Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely...But Doesn't It Sound Like Fun?

On the edge of a Wal-Mart parking lot, a bargain began to take shape. 

So you’re saying that whatever I write on this typewriter will come true?”

Walter dragged a sleeve across his forehead. The sun was high and beads of sweat had started forming on his bald spot. A rivulet of sweat ran down his spine and soaked into the bottom of his sweater vest.

“Exactamundo!” The salesman swept his arms wide. “The world is your oyster.” With his arms raised, Walter could see the sweat stains underneath his arms, the fraying seams on the inside of his bedraggled, moth-eaten trench coat. He looked like the kind of guy who knew the most comfortable way to sleep on a city bus. 

“And it isn’t a trick or something right?” Walter said. “Like one of those things where you get what you want but then a bus plunges into a ravine in South America or something?”

“The devil is in the details my friend so don’t ask me how it works, just trust in the results.”

“And the only thing it’s gonna cost me is my soul?”

“Small price to pay for everything you could ever want, am I right?” 

Walter considered the proposition. What made him nervous was not the prospect of what might change in him once he’d been severed from his eternal soul; like many of his contemporaries, the idea of a soul was an antiquated notion, and Walter had no truck with something that could not be touched or felt or seen. No, the thing that had Walter most unsettled was in thinking about what his wife, Joyce, would say when she found out that he’d exchanged his soul for a typewriter. 

Joyce was the kind of woman who’d grown so accustomed to Walter’s failings that she developed a kind of perverse satisfaction whenever he came home with bad news. The thought of her delight at telling him he’d been ripped off, or worse, that he’d gotten the better of it because his soul wasn’t worth a regular typewriter, let alone a magic one, was almost enough for him to just walk away from the deal entirely. But then again, if the typewriter really worked…

“I have some questions.” 

“A discerning shopper. I appreciate that. Fire away!” 

The salesman clapped his hands and a button fell off his cuff and rolled away. 

“How do I know this thing works?” Walter put his hands on his hips. “How do I know that you’re not robbing me of my soul for just some old junkie typewriter? What if this is all a prank and you aren’t even buying souls in the first place.” 

“Whoa friend, I assure you there’s nothing shady going on here and I guarantee you that if you and I come to an agreement on this here typewriter, that soul of yours will be coming with me.” He winked and cackled, slapped Walter on the shoulder. Walter felt reassured. “Now, regarding whether or not this beauty works, that’s a fair question. I couldn’t respect you if you didn’t ask for a demonstration.” 

The salesman demonstrated the efficacy of the typewriter by typing the word “RAT” fifteen times and subsequently pointing out fifteen different rats that emerged from the nearby dumpsters. Walter still wasn’t convinced, but had taken up so much of the man’s time that he now felt obligated to buy the thing. A deal was struck. 

The salesman started shoving the loose contracts back into his briefcase. “So what you gonna do with it, once you get it home or wherever you’re going?”

Walter thought for a moment. Was there a noble reason he could give? He felt like he was supposed to give a noble reason here. “I’d like to end world hunger, end all wars, and heal the planet,” adding, “I think that would be nice.”

“Sounds like a literal utopia.” The salesman slid Walter a clean contract and a pen and indicated the places where he should sign. “I’m always curious about what each buyer plans on doing when they get their hands on absolute power.” 

“You’ve sold more than one of these?” Walter signed the contract, was briefly disappointed smoke didn’t rise up from his signature, and then put the pen down. 

“Oh sure.” The salesman tucked contract into his briefcase, tucked that under his arm and doffed his hat. “This is one of our hottest items. Good luck to ya!” 

When Walter arrived home with an antique typewriter, he navigated the rough waters of Joyce’s disappointment with aplomb, but not too much aplomb; any abundance of confidence on his part my raise her suspicions. God forbid she actually be interested in the typewriter. Once he got her off the scent, he went to his office, where he set the typewriter down with the reverence and care one might give a sleeping baby. He spent nearly five minutes alone with it, considering what he’d type on their first, when Joyce’s melodic shriek pierced the door. 

“Walter! What are you doing? Quit fooling around. What, you think you’re Hemmingway now? Your meatloaf is getting cold.”

Walter sighed. He hated meatloaf. He started to stand, paused, and sat back down. Soon the office was filled with the punchy chops of two index fingers pressing down antique keys.

