Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish

by Andrew Buckley

  At his other job, he was a baker who was quite famous for making extremely good petitesfours, small balls of baked pastry containing whipped cream and covered with chocolate. For the IRA, he picked up and delivered bombs. He had been in Ireland just last night to pick up such a bomb.

  The bomb had been lovingly crafted by an irate wife whose husband was always off at the local pub getting drunk, and as a result of his neglect, she had taken up bomb making and become exceptionally good at it.

  The Baker, the appropriate nickname bestowed by his superiors at the IRA, decided that maybe this was God's way of telling him to quit drinking. He swung the bomb off his back, set the timer, activated the device, and very quietly and slowly slid the large black box just inside the warehouse. He ran for the exit and was back in his bakery making a batch of petites fours before the sun came up the very next day, completely sober and with a vow never to drink again.

  Next to the door of the warehouse, the digital readout on the bomb began to tick away.

  29m59s

  Thirty-Two.

  Jeremiah swam around in his bowl. He'd napped for a while but couldn't remember why, and seconds later, he couldn't remember napping at all. And so he swam. The castle in his bowl was beginning to turn a bit greenish, so Jeremiah was staying away from it for the time being, hoping that it would turn back to its normal colour, although he couldn't remember what its normal colour was.

  The familiar feeling, although it played no part in the little fish's memory, returned to him. Information began to mount up in his tiny little head, but he didn't know where to throw it. Usually, he knew right away. The information just kept mounting up and mounting up, pictures, words, things Jeremiah didn't understand, but the feeling overwhelmed him. He started to swim in little circles, and then decided to hide in his little green castle just to be on the safe side.

  Pleasantries had been exchanged; Nigel had finally found that if he kept glancing at Death, then he wouldn't slip from memory quite so easily. Celina wasn't having as much luck and had to keep asking who he was. Gerald was just happy to meet new people. Eggnog, who was still plugged into the monitors, hummed a little tune.

  "All right," said Nigel assertively.

  "Yes," agreed Death.

  "Quite," said Gerald.

  "Who are you again?" Celina asked Death for the seventh time.

  They had all examined the monitors to see what the elves and the cat were up to. It had now been established that Death was in fact the Angel of Death; he'd explained his whole situation, and apologized for all the dead not dying. Gerald had explained, as best he could, his own situation, and they had all concluded that they were brought together by a divine power working as a wine waiter not a stone's throw from Piccadilly Circus.

  "So why are they using lemons?" asked Death.

  Celina gave Death a surprised glance as if she hadn't noticed him. Her head began to hurt.

  "The first artificial intelligence we created was a hamster, and we loaded it with so much knowledge that it couldn't handle it all and blew itself up. When we created the elves, we gave them a more basic knowledge of things. Their programming, outside of anything to do with Christmas, is of a more simplistic nature. They wouldn't know how to restore power to this place, they wouldn't know how to jumpstart the Santa Claus unit, they wouldn't even understand the concept of a plug socket."

  "But they understand lemons," said Nigel.

  "They're all programmed with basic knowledge of chemistry, math, biology, and physics. For example, if they need electricity, they know how to build a battery from lemons."

  "How do you think they broke their programming?" asked Nigel.

  Celina began to pace, as she thought better while pacing.

  "I've been considering that all day, and it never really hit me until you mentioned that you were once telekinetically gifted and that the Devil may have possessed that cat down there."

  "Actually," said Death, "there's no may about it, he's definitely in that cat. That's the cat that talked me into quitting."

  "And he's the same cat that was reported possessed by its owner this morning," added Nigel.

  "Okay," said Celina, "the cat is the Devil. Could the Devil possibly be telekinetic?"

  Death had the answer.

  "Yes, absolutely. In the form of a cat, I expect the Devil’s powers would be severely diminished; he'd probably even have trouble talking at first, but he would still carry a certain amount of telekinetic energy."

  "And who are you again?" Celina asked Death.

  "Angel of Death," said Death and offered his hand, which she stared at with disdain.

  "Okay, so what about telekinesis?" said Nigel.

  "Well, it's kind of confusing but I'll try and keep it simple. Recent studies have shown that people even with a small amount of telekinetic energy can affect matter on a micro-level."

  "Sounds simple enough," said Nigel.

  Celina held up a finger.

  "By influencing micro-PK levels using the mind, researchers discovered that such things as random number generators, in which the subject tries to influence the random outcome of the machine in a way that is much greater than chance, are movable within the parameters of the tests."

  Three blank faces looked back at her.

  Nigel's mind finally caught up and blinked to life.

  "So you're saying because the Devil's probably telekinetic, he was able to change the elves' programming by moving around all the 1's and 0'sand making them deranged?"

  "Oh no, they were already deranged, A French scientist who used to work for us completely buggered up their database. Since then, they've been switched off. What I'm saying is that the Devil turned them on and then altered their programming so they would obey him."

  "Ahh," said the three in unison. Gerald said ahh simply because everyone else said ahh; he really had no idea what was going on but he was quite happy to just try and fit in.

  "What's the Santa Claus for?" asked Nigel.

