“Is … is that a smile, Master Screwtape?”
“Why, yes it is, Wormsap. Does this concern you?”
“Well, s-s-sir, if it’s directed at me, yes.”
“Oh? And why would that be? Do I detect a guilty conscience?”
“N-n-nothing more than usual, sir. After all, this is He …”
“Hadean Estates Luxurious Living. Give the company its full name, demon.”
“And its full due? Always and of course, sir.”
“And you think that my smile is a threat of immediate peril directed at you?”
“T-t-that is what it means for practically all of the animals on this planet, and, as you k-know, sir, it was one of our biggest coups when we were able to confuse the topsiders about this and get them to associate the sounds and gestures of a death threat with the concepts of joy and mirth. S-s-so …”
“So you can stop thinking you’re that important, which you’re not. I wasn’t thinking of you at all, I was thinking about these latest sales figures. It’s normal to get a spike during the leadup to our territory’s winter solstice, but this year’s is bigger than normal. The whole ‘Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays’ argument we started, with its ‘War on Christmas’ theme for this season, is a contributor, of course, and there are the usual investments made during the Christmas shopping madness that we stoke. But there’s a late shoulder to the spike that isn’t wholly consistent with the annual crop of ‘I didn’t get what I wanted’ estate purchasers.”
“Oh. That would be the ones who didn’t get to see that their gifts weren’t what they wanted until after it was too late.”
“Hm. Tell me how I did this.”
“Quickly done. We’ve been tempting the topsiders with online purchasing for years now. Instead of having to put up with the crowds at the shops, you just whip out your cell, and, by tapping a few button icons, put yourself irrevocably in the hands of our agents, the creditors. Not only are you disconnected from the process of overspending your money, you’re disconnected from the process of acquiring a thing and getting that thing to the intended recipient. You press ‘Purchase’, and, abracadabra, the gift gets to Grandma.
“Well, this year, we got so many folk suckered onto the online buying system, all thinking that their gifts will get to their intended recipients the second the purchase is made, that the delivery system broke down, under the sheer weight of numbers. The bad weather we cooked up didn’t hurt, either. Millions of packages didn’t get where they were supposed to be, and millions of souls made down payments on our properties by cursing everyone up and down for the delivery failures. Except themselves, of course.”
“Diabolical. Grandfather will be pleased with the stratagem, and if there’s follow through on these initial investments, it may be brought to the attention of Lucifer Himself.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Didn’t I just finish telling you that you were not important? Get to work processing these investment applications. Or my next smile will be at you!”
“Y-y-yessir.”
Shop early.