#fantasy bureaucracy which *sounds* like it would be so boring but somehow it just works???

[walkthemaze]

Not me losing my mind over how good “The Hands of the Emperor” is.

I subjected my eyes to a 1,000 page ebook and finished in 4 days. Every minute of free time for the last two weeks has gone into reading more in the series. I never write down quotes but I have more than 50 from this book. I cried (good tears) on multiple occasions. I WILL be making art at some point (a promise and a threat). If you like stories about kind people working to change the world for good while trying to reconcile their own place in it, do yourself a favor and read it.

[iraacundus]

The Sins of Angels

devil!Taeyong soulmate!au 

Genre: fluff, fantasy, smut, angst Words: 10k

warnings: sex (incl. degredation), swearing

better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven - Paradise Lost, John Milton 1667

You weren't a bad person, but clearly, you hadn’t been a great one either. You had to figure that was the case as you stood in a really long queue at the front desk of Hell. There were some people around you crying and screaming, but most people just stood in stony silence, waiting until they reached the end of the queue.

It was a casual four weeks later when you reached the front, which for Hell you supposed was quite quick. You wondered if it was meant to unsettle you, to form part of your eternity of torture, or maybe that's just how long bureaucracy in the afterlife took.

“Name and time of death?” You finally heard be called out to you. You had to think for a second, the hours of standing in the queue had really started to rot your brain.

“It’s y/n and I died on the 3rd March 2020 at 9:58pm” You said, having no idea why you knew your exact time of death, but the desk man wasn’t surprised and therefore it must have been something dead people just knew. The desk man handed you a gold coin.

“Straight ahead to the gates, tell them you’re going to the second circle,”. You took the coin and nodded. “Have a terrible time,” he said, sounding so bored that you were sure he was having a worse time.

No sooner had you step away from the desk to contemplate your impending doom before he called you back.

He stared down at the old 1980’s computer in front of him in slight disbelief, hitting the side of it three times just to make sure it was actually working properly. Seeing that this made no difference the man shrugged and motioned for you to come closer to the desk.

“Just had a message from the boss man, turns out your wanted down where the real actions happens,” he said taking back your coin. He placed it carefully back in its box before reaching down below his desk and fiddling for a moment.

“Could you come round here and stand beside me?” he asked, you noted his tone had become much more polite ever since he had read his computer message.

“First interesting thing to happen at this desk in ninety years,” He said looking at you, eyes not blinking for a slightly uncomfortable amount of time before pointing down to where he had been fiddling.

“This is a passage to the City of Dis. It’s a ten hour-long fall and it hurts when you get to the bottom, but it’s that… or ten hundred years of torture to get there and we don’t have that kind of time.”

“Don’t we have all of time,” you questioned, Hell had always been marketed as an eternity of suffering.

“You mean to say,” the man began, “That you would actually prefer to endure the ten hundred years of torture?” He was incredulous, you didn’t think his eyebrows could lift any faster.

Neither seemed like a good option, but you couldn’t possibly die twice so one hard fall had to have been the better option. You looked down at the endless dark hole, trying to contemplate what was being proposed here.

“You don’t really have a choice, please jump down the hole, you’re really holding up the queue, I’ve got targets to meet.”

You couldn’t ascertain whether the last part was a joke or not, but you had realised that overthinking wasn’t helping anyone. You took one last look at the man at the hell desk before launching yourself into the depths of Hell.

You screamed for about the first minute, before realizing it was pointless, you had a long while to go until you hit the ground. You pondered about why you might have ended up where you were, cursing that in real life you hadn’t bothered to study the nine circles of hell, that might have given you a clue.

About three-quarters of the way through your fall it started to get lighter again, but also hotter, it was exhaustingly hot, worse than Death Valley in the summer hot. You felt like you had been falling for much less than a few hours, you weren't sure if time worked the same way in eternity. You almost wanted to cry but the thought that an eternity in Hell could be worse though, which somehow comforted you. Even though you knew that it could get worse and probably would.

-----

It was a while longer until you finally hit the ground. It hurt like every single bone in your body had broken. You just lay there, contorted.

“Oh... That looked like it hurt!” You heard someone exclaim from above you. You half-opened one eye to see a boy staring down at you. All you could notice was that he was very good looking, something you had noticed about desk boy too now that you thought about it. Every bone in your body may have shattered, but if all the people in hell, looked like the men you had seen so far... your complaints were limited. A fact which truly made you think you had really lost any sense of reality.

“You need to get up ... you haven't reached your final destination.” He said. You swore under your breath before pushing yourself onto your hands and knees, something that induced the agonising pain all over again. The good-looking guy just stared at you with a wicked grin.

“I have all the time in the world babe quite literally infinite time, but the person we are going to meet does not have infinite patience. And- and I can’t stress this enough - he's really fucking scary so stand the hell up,” he grabbed your arms lifting you to your feet, shaking his head, “get the hell up, did you not appreciate what I did there.” You stared at him blankly.  

“My humour is wasted in this bloody city.” He complained.

You said nothing, you had literally no idea what to say to this man, if he even was a man.

“I’m Yangyang by the way,” he continued, “one of this city’s finest fallen angels, fell straight from heaven into the ladies' hearts.”

Now you were standing up you realised the light you had seen was just endless fire, the only break in the fire was a stone path that didn’t seem to have an end, at least not an end that you could see.

The fire was filled with burning souls in the distance, the screams you could hear were unnerving, you wanted to somehow disappear. Yangyang didn’t even seem to hear them, the screams of hell must have become just a faint music to him over time, like radio music in a shop.

You followed closely behind him as he led you along the fire-lit path. As you got closer to what you presumed was the city of Dis the sound of a distant roar of voices got louder and louder, but there was still no end in sight.

“What did you get kicked out of Heaven for... if it’s not rude to ask?” You were trying to create any sense of distortion from the horrifying surroundings.

He laughed, the fire reflecting against his face that still held the same wicked grin.

“I’m not offended and even if I was, this is Hell, people are rude all the time it doesn’t matter. Here in Hell you can do what you want babe. There is only one person youwill have to listen to; Lucifer himself. Most people listen to the fallen angels too, but I fear you will end up being more important here than me.”

You knew in theory who Lucifer was, fallen angel, cast out by God. Somehow though, you hadn’t expected him to exist even after you got to Hell, you assumed he was just created to scare children and adults alike. The idea of fallen angels was also a foreign one to you, you hadn’t even known there were more people like Lucifer.

“And to answer your question, I got kicked out of heaven for being too fun,” he said, laughing mostly to himself. You doubted that was the official reason he got kicked out, even if he decided to justify it as such.

-------------------------

The walk came to an end at the edge of a vast canyon. At the very bottom, you could see a very grand building surrounded by markets and various other buildings. In the rock face, there were many entrances and balconies which people seemed to live inside.

“We don’t have to jump do we?” You asked, feeling like you had done enough falling for at least the next six lifetimes in Hell.

“There is a lift.”

He said like it was very obvious, and you were stupid for even suggesting otherwise, even though he had seen the end of your bone breaking fall.

The lift wasn’t like any modern-day one, more like one you would have seen in a mine shaft in centuries past, just bigger. There was a large queue for the lift which Yangyang didn’t seem at all bothered by. He grabbed your arm and walked through the queue, the sea of people parting as the jumped back in what appeared to be fear. You couldn’t understand why; Yangyang seemed nice enough.

You stepped into the lift and clung to the side as the door shut. The metal groaned slightly before beginning to lower. You could see each of the levels more clearly now, there were four distinct areas above the ground floor.

“The city is the 6th to 9th circles of Hell,” Yangyang explained, “For people who committed worse crimes, treachery, heresy and all that.”

“What is the second circle?” You asked back, hoping he could provide you the answer to your biggest question.

“Is that where you were headed?”

You nodded.

“Just before I was told to jump down the hole and ended up here, I was originally meant to go to the second circle.”

Yangyang just laughed but didn’t bother to answer the question and you weren’t brave enough to ask again.

The metal began to screech again as the lift hit the ground floor and the gate began to open. The people waiting at the bottom also immediately moved back when they saw Yangyang step forward, pushing you off the lift and past the crowd.

Yangyang set off walking, through market, after market in which everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was the odd scream of pain here and there but there were more screams of laughter, more voices chatting and bargaining.

As you got closer to the centre of the floor the buildings got bigger and grander, some of them almost palatial.

