It’s not enough to go to church every week or say prayers regularly. It’s not enough to contribute to charity or to stick a bumper sticker on the back of your car or a pin in your lapel. It’s what you do in between the prayers and the visits to church that counts. Do you truly love and honor your parents, or are you just going through the motions? Do you love and respect your spouse, cherishing him or her beyond all others, or do you allow the mundane rituals of daily life to erode your passion for each other? Do you strive each day to be a better person, to value honesty, integrity, and morality? To reach out a hand to those less fortunate? When the munchies come to take away a neighbor or a stranger, do you look the other way and say nothing out of fear for your own safety? Do you listen to gossip and pass it on? Are you quick to condemn, slow to forgive? Do you live in fear of those who look different than you, or live differently, or love differently?
God created this world and everyone and everything in it. Yet now the pinnacle of His creation, humanity, is destroying that creation, chipping away at its beauty, its God-given harmony. In harming the world, we harm God’s creation. In harming God’s creation, we harm God. In harming God, we condemn ourselves forever.
But it’s not too late. God doesn’t want our surrender. We aren’t His enemies. He doesn’t want our obedience. We aren’t His slaves. We are His children. But children have to grow up sometime, and that’s what God, like every good parent, wants from us. He wants us to grow up and take responsibility for our lives, our world. He wants us to start acting like adults. Because if we keep on acting like thoughtless, selfish, spoiled children, He’s going to start treating us that way.
My father made us in His image. But if the image no longer resembles its original, does the original change to match the flawed reflection? Or does the original smash the mirror and find one that reflects more truly? I tell you, this earth is that mirror, and we are that flawed reflection. There is nothing here that is not as easily shattered as glass.
Father O’Malley clasped his pudgy hands before his considerable belly as he was led down the long, brightly lit corridor, flanked by two members of the Swiss Guard who reminded him, in their crisp movements and rigid expressions, of the animated tin soldiers from the old Laurel and Hardy classic Babes in Toyland. It was funny, what came to mind when you were scared out of your wits. His fat thighs chafed against each other uncomfortably as he walked, his head downcast, his breath fogging the air. The temperature was just above freezing and dropping steadily as he approached his destination, as though he were entering some realm of ice. Despite this, sweat was trickling down his back. He was shooting for a display of prayerful devotion, but in fact his hands were clasped together to keep them from shaking uncontrollably, and his eyes were lowered because he was afraid that anyone—or anything—that looked into them squarely would see through his deception at once. His teeth were chattering despite his clenched jaw.
He was on his way to a private interview with Grand Inquisitor.
He’d thought, when Cardinal Ehrlich had informed him of GI’s desire to see him, that he would be brought here immediately. But in fact, days and then weeks had gone by with no summons. He began to wonder if he had been forgotten, or if the press of events had rendered the interview unnecessary, and no one had seen fit to tell him. Even though he thought of Grand Inquisitor with a sense of awe that was almost religious and contemplated any encounter with fear and trembling, he felt disappointed that he wouldn’t get a chance to interact with the artificial intelligence, whose existence he considered to be the supreme achievement of human history and endeavor: an essentially alien life-form created by a marriage of human genius and divine inspiration. A miracle, in fact.
Of course, he had already interacted with GI in a manner of speaking, and what’s more did so on a regular basis, with other Congregation programmers of his level, each of them reviewing the code produced by GI, then passing it on to more senior programmers, who in turn passed it on to programmers more senior still, all in an effort, mostly unsuccessful so far, to understand what, exactly, had been born from those first Müller boxes—those primitive computing devices that still existed, or so it was said, at the heart of what had become Grand Inquisitor, just as the most primitive components of the human mind were preserved in the stem of the brain. But it was one thing to review bits of code produced by GI—its logic, even at its most inscrutable, invested with a severe and uncanny beauty that could only derive from an understanding of mathematics that was fundamentally inhuman—and quite another to be ushered into the chilly presence of the thing itself. Into the noötic field of self-consciousness generated—whether by chance or intent, as a freakish epiphenomenon or an inevitable byproduct, no one could say—from out of the cauldron of virtual particles and quantum superpositions in which an infinitude of simultaneous calculations was brought to a bubbling boil in the service of a simple program, a plain objective set down centuries ago: to identify high potentials. Entrance to the inner sanctum of the noötic field was a privilege reserved to a handful of the highest-ranking Congregation technicians, Cardinal Ehrlich, and Pope Peter II. Period. Father O’Malley knew that envy was a sin, but that didn’t stop him from envying the pope, the cardinal, and the technicians their access.
