The Lifter's Paradox [Round One: the Great Golemworks!]

Chapter Three: Imp-erium

Incarnations of Greed, truth be told, weren’t necessarily the best businessmen.

According to Hellish’ most recent Top Six-Six-Six, six of the ten wealthiest devils in Ix-O were incarnations of Envy, wouldjabelieveit. Of course Hellish and other “life”-style magazines were slanderers and panderers to the one, and Hellish’s readership was notoriously dominated by Enviers, so those figures were not to be trusted. Charles, who in spite of his residency in the underworld had never been one to look beneath the surface of things, bought utterly into the stereotype of the rich, pampered Envier, always bitching and moaning about how easy life was for simple poor working Gluttons and Slothers. No appreciation for what they had. Typical. Anyway.

This place wasn’t a hell, in spite of a certain cosmetic similarity. The anthrometric silhouettes strung along in rows were quietly compliant as they were dipped into various molds and furnaces; they betrayed not a hint of agony, let alone remorse—besides which, they appeared to be made out of dirt. This was a production facility. Ashes to cash-ins, dust or bust. To an imp in search of opportunities, this was church. Hajulellah, blessings unto Cain.

The imp flitted along as best he could, his already-deficient wings pinned awkwardly by the Zippo (now his only possession in this world!) strapped to his back. Plus he had maybe an additional ounce of saltwater soaked into his clothes as a result of an incident that already seemed like another life.

Onwards and upwards, all that.

“When opportunity knocks,” his father had always said, “It’s cause He hasn’t been reading the signs. ABANDON HOPE. BEWARE OF DOG. WIPE FEET BEFORE ENTERING. Opportunity is a solicitious bastard who needs constant reminding.” Or maybe Charles was mixing things up. Maybe it was “When opportunity knocks, make sure He knocks on the gate of horn, rather than the gate of ivory. One admits true opportunities, the other false.” His father had been a great devil, a real left-shoulder virtuoso, and as such spoke with many tongues, instilling multiple, subtle meanings into his every utterance. This was not a skill that translated well to parenting.

“Ask not for whom opportunity knocks; He knocks for thee.” The point was that the bastard was damn well knocking. Charles was willing to admit that circumstances had rendered him a bit jittery
“When the van’s a-rockin’, opportunity comes knockin’.” That one hadn’t been Dad; it’d been Sal from down the street. Sal had been a registered Luster. Had to walk up and down the street on all three axes informing the neighborhood parents. Couldn’t help what he was. But this was no time to reminisce. Charles’ keen nose for gold, silver, wampum, and complex fiat enterprises had led him straight to what appeared to be an office structure nestled amongst three bloated stalagmites. A human, panting, recognizably one of the ones he was supposed to be killing as part of this fundraiser or whatever, was walking up the door.

“Check out the knockers on that opportunity!” Sal again. His horns, slightly pliant, had jiggled when he laughed. Rigor mortis sorted that out. Blew his brains out.

Charles took perch two-thirds of the way up one of the stalagmites, unstrapped the Zippo and tossed it at Mr. “Extremely Normal Except When He Isn’t”’s feet.

The only possession he had in the world. But a smart investor doesn’t get sentimental.

On cue, Charles’ mark stooped down to pick up the lighter. The imp swooped with what passed in his estimation for grace down onto his left shoulder, clinging to the cotton tee shirt for purchase.

The mark stood, examining the Zippo. Once Charles was certain he’d stuck the landing, he got himself comfortable, draping his knees over the rube’s clavicle and shuffling in the direction of his left ear, like a Luster on a date. “Well well well,” he said, as smoothly as he could. “Some digs these people got, eh, Norm?” The name Norm came back to him once he sensed he needed it, either through some quirk of his memory or, more likely, an expression of his infernal magicks. “Lot of money to be made in this business. What do you think they’re into, exactly? Homunculi? Simulacra? Frankensteining? Modern sculpture? Some offshoot of earthshaping, maybe.” Norm pocketed the Zippo and stepped into the lobby of the office building. “This is an exciting time for all sorts of unholy creation. Lotta market waiting to be swept up.”

