"Absolute Convergence"
by Mastophilus
Breasts the size of watermelons now suddenly hung from her torso



October, 1996


Masto's Musings:
One night Munch Wolf mentioned the possibility of the devil being involved
in a BE story of sorts.  It was a terrific idea.  I instantly thought of
Larry Niven's short story "Convergent Series", and "Absolute Convergence"
began to take shape.  The story I have written is by no means original.  In
fact, some parts of it are lifted directly from "Convergent Series" with
Niven's original words intact.  Read Niven's story and you'll see exactly
what I mean.

The usual warnings about content apply here.  Some adult language is 
contained herein, and a woman is victimized in a somewhat sexual way.  I
wouldn't recommend reading it to your six-year-old as a bedtime story.  Your
six*teen*-year-old, on the other hand, might enjoy it...

DCS rating:
(no sex, magic, CR, fast, HUGE, flesh)



It was one of my female co-workers at the gas station who got me interested 
in magic.  Her name was Jenn, and she claimed to be a white witch, though I 
never saw her work an effective spell.  After a few months, I went back to 
school, and lost contact with Jenn.  My interest in magic remained, however, 
and I found that it had intrigued me enough to do a thesis on it for my 
anthropology class.  Magic genuinely excited me; I wouldn't have given it up 
for a million bucks.

The thesis was due in three weeks.  I had hundreds of pages of notes on 
primitive, medieval, and Oriental magic, as well as information on 
contemporary supernatural phenomena.  Did you know that certain African 
tribes don't believe in natural death? To them, *every* death is the result 
of witchcraft, and in every case the witch must be found and killed.  Some
of these tribes are actually dying out due to the number of executions.  
Medieval Europe wasn't too different, but at least they'd stopped in time.  
I had made several attempts at conjuring various ghosts and demons, purely
in the spirit of research.  I also put a Taoist curse on my professor.  It 
didn't work.

For all my notes, however, the thesis wasn't moving.  Despite my research, I 
had nothing new to say on my topic.  Things were looking grim until one 
Monday night-

I get the damnedest ideas in strip joints.  The football game on the TV
above the bar was competing with the dancer for my attention.  The Bears
were up by twenty points over the Packers late in the fourth quarter; not
even the Bears could blow that kind of lead.  I turned back toward the stage
to see the dancer lying spread-eagled on the stage, thrusting her hips for
tips.  It looked almost pathetic...

...Then it hit me.  I jumped out of my chair and tossed the stripper a ten 
for her brilliance on my way out.  I was so excited that I didn't even stick 
around to let her kiss me for the tip.  I checked my watch; it was a quarter 
to eleven.  For me to start my incantation at midnight I was going to have
to hurry home, since my equipment was not set up for what I had in mind.

The landlord's wife was kind enough to let me use the apartment's basement 
for my research.  She was a self-proclaimed Wiccan, so when I told her I was 
doing a thesis on magic, she wished me the best of luck and agreed not to 
bother me.  I had fifty minutes to prep the basement.  I'd left a pentagram 
on the floor from three nights ago.  I used a wet rag to thoroughly erase
it, then I carefully constructed a new one in my chosen location.  I lit
candles and incense.  With ten minutes remaining, I wrote down my ideas for
use in my thesis.  Keeping quiet so as not to wake the building's other
tenants, I started my incantations exactly at midnight.

At thirteen past I got the shock of my twenty-two year old life.  Suddenly 
there was a demon spread-eagled in the pentagram.  His head, arms, and legs 
occupied all five points of the star.

I turned and ran.

He roared, "Come back here!"

I stopped halfway up the stairs, turned around, and came back down.  I 
refused to leave a demon in the basement of the nice landlord's wife, whom 
most of the tenants had come to call Auntie Sue.  With that amplified basso 
profundo voice he'd awaken the whole building.

