Pete is an intelligent guy, not bad looking, yet a little shy.  Hobbies - computers, Internet, more computers, and beer of course.  In fact he prefers computers to people a lot of the time, so much so that he has, on occasions, been accused of being a “nerd” or a “geek”.  He doesn’t care though.  He knows he is a clever person, with an active, problem-solving brain, and can find like-minded people through the Internet.  One day, he is “surfing”, as usual and happens upon a website containing an appeal for a missing person, name of Jon, - reward of £10,000.  He decides to follow the links on the website – after all, he could do with a bit of money and he is a clever, problem-solving sort of a chap.  Hours, weeks, possibly months later, he isn’t sure (after all, time passes so quickly when you are on-line) the appeal leads him through a series of websites and eventually he realizes what has happened to Jon.  Jon has sold his soul to the devil and is either in hiding or in grave danger.  Pete, initially worried that this is somehow real re-assures himself.  This is merely cyberspace after all.  Click here, click there, sign up for this and that, no-one really knows who you are.  He is also reassured by his new-found on-line community of friends, “alternate reality gamers” who, as a major hobby, regularly spend hours trying to solve these Internet mysteries, of which there are many.  Thousands of brains working out the clues and sharing the knowledge – a great community of like-minded souls.  So, when he arrives at the website that invites him to sell his own soul, albeit initially reluctant – pacts with the Devil and such like - he does the same.  After all, all his new-found friends have done so already, to no avail.  His reward for “selling his soul”? – further clues to Jon’s disappearance.  Eventually Pete, along with the rest of the community, find the location of Jon.  They simultaneously submit the location to the appeal website, only to be directed to one last website containing a puzzle.  Eagerly they take up the challenge still bated by the £10,000 reward money which they agree to share.  Hours, days, weeks they all put in to solving this puzzle - sharing thoughts, ideas, mathematical principles, some of them even attempting to hack into some of the websites in order to solve this damn thing.  Pete can’t sleep.  Every night he tosses and turns, the many possible solutions of this increasingly unsolvable puzzle going round in his head.  He can’t even work now – so much has this puzzle taken over his life, indeed, every waking hour he spends at his computer testing out every single permutation and combination.  It is Hell.  A living, waking, sleeping Hell.  He needs to know the answer though, but the same repetition, day after day, trying to find out the answer to this puzzle…….?  Sitting at his PC, on yet another day, still with a determination to solve it, yet frustrated, he stops and thinks to himself: “I wish I had really sold my soul to the Devil, at least I’d have riches rather than the endless repetition of an unsolvable puzzle.” Yet he can see no way out.  He needs to solve it, only then he can try and reclaim the tattered remains of his life.  “Fucking Hell” he shouts, out loud, then stops as he hears his voice echoing round, and round, in a space much larger than the confines of his room.  He looks around and gasps.  He is not alone.  The room is infinite.  Computer after computer of boys, girls, men, and surprisingly to him, women of all ages, all desperately clicking on a mouse and tapping away frantically on a keyboard.  He looks at the monitors.  The same picture stares back at him from each one.  The unsolvable puzzle.  The revelation hits him.  He knows where he is.  He has indeed sold his soul to the devil, in the hope of rich returns.  What else could he expect but to be in Hell.