“I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A STEAK FOR DINNER” 

It was a simple sentence, and clear enough that it wouldn’t be misinterpreted by whatever malevolent spirit haunted the typewriter. He waited to see if he felt anything change inside of him, like a waking-arm sensation, but in reverse. A gradual numbness that indicated the departure of his immortal soul. After a minute had passed and he felt nothing different, Walter assumed he’d been ripped off after all. He rose from his desk and opened his office door, and was greeted by the smell of sizzling steak.

“You want this thing to be a hockey puck, I’ll keep cooking it.” Joyce speared a steak from the frying pan, dropped it on a plate, slid the plate in front of Walter.

“But it’s meatloaf night,” said Walter. He probed the steak with his knife. It felt real enough. 

Joyce threw an irritated glance at the calendar. Blinked. 

“So it is. What, are you disappointed? I didn’t realize you loved my meatloaf so much. We can have it tomorrow.”

“Excuse me,” Walter said, holding up an index finger. “Just a minute.” He trotted back down the hall to his office. 

“Look at Hemmingway go. Has the muse inspired you?” A moment later he returned, sat and put a napkin in his lap. Said nothing. 

“Being mysterious, huh Well it doesn’t suit you. And while your steak was sitting here getting cold I had a thought—I’m tired of making meatloaf. I hope that doesn’t burst your bubble too badly.”

“Not at all,” said Walter. He forked some steak into his mouth and grinned.

The next day, Walter’s neighbors were surprised to discover that, seemingly overnight, the modest ranch-style home that had once existed at Walter’s address had been replaced by a 24-room mansion. Walter’s boss arrived at work the next day to find an enormous pile of bear dung on his desk, the bear responsible for it sitting in his chair with a sign around his neck which read “I quit - Walter”. And the women at the beauty salon where Joyce spent much of her time had plenty to gossip about when they learned that Joyce had a newfound fondness for sailboating and had left to circumnavigate the world. 

The thing with absolute power is, once you have it, it’s real hard not to want to abuse it.  

And abuse it he did.Days spun off into weeks as Walter explored every corner of his imagination in using the typewriter. He bestowed upon himself immense wealth, and exacted petty revenges on those he deemed his enemies. He wrote whole novels worth of word counts testing the limits of the typewriter. Soon it got to where anything that popped into his head, he typed into the typewriter.

Then one day, as Walter floated around in his olympic-sized pool, attended by a harem of nubile 20 year old girls who splashed and sunbathed and threw around a beach ball and wrestled and served him food and drinks and played records and asked him questions about the world and said “ooh” and “ahh” to whatever he answered, he realized that he was quite bored. Thanks to the typewriter, he had everything he could possibly dream up. He wanted for nothing. What else was even out there? 

Then a thought occurred to him. perhaps he should try to do some good. Hadn’t he wanted to do good? It surprised him that it hadn’t occurred sooner, but who could blame him for getting swept up in all the fun? 

“What do you think, love,” Walter said to a young brunette sunning herself on a float shaped like a unicorn. “Should I end world hunger?” 

Once he’d towled off and had lunch and then an after-lunch romp with some of the girls, and then a post-romp nap, he walked down to his study, now contained behind a three-inch steel door in a heavily secured sub-basement. The study contained the same desk, and on it the typewriter, illuminated from above by a spotlight. When the door was secure, 450 hair-fine lasers grid the room. There were no less than a hundred more-effective defenses he could have typed into the typewriter to keep it out of anyone else’s hands, but he’d always wanted a room with laser tripwires, and knowing there was even the slightest chance someone could steal it gave him one of the few thrills he felt these days. Walter wrote

 “End world hunger”

Later, when a news report announced that famine had been seemingly erased from the surface of the earth, Walter was disappointed to find that he felt no satisfaction in what he’d done. The truth was, as he’d written the command, he realized that he felt put-upon to do so. Like it was his responsibility to fix all the world's problems, just because he could. As he looked around at the spoils of his savvy negotiating skills, he didn’t feel like he owed the world anything in return. 

In fact, the only thrill Walter experienced anymore were those moments where he tiptoed across lines he never would have thought of crossing in his first life. He started small. He shoplifted a can of soup, stole mail, and stopped paying his taxes. But soon he needed to feel more. 

One day, as he floated around his Olympic size pool, the serenity of the moment was disturbed by the incessant barking of his neighbor’s dog, a repugnant french bulldog named Gopher. 