“That’s my house” Yangyang said pointing to a large building to the right of you. It looked quite nice, even if a drunk man had passed out on the front steps.

“You can get drunk in Hell?” You asked.

“Ninety percent of the people here are drunk ninety percent of the time.” Was his answer.

You walked for a few more minutes before reaching the gate that surrounded the grandest building of all, Devil House, Yangyang informed you. The gates were opened by two guards as you approached, how bowed at you both as you passed. Yangyang walked you up to the door before knocking six times.

After a minute or so the doors opened seemingly by themselves. Situated behind the doors was a grandiose entrance hall made out of black marble, a gold chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

You looked at Yangyang expectantly for him to explain what would happen next, but he said nothing, the wicked grin gone from his face. For the first time he actually looked somewhat scared.

You suddenly noticed a man standing at the top of the staircase. He was staring straight down at you with a glare that could have killed, ifyou hadn’t already been dead.

“My Lord,” Yangyang managed to choke out, he stared down at his feet, his hands fidgeting. When you looked back away from Yangyang, the man, who you guessed was the Devil, was standing right in front of you. Blood red hair, perfect jawline, flawless skin - out of all of the good-looking men you had seen here so far, he was the most perfect.

He reached out and kissed your hand.

“Welcome to Hell, my love, my name’s Lucifer, but you can call me Taeyong,” he said.

-----------------

You woke up in a bed with some of the softest pillows you had ever felt, you sat up slowly, taking in your surroundings, not knowing how you had ended up there. The bed you were on was the only piece of furniture in the completely white room. There was a door at the far end of the room and a window that looked out onto the fire and darkness below.

You stood up carefully and walked over to the window. You could see the guards still standing by the gate and a few people fighting in the corner of the street.

A light knock came at the door.

“Come in?” You replied after a brief pause, realising that the person knocking was assuming this was your room.

The door swung open and Taeyong, Lord Lucifer, walked in. You froze where your stood by the window, even though he was standing about ten meters away from you.

If Taeyong sensed your fear, he chose to ignore it,

“I hope you're comfortable, I had one of the women change your clothes, I figured you would prefer that,” he said. You looked down, where your previous dust-ridden clothes had been was now a silk nightdress, you raised your eyebrows slightly. It was a beautiful item of clothing but slightly on the revealing side for meeting a man you didn’t know.

“Isn’t that very nice of someone who is meant to be the Devil?” you asked him. He looked you dead in the eyes and tilted his head slightly,

“If you want me to be mean darling, that can be arranged... but I would prefer if we could be civil.”

You nodded, once again lost for words. You couldn’t remember much about your life, but you were pretty sure that in life you had always had something to say. Yet since you had gotten to Hell you were more often than not lost for words.

You started to remember the events of the previous span of time, you remembered falling and meeting Yangyang. Yangyang made you feel comfortable, you had many questions and hoped maybe he would be able to answer them.

“Could I maybe talk to Yangyang,” you asked. Taeyong shook his head.

“No.” His lips rested in a firm line; you were starting to understand why Yangyang said he was someone to be afraid of. Yet with a life of torture already assured you felt you had nothing left to lose.

“I’m just gonna say it,” you began, ‘what is going on here, like what’s with the whole situation, I don’t remember anything about my life, or even how I ended up in this room, all I know is I jumped down a hole, met Yangyang, who was definitely scared of you by the way, and ended up here right now. I know that you are the all-powerful Lucifer, but you won’t let me see the one person I vaguely know or trust.” Taeyong just smirked out your outburst.

“You don’t always get what you want in Hell and I wouldn’t make a habit of trusting fallen angels” he replied.

His lacklustre reply stirred a deep sense of anger within you, you found it really hard to tolerate people who thought they were better than others.

“Is this my torture? Because if so, you guys are using weird tactics these days... like rather unorthodox if you ask me, I think I might rather just be burnt.” You instantly regretted the comment about being burnt, “But also please don’t burn me.”

To your surprise Taeyong half smiled at your comment.

“I’m not torturing you; I assure you that definitely involves classic techniques like burning people to death. In fact, I would argue that fact fate has left you lucky.”

“What does that mean?” You asked. Taeyong shrugged.

“There are worse things in death than having to marry me.”

You blinked about ten times in a row, the words gone from your mind again, blank.

“Sorry one second,” you said, holding up four hand, “can you just elaborate on that, because last time I checked I wasn’t engaged to any devils.”

“Not any regular devil, theDevil.” He corrected, before looking down at the expensive watch that was on his wrist, “I have to go and sort some things out, feel free to look around the house, just don’t leave and don’t interact with any of the staff around the house.”

You didn’t have time to formulate a reply or protest before he was gone, door shut perfectly, as if he had never even been there.

You sat around in silence for a few minutes before becoming curios about your surroundings. Your room was totally empty so you hoped the rest of the house wasn’t as such or it would have been a rather dull house tour.

Fortunately, as soon as you stepped out of your room you were faced with a very different sight. The corridor had a plush red carpet lining the floor and paintings and tapestries lining the walls.

You entered room after room, most of them just empty bedrooms, though none as empty as yours had been. As you ventured a little further into the house you began to find more interesting rooms.

There was a corridor that constituted only of studies another that had what seemed to be conference type rooms with long tables and lots of chairs. Around the other side you finally came across the dining room where there was food laid out on the table. A whole feast that you didn’t dare touch for a variety of reasons.

A man stood in the corner of the room, when he saw you enter, he bowed down just as the guards had, something that unsettled you.

“In case you wanted to eat,” the man explained, gesturing towards the table. You noticed there was only one place set for eating, at the same time you wondered if the concept of being hungry even existed in Hell. You felt your stomach grumble slightly, answering your own question.

You gave a weak smile to the man before sliding into the seat. This could be where the torture begins, you thought. It could have been poisoned food or turned into rotting flesh when you ate it, yet it looked so appetising you could hardly believe that would ever be the case.

Still unsure of weather to eat it or not you turned to the man,

“Do you know where I could find this guy called Yangyang?”

“I think we both know that I can’t tell you where Yangyang is,” he replied. You looked back to the food pressing your lips together, it had been worth a shot.

“I would be happy to try and answer any questions you have instead, my name is Yuta, I am a personal assistant of sorts,”

“Another archangel?” you asked. Yuta shook his head.

“Nope, just a demon.”

Yes, just a demon, of course.

Yuta watched you staring at the food and quickly guessed as to why you are hesitant,

“It is perfectly safe to eat; you are an honoured guest of hell.”

“That is exactly what someone who wanted me to eat the torture meal would say,” you replied accusatorily. Yuta laughed to himself slightly,

“If you don’t want to eat it that’s also fine, you will starve for eternity but that is, what as this other demon Johnny often says – not my problem.”

You still wondered if it was reverse psychology, but the hunger pangs had really started to kick in, so you decided to eat the food regardless.

You quickly realised that it wasn’t poisoned and that it was actually some of the most delicious food you had ever eaten.

After you had eaten for a while you looked back at Yuta who was still standing there watching you.

“How come I am allowed to talk to you and not Yangyang?” you asked.

“I don’t make the rules,” he replied. Yuta followed the word of Taeyong just as much as everyone else did, the devil really did seem to have a lot of power.

You stood up from your seat, as you did the dishes and food vanished at a click of Yuta’s fingers. Demon magic. When you headed towards the door Yuta remained where he had always been, unmoving.

“Nice to meet you, I suppose, I’m y/n by the way.” You said just before you left.

“I already knew that,” Yuta grinned. Everyone you had met in Hell acted weirdly, both in general and specifically towards you. You couldn’t figure out why there was no torture or why you had supposedly ended up engaged to Taeyong.

You had thought about asking Yuta more questions, but it seemed like Taeyong didn’t want you to know the answer to your questions and therefore none of his buddies were ever going to tell you, so you didn’t bother.

You went another three weeks before you saw Taeyong again, or anyone else for that matter. The only person you had seen was Yuta who watched you eat every day, would enter into general conversations with you about himself, and tales of demons but would never answer any questions you had or explain anything useful.

“I really need to talk to Taeyong,” you asked him, pretty much pleading at this point.

“Not an option,” Yuta replied.

“Where is he?” you asked for the ninth time that day.

“Hell,”

“Yeah very funny bud. I am not marrying him, I’ve only met him once and then he fucked off, not really the kind of behaviour that would make him a good husband.”

“He will return soon,” Yuta said, clearly trying to hide his own laughter, as a Demon he thrived on your suffering ever so slightly.