The lobby of the corporate arm of Emet (so the sign above the front desk proclaimed to be the name of the organization in question) was cleaner than the outside, but not by much, due to the tendency of entrants not to wipe their feet. Cacti in clay pots provided a semblance of atmosphere plus an implicit warning not to touch things. Some of the merchandise walked around for display purposes—smiling, faceless, clay men, the Emet logo branded into their foreheads. Charles admired the craftsmanship quantitatively, in the same way that he appraised leather wallets for their thickness. The woman behind the desk had a rugged, deliberate ugliness, suggesting that her family had long favored genes conducive to high-quality sons at the expense of the daughters. Relative to one of the factory staff, maybe. “You’re the guy, right?” she asked Norm.

“Don’t soft-sell it,” warned Charles.

“Oh, I’m the guy alright,” said Norm, smiling, planting an elbow like a flag onto the counter.

“You’re just in time,” said the girl, with an attempt to smile that effectively rotated her frown about thirty degrees clockwise. “Third floor.” She indicated one of the wandering golems and snapped her fingers. “Reish-627!” she called. “Escort ‘The Guy’ up to Mr. Vespik’s.”

The golem nodded and waved for Norm to follow him. Charles admired the subtlety of both the nod and the wave—the gestures seemed to convey a personal touch. Through the quick jaunt up a staircase and down two narrow corridors to Vespik’s office, Charles watched the rippling of the golem’s back muscles as one watches the ocean—or whatever the shapes were under the creature’s topsoil; rocks, maybe, or porcelain, or merely clods of dirt, grinding against one another in desperate imitation of animate musculature. Materials. Charles always undertook to understand the processes behind any enterprise he entered, and for this was criticized by his peers on a basis of forest-tree confusion. He was incapable of living purely in the numbers and leaving the real work to the actually qualified. Still the numbers haunted him in his dreams, numbers speaking in tongues as though from a space beyond his comprehension—thirty-thirties and twenty-one-sixties in bases of sixes and sevens, vague sentiments of damnation and salvation, pluses and minuses. The world of solid things was a fleeting escape from the torment of spreadsheets, from his intrinsic nature. He shuddered a bit, steadying himself on Norm's pinna.

Reish-627 opened the door and admitted Norm into an office decorated with a shocking amount of care and precision. Every inch of the wall was covered either by bookshelves or art, clay sculptures, tapestry, mosaic—cross-cultural, a rainbow of decadence, a calculated display of worldliness as well as wealth. The foreignness of it staggered him, expanding his consciousness of his new surroundings from the immediate to the global, forcing him to confront horrifying existential macroeconomics. He’d truly been copy-pasted into a whole new universe. Scattered wall sconces traced a tangram of shadows on the floor, their flickering exacerbating the disorienting effect from the swirling chaos of the carpet pattern. Mr. Vespik himself sat at the gravity well of the room, appearing to have grown roots into a maroon leather armchair, just bald enough to accentuate the regally sunken-in quality of his temples, the textbook image of establishment. A woman sat in the corner with a clipboard, her face covered in shade and her legs in nylons. The chair offered Norm seemed to be sized for a child and he settled into it one ass-cheek at a time, apparently testing to see if his full weight would break it.

“Keep cool,” advised Charles. “Maintain eye contact and lie to him. Lie to him poorly—this is a guy who respects someone who can lie to his face, so make sure he knows you’re lying.”

“And you are…?” asked Vespik. His jowls flared like the hood of a cobra. His eyebrows scraped against his forehead like knives against a grindstone, coughing up yellow sparks.

“Phil,” said Norm. “Philip Thyrich.” He pronounced it “Thigh Rick.”

“Damn right you are,” said Charles. The woman in the corner scribbled a note. Norm maintained eye contact.

“Well, Mr. Thyrich,” said Vespik, “I have to admit I’ve brought you here more out of curiosity than any actual desire to hire you.” This, too, was a lie, or so Charles hoped and assumed. “What brings someone like you running into Emet in search of hard labor?”

“Well, Mr. Vespik, golemry’s always been a passion of mine. My enormous successes in other fields haven’t brought me the spiritual satisfaction that can only come with the creation of life for profit.”

Vespik gave a forced smile that looked rather like someone manipulating his mouth with a crude pulley system. “I’ve always felt the same way. If I were working in any other industry, by the Gods, I’d probably have up and had kids right now.” The smile fell back down to an earthy grimace with an audible snap. “Parenthood,” he intoned, “Is a messy, expensive, and distasteful business. My brother lost a fortune in the baby bubble of the ‘40s. And the cost to the environment--!”

