Author Topic: Pseudopod 038: Hell’s Daycare  (Read 6403 times)

Jim

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on: May 18, 2007, 10:55:45 AM
Pseudopod 038: Hell’s Daycare

By D. Richard Pearce

Read by KJ Johnson

With literally his last dollar, he bought a lottery ticket. That night, Beth called twice, but he ignored the phone. He curled up on the couch, gorged on chips, and watched as the lottery numbers dropped, in precise order, and matched his ticket.

With the weirdness of the last couple of weeks, winning the lottery didn’t surprise him at all. Not only that, he didn’t feel the least bit hopeful. He expected something to go wrong between now and the time he collected. Either the numbers were wrong, or he’d lose the ticket — something.

Nor was he disappointed. He did win, and Satan’s collectors allowed him to keep the decorative memento cheque, and not much else. He suspected a pattern was emerging.

My imaginary omnipotent friend is more real that your imaginary omnipotent friend.


Thaurismunths

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Reply #1 on: May 21, 2007, 12:33:11 PM
Cool story, and a great reason not to use pay-cams in the middle of the night.

Any one else notice the audio problem around 16:30? Sounds like two tracks are playing over each other for a couple seconds.

How do you fight a bully that can un-make history?


DKT

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Reply #2 on: May 22, 2007, 06:03:09 PM
Any one else notice the audio problem around 16:30? Sounds like two tracks are playing over each other for a couple seconds.

Yeah, I heard that too.  At first I couldn't tell if it was intentional or not but as I listened to the rest of it just seemed like a weird glitch. 

Fun story, though.  I really enjoyed the reading. 


bamugo

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Reply #3 on: June 19, 2007, 02:00:50 PM
My favourite bit was the fact that the angel smelled of baked goods.



johnhummel

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Reply #4 on: June 20, 2007, 05:45:38 PM
I don't know - this story annoyed me more than anything else.  Oh, I get the basic idea - the concept that a guy charged with child care is guilty as charged and has no power in the system.  Fine.

But in order to make that point, the deck had to be so stacked against him as to just make me roll my eyes.  He deserves to go to hell because he participated in a video sex chat?  And had a bad angelic attorney (according to this story, God is a real dick who leaves people to hang when they get in trouble).  Nothing the guy ever does (he wins the lottery for pete's sake) can ever repay his debt?

Again, I get the message, and I liked individual parts (the baked goods smell was cute), but the rest of it just had me going "Oh, please".  "Flat Dianne" had a similar take - the powerlessness of a man/father in the face of horror, but while there the victims didn't deserve their fate, neither was the deck so stacked against them that there was nothing they could do (for example, though social services were called in, they didn't just rip Dianne out of his arms just at the inclination of abuse - there were rules and an investigation.  In "Hell's Daycare", the guy had no appeal and was pretty much "guilty" without any chance of fighting back").

Anyway, this is just my opinion, and I could be wrong.  But this story just frustrated me more than anything else.



Russell Nash

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Reply #5 on: June 23, 2007, 04:51:23 AM
I going to jump to my one serious complaint.  The title gave away the ending and whenever the story wasn't really facinating, I was working on how we ended up at the daycare.  I figured it out with quite a bunch of the story left and that spoiled it for me.



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Reply #6 on: September 22, 2009, 08:19:15 PM
This had some good moments, but overall I've got to agree with johnhummel.  The guy is condemned to hell for having a sex chat, and nothing he can do after that initial bout will possibly get him off the hook.  Why is he still paying child support after his son is a grown man, anyway?

Any fair court would be able to obviously see that he wasn't aware of the possible of pregnancy over an internet line.  As a normal mortal, he was presumably unaware of the real existence of succubi, and in any case, traditional succubus stories do not cause pregnancy over the internet so how would he have known.  Of course, the Devil's court is no fair court, but then what's the point of having a trial at all if there's not even a semblance of fairness.  After that ridiculous decision, why wouldn't you appeal to a higher court (as in Heaven).  Can't he repent his sins and be forgiven?  Perhaps not for his debts in his lifetime, but to prevent eternal damnation at least?

If this were made into a movie, it would star Ben Stiller.  It reminds me much of most of his films where there's a regular guy subjected to escalating, ridiculous, unrealistic trials from people who all seem at first to be normal, and everything bad focuses only on him. 

And I also agree with Russell that the title gave away the ending, so the element of the surprise was blown long before the end was reached.



Millenium_King

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Reply #7 on: August 17, 2010, 10:32:44 PM
Ha!  I liked this one alot.  Great twist on the "deal with the devil" thing.  Hell as a bureaucracy is not a terribly new idea, but I thought this put a good spin on it.  The surreal elements came a little too fast toward the end, but that's only a minor complaint.

Great read.  Great choice of reader.  Really enjoyed this one, solid all around.

EDIT: After reading some of the other commentary, I just wanted to mention that I didn't find it weird/unfair that the deck was stacked so hard against this guy.  The story's set-up was classic: pathetic man gets a real lucky break which turns out to be not-so-lucky at all (cf. Twilight Zone episodes "Time Enough at Last" and "Mr. Dingle the Strong" - both starring the amazing Burgess Meredith, FYI).
« Last Edit: August 17, 2010, 10:38:00 PM by Millenium_King »

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