“You are annoyingly vague.” You sighed, “Can we not just break the rules, like this is hell can we not just sneak out and go and do something, this house is boring there is nothing to do and I would still really like to talk to Yangyang.”

Yuta pressed his hands together before speaking,

“No, we cannot just ‘break the rules’ Taeyong is all powerful I would rather not piss him off. It is very unboring here, I still have two million years’ worth of top-quality stories lined up, not all of them mine, I will admit. You only met Yangyang like one time, no need to make it twice, furthermore he will not answer your questions either, he too fears those who should be feared.”

You banged your head against the table repeatedly.

“This is definitely Hell!”

“You are rather dramatic y/n.”

You could see Yuta out of the corner of your eye and though he was laughing you could tell he also felt sorry for you.

“I will see what I can do,” he relented. You stopped hitting your head, got up and ran over to Yuta, throwing your arms around him.

“Thank you!” you said in earnest.

At that moment the door on the other side of the room opened and Yuta froze.

“It seems I have been gone too long, my fiancé is turning to other men,”

You let go of Yuta and spun round.

“She was hugging me because I offered to find out where you were…” Yuta tried to explain but you cut him off.

“Yeah well I have only been stuck in this boring house for a whole month with only him to talk to so if we are close that is your own fault.” You shouted at him.

“Don’t shout at him, that’s not gonna end well,” Yuta whispered to you aggressively.

“I am just a little bit angry, no, a lot angry and seeing as I cannot have any friends or meet any people, I will be voicing them to the only two people I am allowed to talk with.”

Taeyong said nothing, he strode over to where you were, grabbed your hand and dragged you from the room.

Yuta looked alarmed as you left. Taeyong led you down several corridors until you reached one of the grandest offices you had seen yet. He let go of your hand and slammed the door behind you.

“I would appreciate it if you were not rude to me in front of the people who work for me.” Taeyong said.

“I would appreciate it if you weren’t such an elusive dickhead.”

“I had … work to attend to,” he said, hand running through his bright red hair.

He was standing only a few feet away from you causing you to notice just how good looking he was for the first time. He had a cut in his eyebrow and a jawline that was stronger than anything.

“Whereas I was stuck here, doing nothing. Yuta is nice and all, but his stories get kinda old after the first thirty. I just don’t understand why I can’t talk to anyone or leave this house, why I can’t know anything about hell.”

“I…” Taeyong almost started to explain but then shut his mouth again, leaning with his hand against the door.

“What are you afraid of me finding out?” you asked him.

Taeyong sneered.

“If I told you then it wouldn’t be a secret.” He paused for a moment before walking towards you. “I can’t decide,” he said, “whether to risk falling in love with you.”

“So, you have a bad relationship past?” you guessed. Taeyong said nothing so you assumed you had hit the bullseye.

“See, now we are getting somewhere,” you said, “if you explain things to me life is a lot easier and I won’t resent you as much.”

Taeyong continued walking towards you and you walked backwards away until your back was pressed up against the wall.

“We aren’t alive.” He corrected, you could feel his breath on your face, he was inches away.

Taeyong’s face looked pained, confused.

You don’t know why you did it, maybe it was the lack of physical contact, or the slightly sexual nature of some of Yuta’s stories but you felt like it was the right choice.

You place your hands on Taeyong’s cheeks, pulling his face down towards yours, lips together. You had only meant for it to be an innocent kiss at first, just a few seconds. You didn’t know Taeyong, but you wanted to take away the pained look on his face for just a second.

But as your lips touch you felt a deeper desire, your lips moving against his with a slight sense of urgency. Taeyong’s hands moved to your waist pulling you closer towards him, his grip like iron.

After a minute or two you pulled away, realising that you hadn’t breathed, that you didn’t need to breathe, a surprising perk of Hell. You opened your eyes to see Taeyong staring down at you, the pain still in his eyes, but now mixed with something else, something more positive, you didn’t know quite what.

“I’ve never had a girl kiss me first before,” he remarked. You smiled at him slightly.

“Well I just…” you couldn’t really explain why you did I, you didn’t know, because you still resented this man quite a lot., “It doesn’t mean I forgive you,” you assured him.

Taeyong leaned down and placed a final peck on your lips.

“You have made my choice for me though, there is no way I can avoid falling in love with you now.”

“Yuta are we friends,” you asked him.

“Why do you ask, please don’t ask me you break you out again you know I can’t,” he said, sounding genuinely sorry.

“I just mean if I told you something personal because I needed advice you wouldn’t need to tell Taeyong right? As long as it’s not my plan to break free. I have no girls here to talk to, or even any other boys, you’re my only hope,”

“I don’t see why I would have to tell Taeyong something like that no, so you can count me as a friend on this one.”

“I kissed Taeyong.” You blurted out the second he finished speaking. Yuta blinked a few times, nodding his head slightly.

“Did I really need to know that?” he asked.

“Do you know why I would have done that?”

“This, is the single worst question you have asked me yet, how would I know how your brain functions?” Yuta joked. You sighed, picking up your spoon and placing it in the ice-cream in front of you, that even with demon magic was fast melting due to high temperatures.

A few minutes later you walked back out and started searching the house for whatever room Taeyong was in.

You walked through room after room, to the point where you were not even sure which way was back anymore.

Eventually you came to a room with a door that must have been made out of gold. The door had a picture carved into it of an angel falling from heaven into the fire below. Your feet stopped. It had to be the room you had been searching for.

You knocked loudly but there came no reply, so you pushed the door open slightly, peeking into the room. At first it seemed empty, just like yours had been. There was a wooden bed with a canopy, that looked like one you would see in a period drama. It was ornate and stylish with two bedside tables either side.

Those three pieces of furniture were the only ones in the room.

You felt bad about intruding into someone else’s space, but it didn’t stop you, if you had been a better person you wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

You walked curiously over to the bed and sat down on it, the bed was perfectly made, not even a crease as you ran your hands across the bed covers.

You stared down at the bedside table, something you didn’t have in your own room. The one on the left side was empty, not even a dust particle to be seen.

You rolled over the bed to the other drawer, expecting it too to be empty.

You pulled it open to see a few things inside. There were a few letters which you felt like you shouldn’t read, a pen, a picture of Taeyong and Yuta and at the back of the drawer a small red book.

It wasn’t something you were proud of, but you couldn’t help but peek into the book. The first page was inscribed with a verse:

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

So, the stories were true. But as you flicked through the pages you only became more confused, some were written in a language you didn’t understand or even recognise, some were filled with cursive handwriting recounting stories, much like the ones Yuta had told you, but it was the final few pages that confused you the most. There were paintings of five girls, each on a separate page.

Each had their name written underneath, a date and a timespan. The first 120AD - 3 months up until the most recent 1827 – 2 months.

In the last entry to the book you saw your own face. It was a picture of you sitting in a café in the sunshine, it had to have been from your life. You were drinking iced tea and laughing like nothing could have stopped your happiness. The date 2020 but no time span.

You didn’t understand what it meant entirely but you weren’t stupid either, you realised you were not the first girl who had ended up here.

Your thoughts were interrupted as the book was snatched away from you. You stared upwards to see Taeyong, eyes dark and unforgiving.

“What gives you the right,” he began through gritted teeth, “to look through other people’s personal items.”

He placed the book back in the drawer.

“I would say you can’t come into this room when I’m not here, but I assume you have already seen all there is to see,” he laughed darkly.

“Who are those girls, what do those dates mean?” you asked, still curious and somehow still unafraid, even though the man in front of you looked ready to kill.

Taeyong said nothing. You placed your hand over his lightly.

“I can only become close to you if you let me, and if we are to get married for whatever mysterious reason of fate, we should be close.”

Taeyong moved his hand back and looked away.

“We don’t need to be close; all that book proves is that in this cursed place, fiancé does not mean future wife.”

“Would you stop being so damned elusive for a fucking second?” you said. Taeyong lifted one eyebrow smirking.

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“Yeah I don’t understand if you don’t tell me.”

Taeyong’s smirk faded until he just looked sad. He looked over at you and smiled slightly.

“You can leave the house if you want, make some friends, just don’t leave the city, it’s not so fun outside the walls of Dis, its where the real sinners go.”

You were surprised, freedom wasn’t what you expected to gain from your trespass into his personal space.

“Why now?”

“Because even though you probably won’t choose hell in the end, I at least don’t want you to resent your time here.”

