Barth had been doing a lot of thinking. Usually he was good with Deals. The balance sort of presented itself to him naturally, but he wasn't sure he appreciated where this one was going.

That is, he didn't think he could wrangle the housework out of Christof again.

Which meant he'd have to either find a new person to do it, or a way to add on to the current Contract. Unfortunately, adding on household servitude meant HE'D have to do the equivalent for Christof. There was also the issue of what the Contract did encompass. He had been careful not to admit, even to himself, certain plans he had for Christof. His successes were precarious and fickle. As long as he pretended they was effortless, they were, but when he tried to look at them dead on to discern his part in the matter, it was like trying to grasp water. He was clever, yes, and opportunistic, but at his depths he knew he was not the mastermind he needed to be. He hoped bribery would help ease the path forward in the meantime.

The process, Barth promised himself, was very easy. One-click shopping. He wouldn't even have to leave his couch. Since he'd started school he had fought Reapers, Ninjas, and Machines after hiking miles across unfamiliar territory, and even on the occasion done homework, but the computer screen was no less intimidating.

Even if he'd done all that, he'd never bought someone a gift before.

Not out of lack of trying. He had intended to buy gifts, occasionally, but the shopping trip would be procrastinated into oblivion. He would mean to do it even after the event the gift was for had passed, and October after October would roll forward into a solid year. The years racked up with the same results, and here he was, in high school, with zero experience in getting gifts for others. But his intentions were immoral and focused on self-gain, mostly. Bribery, he enforced, was all this was. The shopping was zero-effort. Demonically, he was in the clear on this one.

Barth opened his laptop.

A thousand nagging unfinished tasks sprang to mind. He sorted them with the clumsy shyness of a man fending off sidewalk hookers. That is, halfheartedly and not very well, giving each of them a sorry excuse and too much of his time. First he battled the aesthetics. Clearing his cluttered and unsorted Desktop (later), finally putting up a background (but then he'd have to spend hours carefully sorting through suitable images), or even rearranging his icons (focus). He dragged the pointer laboriously towards the browser icons before he could look at his Desktop any longer, and selected Foxfire.

It was as if he had opened an entirely different buffet of temptation (wrong sin).

He appreciated the Web, professionally. The capacity for time wasting was enormous. As Slothfulness went, video games were a good diversion, with a firm grip for certain age and interest groups, but the internet was a boggy mire of inactivity. There was plenty you could accomplish. There was plenty you could avoid accomplishing, too. His wasn't the only sin being served here. It aided and abetted all seven, a microcosm of the World general.

His bookmarks cluttered his tabs. The actual bookmark folder, as unorganized as his Desktop, was one long time-eating scrolling session. Before the shopping (just a quick stop), he checked his email. He rarely checked his email. The gesture, if anything, was only meant to delay the inevitable. His tally (thousands) of unread messages was only a little misleading. He scanned the email titles from the first page. Already-expired discounts, self-inflicted spam, memos from the school. There were some personal emails form names he recognized, but no one who expected him to read or respond to them, so he didn't. Besides, if he answered one, they'd send something back, and he'd have to keep on doing it. It was a cycle he didn't want to encourage. Emails glanced over, he returned his attention to the task bar.

He could ask a few anonymous questions on Groanspring...

No. Christof. It was important.

Barth felt the first creeping hints of despair that the task might be insurmountable. When he tried to picture the tedium of accomplishing the thing before him: Go to the website, be confronted by an overwhelming blur of discount items and specials he had no interest in, he could feel himself shutting down. His small reservoir of energy shied away like a cockroach in a well-lit room. What he really wanted, looking at the monitor, was a nap. He made a last, flagging attempt to lure his energy back under his command. Dishes, he threatened himself. Piles of dishes. And he'd have to wash every single one of them. Memos he'd have to write, laundry he'd have to wash...anything to focus his claws long enough to type

M-A-D

and now that he'd started

L-A-B-S

in the final stretch

.-F-E-A-R ~enter~

The page for madlabs.fear was not the overwhelming jumble he'd feared. While it did contain those things (discounts, offers) it also had a search box. The item he was looking for was easy enough, and he rode on a fresh rush of victory from arriving at the site at all.

The item he was looking for was a

laboratory coat

immediately he was confronted with rows of pictures of laboratory coats, and settled in for browsing. What made a good lab coat? Strength, economy, materials, dependability? It was ultimately the look of the thing. A lab coat proper commanded the respect that in Christof automatically transferred Mister to Master. Barth was aware of but thought it better not to mention any of these implications. The lab coat was a practical tool, like a wrench. Anyone could have and use a wrench. This particular piece of equipment would protect Christof's few clothes from spills and stains. This is the most Barth, if pressed, planned to say on the subject of lab coats.