“Unfortunately,” agreed Norm, “That industry will continue to limp along—probably on heavy government subsidy—as long as there’s a demand encoded into human biology.”

“You’re a natural at this, ‘Phil,’” encouraged Charles.

“Mr. Thyrich,” said Mr. Vespik, his tone unchanging, “It is frankly disgusting how little you’re doing to disguise the fact that you’re a spy from one of our rivals.” Charles had to physically hold Norm’s head forward to stop him from breaking eye contact as the golem slammed the door shut, blocking off his exit. “It would be easier on both of us if you told me who sent you now. It was Belazel, wasn’t it?”

“Whatever you do,” cautioned Charles, “Don’t. Stop. Lying.”

Norm smirked and leaned forward in his chair. “Why would anyone need to spy on Emet, Mr. Vespik?” he bluffed. “It’s plain to everyone what’s going on here.”

This tactic had an immediate and positive effect; Mr. Vespik’s managerial presence broke down, and the lights in the office seemed to shift so as to bathe Norm in a divine glow. The woman in the corner soundlessly lifted a hand to her face, uncrossing her legs as though prepared to run at any moment.

“You don’t know a damn thing about the work we’re doing,” insisted Vespik, weakly. “Any rumors you may have heard are slander propagated by Belazel. It’s all part of their ploy to steal the Prog contract, and it won’t work!”

Norm rose from his chair, took a step forward and planted his knuckles on Vespik’s desk. “Do you really believe that, Mr. Vespik?” he asked. “How do you expect to keep your cash cow from roaming if you can’t even fence in your pasture?”

“We’re on track to fulfill all our obligations!”

“Don’t skimp on the money shot,” warned Charles. “You’re well past factory work now. Go for the administrative position! Carpe dinero!”

“You’re on track to fulfill your obligations contingent upon hiring me to sort out your mess for you. Otherwise…” Norm swept a picture frame off of Vespik’s desk. In clattering to the floor it sent the precise organizational structure of the office into a state of confusion; the lights flickered uncertainly; Vespik’s source of power was destroyed.

The middle manager quaked in his armchair. “I’m not taken to hiring insubordinate upstarts!” he shouted, as though reminding himself.
“Of course you’re not, Mr. Vespik,” spat Norm. “You only hire uneducated locals to keep the shareholders from realizing that any insubordinate upstart worth his salt could do your job twice as well in half the time.”

“Mr. Vespik,” rasped the voice of the woman from the corner. Norm seemed to notice her for the first time, breaking his eye contact at last as he swiveled to face her. “We can have Mr. Thyrich removed from here at any time. I suggest we do so before he says more things to… influence you.”

“He’s the one who ought to be removed!” roared Norm, jabbing his finger towards Vespik’s jugular. “This office is mine by right!”

“Yes!” cried Charles. “Take it all! All that you see belongs to you! You will be as Adam in Eden—endless golems begotten of your rib! Think of the profit margins!”

“You squander the power of God,” accused Norm. “The power of creation itself! I will lead you to an age of corporate divinity! The Prog account will only be the beginning! Cast Mr. Vespik here out of my domain! I have work to begin.”

The woman quavered, fading slightly in and out of the darkness, as though trying to decide whether or not she wanted to exist. “Mr. Vespik?” she asked, desperately.

“Rosa,” Vespik responded tenderly. “I… I think he’s right.” He looked around his office tragically, the way people gaze upon their lovers in airports and train stations. “I don’t deserve any of this,” he concluded. “Take me away.”

Rosa nodded and drew a precise calligraphic rune on her clipboard. “Security,” she whispered, holding back tears.

Two golems burst through the carpet on either side of Vespik, malformed and intimidating, radiating whorls of dust. Their big, clumsy hands grabbed either of the manager’s wrists. “Take me away,” Vespik repeated softly, standing from his chair. The security golems lowered themselves back into the floor, taking the old boss with them. Charles watched with delight as the zenith of Vespik’s bald spot was swallowed into the earth and vanished.

“That was beautiful,” Charles said to Norm.