  "We know the answer to that," said Death.

  "And who are you again?" Celina asked Death.

  22m32s

  The Devil watched his plan slowly unfold in all its magnificence. Being forced into a cat was not part of his plan, but it had all worked out rather nicely in the end. His two new underlings were perfect, the short one sickeningly devious and the large one sickeningly scared. Two traits that made the Devil practically drool.

  The elves worked out exactly as he expected.

  These will be the first.

  The Devil had taken a serious liking to the deranged elves, and visions of an entire army of deranged elves now danced in his head.

  Maybe I could use one of the technicians to develop more elves?

  The best thing about this whole situation was that no one knew what he was doing. No one could stop him. His chance at world domination was finally here! The Devil hopped from his perch on top of a crate and weaved his way through the hundreds and hundreds of lemons, each with a piece of copper and a paperclip inserted into it, each connected to another by a wire. He jumped up to the table and sat himself on top of the large Santa Claus. This was a body that he could literally not wait to possess.

  17m49s

  Chester Kronkel, the bank manager from Upper Ramsbottom, struggled his way out of Heathrow Airport and realized that he had absolutely no idea how to find his missing client. On top of it all, Chester had absolutely no clue whatsoever that his client was no longer his client, as his client had been hit by a bus. The man who was his client was merely a penguin inside his deceasedclient's body. But Chester didn't know that. He was about to climb into one of London's famous black taxicabs when a construction worker who had recently been convinced by a black cat that he was far better suited to be an astronaut pushed Chester out of the way and climbed into the cab himself.

  "Take me to NASA," said the construction worker to the cab driver. The driver eyed the large man suspiciously.

  "That's in America, innit?" ask
ed the driver.

  "Yes, yes," said the construction worker, "now step on it."

  The cab driver thought about this for a second.

  "Right you are, then," he said and decided to drive the man around for a while and then dump him off back at the airport, tell him that Terminal 4 was actually the NASA Space Centreand collect his fare, which by that point should be quite substantial.

  Chester picked himself up off the ground as the cab sped away. A second cab pulled up. Chester looked around carefully before getting into the cab, just in case there were anymore construction workers waiting to bowl him over on their way to space. The coast being clear, Chester hopped into the cab, which had a strange, soapy kind of smell to it.

  Rupert looked back at Chester from the driver's seat.

  "My, my, you do look a bit worked up, mate. Where can I take ya?" asked Rupert.

  Chester tried to ignore the smell of soap as he closed the door and thought about his answer.

  "I'm not completely sure, you see, I was sitting at home—"

  "Well, well," said Rupert, "I knew it was going to be one of those days when I got up this morning. I tell ya, I've had a policeman in here, an escaped mental patient, some fellah in a dark robe that I can't rightly remember—"

  Chester immediately perked up.

  "An escaped mental patient?"

  "Oh yeah, didn't know it at the time, just caught the news on my break. Thought it was funny he was dressed like a nurse."

  "You're talking about the guy who escaped from the hospital in the Bahamas?"

  "That's the one, nice fellah, really, didn't seem crazy or anything. Left me a good tip."

  Chester took out a hundred pounds and waved it at Rupert.

  "I don't suppose you remember where you took him, do you?"

  "Remember?" said Rupert. "I don't think I've driven anywhere else today. Big industrial area, other end of town."

  Chester pulled out another hundred pounds.

  "I'll make it worth your while if you can get me there in ten minutes."

  "Sorry mate, traffic at this time of night's a bit rough. Make it fifteen minutes and you've got a deal."

  "Deal," said Chester, and with that, the taxicab squealed out into the flow of traffic.

  15m22s

  Thirty-Three.

  The direness of the situation became apparent as Death finished his explanation. Nigel still suspected that this whole thing was nothing more than an enormous practical joke and that sooner or later, some guy with a video camera was going to pop up and explain that the Devil wasn’t trying to bring about Hell on Earth by inhabiting the body of Santa Claus.

  "Now wait a minute," said Nigel, "if what you're saying is all true, then the Santa Claus on the table down there isn't human, he's just a robot, like the elves. And if that's true, then the Devil can't inhabit the body."

  The five of them made their way down to the warehouse. It was more Nigel's decision than anyone else's, but they had all agreed that something had to be done to stop all this.

  Eggnog lagged behind, doing some sort of a shoop de shoop dance.

  Celina wasn't comfortable with the plan of leaving the security centre at all. And she liked the idea of facing all the elves and the Devil even less. Being partly responsible for the creation of the elves, she felt extremely guilty about where all this was heading, and it was more the guilt than her wish for a confrontation that made her realize that this was the best course of action.

  "It's the Santa Claus unit, you see," said Celina. "The unit was so big and required a much larger processor than what the elves needed. Essentially, the Santa Claus unit would be the most important part of the whole project, so he would have to be the most lifelike, which we didn't know how to do. It was actually my idea to use a human brain to cohabit with an artificial intelligence processor."

  Nigel looked at Celina.

  "Basically, you've created Frankenstein's monster, just with a red suit and a round belly that jiggles like a bowl full of jelly? That's amazing, in a sick and twisted sort of way."

