The Vatican Games

by Alejandra Guibert

  Sitting in front of Daniel’s membrane, Zillo read the document which had inspired Vera and Carda to make up this extraordinary story.

  ‘Forgive me for mentioning the event. Is it possible that your partner’s unexpected demise has nourished this fantasy? Is this the only proof you have of something that doesn’t work?’

  ‘Father, it’s something that interferes with users’ spirit.’

  ‘What a thing to say!’

  ‘I know it sounds ludicrous. We have no conclusive proof. That’s why we need to warn the population through the World Government.’

  Father Zillo turned to Vera with an unrecognisable look. Vera’s proposal was trivial compared to his all-encompassing vision. The universal scope he had to bear in mind when making decisions.

  ‘Who do you think you are to alert the World Government? You’re being arrogant. Arrogance is not only the worst sin, but the origin of all the others. Do you think yourself somehow above humanity? Would you deny it a basic need? I’m talking about living in harmony. We have reached this state of grace after millennia of struggles and violence. Do you want to destroy that grace we have conquered? Child, don’t you realise you’re challenging God?

  ‘People all over the world are taking their own lives.’

  ‘It’s an error that will be put right. How do you know that the World Government is not aware of it?’

  ‘People should know about it. They should stop playing the game until the error has been corrected.’

  ‘People want to live in peace. That’s why they leave the responsibility of managing the world to us and the World Government. It’s a better world. You were lucky to have been born in it. I knew the previous one. The one you didn’t know had millions paying for loans with no way out. That was how the world was controlled back then. Do you know how many people were born and died in poverty?’

  There was a sacred silence which lasted for the time Zillo bowed his head as if in contrition. Vera was left unable to reply given the dimension of Father Zillo’s arguments. The priest recovered his breath and looked her in the eye again.

  ‘If they stop playing the game, they won’t take it up again.’

  ‘Is this the only option?’

  ‘No. This is the third option. The world was distanced from God in any case. I’ve struggled to make it possible. I will take charge of rectifying the error with no need to return to times of panic. You can help me.’ Zillo’s smile bewildered her.

  ‘Don’t ask me to help you avoid people becoming aware of this.’

  ‘Aware? That’s a nice word. Their manipulation is absolutely necessary. You’ll have seen a dog without the control of the leader of the pack – It doesn’t know what to do – it becomes neurotic or aggressive. We have managed to put an end to the good of the privileged few. We have preserved a world at peace. Basic needs are covered. We must continue to protect this world. The next step is to end the ideal of a freedom that is linked to economic priorities. Commercial exchange at the expense of human exchange. Complacency and superficiality at the expense of spiritual greatness and elevation. That’s my mission. The only way is to preserve a creed which is internalised in the majority. Religion should thrive. Politicians will finally come to understand. What societies need in order to survive is cohesion.’

  ‘Manipulating the mind. Your practices, Father, are no different from those of the World Government.’

  ‘For their own good. It’s nothing new. Haven’t you yourself lived the consequences of the inability to live together, egocentrism, evil? Man is a mental patient, dangerous to society and himself. It’s necessary to protect humanity from its own madness. Have you read Céline? The human condition can’t change because it is made of stinking mud.’

  ‘Why should those in control be any different?’

  ‘Justice doesn’t exist in the way you imagine it. Pacts of interest will always exist. Some benefit at one time, and others, other times. Meanwhile, keeping the population carefree and happy is an enormous task. Those of us who understand the world carry the burden of knowing that it’s a delicate balance. Before the cataclysm the economy was based on war. Of course such a system was going to collapse one day. Don’t you think a source of income based on games is preferable?’

  ‘Have you ever stepped back, as if outside your own body? To look around you, the people in this room, the announcements on the big screen, the speeches, the launches. Games are nothing other than a way of control. They are not necessary for life.’

  ‘Games are the food on the table. Can’t you see? Now we can live. Technology has protected everyone. Human ingenuity has managed to save the world.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘You can’t have it all. There will always have to be a losing side. The virtual world has the ability to take us to a new world.’

  ‘It locks us up in a false one.’

  ‘You’re so ungrateful. After the cataclysm, humanity has managed to flourish so that individuals can attain equality. Now they can also aspire to more. I’m happy to have found a way. We only need to perfect it.’

  ‘Father, what is there in Cf?’

  Vera had no fear. What nurtured her gave her the composure with which she joined Father Zillo at the huge panelled window overlooking the hundreds of employees sitting passively at their screens.

  ‘Are you going to help me?’

  ‘Look at them. They’re dead. Alienated from a life they don’t understand.’

  ‘What life would that be, Vera? Do you mean nature, the cosmos? Nature has turned her back on us. The cosmos has always been alien and distant. What we have is this.’

  Zillo swept his arm over the extensive processing room at his feet.

  ‘You believe in God. Like everyone, you prefer to protect yourself from mystery.’

  ‘Just like Adam and Eve in Paradise, you and Carda have betrayed me. It’s a shame you don’t want to help thousands of people. They will continue to kill themselves until the problem is solved.’ Zillo took out of his pocket a gun so small it looked like a toy. ‘Armchair philosophy has been relegated to self-help books from before the cataclysm. This is reality. Those books have been superseded by games. You said it. It’s not right but it’s necessary.’

