FIAT SOULS

Part I. Audit of the Void 

(Prelude)

The Chief Auditor’s office had no windows. Why have windows if there is nothing outside but static grey noise?

On the desk before the Auditor lay not a folder of documents, but a simple neuro-drive. Opposite him sat the Client—a man convinced he had brought a treasure.

“It is a murder,” the Client whispered, leaning forward. “A real one, with aggravating circumstances. I betrayed my best friend for the sake of my career. He drank himself to death and perished. This qualifies for first-class liquidity.”

The Auditor wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose and inserted the drive into the slot. Stock charts raced across the screen. A green line twitched and immediately plummeted.

“Garbage,” the Auditor stated, returning the drive. “‘Junk bonds.’ A junk bond.”

“Are you out of your mind?!” The Client jumped up. “This is baseness of the highest grade! This is suffering!”

“Sit down,” the Auditor’s voice was as dry as the rustle of old banknotes. “You seem to be stuck in the last century. Allow me to explain the political economy of the current moment.”

The Auditor deployed a hologram of a vintage American dollar spinning in the air.

“I was once explained why people keep money in different currencies. It is a matter of trust and faith. Look here.” He pointed to the inscription In God We Trust. “The deification of the dollar, the symbol of capitalism. Belief in currency is the same abstraction as belief in God. Belief in the non-existent.”

The Client blinked, not understanding where the Auditor was leading.

“We stepped past that stage long ago,” the Auditor continued. “We survived the belief in cryptocurrencies, when people prayed to algorithms. We survived the NFT era, when a picture of a monkey—an unreal, intangible, abstract something—was equated to the value of a real mansion in Miami. We bought simulacra. But now... now we have become simulacra ourselves.”

The Auditor picked up the Client’s drive and tossed it in the air.

“Your ‘real resources’ today are bits of information. Just like those NFTs. Your sin is just bits. It has no collateral.”

“But I suffered!” the Client exclaimed.

“You thought you suffered. The value of your money, like the value of your sin, was only in quantity. Whoever has more unsecured funds is richer. But it is a bubble. Company capitalization is a bubble. The stock exchange is a bubble.”

“Your betrayal of a friend...” The Auditor grimaced in disgust. “That is also a bubble. You did it not out of passion, not out of great malice, but for the sake of ‘optimizing your life path.’ It is a transaction, not a tragedy.”

“So what do I do?”

“Nothing. Inflation, my friend. Too many sinners, too little meaning. The guarantee of the dollar was the power of the USA, but that was absurd: the power was built on money that was just paper, printed at a rapid pace. We printed emotions just as fast. And they depreciated.”

The Auditor pressed the button to call security.

“Your ‘currency’ is not accepted. The bank is full of counterfeits. Next.”

---

Part II. Margin Call for Lucifer (Development of the theme)

Setting: Hell. Not fiery caverns, but an endless, sterile open-space office resembling a Wall Street trading floor, only instead of windows, there is pitch blackness, and the monitors display the cardiograms of dying souls.

Characters:

• Lucifer — CEO. Impeccable suit, deadly fatigue in his eyes. The best cynic in the Universe.
• The Billionaire — Newly deceased. A typical modern technocrat.

Lucifer sat with his feet up on a black obsidian desk. He smoked, flicking ash directly into the void. The Billionaire stood before him, looking around for cauldrons and devils with pitchforks.

“Where is the torture?” the Billionaire asked. “I deserve a personal circle. I created an algorithm that drove half of humanity into depression! I demand exclusive service!”

Lucifer blew a smoke ring and laughed. The laugh was dry and short, like the crack of a breaking bone.

“You demand nothing,” Satan said. “You are bankrupt.”

“Me? Bankrupt? My soul is worth trillions!”

“Your soul is illiquid asset,” Lucifer lazily poked a finger at the monitor. “Look at the quotes. The market has crashed.”

Lucifer stood up and walked right up to the Billionaire. He smelled not of sulfur, but of the ozone of overheated servers and expensive cologne.

“Do you understand the problem?” Lucifer began insinuatingly. “Satan is the best cynic, that is true. I am a broker of souls, an executor. But even I cannot trade thin air forever.”

He snapped his fingers, and a projection of an ancient gold coin hung in the air.

“Before, there was the Gold Standard. Cain and Abel. Brutus and Caesar. It was backed by the gold of passion, blood, horror. It had weight. But now?” Lucifer waved his hand contemptuously at the Billionaire. “You were not a creator of evil. You were an architect of algorithms. Your sins are an unsecured emission.”

“But the consequences were terrible!”

“Consequences are statistics. But sin requires a soul. Today’s real resources are bits of information. Your life was a set of bits. You accumulated a huge capital of sins, but they are not backed by anything. Their value is only in quantity, but the quality... is zero.”

Lucifer returned to his chair and rubbed his temples wearily.

“It is all His fault,” Lucifer pointed a finger at the ceiling. “The Regulator. He introduced the Commandments as market regulation to create a deficit. The forbidden fruit is sweet because it is expensive. But you people, with your ‘new ethics,’ diluted everything. If everything is allowed, nothing has a price. You cancelled the very concept of Sin, replacing it with ‘social construct’.”

“And what does that mean for me?” the Billionaire’s voice trembled.

“It means that Hell is declaring a technical default,” Lucifer spread his hands. “I see no difference between crypto and ‘real’ money, and in exactly the same way, I see no difference between your soul and a spam bot. We are closing up shop.”

“But where do I go? To Paradise?”

“Paradise only accepts those who hold the currency of faith. And you have none. You believed in success, in capitalization, in yourself. You believed in the non-existent.”

Lucifer pressed a button on the intercom: “Behemoth, annul the guest’s pass. Escort him to Limbo.”

“Limbo?” the Billionaire asked. “What is there?”

“Nothing,” Lucifer smiled the most cynical of his smiles. “Absolute, sterile nothingness. An eternal grey zone. You will be there alone, with your portfolio of ‘securities’ that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. This is your mansion in Miami, bought for a picture of a monkey. Own eternity, you dummy.”

The light in the office flickered and went out. And on the door of Hell, Lucifer changed the sign. Instead of the familiar “Abandon hope...”, he hung up: “Technical Default. Acceptance of payments in fiat souls suspended.”