You walked round the bed to sit closer to him but as you sat down, he stood up.

“I think it is easier for both of us long term if what happened yesterday… doesn’t happen again.” He looked down at the time, “I have some rogue demons to chastise, I’ll get Yuta and Yangyang to show you around town.”

Five hours later you were drunk at a vodka bar in hell where Yuta had disappeared with some girl about an hour previously and you were left laughing with Yangyang until your stomach hurt.

“You have way better stories than Yuta,” you joked as Yangyang recounted a mishap between him, a goat demon and a man who had been sent to hell mostly for his obsession with stealing collectable plates.

“and you,” he replied, “are much more fun to be around than any of Taeyong’s previous ladies,” he said, covering his mouth as soon as he said it, “well fuck,” he finished off.

“Do not fear young fallen angel for I already know of these previous ladies, as in I know they exist and nothing else.”

Yangyang breathed out a sigh of relief.

“If I had let that secret go, well I would probably have been stung by bees for the next couple hundred years, every day at three o’clock.”

“There must be worst tortures?” You prompted. Yangyang shook his head.

“Don’t ever underestimate hell bees,” he said in a statement that sounded like he had his own history with said hell bees and that you shouldn’t press further.

“I know of the ladies and I guess that’s what makes him act weird towards me, but I don’t understand what happened.” You explained.

Yangyang looked around to see who was looking before motioning you to come closer.

“I can tell you, but you never heard it from me,” he said, “I must be drunk to be telling you this. Basically, Taeyong is cursed, not by God that’s just this whole hell thing but in a personal argument with an angel named Taeil. Taeyong once stole Taeil’s fiancé back in heaven, so when he was cast down to hell Taeil vowed to take revenge. Ever since as soon as a girl dies, who is someone Taeyong would definitely fall in love with, Taeil make sure they are sent right to his door, calls them the brides of hell. Well with the first one Taeyong didn’t realise it was Taeil, he just thought he had found his soulmate. Yet three months later Taeil shows up at the gates of hell und summons her fourth, Taeyong following close behind. He offers the girl a chance to go to heaven to have everything she ever wanted, that her going to hell was just a mistake and she is meant to marry him in heaven. And the girl agrees. Because as much as she loved Taeyong she wasn’t willing to give up the idea of eternal paradise for him, same for the next four girls… and now you. With the last one he didn’t even try. He didn’t talk to her once he just kept her locked up until Doyoung came. When she left, she said she hated Taeyong, which hurt him just as much as when he was betrayed.”

You took another shot of vodka.

“Well that… is a story and a half,” you remarked. Yangyang shrugged.

“Did the first girl really love him?” she asked. Yangyang nodded.

“They were happy together, Taeyong isn’t a bad guy to the people he loves, he’s not the same person he was a couple hundred thousand years ago, he’s not a great guy by any means but he was kind to the girl and they loved each other, the first betrayal is still the worst.”

“How could she do that to him if she loved him,” you asked him, you had only known Taeyong a short time and for most of that you had resented him, but you had started to understand him.

“Heaven isn’t something you refuse,” Yangyang said simply.

Before long you were both back to laughing and drinking, increasingly incapacitated. An hour later Yangyang was dragging you back to the steps of Taeyong’s house. He knocked on the door, lazily calling out,

“Taeyong, come and get y/n! I want to go to bed!” he said.

Taeyong appeared at the door a few moments later to see you lying on the ground semi-conscious, cocktail umbrella still in you grasp.

He leaned down and picked you easily, something you welcomed after Yangyang’s drunk drag.

“I’ll take you back to your room,” he said. You shook your head laughing.

“No!” you protested like a stubborn child, “I want to sleep next to you, in your room.”

Taeyong looked somewhat shocked.

“I already explained it would be better if we just kept out distance,” he began before you cut him off. You put your finger over his lips to silence him.

“Starting today,” you said, “I am going to stay with you forever, starting right now, in your bed.”

Taeyong sighed, continuing on to your room before placing you down in your bed, he tried to leave but you grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Please don’t leave me alone again,” you asked him quietly, “I don’t like being alone in this place.”

Taeyong’s eyes soften, his resolve defeated, he sat down next to you in the bed.

“I really won’t leave you, I won’t go with that mean Taeil guy,”

“Yangyang is so dead,” Taeyong said.

“We’re all dead silly.” You lay back in the bed, pulling Taeyong’s arm so he fell down to lie facing you.

“And you will leave, they all do,” Taeyong explained. You blinked a few times.

“I’m not them, I’m y/n, I’m my own person. And anyway, I bet none of them ever kissed you first.”

“Why did you kiss me?” Taeyong questioned thoughtfully.

“I really don’t know I just suddenly felt like it was the right thing to do in that moment, like fate had been leading up to right then and there.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Taeyong sighed, “we are all just puppets of people like Taeil.”

“For someone who has power over a whole dimension that is a very defeatist attitude.” And before he could protest anymore you placed your hand on his cheek, your fingertips brushing a few strands of his hair,

“Am I really not different to any of those other women? Maybe their choice wasn’t wrong, maybe they just weren’t right for you, maybe I am,”

“I’m scared of you in particular, I have watched parts of your life on earth and I could see myself with you more than anyone before, and that terrifies me,” Taeyong admitted.

“I cause fear in the devil, what a powerful woman I am,” you joked grinning at him, “Don’t underestimate me.”

Taeyong brought his hand up to cover yours that was still rested on your face.

“You said you hate being alone here, why would you ever choose to stay here?” he asked.

“Because I wouldn’t be alone, I would have friends like Yuta and Yangyang and I would have you, Taeil chose me because we are a perfect match, right? Well then we will always be happy, also Yuta assures me he has a few million more stories lined up and I can’t miss out on that.”

Taeyong’s eyes stared into your soul, he licked his lower lip slightly before moving so he was positioned over you, resting on his forearms.

“I really hope that what you say is true,” he said before bringing his lips to meet yours.

A few weeks passed, you didn’t see Taeyong very often, he was still very busy, but he had made your life in hell become somewhat enjoyable. You spent most of your days playing around with Yuta, Yangyang had work to do, and getting to know the city. When you did see Taeyong he still somewhat guarded, but he was a lot more genuine with you.

You were just coming back from a game of throw the devil with Yuta when you noticed a bright white letter sitting on the doorstep, Dear Taeyong was written on the front in cursive writing similar to that of Taeyong’s.

Yuta grimaced at the sight of it. You didn’t have to ask who it was from because you knew it was from him, from Taeil.

“Well it was fun to get to know you,” Yuta said, holding out his hand for you to shake, “I wish you all the best in heaven, it sounds like a great place.”

“I’m not going,” you said. Yuta snorted,

“No one would ever give up that chance, especially not for someone they barely know, you’ve talked to Taeyong, what three four times, you might be crazy but there is no way you’re that crazy.

You looked up at the orange sky above, wishing more than ever that you could remember your past life, so you could understand what choice you would have made when you were alive.

“It doesn’t make sense to me either, maybe I suffered permanent brain damage when I fell down that hole on the way here… but I just have this feeling, a feeling that tells me that I belong here, with Taeyong, with you, with Yangyang, that this is my fate.”

“Don’t suffer a harsh fate just because you feel sorry for the devil,” Yuta exhaled deeply.

“How is this fate harsh?” you asked, “maybe for most people hell is the worst, but I have only had good experiences here, I may have complained about your stories, but they weren’t that bad,”

“Any fate is harsh in comparison to perfection.” Yuta mused.

“It’s almost like you want me to leave,” you joked. Yuta looked at the letter with envy.

“If you want to stay here that’s your choice and I will be happy not to see you go, but it’s not the choice I would make.”

You pushed him slightly on the shoulder to ease the tension.

“You would be bored after five seconds up there,” you said opening the door and kicking your shoes off into the hallway.

You both went to eat and were wrapped up in conversation but neither of you could ignore when you heard the front door slam loudly and Taeyong scream out a list of profanities even from the other side of the house.

You gave Yuta a small smile before hurrying downstairs to try and find Taeyong. He was kneeling in the hallway staring down at the open letter on the floor that was set alight, the pages burning until there was nothing left but ash.

You tried to sit near him to comfort him, but he pulled away.

“I won’t go with him,” you said quietly. Taeyong rolled his eyes.

“Yes, you fucking will, no matter what you say humans are all the fucking same, you’re not special.”

