The nice and accurate prophecies of major Tom to ground control OR Why you shouldn’t listen to David Bowie at 3 in the morning after binge reading Terry Prachett and not sleeping for two nights straight

When the apocalypse happened, the M & A folks were the first to go. Now there was a bit of debate in the back offices of hell, on what exactly M & A meant. You see, the orders had come from ‘up above’ almost 6 millennia back, and at that time no one had really bothered to check, what with the frequent transfers and postings. Everyone just kind of assumed that it would be handled by whoever was in charge, next. But now the time had come to decide.

And so began the great bureaucratic process. To remind you, the last time this had happened, it had rained for 7 days and 7 nights, before someone realised that the reason for the rain was that a tap had been accidentally left on ‘up there’. Memos were sent, and a portion of history was hastily rewritten. Another time, one of the golf balls in the great golf course on the eastern gate of
Heaven ™ had been swung off the course. And the great dinosaur fiasco happened.

Like all other times, the clerks sent the papers back up with a note and comments. The papers were of course, promptly returned with a copy of the by laws of creation which clearly stated that the apocalypse was hell’s problem alone. And so it fell on the great lords of hell to decide what they were going to do with this little confusion.
Committees were formed to debate and decide on the topic. As is par for course for such things, the matter went on for millenia. Legend says that there was much money exchanged under the table. Maybe an RTI would throw more light on the matter.

Till finally, it was decided. M & A was interpreted to mean Marketing & Advertising. A legal case was prepared and submitted to the great lord Lucifer (the GLO- or Great lord’s office, as it was called), who promptly signed and made it official. So, it was announced in all gazetted notifications that M & A folks were to report promptly to the nearest branch of hell office for the total and complete annihilation of their souls.

Of course, the M & A teams across earth rejoiced at first, since they believed that they had no souls in the first place, and would be saved. But the FSAI (The Figurative Souls Association – Infernal) promptly took out another gazetted notification to the effect that a spell had been put in place to remedy the same, and all M & A teams had been returned their souls.

This was a mistake.
To be continued