“Do you know where you are?” the man asked. His immaculate suit caught the lambent glow of the ember-filled walls, and almost seemed suffused with a fire all its own. The office he sat in was spacious and well appointed, the bookcases and paintings lining the walls oddly immune to their flaming companions.

The man sitting across from him looked around, his dark eyes flicking from object to object before settling back on the man in the suit, patiently waiting for an answer. “I’d imagine,” he said, a smile teasing at his lips, “that this is Hell. Would you happen to be Satan?”

“Yes, yes I would.” Satan acknowledged, steepling his fingers in front of him as he stared at the man across from him, who had given up any pretense of neutrality and was grinning quite broadly. “It would seem you also know why you’re here, rather than already receiving your due punishment.”

“Would it happen to have anything to do with…” the man drew out the sentence, tapping a hand against his knee as he tried not to laugh. “...How you tabulate sins?”

“Yes, that would-” Satan stopped as his voice was drowned out by laughter, and waited for the man to quiet down. His fingers drummed against the desk for a few moments, and then he sighed. A breeze filled the room and the walls flared to light, interrupting the laughter long enough for him to continue. “That would be the case. You have quite the anomalous count of sins. Would you care to explain?”

“Oh my yes, I certainly would.” The man leaned back in his chair and looked around the room, before his eyes settled upon an old painting. “What a coincidence. Is that Emperor Gaozu?”

Satan looked to the painting, then back to the man who clearly already knew the answer. “Yes, that is him.”

The man clapped his hands together. “Excellent! See, he was part of the inspiration for what I did. It all started ages ago, you see. I came to the horrible realization that I was probably never going to go to heaven. A terrible thing to conclude, you know?” He wiped a few tears that very clearly didn’t exist out of his eyes, grin belying the action as he did so. “I figured, okay. If I’m going to go to Hell anyway, I should make sure I go there in style.”

“I see.” Satan said, rubbing his temples. “You’re not the first, but you are certainly one of the more…” he sighed again, “creative cases. That doesn’t explain what you did, however.”

“Right, I was getting to that. First thing I realized was that classic methods were off the table. No better way to live a short and probably miserable life than to try to become a mass murderer in the modern age.” He shrugged. “So I spent a while thinking. Realized that I probably get counted in for convincing other people to commit sins too. Even if it’s at something of a discount.”

“Yes, you do.” Satan leaned forward, staring straight at the man he was interviewing. “Normally, intent is accounted for here as well. However, you caused us to re-evaluate other pending cases. We’re going to need to adjust accordingly in the future. Anyway,” he said, sitting back and gesturing across the desk. “Please continue.”

“So yeah. I figured, okay. I can do this.” The man grinned again. “Seems I was right, by the way.” His smile faded slightly, but the twinkle remained in his eyes. “So I decided, hey. We’ve got this fancy new tech that connects people around the world. Is there a good way to abuse that to create sins en masse?”

Satan chuckled, the sound hollow even to his ears. “Yes, you certainly did that. Every one of the deadly sins and a multitude besides, committed constantly around the globe.” He grimaced as he looked at some of the paperwork on his desk. “Your final numbers are unlikely to finish tabulating any time soon, as the sins continue to come in. Congratulations, you’ve broken the system.”

The man simply sat, his grin never fading as he waited for Satan to continue.

“So all of your assumptions, correct as they were…” Satan paused to stare at the man. “All of them led you to-”

“To invent microtransactions, yes. Brilliant piece of work, aren’t they?”