the table. So who’ll be first to put his mark on the bottom of a contract?”
Ron was the first to find his voice. “I’ll have none of your satanic devices in my factory, Chipset,” he hissed. “Infernal machines taking food from the mouths of hard working shoemakers, indeed! Machines that can think, you say; Machines made in the image of Satan, I say! I’ll have none of it, I tell you. Not in my shop! Never in my shop.” Kicking his chair to the floor Ron stormed out of the room. The sound of his hob-nailed Lastman boots on the cobbled street faded rapidly into the distance.
“Well, we know where he stands!” Chipset purred around his omnipresent smile. “What about you then, Don?”“I’m all for it!” the youngest Lastman enthused. “Thinking machines to run my equipment! No labour problems and no payroll! It’s a dream come true. All I’ll have to do is laze around dictating memos to my secretary and taking long six-martini business lunches. That’s the life for me, Chipset! Where do I sign? (Oh, and do you think you could throw in a copy of GrandTheft-Auto 99 with the video game set?)”
“Done, done and so you will be. Sign here, here and there.” Smiling broadly, Don Lastman left the inn after his brother.
“And you then, Jon? With the option of a large screen plasma T.V. in place of the games unit if you so prefer. Sign here and here“Not so fast, Chipset,” the middle Lastman brother pushed the contract back across the table. “I see some possible use for your magic machines, but we’ll talk about it in my office tomorrow after the rum fumes have cleared from my brain. You know how to find me, I take it?”
“You betcha,” Chipset said. “Shall we say two p.m.? Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do lunch?”“Two it is then,” Jon said, swaying gently as he made his way to the door.
* * *
Ron Lastman had labour troubles almost from the first hour. In fact it was ten minutes after nine on the first Monday morning, his chair barely warmed by Ron’s butt, when a small group of men entered his office without knocking and took up a confrontational stance on his green shag carpet.
“We represent the new Cobblers United Craftsmen’s Unified Union,” the biggest of the men said. “CUCUU for short. We’re here to deliver a list of our demands.”
That’s nice,” Ron said, intending to diffuse the situation with charm and a cooperative manner. “If you’d kindly leave your list with me I’ll be sure to study it carefully and get back to you next week to begin negotiations.”
“The list is outside on the forklift truck,” the big man said. “And the demands are not negotiable. It’s pay up or we’re all out. We expect the new pay scale to come into effect immediately and the paid holidays to be retroactive for the last five years. We may have a little flexibility on the question of company cars for all employees, but not much. And overtime at time and a half after four hours in any twenty four hour period is a given.” Ron sighed. “Well, I’ll look at the list as soon as I finish my morning coffee and I’ll be back to you with my comments before noon. I can’t be fairer than that now, can I?”
“Comments? What comments? We don’t want your comments, Sunshine, we want your signature on the collective agreement. I told you we’re not here for negotiations, we’re here for your answer. Now is it ‘yes’ or is it ‘yes’?”
The strike didn’t last long as the new union and Ron’s shoe factory went bankrupt together at the end of the third week.“We won!” chanted the men, marching arm-in-arm to the unemployment office.
“I guess you did,” said Ron, marching with them.
* * *
Don Lastman had a fine time the first week, while the TechnoMagics technicians installed their thinking machines in his factory. Don spent the time driving around in his company car and taking his new secretary for three-hour business lunches. The following Monday morning the mayor was on hand to press the ‘Go’ button, and the local paper featured the picture on their front page under the caption ‘Local Shoemaker Goes Hi-tech.’ Everyone said how smart Don looked and marveled at how he’d found such a well-built secretary who could type at seven words per minute with hardly any errors.
The machinery’s productivity was tremendous. In the first eight hour shift, when a manned shop might have produced twenty or twenty five pairs of shoes, the automated TechnoMagics machinery produced seven hundred and twenty four shoes. This result was somewhat marred by the fact that all seven hundred and twenty four were left shoes, but this was rectified the following day when the equipment whooped and growled and spat out seven hundred and twenty four right shoes. It was a real pity that some glitch in the program caused all of the shoes to be a man’s size sixteen.
An order for five dozen spiked running shoes was filled in two days, whereas the same order could have taken up to two weeks if the shoes had been hand-made. Of course, a human cobbler would probably have known that the spikes were intended to go on the outside of the shoe.
On the fifth day the automated plant produced two hundred ballet slippers, made out of cardboard, and one hundred boxes in which to ship the slippers, all made from the finest Doeskin leather. The automated shipping machinery then sent the entire shipment to Anchorage, Alaska, while the Royal Ballet in Winnipeg received a shipment of seventy pairs of Mukluks.
By the end of the first month Don’s profit and loss statement was clear, simple and decidedly lopsided. His expenditures ran to six digits while his income, in round figures, was a round figure. When Don met Ron at the unemployment office it came as a shock to both brothers.
* * *Jon Lastman spoke at length with Dickie Chipset and then spent the next day at TechnoMagics Head Office. He spent a particularly long time with the designers in the engineering department, and saw demonstrations of various types of magical thinking machine. In the end, Jon decided that he would not allow any kind of equipment to take over the work of his craftsmen, since the reputation of his products rested squarely in these men’s hands. However, Jon saw many possibilities for the magic machines in his office, warehouse and shipping departments, and before he left he placed a substantial order.
The equipment arrived and was installed. The mayor was not present to press the ‘Go’ button, and the entire operation was low profile. The teething troubles began the following day and lasted through the first six months. Fortunately most of the serious blunders made by the magic thinking machines were caught by the men, who did not make one thousand pairs of ladies’ shoes with three-foot heels, even though the specifications called for this. The correct order — ten pairs with three-inch heels — was produced and dispatched. The machines accurately added up columns of figures, kept track of stocks, and simplified the office routine immensely.
Jon Lastman and his little company prospered, and in due time Jon opened a second factory in an adjacent town, and later a third. His wife bore Jon three sons, and in the fullness of time Jon made his will, leaving a factory to each son. He also left them each a letter to be opened in the event of his death. The letter read:
“Dear Sons:There is magic involved in the making of a fine pair of shoes, and it is important that you learn to use this gift wisely and well. There has always been magic in the world; it has appeared in many guises and it has been called by many names. Once it was called sorcery, once wizardry, it has been called witchcraft and alchemy and, more recently people have come to know it as high technology. Regardless of what it may be named, magic is a poor slave and a worse master. Never let magic do your thinking for you or make your decisions, and if you use it to work for you, be vigilant always. Do this, and you will make good shoes and run a good business. And you will thrive and prosper.
And, in the fullness of time, they did.