  Celina, who was originally proud of her idea to create a half-human, half-robot unit, began to feel deflated.

  "It's not human, by any means," she said defensively to no one in particular, "but components of its processor are human."

  "Amazing," said Nigel again.

  Gerald glanced back at Eggnog for the thirteenth time. The ex-penguin was highly amused by the little creature who had a tendency to dance for the majority of the time. He was currently wiggling his little hips in between running to keep up with the other four.

  "Why is that elf dancing?" asked Gerald innocently.

  Celina looked back at Eggnog. She'd been wondering the same thing herself.

  "I don't think he was turned on with the rest of them. Maybe the Devil couldn't change his programming the way he did the others."

  What none of them knew, or would ever know, was that Eggnog had simply been misplaced. When the other elves switched on programmed with the Devil’s evil coding, Eggnog's lifeless body laid behind a stack of crates well away from the other elf units. He probably would have lain there all day if a string of code hadn't been flung through the stratosphere, transcending time and space, redirected through the mind of a prophetic goldfish, and then thrown into the elf. The string of code made the elf harmless and also gave him the strange yet entertaining compulsion to dance. What they also didn't know was that this same string of code was mounting itself up again inside the head of that same prophetic goldfish at this exact moment.

  "So the Devil can possess the body as long as the brain is active," said Death, getting back to the subject at hand.

  Celina nodded thoughtfully.

  "The size of the lemon battery they've created down there is big enough to jumpstart the Santa Claus unit. Once that happens, the brain will be active."

  "And the Devil can hop right in," said Nigel, finishing off everyone's thought. "If he can switch bodies so easily, then why is he still in the cat?"

  "The rules of his contract are very clear; he's only allowed to possess the body he enters when he arrives on Earth. However, the rules of possession are fairly bendable, you see—"

  Death didn't have a chance to finish his sentence. The three humans, one angel, and the dancing elf had just rounded the corner of a dark corridor. Before them stood twelve elves, angry-looking ones.

  13m20s

  The Devil had been busy watching over the assembly of the battery. He'd found good reasons, or at least any old reasons, for which to chastise a couple of the elves, and he even yelled at Big Ernie for no apparent cause. With Big Ernie and Itch's task complete, the Devil was content to let them stand around for the time being.

  Itch had tried to explain to Big Ernie that going along with the cat's plan was a good idea. Big Ernie wasn't convinced.

  "But he's not cute," said Big Ernie, "cats are meant to be cute. He's scary!"

  "Look, Ernie, he's not really a cat, he's just using the cat," explained Itch.

  "Who's using the cat?" said Ernie.

  "The Devil."

  "I thought the Devil was in the cat," said Big Ernie.

  "He is," said Itch, his temperature slowly rising. He'd been through many similar situations with Big Ernie. "He's using the cat's body. We're helping him so that when his plan works, then he'll reward us. Got it?"

  Big Ernie thought hard, calling upon every bit of his shallow IQ.

  "No," said Big Ernie.

  Itch sighed.

  "Okay, let me try again. The cat is the Devil, got that part?"

  "Yes," said Big Ernie, nodding for emphasis.

  "And we're helping him because at the moment he's just a cat. Still with me?"

  "Got it."

  "When he's no longer a cat, then he'll reward us for helping him, okay?"

  "Right," said Big Ernie.

  "So you've got it then?"

  "No," said Big Ernie solemnly.

  Itch began to hop up and down as he alwa
ys did when angry.

  "You two over there!" shouted the Devil. "Be quiet and stop jumping around or I'll have you pummeled with a wooden spoon!"

  Something distressing had occurred to the Devil, although it was probably nothing at all. He knew how many elves had been created at Majestic Technologies, and he was almost certain that he'd activated all of them. Then, as he counted over the little creatures, he couldn't help but notice that one was missing. With a swish of his tail and several looks of ill contempt, the Devil dispatched twelve elves to search for the missing unit.

  12m11s

  Nigel briefly remembered what his life had been like before he woke up this morning. A respected and renowned serious crimes detective, slight gambling problem, ate healthy. It wasn’t like he was completely happy with his life, but at that very moment anything would have been better than standing in a dark corridor with twelve pairs of little elf eyes staring angrily at him.

  He leaned over to Celina and was about to ask what they were doing, as none of the elves had moved yet, when one of the elves went and moved. It was one of the elves at the front, who had a jingle bell on the tip of his pointed hat that jingled every time he moved his head. He produced a walkie-talkie from his little green jacket and spoke into the microphone.

  "This is Cuddles, we've found the missing unit and some other people."

  The Devil's voice squawked back over the tiny transmitter.

  "Other people! What other people? Who are they?"

  "Three humans and something else," said Cuddles, the something else being Death.

  "We don't have time for this, dispatch them all, bring me the unit."

  Cuddles turned his attention back to the group.

  Nigel leaned over to Celina.

  "Seriously, how dangerous can they be, they're just little elves."

  Celina didn't have chance to answer as the elves let forth a loud battle scream that would have made Celina's Scottish ancestors proud and began to charge.