| When an actuary's exclamation upon hitting his thumb with a hammer summons a demon, he unwittingly causes a general strike of the workers in Hell. With the help of a theologian with a bizarre theory to explain apparent inconsistencies and inequities in religion, he is able to save the day and fulfill one of his dreams.
The mathematical content per page ratio is much lower here than in some of the other demon/devil summoning stories listed in this database. (See, for example, The Devil a Mathematician Would Be, Naturally, The Atrocity Archive, The Devil and Simon Flagg, Convergent Series, and I of Newton.)
The main mathematical aspect of the story is simply the degree to which the protagonist conforms to the stereotype:
| (quoted from Hell of a Fix)
In college, Chesney discovered the sheer decorum of the interrelationships that numbers could form with each other; that became his fascination. Though he lacked the creativity to pursue a career as a pure mathematician, his degree led to a position as a junior actuary in a midsize insurance company. He spent his days calculating the risk of death or injuries for tiny slices numerically carved from the demographic spectrum. His evenings were mostly given over to the second love he had discovered in college: graphic novels, especially those that featured oddly talented individuals who fought crime, freelance-style.
Crunching numbers suited Chesney's deeply introverted personality. Actuaries were not expected to be the life of any party. All the men in his department had grown up as friendless as he.
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A discussion between Chesney and his co-workers regarding the morality of their profession is also somewhat mathematical. However, in contrast to the stories above, the resolution of the supernatural predicament does not come either from mathematics or the character's inherent intellect, but rather from a very unorthodox theological perspective.
This story was published as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (December 2009), p. 81.
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