Precisely Bound Demons and their Behavior

There is a profession/priesthood, a rough combination of lawyer, engineer, and programmer, which writes formal sets of instructions for demons. Any summoner can summon a demon to "if such a contract exists and I have specified it uniquely then fulfill the terms of 'Archibald, Flywheel, and Sprunk standard contract 282: build an apartment block', if not then do nothing". Though any sensible person will have an expert come and say those words for them, just in case. An increasing number of domestic tasks are being coded up, with a bare minimum of errors, and the waiting lists are rather long.

Transportation has long been solved. There are mass produced (read, produced by a demon at a well specified rate from materials of a well specified source) power units, strap on a chassis, feed your steering commands into the controls, and the machine will go.

Certified Demon-free foods are the reserve of the liberal elites. Everyone else eats food made by specialised demons. There was a crisis a few decades ago when the population outstripped the fixed, regular amount that the demons produce. Several cities made more, some of them got it wrong.

There are demons used by the army, very very limited in what they can do, normally not more than "destroy all the matter in a sphere N meter radius centred the nearest point to me that fulfills {this condition}, leaving everywhere else unharmed, then do nothing." But their use has been massively scaled back due to mistargetings killing civilians at a higher than acceptable rate.

Most summoners who use their powers then are in practice mere functionaries of the real professionals who get things done. They are handsomely rewarded as befits their rarity, but nobody would trust them to decide anything. Most. Some are rouge, making their own incantations on the fly, the stuff of legends, like Arthur of Flintshire who tricked a demon into building a magnificent city. But legends have flip sides. Some are terrorists, summoning death and destruction. Governments learnt long ago to make sure phrases like "the ruler of England" and "the most powerful man in Brazil" do not refer to anyone, at least, not anyone important.

Naturally no soldier is sent into the field who can summon, just in case someone does something stupid. Likewise summoners are routinely given mental health screenings so that ... precautions ... can be taken. Poor areas are laid waste every couple of decades by some undereducated summoner getting the incantation wrong.

/r/HPMOR Thread