He watched me come slowly down the stairs.  Except for the horns, he looked 
like a nude, overweight man of fifty who had been painted red.  But if he'd 
been human you wouldn't have wanted to know him.  He seemed built for each
of the seven deadly sins.  Avaricious green eyes.  Huge gluttonous tank of a 
belly.  Muscles soft and flabby from sloth.  A face permanently wrinkled by 
eons of anger.  A phallus- never mind.  His horns were about six inches long 
and polished to a glow.  They looked as sharp as all hell.

He spoke again when I reached the foot of the staircase.  "That's better! 
Now, what took you so long? It's been almost two hundred years since
anyone's called a demon."

"They've forgotten how," I offered.  "Everyone thinks you're supposed to
draw the pentagram on the floor these days."

"The *floor*? They expect me to appear lying on my *back*??" His voice was 
saturated with rage.

A shiver ran down my spine.  My bright idea.  A pentagram was a prison for a 
demon.  I'd thought about the points corresponding to various limbs of the 
demon's body.  To appear on the floor just seemed so...undignified.

"*WELL*???"

"I know; it doesn't make sense." A sigh of emotional drain left my body.  
"Would you go away now please?"

He stared.  "You *have* forgotten a lot." Slowly, almost gently, he 
explained to me the implications of conjuring up a demon.  Fear and sick
hopelessness welled up in me as I listened.  "I am in peril of my immortal
soul..." This was something I'd never considered, except academically.  To
hear the demon speak, I was already doomed.  My soul was lost the moment I
used the correct spell.  I felt like I was going to throw up.  When he was
finished speaking, he grinned as if he were inviting comment.

"So, let me get this straight," I said.  "Normally, I would get only one 
wish, but you're giving me three?"

"Yes," he replied.  "Given that you're such a novice, I'll make an exception 
in your case.  Just because I'm a demon people think I'm insensitive.  
That's not true."

A demon for the nineties, I thought.  "Okay.  And if you don't like the
wishes, I have to choose others."

"Right."

"That doesn't seem fair."

"Fair? You stand before me and question my fairness? I never said anything 
about fair.  In fact, if there is any unfairness here it is on *your* part.  
You're the one getting three wishes, bucko."

"Okay.  And you have the power to change any thing I write about this whole 
experience."

"Right."

My thesis was shot to hell.  Oh, well...but that was the least of my
worries.

"Okay.  So this is how it'll go," I tried to explain, hoping I had 
everything right.  "I make the three wishes now, and those three wishes are
good for twenty fours from the time that you appeared in the pentagram.
After those twenty-four hours are up, you teleport to Hell, report to your
boss, reappear inside the pentagram, take back the wishes, and take my soul back 
to Hell 
with you."

"Yeah.  Good word, 'teleport'. I disappear and reappear a few seconds later.
You getting any bright ideas?" he grinned at me with his black teeth.

"Like what?"

"If you erase the pentagram I can reappear anywhere.  If you erase it and 
draw another I have to reappear inside of it."

A question hovered on the edge of my tongue, half a synaptic fire from 
becoming spoken word.  I swallowed it and asked another.  "What if I wish
for immortality?"

"Then you'd be immortal for what's left of your twenty four hours." The 
demon continued to grin at me.  "But surely you wouldn't wish for *that*.  
You're going to Hell in less than twenty-four hours, don't you want to have
some fun? Indulge in some earthly pleasures for one last time?"

My heart fluttered with excitement.  "Well...okay.  For my first wish, I'd 
like...the power to inflate women, you know...like make their tits bigger
and such."  A fantasy I'd kept secret since puberty, yet I had little
reservation in telling the demon.  What did it matter, at this point,
anyway?

"No problem."

"Okay, then for the second wish, I'd like the power to remove girls'
clothing at will.  Like telekinesis."  Saw it in a movie once; looked like
fun.  Despite the prospect of eternal damnation, I was slowly becoming erect
at the possibilities of my last day on Earth.

"You got it.  How about the third wish?"

Here it goes, I thought, all or nothing.  "Can you stop time from passing 
outside of me?"