Norm giggled. The new boss stepped onto and over the desk and seated himself luxuriously in the chair, coughing as he kicked up dust. He turned to Rosa, who was now huddling against the corner like a kidnapping victim. “Get someone to clean this up,” he barked. “And while you’re at it, I need a coffee and a full status report on the Prog contract.”

“On it, Mr. Thyrich.” Rosa simply vanished. The room seemed to brighten somewhat. Charles seized his moment, hopping off of Norm’s shoulder and on to the desk.

Norm’s reaction was immediate and deployed in two stages. First, the “Oh my God, what just happened?” Then the “Where did you come from?”

“Charles. Mondo. The third,” announced the imp, as though this answered either or both of Norm’s questions. “I believe you have my lighter.”

Norm, hands shaking, reached into his pocket and pulled out the Zippo, tossing it on the desk at Charles’ feet. “What did you do to me?”

“I’m a Greed,” explained Charles. “All I did was offer a little temptation. You were the one who snatched up the bait. Opportunity knocks on wood and all that.”

“I…” Norm hyperventilated, supporting his face on his hands and his elbows on the desk. “I didn’t want this.”

“Lotta responsibility associated with your position,” acknowledged the imp.

Norm squinted. His eye contact had lost some of its verve from moments before. “Are you… are you trying to ‘Grand Battle’ me? Is this some crazy murder plot?”

“Nah.” Charles had forgotten about that whole element to his situation. He briefly considered the prospect of killing Norm. Being the last man standing would confer “a wish or a job offer,” as he recalled. This idea appealed to him but it seemed awfully distant and he had issues with delayed gratification.

“So why, then?” demanded Norm. “I don’t know how to run a golem business! All I wanted was a job working with my hands, something where I could stay out of sight, feed myself, wait for, um… for something to happen.”

Charles shrugged. “Weeeeeeeeell, that’s what you tell yourself you want.” He waved his tail. The tail always freaked humans out. “But I’ve sat on your shoulder, buddy, and believe you me you got a lotta tension you gotta work out.”

“Okay, fine,” said Norm. “One day I would like to… live more comfortably than I do now. Sure. But I know my limitations. Whatever it was that got the last guy so stressed out he had to vanish into the floor rather than deal with it, I can’t deal with it either.”

Charles made a farting noise, the fork in his tongue adding a complex harmony to the sound. “Bah, Vespik just couldn’t handle the combined force of my infernal magicks and your… je ne se what. Your mojo. We’re a pretty unstoppable team, pal. I got the brains, you got the pretty face, we both get paid. Come on, whaddayasay?” He reached out a hand to grab Norm’s index finger; Norm withdrew his hand anxiously.

“No. No no no no no. I don’t want your devil powers. How’s this for a deal: you get the job. You get to be the guy all by yourself and deal with the whatever account and take all the credit. You hire me to do dumb factory work, pay me slightly more than the other guys get paid, and never bother me again.”

Charles twitched involuntarily. “Okay,” he said, too fast. “Those terms are acceptable. Get out of my chair.”

“It’s all yours.”

Norm stood and gestured. Charles hopped onto the chair, took a seat and jerked his legs from side to side, trying unsuccessfully to get it to swivel. He frowned. “Alright, get out of here. Go down to reception, tell the ugly one that Mr. Mondo says to get you a job in, uh, the golem… molding… you can work out the details, because you’re a good guy and I trust you.”

“Thanks, I guess,” said Norm. “And for not trying to kill me.”

“Hey, what are friends for?” Charles mimed smoking a cigar, wishing he had a cigar. A chair of this caliber merited a cigar. Norm rolled his eyes and left, passing by the very confused golem still waiting in the hallway.

About a minute later Rosa reappeared in the corner, proffering a coffee mug and a binder. “Set it down on the desk, doll,” commanded Charles.

“You’re not Mr. Thyrich,” said Rosa incredulously.

“I have many forms. And you can call me Phil. Come on, sugar, I ain’t got all day. Work to be done on Prada account.”

“Prog.”

“Yeah.” Rosa deposited the binder and the coffee on the desk. “That’ll be all.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Thyrich,” said Rosa doubtfully, fading out of sight.

Charles hopped back up to the desk and surveyed the binder. Sure was thick. Had to be two hundred sheets of paper in there. He pushed it open with some effort and surveyed the opening pages. It read:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

And so on and so forth. Charles sniggered. This report could easily have defeated the mild-mannered mortal Norm, but could never stand up against his fiendish devil magic.

