Satan's best invention

My Dearest Wormwood,

It is with pleasure I announce that our Infernal Laboratories have succeeded in producing a truly fiendish new weapon with which to assault the Enemy and bring his little pets, the humans, into our camp. Some of the worst minds in the Lowerarchy have labored for years on this project; those who have succeeded will feed for millennia on the pain of those who failed. The laughter of the victors and the screams of the losers can be heard even now echoing through the Kingdom of Noise.

But enough talk of life’s little pleasures; I want to discuss this new invention with you. If you can succeed in attaching one to your patient, you are likely to succeed in bringing him into our Father’s house, even if he has become one of those loathsome Christians.

The device itself is referred to as a “pager” or, sometimes, a “beeper.” The genius of it is that it appeals to their basest instincts of greed and ambition, while simultaneously infuriating them. The mechanism allows human masters to be in constant touch with their hirelings by means of an electronic signal. No matter the time or place, the hirelings can be “paged” to resume work. The appeal to “efficiency” and “worker productivity” is unstoppable. If a human overlord needs to have, say, his factory supported 24 hours per day, he can simply hire one human with a pager instead of two or three humans to share (my apologies for using the “s” word) the labor while the others rest or engage in their disgusting animal behaviors.

On the other hand, the underling is encouraged to use the pager by appeals to his “responsibility,” his “loyalty to the company” (which we all know is nothing but a sham for his avarice and ambition), and the improvements in his “personal productivity” (which carries the promise of financial reward at the expense of the humans displaced). If you handle things right, you can even get your patient to sin against the Enemy by actually being proud of his new electronic master! In the right circles, carrying a pager is seen as a sign that one is a valued member of the economic order!

Once the human has accepted the device, we have an enormous hold over his attitudes. The pager can be used to disrupt his personal relationships, his pleasures, his prayers, his sleep, and even his attitude towards the Enemy. Does he seek a little “marital bliss” with his bride (by Hell, it sickens me how the Enemy encourages the most creaturely behaviors of his little pets)? Does he want to spend “family time” with his oh-so-precious offspring? The pager can take care of that.

Be especially certain to disrupt his sleep patterns! Rest is a sure and certain setback to our efforts; the Enemy uses it to soften their baser animal instincts and turn their thoughts towards him and his aims. He has even been known to use their sleep times as a means of direct communication to their pathetic little psyches, though not as frequently as in the days before that regrettable incident with the Cross. But depriving them of rest – ahh, that turns their minds in our direction as certainly as mortal sin itself!

As I have written you before, they have the pathetic and egomaniacal delusion that time belongs somehow to them! Deprive them of their time and you immediately turn them to petulance. Cultivated petulance becomes bitterness and anger, and anger is the raw material of our best work - everything from self-consuming hatred to the exquisite joys of violence. Is the subject praying before the enemy? A simple electronic signal and I guarantee that his mind will turn from the Enemy to himself in a nanosecond. If you can arrange things so the device goes off while he is in church, so much the better. The shock of the change in his emotional state from worship to resentment can even get him to question his relationship with the Enemy, and even the nature of the Enemy himself! Astonishingly, the creatures are so stupid that they confuse their “feelings” with reality on a regular basis. Oh – and if you set the pager to go off in a church, try to make sure he has forgotten to set it to “vibrate” mode. The noise will then cause him embarrassment and an even greater shift in his feelings, while at the same time distracting any number of other humans around him!

Really, the possibilities of this device are limitless! And it is unstoppable, being driven by the basic needs of greed, power, and self-aggrandizement! I am proud to say I had a bit of a hand in developing it myself; I had the opportunity to act as “encourager” to many of the laboratory staff. The role was both significant and delicious.

I must give you one caution with the use of this device, however! The pleasure you will enjoy from its use and the effect on your patient is quite intense and addictive. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by the momentary glee at the expense of your true duty, which is to bring the patient safely to our Father’s house. Do not cause him such discomfort that he decides to discard the pager and find another occupation! Such an event is quite likely to make him think seriously about his life, and such thoughts are always used by the Enemy to draw them closer to himself. A disaster of that magnitude would require the Home Office to reconsider your usefulness as a Tempter, and I don’t have to tell you what a demotion would mean in terms of your personal intactness.

As eternally, I remain...

Your devoted and caring uncle,

Screwtape