  Zillo raised the gun and pointed it at her. Vera looked at him, suspended in incredulity. The absurdity of the gun in the priest’s hand paralysed her. The man who had opened the doors for her and had admired her. Now he was ready to take it all away from her. What was the overriding objective? The one that made it possible for a man to decide to suppress a life? Vera reverted almost unwittingly to a primitive state. One by one her limbs numbed until she felt only her spirit spreading around the room. She barely smiled on perceiving Father Zillo’s naivety with the minuscule gun in his hand. The vastness of the universe ahead of his act of supreme obtuseness. The magnitude of his purpose was dissolved in the wave of energy rising from Vera’s body as if once more her head opened to the cosmos to understand nothing. To be immaterial with the immensity of a truth as certain as it was unknown. Like in a photo, Zillo’s image was recorded once more among hundreds of billions of futile, useless, empty scenes. Scenes piled up over centuries of history. Evolution with no evolution. Meaningless. The image of Zillo holding a gun could summarise them and at the same time encompass them all, the same ones. It was one. Vera knew it and there she remained, feeling nothing but the moment of departure to be as one with her moon.

  PART IX

  The blast from the shot filled the room to echo in the air above the hundreds of operators sitting in silence. Its fallout, millions of shards of glass. A white rain on top of the heads, now bowed, of those perplexed by the glass drops. Until from the gaping hole in the vast window upstairs the black shape began to fall. Their astonishment was cut short by the dull thud as Father Zillo’s body hit the ground.

  Roch emerged from behind the screen with the gun still in his hand. The resounding crash of the glass restored Vera’s bodily sensations. Roch was st
ill pointing the gun, his arm stretched out. As if his own action had petrified him. Turning her body slightly, Vera just had time to assimilate events on the other side of the glass. The door opened suddenly and Carda fell into the room. Martino, who had pushed Carda’s body using it to enter, closed the door, dropping the handkerchief with which he had covered a deep gash on his forehead. At that point it became clear to Vera who Carda was. It was good news on the one hand, twice as bad on the other, when she saw the guns both Roch and Martino were pointing at her. At the same time as Carda’s heavy breathing against the floor suggested he was injured.

  ‘Roch, where’s Zillo?’ The blood from his forehead did not allow Martino to see the open space left by the shattered glass panel. ‘Help me with these. Come on, get moving!’

  Roch seemed to have lost control of his muscles. In a catatonic state he barely turned his head to look at Martino who had picked up the handkerchief and was wiping off the blood clouding his vision.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? Where’s Zillo?’

  For the first time Martino paid attention to the scene. It was very straightforward. Everything was clearly set out. So clear that he could not see what was evident when he entered and became a part of it. The only thing Martino managed to see was so extraordinary that he became thoroughly confused. He saw the open space where the glass panel should have been, its absence confirmed by the voices he could hear rising from the processing room. If Roch held a gun pointed at Vera and she was still standing next to the empty space of the glass, where was Zillo? The simplicity of the scene made no sense to Martino. It became even more senseless when, on turning his head towards Roch, he felt the impact on his chest. Or seconds later when, even if he did not feel the second impact, another bullet perforated his temple. Neither of the bullets that were shot at him made sense to Vera. Martino fell dead on top of Carda. Without analysing the scene Vera ran to help him to free himself of the unbearable weight of the towering security guard. Neither of them saw Roch turn the gun into his own mouth. To use the last bullet and end his own life too.

  Vera struggled to drag Martino to one side. The sound of the fourth bullet had shocked her. She had not expected it. She did not need to look at Roch to know that he had been its target. Given the sequence of events, she was glad Carda was not holding a gun too. Guns had been in unexpected hands, except in Martino’s case. Shots had also been fired at those least expecting them. Other questions arose: had Roch seen the priest pointing his gun at her and had he shot Zillo to protect her. If he had had no choice but to shoot Martino why had he turned the gun on himself? What was the explanation for all this? It was like one of the games which she had so categorically refused to play.

  Carda stood up with Vera’s help. The burning sensation at the back of his neck matched the dizziness from which he had not yet recovered.

  ‘Carda, are you all right?’

  ‘My name is Felix.’ He touched her hand with the same lightness with which Vera breathed her surprise.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘When I went into his office Martino knocked me out… He cut his forehead but he had a gun.’ Vera did not ask for explanations as Carda’s confused summary did nothing to clarify what had happened.

  Disorientated, Carda could not explain the chain of events to Vera. On entering the office, Martino had hit him on the back of the head. Carda had lost consciousness for a few minutes. When he came to, he found he was half inside a crate. Martino was holding him, his arms wrapped around his chest. It only took a fraction of the clarity he was regaining to understand that Martino was about to despatch him to the darkest of fates. A healthy impulse for survival had allowed Carda the strength he needed to give an unsuspecting Martino a shove. Despite slipping and banging his forehead on the metal edge of the console, Martino had managed to regain control of the situation. At least it had alerted him to what the monitors were showing. Although for Vera it was a mystery that Carda should know what had happened in Zillo’s office.

