He Looked at a Tree for Three Minutes—Now All of Hell Is on Fire

One glimpse of beauty, and Hell Inc. goes full lockdown mode. Based on Screwtape Letters Chapter 1.

Ever read the Screwtape Letters? I did as a kid, and it terrified me. Which means… I missed the point. Tolkien once cautioned that it was dangerous to ‘investigate too deeply the enemy’s plans’… C. S. Lewis said ‘hold my beer’ and wrote a book. So I did the next best, thing: hired a Balrog to pull open the senseless, stupid, and vapid lid of a hellacious startup, known as Damnage Control.

The point? To double down on how lovely and powerful is grace, and how ludicrous are we humans… and the demons below.

Not for the faint of heart, I suppose.

(I wish I could watch this as a skit.)

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In the flaming bowels of Hell’s startup sector, a demonic venture team is hard at work disrupting salvation. Their mission? To scale sin, optimize temptation, and A/B test despair using hyper-targeted apps, moral vaporware, and algorithmic addiction.

Each episode dives into the chaos of Damnage Control, where Screwpix (CEO from the 9th Circle) and his team of overconfident demons beta-launch spiritually corrosive tech—only to watch in horror as grace, free will, or leaf-induced wonder ruins the roadmap.

It’s The Screwtape Letters meets Silicon Valley by way of The Good Place—a fast-paced, theologically feral satire of our distracted age.

Welcome to Damnage Control. Innovating Eternal Damnation, One App at a Time.

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Screwpix [CEO] I have seen miscalculations before—gross blunders, weak temptations, entire campaigns of temptation dashed by a single act of patience—but never this. Never this.

Grimberry [aside] Oh splendid—he's doing his tragic opera voice again. Someone fetch the smoke machine and a haunted violin.

Screwpix He looked at a tree, Wormtwig. He did not scan it. He did not filter it. He did not even photograph it to project a curated sense of serenity.

He simply saw it.

For three minutes and twelve unholy seconds, he sat there in unqualified awareness. No advertising prompts, no hunger loops, no comparison reflexes. He was still.

Wormtwig [Intern] Okay now hold up, because I’m just gonna say it: nobody told me we were still losing users to trees. I mean, really—trees?

Screwpix That stillness, Wormtwig—that appalling silence—cost us seven micro-indulgences, two dopamine spirals, and most unforgivably... his trajectory.

Wormtwig What if—and I’m just brainstorming here—we redirect the memory stream? Throw in a nostalgic ache for a breakfast he never had? Something buttery and sad. “Remember Nana’s pancakes?” I’m telling you, I’ve seen humans abandon entire Cursillo plans for a memory of waffles.

Screwpix You absolute, unrepentant spatula.

It is not what he did that concerns me. It is what he did not do.

There was no swipe. No scroll. No craving activated, no mechanism triggered. It was, in short, a moment without us.

And it was precisely that absence which allowed something far worse to slip in: the dreadful possibility of awareness. In that tree-gazing moment, brushed against something old. Something dangerous. Something... unscheduled.

Blabberdash [Dev] Ad stream normal. No ping delay. Ignored three reward prompts and two curated envy bursts. Possible sensory deadzone glitch.

Screwpix A glitch? No, Blabberdash. You simple processor. It was a glimpse.

Wormtwig (aside) He says that like we haven’t all glitched out staring at nothing before. I once lost four hours watching a ceiling fan spin.

Screwpix He tasted being. Not pleasure—we can counterfeit that. Not happiness—too light, too mutable. But awareness...? Ah, that is the seedbed of the Enemy’s most insidious project: grace.

Grimberry [PR/Marketing] Ew. We don’t say that here. But fine—if we must salvage this disaster, let’s do it with elegance. I suggest memory vapor. A soft ache. Childhood lighting. A pastel sadness clinging to a song he’s never heard. The kind of grief that tastes like birthday cake at the wrong time of year. We’ll flood his soul with curated ache until he forgets the tree and hungers for the absence again. If I must ruin him, let it be with velvet.

Screwpix Silence is not an absence to fill—it is a Presence we cannot control. It is the breach in the veil. The crack in the firewall. It is the moment our grip slips.

In the silence, they remember their hunger. Not for food. Not for fame. For home. And that, Grimberry, is the beginning of the end.

They begin to ask questions—yes, dangerous ones. Not the shallow inquiries about relevance or influence, but the raw, primeval ones:

Who made me? Why do I ache? What waits beyond the ache?

Awareness becomes awe. And awe becomes surrender. And surrender... is the Enemy’s opening salvo.

Every time it happens, we bleed ground. And we are bleeding now.

Shlox [Legal] With all due respect, sir, isn't this just a minor breach? I mean, it’s a leaf, not a liturgy. Are we sure we’re not overreacting?

Screwpix [furious] Overreacting? Do you honestly think the Enemy needs cathedrals to spark conversion? He stitched eternity into bark and breath. One glimpse—one—and our entire scheme starts unraveling from the inside out.

Do you think Hell fears the megachurch? No, Shlox. We fear the grandmother humming a hymn while folding laundry. We fear the man who forgives before he understands why. We fear the quiet ones.

Because those are the cracks. And in those cracks, the Enemy plants hope.

Now pull your head out of your litigation and pay attention.

This user entered an ancient awe. Old as Eden. Sharp as blood. Real as resurrection.

And all our clever scaffolding of vice and irony and shame collapses like paper in flame.

And if they ever look beyond the tree—beyond the shadow and leaf and wind—and see the Enemy smiling behind it...

We are undone.

Blabberdash High Suggest locking down all unbranded nature interfaces until further notice.

Screwpix Yes. Lock it all. I want nature on lockdown like a plague site. Drench the forests in static. Mute the rivers. Scramble the birdsong. Silence is our enemy’s embassy, and I will not have another soul defect through a leaf.

Grimberry (aside) if silence trends, I’m launching a line of emotionally oppressive throw pillows.

Screwpix If one of them saw a tree today—and thanked Someone for it— then we have a fault line, running through the very bones of our operation. It means the Enemy has slipped grace in through the gaps we called secure.

A moment of gratitude is not just offensive—it is infectious.

Wormtwig (shaken) Wait wait wait—you’re saying it could, like... spread? Like spiritual measles? From a tree?

Screwpix Worship, if it starts in a leaf, will spread to light, to breath, to bread, to blood. And then they start kneeling in kitchens. Forgiving in traffic. Repenting without fanfare.

Blabberdash (nervous monotone) Red-level contagion protocol? Do I initiate Sanctity Quarantine Grid Zeta?

Grimberry I’m sorry, but if he starts seeing holiness in leftover casserole and ugly pew upholstery, I am out. I didn’t sign up for that level of gross.

Screwpix And when that happens, team—when the sacred begins leaking into the mundane—we are not just at risk. We are at war. I suggest you treat this leaf like the arson it is.

Wormtwig (panicking on his ipad) Okay okay I’m flooding his internal feed. Pancake memories. Estranged uncle guilt. Umm… Any emergency lust bundles still in stock?!

Screwpix Fix it. If this spreads, I'm sending every one of you six floors down to the Punishment Accounting Office. Don't gasp at me. Yes, it's lit exclusively by flickering fluorescent halos, and staffed by ex-angels who haven’t blinked since the Rebellion.

I'll personally task you to file reports on missed temptation quotas using a cursed spreadsheet that scrolls in both directions, screams when hovered over, and autocorrects all typos to 'Failure.'

We’re a startup selling chaos in a universe held together by a Word we can’t cancel.

If you can’t hack it, you’ll have hell to pay.