Saturday, February 6, 2010

Chapter 34 : Evaluation

where we learn how tempting is measured.

Phew, what a month. January always means a lot of paperwork, as we have to do the "temptation accounts". It doesnt' limit itsemf to counting the souls brought down : Every tempted soul, every not tempted soul, every action or observation, every minute spent on the field has to be documented, justified, evaluated. To be honest, my performance last year was pathetic, which is normal given that I had virtually no formation as tempter, but which earns me nevertheless teasing and insults from my cotempters on a daily basis. The evaluation table, displayed at the wall of the office, looks like this:

The most points went, of course, to the ambitious tempter Lemalin and his rival, the wannabe-succubus Gharz. Wazaah is an old stager, his old fashioned methods earned him a good third place. But even Schlok, the depressive demon of despair, got a soul down and almost 1000 points. As for me... Don't mention it.

You might wonder how the points are calculated. Well, there are mainly two things which earn you points: Souls and sins. Tempting is actually not so much about sins but about attitude, the best sin doesn't bring a soul nearer to hell if it regrets it. Sins are for attitude what symptoms are for an illness. But attitude cannot be measured, sins and souls can, just as you can measure the gravity of a disease by it's symptoms and letality. Every soul brought down and every sin earns points according to complex tables and formulae.

Some demons rather focus on attitude, hoping to bring a maximum of souls down to Hell, whereas others only collect points with sins. Schlok belongs to the latter type. He doesn't even try to bring a soul home, he spends his time wandering around and jumping on occasions to make someone sin by despair. The soul he brought down was luck, a depressive and anorexic young woman who didn't need much help to commit suicide. I think it was a success or Infernal Marketing rather than of Schlok; decades of world wide anorexy propaganda with Barbie dolls and scrawny supermodels weren't in vain. But administration requires specifying a hunter for every killed prey, and as Schlok was at the right moment on this bridge to whisper "You're fat!" into the ear of the skinny girl in tears looking down into the black water, he got his soul on his hunting table.

(Don't ask me why suicide can bring a soul down. I don't make this kind of decisions, neither do my superiors, neither Satan Himself: The Enemy makes the rules, he sends down whatever soul he thinks has separated itself from Him, and Hell takes what it can get.)

Anyway, I need to improve my performance. Maybe I should talk to my "friend", the old librarian. He may have some tips for me how to hunt souls.

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