  ‘I think it was when Roch shot Zillo… We didn’t see it. We only saw that Roch was pointing a gun at where you were standing. On another monitor the processing room operators could be seen standing in a circle. It was lucky that Martino didn’t see Zillo in the middle of it. He saw just enough to bring me here.’

  ‘There are no cameras here.’ The knock on the head had confused him but Vera did not realise that Carda’s explanation was totally coherent.

  ‘Yes there are, they’re hidden. I imagine they connect them when Zillo says so. Said so. I’ve just seen the images in Martino’s office.’

  ‘So, had you seen that Zillo had fallen?’

  ‘No. I imagined it. I knew that bullet was for Zillo. It was a relief to see you still standing.’

  Vera could only figure out what was most obvious. Carda was being laconic again. This time she thought it understandable. Carda peered cautiously through the window. A group of police officers and building security staff were dispersing the operators. They had placed Zillo’s body on two of the tables. The light from the terminals on one side of the body made his blood-soaked face glisten red.

  ‘We have little time. It won’t be long before the police come here.’ Carda removed the access card from Zillo’s screen.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We have to get into Daniel’s code and modify whatever it is he’s done in Cf. We’ll at least have time to neutralise the code before the IPSs are triggered.’

  ‘Without access? We must talk to the police to…’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ Felix gripped her by the shoulders, agitated. ‘We must go to your office. Now.’

  Felix grabbed her hand. Vera’s intuition assured her there was no reason to doubt him. They went out into the corridor.

  ‘We mustn’t run but we need to hurry.’ Felix let go of her hand.

  They walked past the cameras with restrained haste. They reached the side corridor and, once the access door shut behind them, ran downstairs to avoid the police who were coming up in the lifts. Carda knew he could not rely on the entire security force of the building to have made their way to the processing room. They would gain time if nobody could see where they were. Vera went into her office. Felix followed her and without delay picked up the little table at the entrance. He put it under one of the cameras. He climbed onto it and pointed the lens to the ceiling. He jumped off the table and with equal urgency did the same with the other camera. Now it would just be a question of luck. He was confident he had moved sufficiently fast. If nobody came into the office in the next few minutes, they would have a bit more time; security and the police would have their hands full with what they would find in Zillo’s office. When he jumped for the second time Felix again felt the impact on the nape of his neck. As he staggered, Vera went to him to offer her arm and she held him up. There was an intense warmth in Carda’s tight clasp. Vera allowed herself to be embraced. Those brief seconds restored in Felix a feeling of trust long forgotten.

  ‘It was him. Thanks for giving me an excuse.’ He was embarrassed by his own choked voice.

  ‘Who?’ Vera no longer hid her confusion at the chain of events.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Carda drew away from the consolation he took from Vera’s warm body. The silence between them had changed. He no longer felt it served to impose himself. Felix sat in the armchair at the back of the room. Vera opened the screen avoiding his eyes, watching him in its reflection.

  The time had come. The explanations Carda had kept to himself were compellingly linked to recent events. For all he knew, they might both end up under arrest. If revealing the truth might bring them punishment.

  ‘I know what you think about the World Government. The World Church is not much better. Past powers legitimised actions using religions. Since their merging, they no longer interfere with the government, nor the government with them. After the cataclysm they were left to their own devices.’ Vera continued in silence with the procedures on the screen, not missing a wor
d. ‘The general synod of bishops was the first to seek solutions to the Catholic Church’s loss of power. The main criterion was economic. Without any money, the Church had no way of continuing or progressing, just like any political party. They ended up not caring that church goers would ignore moral guidance. With the church business they finally admitted their intention to regain their power. They agreed to provide the basis for peaceful living. Compliance with canons took second place. The synod found only one way out. To adhere to the main principle of the modern world: lack of satisfaction in the individual. Consumerism its opium. Forgetting about death. The memory of the cataclysm was too recent.’

  To Vera his image on the screen had never seemed so clear. She wondered how somebody could be so different from the way others saw them. Carda’s image was refreshed. It was not all appearances like the previous one. Then it became real as he began to speak.

  ‘The decline of the Church gathered speed as clergymen were caught in flagrante. Money from public funds spent in whorehouses. The Church paid billions in damages for the sexual abuse of children for decades. They covered it up but it leaked out. I’m sure that Benedita never spoke to you about it. Thousands of cases on file. They could have prevented other victims from suffering the same fate. Complaints that were never recorded. The Vatican would tell its bishops to cover up cases of sexual abuse or they risked excommunication. The Church consented to a culture of deceit and concealment. I’ve been here for years. For years I was trained for this job. For years I was scared of doing anything.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘I was one of those children. The idea of revenge grew so much that it paralysed me. When I was twenty Zillo swapped me for somebody younger. Roch is the fourth. He had already reached the age of twenty-four. I wondered why he kept him for so long. Now I see why. Roch also undertook other tasks. Trained by Martino, probably. There were clothes at the bottom of the crate he pushed me into. I have no doubt that they were Daniel’s. When I read the document on Daniel’s membrane, it all fell into place.’