"Yes, but here." The demon snapped his fingers and a stopwatch appeared 
around my neck.  "That stopwatch will tell you the time as you perceive it.  
If you stop time, your wristwatch will stop as well, but the stopwatch will 
continue to run.  You have until thirteen minutes after midnight to make
your peace with the world...and maybe get laid as well.  Don't worry about
me.  I'll keep quiet, and nobody will ever know I'm down here.  Have fun!"
The demon grinned with his obnoxious coal-colored mouth again.

Suddenly I felt very tired.  Meeting a demon face-to-face was more of a
draining experience than I had anticipated. I went upstairs to my apartment
and decided to get some shut-eye.  I set the alarm for six as I lay down,
praying that all that had just transpired was merely a very vivid nightmare.

When I next opened my eyes the clock glared a red ten-thirteen at me.  I'd 
slept through the alarm.  Damn! I had missed my anthropology class.  I went 
to turn on the television.  Instead of a talk show, I found the news.

Shit! It was ten-thirteen at night! I had slept for more than twenty hours! 
Less than two hours remained until the demon would claim me.  Or would he? 
Was the whole experience a dream? My heart sank as I found the stopwatch, 
still hanging about my neck.

The demon was real enough, but what of my wishes? Did I really have any of 
the powers I had wished for?  Probably not, I thought, he probably cast a
spell on me to get me to sleep this long, in any event.  On a whim I pressed
one of the buttons on the stopwatch.

The anchorwoman stopped in mid-sentence.

I stared for a moment at the television.  Then I glanced at my wristwatch; 
it had stopped at ten-fifteen.  The demon's stopwatch, however, continued 
to tick, as the digital display advanced to ten-sixteen.  Running to the 
window, I saw that traffic was stopped in the street.  A man and a woman
walking down the street holding hands had frozen in mid-stride.  The power
to stop time was real.

What about the other powers? I ran downstairs and out the door to where the 
couple stood frozen in time.  The night was warm, even for Alabama in the 
first week of November.  The woman was an athletically built college student 
clad in a long, silky, red summer dress, blond hair pulled back into a
functional ponytail.  The guy was clad in a blue sport coat and beige
Dockers.  "Greeks," I said to myself in disgust.

I walked over to my car so I could park near their path yet remain hidden.
I turned the key in the ignition; nothing happened.  Time had stopped for
everything outside of me and the stopwatch; the spell that kept us ticking
wasn't large enough to let me start the car.

I ran upstairs back into my apartment and dug through my closet. I found my
old reliable 7x50 binoculars that I used long ago for astronomy.  Then I
opened the window and looked outward, focusing in on the couple.  When I
had taken up my position, a bizarre sort of sexual sniper, I restarted
time.

The couple continued walking, and I followed them with the binoculars.  As
they approached the corner, I gathered my breath and my nerve.  Showtime.
 
The sorority girl squealed in surprise as the front of her skirt suddenly
blew upward into her face.  A small triangle of red silk covered her front;
wisps of dark pubic hair extended outward from beneath the material.  She
was a bit wide in the hips, but still, a nice figure.

As she brought her skirt under control, she looked at her companion. The
frat boy just stood there with a ridiculous grin on his face.  She said
something to him- I was too far away to hear, and I couldn't read lips. He
just shook his head and shrugged in response.  They went on their way.

I wasn't finished with them yet, though.  As the couple continued to walk
down the street, I began focusing in on the suzy's B-cup bosom.  As I began
to notice the swelling against the front of her dress, she looked down at
herself and came to a stop.  The freddy was looking at her chest, too;
funny, he thought, were her tits always that big?

Her eyes went wide and she clutched her chest as I suddenly concentrated 
with great intensity on her boobs.  The front of her dress exploded, 
throwing her arms backward as breasts the size of watermelons now suddenly 
hung from her torso! As her jaw dropped open, I could finally make out what
Freddy was saying. "Wow!"

