“Good news, good news!” The head of Inhuman Resources was grinning as he rounded the corner. “Arbitration’s going swimmingly. With luck, the strikes will be over before the president returns.”
I wished I could have returned his smile, or even confided my suspicions, but for the moment, I held back. I had to be sure — I mean really sure — of my findings.
Meanwhile, up in the foothills of the Appalachians, the devil opened up his case and he said, “I’ll start this show.” And fire flew from his fingertips as he rosined up his bow.
Soon, though, it would be Johnny’s turn to play.
I was running out of time.
“Boyle’s law?” My friend Stanley looked up from where he was updating the Liars, Cheats, and Swearers database, and frowned. “Since when have you been interested in thermodynamics?”
“I’m not,” I said, crossing my fingers in the hope that my name wasn’t about to be added to the register. “Learning the twenty-three laws of gases is a new punishment being introduced for those who didn’t eat their greens.”
Stanley used to be in secondhand car sales, so he didn’t query my explanation. Instead, he reached for a piece of paper and wrote PV = k on it in thick red ink.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Boyle’s law.”
I must have looked as stupid as I felt, because he pointed with his trident.
“P denotes the pressure, V is the volume of the gas, and k is a constant value representative of the pressure and volume of the system,” he explained. “So long as temperature remains constant at the same value, the same amount of energy given to the system persists throughout its operation and therefore, theoretically, the value of k will remain constant.”
I was hoping he’d give me a moment to take this in, preferably ten years. But, just as if he was selling a ten-year-old Chevrolet with dodgy brakes and leaking radiator, Stan was in his stride.
“Due to the derivation of pressure as perpendicular applied force and the probabilistic likelihood of collisions with other particles through collision theory,” he said, “the application of force to a surface may not be infinitely constant for such values of k, but will have a limit when differentiating such values over a given time. Forcing the volume V of the fixed quantity of gas to increase, keeping the gas at the initially measured temperature, the pressure P must decrease proportionally. Conversely, reducing the volume of the gas increases the pressure, got it?”
“Got it.”
Like you, I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. In fact, it was only later that I discovered he’d brought up the Wikipedia article on his computer and was quoting it verbatim. Seems you can’t trust anyone these days.
“You can also tell those cabbage-haters that Boyle’s law predicts the result of introducing a change in volume and pressure to the initial state of a fixed quantity of gas. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ volumes and pressures of the fixed amount of gas, where the ‘before’ and ‘after’ temperatures are the same (heating or cooling will be required to meet this condition), are related by this equation here.”
My heart sank. Another piece of paper. Another red equation.
p1 V1 = p2 V2
I nodded knowingly, thanked him for his time, and then, once I got back to my desk, cried my eyes out. Physics and feasibility? I was doomed.
“Boyle’s law?”
Of all the help in all of Hell, the last place I expected to find it was from my pedicurist. Don’t get me wrong. Suzie does a great job, buffing, polishing, and getting a really even cleft between my hoofs. In fact, it was I who suggested she put the “love” in “cloven” in her advertisemens, and turn the “o” into a heart. Even so, she was the very last person I expected to be familiar with physics.
“Oh, sure, honey.” Buff, buff, polish, polish. “Pythagoras’s theorum, Archimedes’ principle. Ask me anything.”
I hadn’t actually intended asking her one damn thing. I’d simply been grumbling about my problems over a soothing shod-rub to unwind, when suddenly she trots out with that little gem. Amazing. And though the prospect of more horrendous equations filled me with dread, when it comes to fact-finding, there is no such thing as too much information. I braced myself.
“Easy peasy, sugar.” She gave my scales an affectionate ruffle. “Boyle’s law simply states that the volume of a gas increases when the pressure decreases at a constant temperature.”
And there it was. Suddenly boiled down (boyled down?) to something I could understand. Everything I needed in a nutshell.
“Suzie, you’re a star,” I said, hugging her.
“Aw, go on with you,” she said, blushing and pushing me away. All the same, she gave my horns a good hard burnish as a freebie, and when I left, I could really feel them glowing.
I know what you’re thinking.
You’re wondering why, if Hell doesn’t make deals, the devil was cutting one in Georgia. Well, I’ll tell you. Fun. He just went up there to have a look around and enjoy himself, because win or lose, Johnny’s soul was his. It was only ever a question of time, since what people often don’t appreciate is that everybody goes to Hell — and I do mean everybody. You. Me. Murderers, thieves, rapists (obviously), but where do you draw the line? Pickpockets? Exam cheats? People who exceed the speed limit while driving? Yes, you’re probably thinking. There might be a case to be made for those, along with adultery, tax evasion, forgery, and plagiarism. And you probably have a mental image of a panel of judges sitting in the Admissions Office, deciding who comes in and for how long, but you’d only be partially right. Sinners are indeed sorted according to category. But I repeat: Everyone comes in.
Nobody comes out.
Surprises you, does it? It shouldn’t, because in the end it all comes down to religion, many of which proclaim that if you are not a member of theirs, you will go to Hell. And since there are many of these religions, and given that people never belong to more than one, everybody ends up here by default. Factor in projected birth and death rates, and you begin to see that the clientele is increasing in direct proportion. Hence the need for a feasibility study.
But having done the analysis, the conclusion was chilling.
And frankly, it made telling the president about pitchfork sharpeners going on strike look very tame indeed.
You see, this is where Boyle’s law comes in. Once I’d got to grips with Wikipedia, I saw that if you look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell, you’ll see that the temperature and pressure can’t stay the same; and the volume has to expand as more souls are added. Which means one of two things will happen.
Either Hell will expand at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter. In which case, the temperature and pressure will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
Or Hell will expand at a faster rate than the rate at which souls enter. In which case, the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
Now who’s going to tell the devil that?
The boy said, “My name’s Johnny and it might be a sin, but I’ll take your bet, you’re gonna regret, ‘cause I’m the best that’s ever been.”
He played: Fire on the mountain, run boys run, devil’s in the house of the rising sun, chickens in the breadpan, picking out dough, Granny does your dog bite? No, child, no.
Hmm, I thought. Fire on the mountain indeed.