Just in case you were wondering ...

	Of the twenty responses to the question "Would you accept this
bargain" that I received in the roughly twenty four hours after I asked:

	Fifteen said no. (75%)
	Four said yes. (20%)
	One made inane or smart-aleck responses, *instead* of one of the two
acceptable responses. (5%)

	(After my arbitrary and unstated deadline passed, I received a pair
of responses, one yes and one no.  They don't go into the figures above.)

	Of the two who said yes, two claimed disbelief in the existence of
the soul (and thus ignored the explicit statement that the soul did exist,
and could continue to exist after the death of the body), while two were
authors of self-insertion fanfics already.

	Of those who said no, I think the most eloquent answer came from my
man David H. Olivier, quoting my man J.R.R. Tolkein:

-----
    "'And now at last it comes.  You will give me the Ring freely!  In place
of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.  And I shall not be dark, but
beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night!  Fair as the Sea and 
the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain!  Dreadful as the Storm and the 
Lightning!  Stronger that the foundations of the earth.  All shall love me
and despair!'
    "She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a
great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark.  She stood
before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond
enduring, terrible and worshipful.  Then she let her hand fall, and the
light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a
slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and
sad.
    "'I pass the test,' she said.  'I will diminish, and go into the West,
and remain Galadriel.'"

(The Lord of the Rings, Book II)

No.
-----
	(He also wrote some dialogue by some guy named Dante, but we won't
go into that. David should write more, I think ...)

	I want to stress that there is no "trap" as such in the bargain.
The devil (and yes, it is *the* devil, if you can't accept that you should
just delete this message and move on) will going to do exactly as he says.
You'd wind up *in* the series, with a chance to make a difference.  Not on
some other continent, not too late in the storyline.  Whether you succeed is
up to you.  The scenario may permit you additional abilities, or it might
not.  But the price is as high as most people polled believe.  When you die
(not before), your soul is gone.  Totally.  Not before, so you won't 
register as "soulless" or lose any of the characteristics that people have
attributed to the soul (such as what Carlos Castaneda referred to as "the
language of the soul", laughter).  Efforts at prolonging your life will
succeed, but efforts at cheating death (braintapes and cloning) *won't*.
And everyone dies someday.

	And what about me?  What does the author of this little exercise in
bargaining think?

	Would I do it?

	I don't know.

Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part-Time Champion of Light.
"People need vampires.  They helps 'em remember what stakes and garlic are
for." -- Granny Weatherwax, "Carpe Jugulum", by Terry Pratchett
http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/banks/277/index.html