Suzy turned around and ran off screaming into the night.  Freddy watched her
run for about two seconds, and then he raced to try to catch up with her. 
I continued to stare into the night, trying to comprehend the meaning and
implications of what I had just seen and done.

The semi-erection that my "experiments" on the girl had given me faded
quickly.  There was no longer any doubt; the demon and all of his
wish-granting was real.  He had kept his word, and presumably would continue
to keep it.  I looked at the stopwatch he had given me.  I was now
eighty-three minutes from Armageddon.

I needed some religion in a hurry.

The Baptist Campus Ministry was six blocks from where I lived.  I drove,
only to find a empty lot where the place of worship had once stood.  I also
raced to where the local Catholic church, Episcopalian church, and Jewish
synagogue should have been.  Should have been, but weren't.  For me, houses
of God no longer existed.

Again I checked the stopwatch.  I was now forty-six minutes from 
brenschluss.  I returned home, parked my car, and stopped time again.  On
the way into the building, I prayed.  I didn't believe it would work, but I
prayed.  If I wasn't heard was it because I didn't expect to be?

When I re-entered the basement, the stopwatch read eleven-fifty-six.  
Seventeen minutes left.

Again I used a wet rag to erase the pentagram on the wall as thoroughly as I 
could.  Then I drew a new one, using a flexible metal tape measure to keep 
the lines as straight as possible, making it as large as I could get it in 
the confined space.  It was still barely two feet across.

I spent the last few minutes sitting at the foot of the stairs, waiting for 
zero hour.

"Time's up!" chanted the voice, snapping me back to attention.  The demon 
glanced to the side and grinned wider than ever when he saw that the chalk 
lines were gone.  "Back in a flash..."

Three seconds later, a cheery bass voice permeated the air.  "I knew you'd 
move the pentagram.  Made it too small for me, too, I see.  Tsk, tsk, didn't 
you think I could change my size?"

There were rustlings, and a shimmering in the air.  "I know it's here 
somewhere.  I can feel it.  Ahh...."

He was back, spread-eagled before me.  Two feet tall and three feet off the 
ground.  His ebony know-it-all grin disappeared when he saw the pentagram 
wasn't there.  Then- he was seven inches tall, eyes bulging in surprise, 
yelling in a contralto voice.  "Where in hell's the-"

He was two inches of bright red toy soldier.  "-pentagram??" he squeaked.

I'd won.  Tomorrow I'd get to a church.  Have someone lead me in blindfolded, 
if necessary.

He was a small red housefly.

A tiny red star.

Gone.

It's odd how quickly you can get religion.  Let one demon tell you you're 
damned...Could I really get into a church? I'd made it this far, I'd 
out-thought a demon.  Somehow I was sure I'd make it.

Eventually he'd look down and see the pentagram.  Part of it was in plain 
sight.  But it wouldn't help him.  Spread-eagled like that, he'd be unable to 
reach it to wipe it away.  He was trapped for eternity, shrinking toward the 
infinitesimal but doomed never to reach it, forever trying to appear inside a 
pentagram that was forever too small.  I had drawn it on his bulging belly.

Out of some unknown reflex I made the sign of the cross across my chest.  My 
hand was caught by the demon's stopwatch.  He had never actually reappeared 
inside the pentagram, so he never had the chance to take back my wishes, much 
less cart me off to Hell, and he never would.

I felt a new wave of energy fill my being.  Taking the stopwatch in hand, I 
looked down at it and began to laugh uncontrollably.  Religion might have to 
wait; it was time to go out into the world.

And have a whole lot of fun.



More Masto's Musings: Well, whadja think? What I really liked about the idea 
was how open it left the character for future story possibilities.  Look.  We 
have a guy who can 1) stop time, 2) rip women's clothes off just by thinking 
about it, in a tip o' the hat to the movie "Zapped!", and 3) inflate various 
body parts on various people at will.  I'd *love* to have these powers.  
Wouldn't you?

Take Care of Yourself,

Mastophilus
phoenix@crown.icongrp.com