The Absolute at Large by Karel Čapek

A few days after these occurrences G. H. Bondy was wandering through the streets of Prague, a cigar between his teeth, thinking things over. Anyone who met him would have thought that he was looking at the pavement; but Mr. Bondy was really looking into the future. "Marek was right," he was saying to himself, "Bishop Linda even more so. It was simply impossible to bring God to earth without a confounded lot coming of it. People could do what they liked, but it was going to shake the banks and do goodness knows what with industry. A religious strike broke out at the Industrial Bank today. We installed a Karburator there, and within two days the officials declared the bank's property to be a sacred trust for the poor. That couldn't have happened when Preis was manager. No, it certainly would never have happened."

Bondy sucked at his cigar in great depression. "Well, what about it? " he said to himself. "Are we to throw the whole thing up? Orders worth twenty-three millions came in today. It can't be stopped now. It means the end of the world, or something. In two years' time everything will have come down crash. There are several thousand Karburators at work in the world already, every one of them pouring forth the Absolute day and night. And this Absolute is fiendishly clever, too. It has an insane desire to exert itself, no matter how. There you are, it hasn't anything to do, for thousands of years it's had nothing to do, and now we've let it off the chain. Just look at what it's doing at the Industrial Bank, for instance. It keeps the bank's books all on its own, does the accounts, carries on the correspondence. It gives orders to the Board of Directors in writing. It sends its clients fervent epistles about showing love by works. What's the result? The Industrial Bank shares are mere waste paper: it would take a kilo of them to buy a bit of cheese. That's what happens when God starts meddling with banking.