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Rick, you might be interested in a short story which the renowned British astrophysicist, Fred Hoyle, knocked off in his spare time.

It is entitled, "Welcome to Slippage City," and is included in a collection of Hoyle's stories called Element 79. All of Hoyle's stories are sufficiently subtle and erudite to meet with the approval of even a San Franciscan.

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It's amazing how many people have a good idea and then foul it up. Take the theologians. When they thought up the Devil, they were dead-set on the right track, then they go off with a ridiculous notion. Imagine the Devil bothering with souls one-by-one, dealing with you or me on an individual basis, like a common tinker. The critical thing to remember is that the Devil thinks big, reaping his harvests by the million, as he did in the case of Slippage City.

Suppose you wanted to start up a hell of a city. You'd probably put it in a lousy climate. Well, the Devil didn't make that mistake. He put his City in a beautiful place, a place with a wonderful climate. There was a plain about fifty miles wide between a chain of mountains and the sea. It was a place of nearly perpetual sunshine. Yet it was no desert, quite the reverse. What happened was that every day the air moved in and out over the sea. It came in saturated with moisture during the early morning. There was always a heavy dew with a light mist. The water soaked into the fertile ground before the sun climbed high in the sky....
And so on.

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There's nothing more here than the Devil's hoariest old trick, this simple two-by-two multiplication. Humans fall for it every time. Get humans started out on something they like, then bring in the two-by-two business, that's the standard formula. The result must always be disaster because the multiplication can't go on indefinitely, it must blow up in your face.