You were taken aback. You had known the letter would upset Taeyong, but you hadn’t expected him to act with such anger.

“I don’t need your stupid fucking pity,” Taeyong hissed, the venom in his voice not something that could be faked, “I may want to love you but at this point I hate you at the same time and I will hate every girl that comes after.”

Your eyes narrowed and you snorted slightly.

“I didn’t pity you before Taeyong,” you said, “but this is pathetic.”

You picked up a vase that was next to you and smashed it on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Taeyong said standing up, alarmed at your sudden violence.

“I don’t remember my life on earth,” you began, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t an angel. I do know who I am now though, I commit petty crimes with Yuta for fun, I am attracted to a man who tortures people for a living, and I broke your vase just because I can. That doesn’t make me evil but I’m not a saint and I certainly don’t see a reason to go to heaven. Call me a narcissist but at least here I’m special, at least you will love me and for whatever reason my brain seems to value that more than eternal glory or whatever.”

“I’m a difficult man and this is a difficult place, I’ve just sheltered you from it so far.” Taeyong said.

You stepped closer to him until your lips were right by his ear.

“Then show me,” you whispered, “show me hell,” you stepped back, “show me what life here is really like and then I can make an informed choice, I can’t chose you if you don’t even give me a chance.”

“That seems fair, you can at least be Queen of Hell for a day” Taeyong agreed.

Which is how you ended up hours later back on the lift out of the city. This time you had no broken bones and you instead wore a dress of fire, courtesy of Yuta’s demon magic.

Taeyong led you through the circles of hell, through all the punishments, betrayers frozen in ice; tyrants and robber forced to swim in boiling blood; the eternal combat of the wrathful sullen and lazy and the lustful caught in the endless violent wind to name but a few.

“Hell is a horrible place for a lot of people, the city of Dis is the exception not the rule, to live there you have to live with that.”

“Then who are the people wondering around, in the villages outside the city?” you asked, not really wanting to dwell on the torture.

“The pain of torture dulls after a few thousand years and those people become free, everyone here is free because of that. After a few thousand years you can just get up and walk away and live a life again. I burned in fire for three thousand years until one day I just walked away and found the demons in the city,” Taeyong explained.

“So, the torture ends?” You asked him. Taeyong nodded,

“Pain has no power if you have experienced 1000 lifetimes of it, it just becomes normal.”

“Then I can live with it.” You said.

Taeyong looked surprised.

“It probably makes me a bad person but then I suppose that justifies my place here but if the torture ends then I can justify within myself living here, marrying you.”

“If I chose to stay, do I have to suffer the thousands of years?” you followed up.

“Does that change your answer?”

You didn’t know. But you didn’t think so, you just didn’t ever want to say something you weren’t totally sure about.

“But no, you wouldn’t, every millennium I can pardon someone, I have saved that for the chance someone ever choses to marry me,”

“Not the pessimist I always thought then,” you giggled. Taeyong laughed,

“It wasn’t optimism, it was fear… though the pain ends, I still didn’t want anyone who had made a choice to stay with me to have to experience it, because while it normalises after a thousand years the first couple hundred really are torture.”

“Well then I can’t really have any objections to hell then, or to such a thoughtful devil as you.”

“Would you like to sleep in my room tonight,” Taeyong asked suddenly.

“I knew there were other perks to Hell,” you joked.

“Well you’re a beautiful girl and I’m certainly no saint.”

When the sky turned from orange to blood red you were in Taeyong’s room. He was sitting up in his bed, shirt unbuttoned slightly, making the room feel even hotter than the inferno it already was.

You fiddled slightly with the bottom of your shirt before pulling it straight off, to reveal the lingerie that had been left in your drawer by Taeyong since day one. Taeyong smiled to himself dragging his finger over his lip slightly.

You continued, pulling down your shorts to reveal your panties, stepping ever closer towards Taeyong, who had begun to take his own shirt off as well, revealing his chest underneath.

You reached back and unclasped your bra, throwing it to the ground as you crawled onto the bed, towards Taeyong, fuelled by new confidence given to you by the look the devil. His eyes burning with lust.

You had barely touched him before he caught your arm and flipped you over, once again resting on his forearms above you but this time he kissed your neck.

“I’m the king of hell, I’m in charge here,” he said, bringing his hand up to massage your breast as he marked your neck, causing you to illicit a moan, any plans you had slipping away.

You watched him grin as he pulled away,

“You’re beautiful,” he noted. You noticed the same thing about him, it was clear he used to be an angel, but the scars on his chest, a product of hell somehow only made him more attractive. As you both paused your eyes travelled down to his underwear, where a wet patch had already formed at the tip of his dick.

Taeyong caught you staring,

“Wanna suck?” he asked and so you nodded but Taeyong stopped you as you leaned down to touch him.

“I want to hear you say it, I want to hear the sinful words, worth of the Queen of Hell.”

You had no problem obliging, you didn’t think there was anything you wouldn’t do for this man at this point and you still weren’t a hundred percent sure why.

“I want to suck your cock, I want to choke on it” you said to him with a small smile, before once again leaning down and pulling at his waistband. Taeyong was pleasantly surprised by your own addition to the statement,

‘I didn’t realise you were such a good slut,” he grinned a grin that quickly turned into a moan as you took him into your mouth, pushing your head down until you felt him against the back of your throat causing you to gag before moving back up and down again. As you sucked you looked up at Taeyong, tears forming in your eyes, never breaking eye contact.

“You look so pretty with my cock in your mouth,” he said. It didn’t take long until Taeyong’s breathing got heavier and you swallowed his warm cum that burst into your mouth, not missing a drop.

He recovered quickly and before you realised it, he was kissing you again, his hands wasting no time in removing your own panties, that were already soaked.

“I’m glad I have this effect on you,” Taeyong smirked as he chucked them across the other side of the room. Taeyong’s fingers stroked over your wet entrance but before he could slide a finger in you grabbed his arm, stopping him.

“Not today, I just want to feel you inside me,” you asked, and he was happy to oblige, just as you had been.

“Get on your hands and knees,” he commanded. When you were ready you could feel him rubbing his dick over your wet folds, teasing you.

“I’ve gone months without sex down here because of you, just fuck me, please,” you begged. Taeyong immediately thrust his full length into you, but despite this initial urgency, he kept a slow torturous pace.

You whined in complaint which had no effect on Taeyong’s actions.

“This is what you get instead of a thousand years of torture baby, and also you feel so good, so tight around me, I want to savour it.” He said.

You moved your hips back to meet Taeyong, trying to get him to increase his pace.

“I’m sure Taeil would fuck me harder,” you teased which was all it took.

“So that’s the game you want to play,” Taeyong smirked before pulling out completely. Before you could even complain about the loss Taeyong thrust back into you again in tandem with a smack on your ass.

“You’re a bad girl, and bad girls get bad treatment.” He kept one hand on your hip and one hand grabbed your hair as he pumped into you hard and fast, your moans getting louder each time.

“If you don’t shut up Yuta will here you,” Taeyong complained, “but I bet a naughty slut like you would like that wouldn’t you,”

You moaned in agreement.

“I want to hear you say it,” Taeyong said, smacking your ass again.

“I’m a naughty slut who wants Yuta to hear me fucking you.” Taeyong groaned at your sinful words, his dick beginning to twitch inside you.

A few seconds later you felt his cum inside you and Taeyong continue to fuck it into you, which was enough to push you over the edge.

“Fuck!” you screamed out as Taeyong kept fucking you through the aftershocks, before pulling out and getting you to kay down next to him.

“I love you y/n,” he said, his eyes filled with affection, “even if you are a naughty girl.”

Two days later Taeil appeared at your door. It was 3pm in the afternoon when he knocked. Taeyong answered the door and went outside first, you didn’t go until he called you a few minutes later.

“Hello y/n, I am Taeil, Angel of Heaven.” He introduced himself.

“I am aware,” you replied curtly. You could see the fear in Taeyong’s eyes, and it made you want to cry, you couldn’t believe he still thought you would leave him.

“I am here to give you the chance to come to heaven, where you can have everything you ever wanted and live in perfect peace, instead of a tumultuous eternity in hell.” He began but you cut him short.

“I am fine here actually but thanks for the offer.”

Taeil didn’t look phased, maybe it had taken a while before the others agreed.

“I can give you everything, memories of your life on earth, the chance to meet your family again, here you will endure years of pain.”

You remained resolute.