Even if Barth would not have personally shopped for something that was only a wrench.

The size of the lab coat was trickier. Christof's hump presented some problems, but his varied arm lengths and tendencies to replace his parts made any size the wrong size. Barth decided to err on the side of too big. The important thing was that Christof would be able to put it on. If it was too small, he might feel restricted, ill-suited, and guilty. The hard grip could pinpoint all of those uneasy master-oriented anxieties into a sign that Science proper disapproved of his tampering with the Natural Order. Too big- well. There were some things, though perhaps ill-suited, that could always be grown into.

The coat he finally decided on was not fancy. It was lacking in bells, whistles, or maniacally flared collars. It was on the plain side. Traditional. A working lab coat. Ordering several was out of the question. It was not A lab coat, it was THE lab coat that mattered. With trepidation, Barth found the +add to cart button, and right below it:

Check out.

What he found on that page made him wilt. No, he did not have an account. Yes, he would like to make a purchase.

He watched his scroll-bar shrink to accommodate the size of the form he had to fill out.

Oh no.

Absolutely not.

Paperwork. Digital paperwork. Lines and lines and lines of verification and digits and accounts. He had hit a wall. He had defeated the minotaur and forgotten the golden string. Under no circumstances, not by all the powers of hell, would he - could he fill out that page. Even if he, through the use of charms, curses, and secretaries, correctly answered every empty space, the button at the bottom did not say Okay, or even a blase, matter-of-fact message like Submit.

The button said Next.

He scrambled for the phone.

Who did he have on speed dial? Who could come over to his dorm? Who wasn't a demon? Who liked shopping? He should have done this in the first place. What had he been thinking, personally buying anyone a gift. His claw hovered over the digits. Slowly, he lowered the phone. He knew exactly what he had been thinking. And worse, his pretense of bribery was about as true as the assertion that the coat was only a tool.

That Christof was only a tool.

That Christof could be...

His partner.

There, he'd thought it. Not said it, but thought it. His partner in science. In inventing. Not just in the school, in the cramped dorm room, but in the long-term, castle on a hill, business career sense. And why not. Even if Christof was trying desperately to see himself as something less refined, it was like trying to use a pocket-watch as a hammer. Christof was an expert groveler, yes. A skilled fetcher. An earnest housekeeper. Hard-working. But more than that, he was creative. Destructive the way a smart (and bored) dog might be destructive, but curious, competent, clever. Igors did not have their own projects, had no part in the creative process. They were gofers, an extension of their master's hand, not his brain. Not to say that Christof was not a good igor. He was a good igor. But he was also an Inventor.

As Christof began to realize what Barth had known since the Christmas Play (Only inklings when Christof had built the puppet, but a deeper appreciation at the frankensteined water balloon launcher), so did other students. And other demons.

He looked again at the form.

He had practiced tuba, hadn't he? Dragged the stupid, impossibly heavy thing to his dorm and back? It was compromises like this that were slowly killing off some essential part of him. He knew he was ambitious, for a Sloth demon. But no one else seemed to understand the capacity of science. How a device could ease the matter of one thing killing another to a single trigger pull, how killing millions was even easier than that. He dabbled in recliners and door-openers, but the very heart of his sin was far darker. Make it easier. The Big Sleep. Non-action. He also who is slack in his work Is brother to him who destroys. He knew how close Dream is to Death, even if he loathed the idea of dying himself. He knew how much people would do for the promise of ease, how many souls wasted their lives away hoping for a button to take care of those problems. He could make those buttons. Buttons to make life easier by shades and degrees until it was hardly like living at all. Buried there was the asterisk to his assertion that he was mostly harmless.

He typed BARTHOLOMEW MUDD into the first space.

Four hours later, the coat was ordered, and he had never felt so simultaneously victorious and guilty in his entire life. This will not become a habit, he promised himself. He felt sick. Ill. Defiled. He had been right about the Next button, and he would have rather been roasted alive than type out each tedious line after line after line. But he had still done it. He felt like a samurai cutting down lines of soldiers, if the soldiers had all been his brothers in arms and he had been planning on inviting them to a party next weekend.There had been something that needed doing, and he had to do it. It was awful. Contemplating it was awful. Each moment doing it was awful. The aftermath was awful. He wanted to go curl up in bed and pretend it had never happened.

These sorts of circumstances were becoming distressingly frequent, but he'd only have to endure it a little longer.

...If anyone asked how he had managed to order something online, they were going to be told that one-click shopping was no trouble at all thanks, and to please not bring it up again under any circumstances.