“What do you think, love,” Walter said to a gorgeous blonde floating by on a docile crocodile. “Should I make that dog disappear?” 

“Ooh, yes!” she said, then immediately began spreading cocaine in her cleavage, because he liked it when women listened to him and agreed with him and gave him lots of cocaine off their tits. Later, after he and the girl and the crocodile did all of the drugs their bodies could handle, Walter stumbled down to his office and wrote the following sentence:

“I want gopher to go away forever.”

Accumulating wealth, power, and adoration had all lost their appeal. He needed a new drug, besides the hard drugs he’d started regularly using. For a time, Walter found a thrill in exacting revenge. He indulged in turning friends against each other, taking advantage of anyone who crossed his path, and carrying out petty crimes as he continued to spiral further and further out of control. He grew increasingly detached from reality, because he could shape it however he wanted, it all started to lose meaning. 

People, places, all of it could be bent to his whim. They were no longer people he saw, just puppets waiting to be manipulated in whatever way suited Walter. 

As time went on he grew more and more protective of the typewriter. He’d spend more time down there, clacking away at the keys, coming up with new and unusual ways to punish his enemies. He started to suspect everyone. The first person he ended using the typewriter was one of the harem girls. She’d brought him a sandwich, but his paranoia got the better of him, and he found himself typing:

“I want the girl to go away forever”

And so she did. Shortly after, Walter started coughing. He snorted a few more lines, rubbed his nose down his sleeve, and typed that he wanted to feel better. But a minute later the cough cropped up again. Walter could feel something had shifted. His skin felt clammy and he suddenly felt quite weak. He typed more lines into the typewriter, ripped ineffective paper from the drum, tried again. Still, nothing was working. 

He was interrupted by the buzzing of the office door being unlocked from the other side. A familiar head looked in on him.

“Oh hey there, long time!” 

The salesman stepped into the office. He punched Walter’s password into the keypad near the door, killing the alarm that would trigger five seconds after entering if one didn’t punch the code in. 

“Its you!” Walter tried to stand, wobbled, sat back down. “My typewriter is broken,” he said. “Replace it with a new one.”

“Afraid I can’t do that, my good man.” He pulled a bag out from within his trenchcoat and opened it on the table. “I’ve come to reclaim this little gem.” 

“Reclaim?” Walter huddled over it, trembling arms shaking as they curved over it like a protective mother. “This is mine, I paid for it with my soul, and I want you to fix it.”

The salesman chuckled. “I haven’t been on a reclamation in a while where the owner was still around to have a conversation. This is neat.” He took Walter’s wrists and gently, and effortlessly, moved his arms away from the typewriter. 

“I have my contract right here. I’ve read it plenty of times. It says that ownership of the typewriter transfers to me in exchange for my soul.”

“Ahh yes, see, that’s the trick though.” The salesman scooped the typewriter up, slid it into the bag, only once slapping away a weakened effort on Walter’s part to forcefully take it back. “We never had your soul.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t just give away your soul. It’s not in anyone’s power to do. Do you know how much easier this would all be if we could just convince people to give us souls? And for much less than this little beaut?”

“So you gave it to me for free?” Walter was confused. His breaths had taken on a rattling, wheezing quality and he felt completely exhausted. 

“A soul is not something that can be freely given away, it is yours until you do enough in life to lose it. Once that happens, the magic is gone and we come collect. It’s all in your contract.” The salesman slapped the side of the typewriter. “These things. Doesn’t matter who you are, almost everyone ends up in the same place, having the same conversation.”

“So I still have my soul?”

“Right up until you kick off for good.”

Walter took an accounting of himself.“What’s happening to me?”

The Salesman zipped the bag up, hoisted it up on one shoulder and started for the door. “Oh you’re dying. It’s because the typewriter’s done its work. No more magic, no more ageless, deathless Walter.” 

“So you’re…are you the the grim reaper?” 

This time the salesman filled the small office with great shaking laughter. 

“Me? Heavens no, I’m just a salesman. Trying to make an honest living in this world.” He adjusted the bag on his shoulder, stepped through the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get this thing to Akron. I’ve got a lead on a real loser who would probably give me his soul and the souls of everyone in his family for one of these. Nice doing business with you.”

The door closed, buzzed and locked. The laser grid turned on. Walter sat in his chair, listening to the sounds of a half dozen 20-year old girls splashing in a pool on another perfect summer day.