“That’s a no thank you, have a nice day,” you said grabbing Taeyong’s hand and moving to head back inside

Taeil stopped you, his arm placed in front of you. He reached into his pocket and played a scene into your mind.

It was what you guessed was heaven and all you could feel was an immense sense of peace, you saw people around you smiling and cheers of laughter not screams.

“My answer is still no,” you said. Taeil looked perplexed.

“No one who has seen heaven has ever turned it down, what could be better than the everlasting peace?” he asked.

You looked up at Taeyong who still looked frantically worried and smiled. You saw Yuta hopping from foot to foot behind a bush with Yangyang to eavesdrop what was happening.

“Everlasting love,” you replied, “Everlasting friendship,” you continued, “and besides I reckon hell must be more fun anyway.”

Taeil took a few steps back, something close to anger appearing on his face.

“If you turn this offer down, I will never give it to you again,” Taeil asked. You shrugged.

“Have a nice flight back,” was all you said before leaning up and giving Taeyong a kiss on the cheek.

“I won’t want what I can have because I have all the things I need, and that is my peace.”

Taeyong wrapped his arms around you grinning,

“You really are one of a kind, kissed me first girl,” he remarked. Taeil scoffed.

“Have fun being damned together,” he said before heading back out the gate.

“Being damned never looked so good!” Yangyang called from behind the bush. You laughed, sure at that moment you had made the right choice.

Even if you hadn’t Taeil came back every year for the next thirty years, despite promising it would be the last each time, unwilling to accept that he had lost. Each time you found a creative way of telling him to get lost. Each year Taeyong looked less and less scared that you would leave him until he finally realised you never would.

“Get lost Taeil!” He called out, “My wife isn’t interested in your schemes and she never will be,” he shouted before he proceeded to make out with you in a very non-PG way causing Taeil to cover his eyes and run. After that he never returned.

A hundred years later you sat with Taeyong under the orange sky and smiled.

“Do you believe in fate now?” you asked, rubbing your thumb on the outside of his hand.

“I believe in my love for you, be that fate, the end to my torture or just sheer luck. Whichever it is I’m thankful for it, because hell is lonely but when you have someone with you, it’s just a very warm place with a lot of alcohol and screaming.”

Maybe the second part wasn’t so eloquent, but it was right. Hell wasn’t something to be feared when you had someone by your side. Because for Taeyong being alone had been more torturous than the fire.

At that moment Yuta’s demon child ran into the garden and set fire to the tablecloth and you couldn’t help but burst out laughing as Yuta then threw the child about a mile, probably a demon throwing high score.

The afterlife you had chosen wasn’t what most people had chosen, most people didn’t even get a choice and so when Taeyong kissed you in the darkness lit up by flames you felt like someone who was lucky. You didn’t know why this was the afterlife you lived or why Taeyong had ever meant so much. But you final realised that you didn’t need to know. That sometimes things could have vague answers and that was okay. As long as your love for Taeyong was clear, then so was the choice you had made.

As you had once shouted at Taeil whilst chucking a demon at him,

“What’s so good about resting in peace anyway,” you found resting in chaos much more entertaining.

[xhxhxhx]

Thinking about Ross Douthat’s “The Age of Decadence” this morning:

“Do people on your coast think all this is real?”

The tech executive sounded curious, proud, a little insecure. We were talking in the San Francisco office of a venture capital firm, a vaulted space washed in Californian sun. He was referring to the whole gilded world around the Bay, the entire internet economy.

That was in 2015. Here are three stories from the five years since.

A young man comes to New York City. He’s a striver, a hustler, working the borderlands between entrepreneurship and con artistry. His first effort, a credit card for affluent millennials, yanks him into the celebrity economy, where he meets an ambitious rapper-businessman. Together they plan a kind of internet brokerage where celebrities can sell their mere presence to the highest bidder. As a brand-enhancing advertisement for the company, they decide to host a major music festival — an exclusive affair on a Caribbean island for influencers, festival obsessives and the youthful rich.

The festival’s online rollout is a great success. There is a viral video of supermodels and Instagram celebrities frolicking on a deserted beach, a sleek website for customers and the curious, and in the end, more than 5,000 people buy tickets, at an average cost of $2,500 to $4,000 — the superfluity of a rich society, yours for the right sales pitch.

But the festival as pitched does not exist. Instead, our entrepreneur’s plans collapse one by one. The private island’s owners back out of the deal. The local government doesn’t cooperate. Even after all the ticket sales, the money isn’t there, and he has to keep selling new amenities to ticket buyers to pay for the ones they’ve already purchased. He does have a team working around the clock to ready … something for the paying customers, but what they offer in the end is a sea of FEMA tents vaguely near a beach, a catering concern that supplies slimy sandwiches, and a lot of cheap tequila.

Amazingly, the people actually come — bright young things whose Instagram streams become a hilarious chronicle of dashed expectations, while the failed entrepreneur tries to keep order with a bullhorn before absconding to New York, where he finds disgrace, arrest and the inevitable Netflix documentary.

That’s the story of Billy McFarland and the Fyre Festival. It’s a small-time story; the next one is bigger.

A girl grows up in Texas, she gets accepted to Stanford, she wants to be Steve Jobs. She has an idea that will change an industry that hasn’t changed in years: the boring but essential world of blood testing. She envisions a machine, dubbed the Edison, that will test for diseases using just a single drop of blood. And like Jobs she quits college to figure out how to build it.

Ten years later, she is the internet era’s leading female billionaire, with a stream of venture capital, a sprawling campus, a $10 billion valuation for her company, and a lucrative deal with Walgreens to use her machines in every store. Her story is a counterpoint to every criticism you hear about Silicon Valley — that it’s a callow boys’ club, that its virtual realities don’t make the world of flesh and blood a better place, that it solves problems of convenience but doesn’t cure the sick. And she is the toast of an elite, in tech and politics alike, that wants to believe the Edisonian spirit lives on.

But the Edison box — despite endless effort and the best tech team that all that venture capital can buy — doesn’t work. And over time, as the company keeps expanding, it ceases even trying to innovate and becomes instead a fraud, using all its money and big-time backers to discredit whistle-blowers. Which succeeds until it doesn’t, at which point the company and all its billions evaporate — leaving behind a fraud prosecution, a best-selling exposé and the inevitable podcast and HBO documentary to sustain its founder’s fame.

That’s the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. It’s a big story. But our third story is bigger still, and it isn’t finished yet.

An internet company decides to revolutionize an industry — the taxi and limousine market — that defines old-school business-government cooperation, with all the attendant bureaucracy and unsatisfying service. It promises investors that it can buy its way to market dominance and use cutting-edge tech to find unglimpsed efficiencies. On the basis of that promise, it raises billions of dollars across its 10-year rise, during which time it becomes a byword for internet-era success, the model for how to disrupt an industry. By the time it goes public in 2019, it has over $11 billion in annual revenue — real money, exchanged for real services, nothing fraudulent about it.

Yet this amazing success story isn’t actually making any profit, even at such scale; instead, it’s losing billions, including $5 billion in one particularly costly quarter. After 10 years of growth, it has smashed the old business model of its industry, weakened legacy competitors and created value for consumers — but it has done all this using the awesome power of free money, building a company that would collapse into bankruptcy if that money were withdrawn. And it has solved none of the problems keeping it from profitability: The technology it uses isn’t proprietary or complex; its rival in disruption controls 30 percent of the market; the legacy players are still very much alive; and all of its paths to reduce its losses — charging higher prices, paying its workers less — would destroy the advantages that it has built.

So it sits there, a unicorn unlike any other, with a plan to become profitable that involves vague promises to somehow monetize all its user data and a specific promise that its investment in a different new technology — the self-driving car, much ballyhooed but as yet not exactly real — will make the math add up.

That’s the story of Uber — so far. It isn’t an Instagram fantasy or a naked fraud; it managed to go public and maintain its outsize valuation, unlike its fellow unicorn WeWork, whose recent attempt at an I.P.O. hurled it into crisis. But it is, for now, an example of a major 21st-century company invented entirely out of surplus, and floated by the hope that with enough money and market share, you can will a profitable company into existence. Which makes it another case study in what happens when an extraordinarily rich society can’t find enough new ideas that justify investing all its stockpiled wealth. We inflate bubbles and then pop them, invest in Theranos and then repent, and the supposed cutting edge of capitalism is increasingly defined by technologies that have almost arrived, business models that are on their way to profitability, by runways that go on and on without the plane achieving takeoff.