Performing the Summaring was a simple process. He set up a burner using his Zippo and some kind of avant garde pencil holder Vespik had, setting the mug of coffee over the fire. Then he perched himself on the rim of the mug, held his hands out, closed his eyes, and thought about money.

The coffee lifted itself in the air in droplets and spilled itself over the pages of the binder in neat lines, highlighting the salient points in a dull brown stain.

Charles flicked the Zippo closed and resumed his reading.

Blah blah blah blah the Progressive axis blah blah blah (the Progs) blah blah war against Regressive “Regs” blah blah blah blah requisitioned a single golem blah specifications impossible using current methods blah blah blah insisted that an army of high quality golems will not do, only a unique golem possessing the characteristics of a “hero” blah blah four billion Big Golds and a dukedom blah Risk assessment: blah blah blah retribution by the Progs if golem not completed to specification blah sabotage by Regs blah blah blah corporate espionage by Balazel Golemry blah blah golem achieves sentience and rebels against creators blah.

Charles of course didn’t know the exchange rate, but the coffee stain over that “four billion Big Golds” figure was so thick it was burning through the paper.

He resumed the spell, pouring a bit more coffee onto the binder. The details began to fill in. Emet has been in bad shape for a while, losing all the big contracts to Balazel. But as Balazel has already been working on building a golem army for the Regs, the Progs spitefully decided to take their business elsewhere. Their individualistic philosophy (stupidly, Charles inferred, though he was no soldier) spread to their military tactics, a harsh meritocratic training regimen designed to weed out potential destined heroes who would win the war for them singlehandedly. When this failed, they decided, hey, why don’t we just commission these guys to build us a hero of destiny out of dirt and scrolls. Emet, despite considering the Progs’ expectations to be unreasonable, needed the money from the gig to ensure their future, made some promises they couldn’t necessarily keep, and didn’t think to get paid up front.

After ten minutes’ study, Charles considered himself an expert on the ins and outs of modern-day golemry. The solution and the problem were equaly clear to him. Obviously the ingenuity of Emet’s engineers (or golemeers or rabbi or whatever they were called) was limitless, and the idea that a specified golem would be “impossible” was ludicrous and defeatist. Like all problems, this one could be tidied up by throwing vast sums of money at it. Unfortunately, pretty much all the money coming into this operation was getting promptly regurgitated out one end or another, which Charles understood to be the fault of poor oversight by Mr. Vespik, whose exact responsibilities he still did not entirely understand. By taking out some loans (stood to reason that this wartorn fantastic countryside probably had banks, especially since Emet had accrued a fair amount of debt already) and instituting sweeping cost-cutting programs across the board, he could expect to see the project completed within, say, a week.

Charles gave an involuntary shiver thinking of sweeping cost-cutting programs. The imp considered sweeping cost-cutting programs to be his specialty. Once when he was just a little guy (yeah, yeah) he’d taken a five Baalor bill, folded it up into fourths, taken a pair of scissors to it and cut it into the shape of a snowflake. Holding his snowflake up to the light of the fires of Ix-O, the young Charles had dimly realized that this was some infantile microcosm of what he wanted to do for his entire life.

When his dad had found out what he’d done to a perfectly good fiver he’d smacked the hell out of him. Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Opportunity.

Opportunity who?

Don’t be a smartass, Charles. Check it: you can shave three million off of weekly expenses by overhauling safety protocols.

Yes, master. Workers’ benefits, too; they won’t notice it’s missing ‘til well past the end of the week, unless someone gets injured or something.

Now you’re cookin’ with brimstone. Now, some of these steadier contracts we can ease up on the quality of the product now we’ve built up brand loyalty.

How so, Opper? (Can I call you Opper?) What do we, use cheaper dirt?

If you can find it, yeah. But more importantly, look how much we’re spending on the ascetic scribes who write out the whaddayacallems—the shems, the scrolls, the golems’ souls—brushstroke by brushstroke.

Jeez, Oppstein, haven’t these guys ever heard of a printing press?

They’ll hear about it when you tell ‘em about it. You’re gonna be a one-man renaissance, Charles. You’re gonna make a bundle.

I love you, Opportunity.

I love you too, Charles.