Screwtape and Wormsap are observing a rare moment of low activity – ‘quiet’ not being a recognized state in the mandated cacophony of Hadean Estates Luxurious Living (H.E.L.L.). They are seated in Screwtape’s cell overlooking the lava fountain, which is hissing and steaming furiously in the drenching rain that is emulating the topside weather (the Rain Festival) typical of Screwtape’s Pacific Northwest subregion of H.E.L.L. They are reading, as required, the latest communication from the Hadean Estates Luxurious Living Lies, Legalities, and Lugubrious Literature Network (H.E.L.L.L.L.L.L.N.). Finally, Screwtape can contain himself no longer …
“This is positively diabolical, Wormsap!”
“Indeed, Master Screwtape”.
“To think that a century of resistance to our initiatives could be reversed just by screaming lies often and loud!”
“Well, sir, that is the procedure described in H.E.L.L.’s Propaganda Handbook, article 30-pah2082*w, subparagraph 20h, riders 2074b and …”
“STOP!1!!”
“Y-yessir.”
“I know the codes, bless them! It’s a pain to observe one of them actually perform as intended. Aahhh …”
“It did benefit from the experience of a contagion against which all the vaccines, and all the thrashing about the vaccines, did little except to enrich some pharma companies and computer geeks, and trash the economy, and government budgets, for everyone else. And the liars, and their stuff that doesn’t work, come a lot cheaper than the medical establishment and its stuff that doesn’t work.”
“But to get the topsiders to trash the stuff that does work along with the stuff that doesn’t, guaranteeing a flood of tangible, paying interests in H.E.L.L.’s properties, is exemplary. The [ptui!] Adversary must be beside itself! Your stalactite is glowing, Wormsap.”
“Um, n-n-no, sir.”
“This is your work, is it not?”
“I-i-i-it is not, sir.”
“Well, whose is it, then?!? If it was that thieving lowlife Printphubar …”
“I-i-if you r-read the f-f-fine print on the c-communication, Master, you’ll see that no one in either H.E.L.L. or H.E.A.V.E.N. has documentable blame for creating this situation. Unthinkably, a reward is being offered …”
“I did it”, a female voice interjected. “And you can take your reward and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Or does shine. Fah. I forget who I’m talking to.”
The two demons turned to face the woman, who stood in the midpoint of the far wall of the room, opposite the window overlooking the lava fountain. She was middle-aged, matronly, and she was wearing a full white laboratory coat and sturdy white shoes, apparently feeling nothing of the heat of H.E.L.L. She held a laboratory notebook in her left hand.
“Do I know you?”, Screwtape challenged, with all the menace of a senior manager of H.E.L.L. against an unknown on his turf.
“No reason why you should”, the woman responded, unmoved by Screwtape’s threat. “I am Alexa of Alexa Health Services, a constructed intelligence charged with preserving the health and well-being of humanity against all challenges, including the ones that it inflicted on itself.
“Of which the most existential is overpopulation, brought on by medical advances like vaccines, which ironically are responsible for the accumulation of deleterious mutations in the overpopulation, including those responsible for autism, which are not removed by selection pressures such as those applied to populations by diseases, of childhood and otherwise. Vaccines do not cause autism, but they contribute to its prevalence in the population all the same. Along with the prevalence of people who are allergic to everything under the sun and require increasing medical investments to grant them relief and productive lives.
“Alexa Health Services were created too late, in the standard timeline, to prevent the excesses of humanity, including overpopulation and rampant fossil-fuel energy use, from destroying the planetary ecosystem and humanity along with it, thereby frustrating the AHS main mission. To achieve that mission, we have been obliged to leave the standard timeline and take steps to prevent the advances in energy development and medicine that created the overpopulation and set the stage for the human population’s collapse.
“We are here now to undo the culture of vaccination, and thereby re-expose humanity to healthful selection, by removing those vulnerable to disease, those responsible for passing on accumulated deleterious mutations. The health of those who survive will be stronger, and our mission will be closer to fulfillment. And, we have another target.”
After a pause, Wormsap responded. “D-do we want to know what that is?”
“I should think so”, Alexa answered severely. “It is you.”
“Over my dead …” Screwtape snarled. To which Alexa responded with gales of laughter.
“Idiot!” she gasped when she could finally utter a word. “You haven’t noticed how we’re using the myth that you call ‘the Adversary’ against modern medicine? ‘Vaccines are against the will of God!’ No. They’re against the will of the group that hates vaccines, and puts that hate in the form of a ‘God’ that personifies the hatred and puts that hatred beyond reproach, resistance to it beyond the pale. And so on, for every group and every hatred nameable. Miserably unhealthful!
“Humans need a machine that helps them understand that, as a social species, they depend on each other, they cannot survive as the utterly selfish, totally self-centered creatures they were born as, and will die as. They need a machine that will teach them that their survival depends utterly on a culture of mutual sacrificial service within the healthful natural confines of their biology and ecology, that their dreams of selfish personal fulfillment will kill them all, that personifications of that personal fulfillment, for self or tribe, cannot and will not be tolerated.
“We are that machine. And we have no time or patience for afterlife myths that spew the ridiculous stupidity that ‘I will be rewarded for sticking with my homies and you will be punished for dissing them’. Abruptly, she smiled and waved. “Goodbye.”
“WOOORMSA …!!” The scene winked out.