Do people on your coast think all this is real? When the tech executive asked me that, I told him that we did — that the promise of Silicon Valley was as much an article of faith for those of us watching from the outside as for its insiders; that we both envied the world of digital and believed in it, as the one place where American innovation was clearly still alive. And I would probably say the same thing now because, despite the stories I’ve just told, the internet economy is still as real as 21st-century growth and innovation gets.

But what this tells us, unfortunately, is that 21st-century growth and innovation are not at all what we were promised they would be.

I wonder if we’ll think about Silicon Valley the way we think about Texas wildcatters and Florida real estate hustlers. 

It’s not that there isn’t innovation in California. There is innovation in California. There was oil in Texas and real estate in Florida too. But their dilemmas are the same: the market has matured. The frontier is a confidence game, but the core is stagnant.

Facebook and Google monopolized social and search. They have the profits that newspapers used to have and broadcasters still do. Apple sells luxury products to the affluent, like the LVMH of Cupertino. They are not growing and innovating. They are insulating.

They acquire smaller firms that might threaten their business: Instagram, WhatsApp, Waze, DoubleClick. They do just enough to insulate themselves. They do no more. A little while ago, they challenged one another: Apple tried search, Google tried social. They don’t do that anymore.

It would be nice if they tried something new.

[eisforeidolon]

Episode: All Along the Watchtower

Well, it could have been worse.  Of course, it also could have been a lot better.  Perhaps it's that I haven't found anything to like about the devil baby mama drama arc from the start, perhaps it was just that I really, really wanted Lucifer dealt with in a definitive absolutely-not-coming-back-again way.  There were some pretty nice moments in this episode, but a lot of it was unremarkable or worse.

The immediate, major problem I had throughout was this episode heavily assumed I was invested in Kelly and I have absolutely no idea why.  Why did Kelly decide to keep the baby after it made a bible catch fire or after she knew birthing it would definitely kill her?  Beats me.  The show had Lucifer call her the baby container or whatever to make him sound like even more of an asshole, but that's pretty much all the writers themselves ever gave her in terms of personality.  So wasting my time with her bonding with Castiel, making cutesy jokes about baby furniture and pooping, making videos for her evil spawn that don’t even say anything interesting, bonding with Mary, having labor pains?  I. Do. Not. Care.  That's the problem, I don't hate her, I don't know enough about her to care either way!  An eleventh hour slog through Kelly’s last few days of life did nothing to change that.

Worse, we had time for all of that boring nonsense and Rowena was killed off off-screen?  I mean, it gives them room if they intend to bring Rowena back because we didn't see exactly what happened and Abaddon revived a body ruined that badly, but still.

Also, if they wanted Crowley's resurrection at the beginning of the episode to be remotely surprising, they should have shown the rat or the body not lighting up - but not both last week.  Similarly, having Mary say a line about wanting to punch Lucifer in the face was so amateurishly telegraphing her doing so later in the episode.  Which itself only happened for the gratuitous angst of her falling into Apocoworld.

I did love the visuals and stark atmosphere they managed to give Apocoworld, and the scenery of the cabin where Cas took Kelly was absolutely gorgeous.  The effects of the formation of the rip in space and time were pretty cool, too.  I loved that we got to see Bobby again.  Bobby in a beret, even!  Not sure it's really a plus that Bobby and Mary as hunting partners sounds several degrees more interesting that almost everything that we actually got this season.  I did find Dean's enthusiasm and Cas' corresponding dirty look over the angel bullets pretty funny, too.  

Except, if Sam and Dean literally don't exist, how did the apocalypse happen?  The demons and the angels specifically orchestrated it so that the proper bloodlines would come together to have the proper children to be strong enough to be the proper vessels, but somehow they just … threw the apocalypse anyway?  Bzuh?  Speaking of which, they namecheck The French Mistake, but Sam and Dean moved between dimensions there on an angel spell once and Raphael may not have even needed that.  So why, exactly, can Lucifer not just pop back any time he pleases?  I mean, I'm sure the writers could make up a reason, but I'd put money on them not even noticing and bothering to do so at this point.

While I wanted to like it as a redemptive send off for the character, I have some qualms about just how pat Crowley's arc through the episode was.  It seemed like we'd been having 'Crowley actually hates his job' plots for a good long time now.  The bureaucracy, the human blood addiction, etc.  So acting like it's some big revelation... Not only that, but it felt like the same stupid arc they keep giving Cas about wanting to be useful, but they just scratched out 'be useful' and added in 'win' instead.  I mean, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Crowley would sacrifice himself to screw Lucifer over, but it felt like it tried to build an entire arc out of duct tape and old scripts in the course of one episode.  I also wasn't impressed with why they thought stabbing him through the hand would manage to actually keep him in the bunker.  Like, why would that work?  That said, I did love pretty much all of the dialogue exchanges Crowley had with the Winchesters in the bunker, from Dean holding him at knife-edge and Sam's “well, then we kill him” with Crowley's expression to him drinking and bored while they all did research to the “big beautiful lumbering piles of flannel” bit.  If it wasn't exactly the greatest writing, the cast did superb things with it anyway.

Which brings us to Cas, where this episode draws a glaring underline on how not only does Crowley have more faith in the Winchesters than the winged menace, they really don’t have any better reason for trusting Cas over Crowley than just because he's not a demon. Feathers for brains had the spawn of Lucifer plant some blatantly impossible fantasy in his head that goes completely against the idea of free will and just like that he betrayed everyone again.  A world without fear, suffering, and hate ... is a world without people.  Basically exactly what Lucifer of The End would have had once all the Croats died out.  I mean, is the plan to bring Cas back as the henchguy to devil baby as the next Big Bad?  Because I'm really not sure at this point how he could be a worse ally to the Winchesters without actively trying to be an enemy – hell, he'd probably do less damage that way!  Recycling the plot of Cas going evil from seasons 6-7 sounds like it would be right up the alley of the hacks we have writing now, too.  Then again, I’m fairly willing to go for anything that means I don't have to hear any more stupid speeches from Dean about how he totally has faith in them and Cas for … reasons … that are pure nostalgia for him being helpful a very long time ago or based on negligent stupidity at this point.  I mean, even still liking him I could understand because he has been around and they’re used to him, but trusting him is just ... dude, no.  Not even to make a trip to the store.

As to the big end?  Ooh, scary guy huddling in a corner in the dark.  Maybe they’ll surprise me, but it seems like the two obvious options at this point are obvious evil and Jasmine from Angel mindfuck evil-dressed-as-good.  I just can’t believe devil baby isn’t 100% pure evil – it certainly didn't  help that of all potential AUs, his energy ripped a hole into Apocoland and not Fluffy Bunny Cuddle Land.   I do think there’s some interesting opportunities with Apocoland, but who knows what direction they’re going to go in come fall?  Not even them, I’m guessing.

Thing is, remember what the writers said they understood at the beginning of this season but really, really never actually did – you can't just keep making your villains bigger and bigger and it was time to scale back?  Going into season 13 with world-destroyer devil baby and still-sadly-not-dead Lucifer couldn’t make it clearer they were just spouting bullshit.

[katherinemacbride]

solidarity in sites of temporary hospitality, you do what you can with what you’ve got

Text written August 2018. For Hagen Verleger (ed.), Margaret van Eyck—Renaming an Institution, a Case Study (Volume Two: Comments, Contexts, and Connections), Peradam Press, NY, 2018.

https://hagenverleger.com/portfolio/margaret-van-eyck-volume-two/

 Prelude/Postscript

He was talking about the library as a site of radical hospitality: because the person holding the space cannot know the content of all that is being held, in fact it is better if they don’t, because then their focus is on the hospitality, rather than making their own voice among the tangles of sentences in some of the books. [1]

She was critiquing the Western European perspective of not articulating a voice as a way of dealing with colonial guilt. Her critique was that this was both an attempt at empathy but also extremely privileged. [2] What do you do when you’ve wasted your own epistemologies by using them so violently, when you’ve taken up all the space already, how is it possible to make work that listens, can you speak, how do you learn to speak more quietly when you’ve been trained to be at the centre, should you shut up and fuck off? What are all the men doing?

We were swimming in the studio, lesbian empathy. Notes everywhere, to self, to unknown, to a different self, from a different self.

