Early in year 2016 Asmodeus's portal closed just before he reached it. He was trapped on earth. Shit. It would be another thousand years before the doorway reopened. That was a lot of time to kill, even for an immortal demon. He’d just wanted to see this thing Halloween, but he allowed himself to get distracted and lose track of the hour.

The place had changed since the last time he’d been around. They weren’t any more interconnected than when they’d mostly lived in small villages, but they seemed to think they were with their devices for communicating at a distance. If anything they were more disconnected this way. Good.

On this side of the portal he wore a fleshly body and the damn thing needed food regularly. He was starving with nothing to trade. He was physically stronger than they were, with sharp teeth and claws. He could simply rob or even eat a few of them if not for the damned laws.

He walked to an intersection where self-propelled carriages rolled by regularly and stopped for each other according to a system of colored lights. He made a sign on discarded, thick brown paper with his own blood and held it up. It read—No money. Need flesh to eat.

They laughed, many of them. And lowered glass windows and gave him silver coins and paper currency. He went to the king of burgers’s house to buy dead cow.

He’d have to cut deals with a string of them until the portal opened again. Help them gain wealth and power in return for whatever he needed to stay intact. He required a person venal and selfish, weak of mind and character.

He’d spotted one on what they called television. The orange clown. He would do nicely.

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