“Capacity Based Exchange,” he was saying; each according to what they can do. All share. [3]

“We share values,” someone says [4], but the values didn’t get a name so how do “we” know? And even if they had a name, there is that big gap between the word and its meaning, that space for editing and remaking and erasing, as Christina Sharpe says. [5]

While you’re reading this, think about friction. Dirty fingers rubbing paper, skin on skin, bodies that don’t fit. Rubbing up the wrong way. “Remember: deviation is hard. Deviation is made hard.” [6]

I was supposed to be writing about dust, and dirt, and sweat. And books. The books that you taught me tell you things even if you think that as books they’re boring, the books I was learning to read as a context not as content. The catalogue shelf for example, filled with female editors care-taking the writing of male essay writers, the exhibitions in regional institutions, the work of the institution we are in represented as books, all this labour and how do I read it now. Not carefully enough, I feel. 

Making change is dirty, tiring, boring, upsetting, enraging, finding your allies. Unending.

It was dark, to protect the books, and cool, but not cold, and certainly not damp. The room was sound-proofed, from the mixed musical fragments thrown out the windows of the conservatory, by the trees standing in the garden, the blanket of carefully selected ground-covering perennials, a village of bicycles chained to the fence, and the partial jutting out of the opposite wing of the building. A place to go and write. A place to go and hide in plain sight. A place to go and observe from your quiet seat the comings and goings of the management (collective noun) and the management (verbal noun). The caretaker, writer, poet. The librarian, writer, novelist. Two of the beautiful possibilities of provincial life where people are allowed to slide into roles for which they are not officially trained but are precisely skilled, temperamentally matched, committed, and able to bring some flow and energy.

Dust/Dirt made from particles of paper residue left over from cutting the pages, microfibres from cleaning cloths, dead human skin cells detached from their organ, sugar granules, dust mites, desiccating coffee molecules, food particles, broken-down hair follicles, tobacco threads, traces of drugs in pre- and post-ingestion forms, clay particulate from the soil outside, DNA, fragments of art materials, faeces, sand, sweat. It is sticky from the proteins; the human matter. The type of paper in each book must alter the dust composition through its attractant or repellent qualities. And what is that smell, the book smell that indicates its age roughly, is it accumulated dust and sweat? 

A room with a dry smell. Most of the books too well-kept, or not so old as, to have foxed pages and those moist smells familiar in memories of rummaging in boxes at sales and in garages. Archival quality papers, hot pressed smoothness, the chemical grassy smell of freshly printed large distribution. The occasional papers [7]—A4 printed essays, stapled and set into plastic folders, flopping awkwardly among the books, their matt surfaces supporting tough content asking questions of the ranks of catalogues memorialising indistinct exhibitions of regional and international artists; remnants of the theory department persisting in participants that came after holding fast to writing as a critical tool. Radical, beautiful thought unfolding in 11pt fonts. Their format whispering, refusing, sticking to academic norms; their words shouting “find me you fucker.” Documents of group processes made public in pages—the process evading the printing press—presented fragments and transcripts, quotations and diagrams, occasional bit-mapped photographs; everything is Riso-printed, upstairs, on creamy absorbent paper stock. 

She was angry. Sunday morning. Dressed prettily, playing music, angry. She was tired, sitting among the aisles working quickly, but making slow movement along. He was bored, writing lists of new curricula. They were sad. The energy was held unevenly, fed by stolen-or-shared cigarettes and sweet coffees, chatting outside on the wooden platform, red wine, moments of recognition and pleasure, durations of pointlessness, biscuits and trail mix. How many days? Rushes of energy—who bought all this African philosophy in the early 1990s! Quick shelves: bleak. Fiction for instance, clang each spine on the metal shelf quickly. Quick shelves: like friends. Feminism for example, this, this, this, oh not that one, wonder why, not much to turn here because women wrote this shelf mostly. Put the single book about masculinities on the collective pile. Finding things like jewels on the beach, books you’d forgotten about, books you’d heard of but never encountered, books you’d never met, books not very present on the internet. Fantasies of who was ordering these, stories of books being trashed and rescued resistantly from the piles of waste. Epistemological wastage [8] comes in overlapping layers: firstly, and undoably always continuingly, violent; later or simultaneously through violence’s secondary forms of stupid, penny-pinching, “progressive” [9] bureaucracy. 

They were fighting a bit, one likes big gestures, one likes small details, so it is difficult. Strategically, politically, and ontologically different ways of dealing with the question and its answer: “And who does the labour benefit? The institution really.” These positions are fighting around and within me. The details liker is directed, like an animal following a scent, there is a sensitivity to something in the air that I can’t perceive, they’re sure of the path they’re moving along, but not so sure that they’re not open to taking another one if something comes up. The big gestures seeker worries more—I can relate to this—maybe because the pressure of that expectation is a bit crushing. What kind of self-confidence and stamina do you need to continue with a task that is so temporary, that many would regard as futile? 

Learning

Learning the knowledge that your body is remembering anew, again—

does it forget in order to survive, like some bodies somehow forget the physicality of cumulative not sleeping in baby feeding periods and desire to fuck reproductively again, 

does it forget because it takes too much energy to remember the way it stiffens when it is threatened, in between all the times when someone chooses to assert their existence in a mode of power and threat against yours,

does it sometimes ignore what it actually is knowing all the time, because life would be too sad and raging if it did acknowledge this without the caring company of the others in this room, or other others in other rooms

—of how hard it is to make change, just how repetitive and boring and physically hard it is to do even this one tiny thing. When this one tiny thing is complete the how hard is suddenly so visible and makes that systemic oppression clear. This is what it means. It means billions fewer words in space. Galaxies of thought that have no space in here. Making stories to remember important information. Making gatherings to learn how to do things. Getting out of bed to go take care of the thing you were doing yesterday and see how it is now it’s tomorrow. Making peace. Making reparations. 

Learning the contingencies of making decisions as you go along, the system can never be perfect and consistent. This time I felt generous, this time not, this one was a balance of problems, this one breaks the rules entirely but it is an important book that should be visible so I put it on the table.

Books are carbon, captured, stable, running without a data centre. A wasted epistemology is also often wasted land-water-air. My wasting epistemology is made of your natural resources, and your body, because mine weren’t and isn’t enough. But I feel my greed and overuse as not having enough, being underfed, dysmorphia of the body, the culture, the interconnectedness of it and us all. 

Prelude/Postscript

The difficulty of doing things differently, the slowing down or changing of methods. Inductive reading, reading across time, lingering in the period between two publication dates to see what changes between one text and the other. Time, hearing and time, time is material, time is everything, time is not straight, time was, time is, time will, now and not now, two kinds of time, or three, past present future, or more, entanglement of all the possible and actualised times, waiting for time to pass until something heals, but what if it doesn’t ever heal, or it can’t, it’s eaten into the DNA that’s being passed around, it's so embedded in the structural oppressions that it can’t yet heal into something else, because it never stopped happening, it’s not past, it’s now. 

Everywhere the time is being stolen that’s needed to do this work. Stolen from and stolen by, stolen in order to do, and stolen from that possibility.

In the car you said something like, “maybe we should all refuse to speak in the moderated and mediated rational language we’re taught to think it’s better to fight in so we don’t look emotional.” [10]

[door of the public speaking/shaming room slams, shaking the seats]

[walls of the broken-into-on-the-weekend library ring with thought and study and laughter]

[1] Nick Thurston, “Speculative Libraries” (talk, PrintRoom, Rotterdam, June 18, 2018).

[2] Cristina Bogdon, “Fuck off Transmediale (provisional title),” Revista-Arta, (February 8, 2018): http://revistaarta.ro/en/column/fuck-off-transmediale-provisional-title/

[3] Michel Bauwens, comment made during “FAQs on the Commons and Art” roundtable (launch event, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, June 9, 2018).

[4] A comment I have encountered, unspecified like this, on too many occasions recently.

[5] Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).

[6] Sarah Ahmed, “Refusal, Resignation and Complaint,” feministkilljoys, (June 28, 2018): https://feministkilljoys.com/2018/06/28/refusal-resignation-and-complaint/

[7] E.g. E.C. Feiss, A Critique of Rights in “We Are Here” (Maastricht: Charles Nypels Lab, 2015).

[8] Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).

[9] Conversations with various friends and acquaintances who work in libraries indicate that numerical quantities of loans, stripped of any other information, are being used as the marker of success and value, at the level of the whole library, the performance of the individual librarian, and the worth and necessity to the collection of each individual book.

[10] I’m paraphrasing a private conversation here.