Then the long-awaited, despaired-of summons had come, and suddenly his envy had turned to something more like dread. Which, now that he came to think about it, was pretty much what he’d felt in Cardinal Ehrlich’s office all those weeks ago, when his relief at being cleared of the suspicion of being a Conversatio agent had been immediately undercut by the alarming news that GI wanted to see him.
I’m right back where I started, Father O’Malley thought now, as his tin-soldier escorts marched him up to the end of the hallway, where a massive, vault-like door of dull gray cerametal alloy blocked any further advance. It was so cold by now that it seemed strange to O’Malley that the door wasn’t covered in a rime of frost. He’d tried to dress warmly, with thermal underwear beneath his surplice, but he’d badly underestimated the cold.
He wondered what else he had underestimated.
There was a simple optical scanner at eye level. At a silent gesture from one of his escorts, O’Malley leaned forward, presenting his retina for examination. A flicker of red laser light danced pixie-like across his vision, and he heard the sharp click of a lock disengaging within the door. He stepped back quickly, finding the Swiss Guards standing as rigidly as ever, but now with their backs turned to the door, as if they were forbidden to so much as glance inside. The door, meanwhile, was dilating open like a huge eye. Or the mouth of a gigantic snake. A frigid breeze spilled sluggishly out, piercing O’Malley to the bone, so that a groan inadvertently escaped him. With the breeze came a white light that seemed equally cold. It was as if the light and the cold were linked together, twin effects of a single cause too grand for human senses to perceive in its totality. Was this, O’Malley wondered, the gaze of Grand Inquisitor? Part of him wanted to fall to his knees. Another part wanted to turn and run.
Instead, he stood there shivering as the door irised open, trying to see inside. But though the spill of white light hadn’t blinded him, neither could his vision pierce it. It was as if the door was opening onto a wall of pristine snow. O’Malley waited until there seemed space enough for him to enter. Then, mouthing a silent prayer and hugging himself for what little warmth he could yet coax from his body, he gingerly stepped across the threshold and into the cold white light. It was like walking into a cloud. After a few steps, he stopped, unable to see his feet, his hands, or any part of his body at all, let alone anything of the dimensions or the contents of the room he had entered. In fact, it seemed just as accurate to say that the room had entered him.
When he’d asked Cardinal Ehrlich what it was like to enter the noötic field, the cardinal had replied that the experience was different for everyone, impossible to predict, and thus impossible to prepare for. “Expect nothing,” the cardinal had told him. “And anything.”
O’Malley heard the whisper of displaced air behind him, but he didn’t turn. “I—I’ve come as you a—asked,” he managed to stammer out despite the cold and his own mounting terror.
He waited. There was no reply. No sound. Nothing but the ubiquitous white absence of everything but itself.
Then O’Malley realized there was a confessional booth in front of him. It had not suddenly appeared. Rather, it was as if it had always been there, only for some reason he hadn’t noticed it until now. It was mystifying, but he recognized an invitation when he saw one. He entered the booth. Inside was a dusky, sourceless illumination of the sort one is apt to find in neglected corners of cathedral chapels. He sat on the wooden bench with its threadbare but still soft cushion.
The air was close and warm. It smelled of old wood scrupulously polished and oiled, and of smoky incense that had over long years infiltrated the very molecules of fabric and wood. O’Malley felt half drugged, lulled into a dreamlike state in which he accepted without question everything that presented itself to him. The grill before him was also of wood, darkly stained and carved in an intricate arabesque that he suddenly recognized as the infinitely recursive patterning of a Mandelbröt set. It was this apprehension of a keen mathematical intelligence—and one, moreover, that was not lacking in a sense of humor, for his graduate thesis had involved esoteric manipulations of Mandelbröt’s famous equation—that recalled O’Malley, with a start, to himself and to his surroundings. However real this seemed, it had no independent existence outside the noötic field. And what about he himself? Was he anything more than just another thought within the capacious mind of Grand Inquisitor?
It struck him as particularly ominous that GI should have conjured up a confessional for their interview. Either ominous or more evidence of a sense of humor, albeit a twisted one.
Or both.
O’Malley waited, sweating.
He didn’t hear anyone enter the confessional. But all at once a voice was addressing him from the other side of the grill. It was a remarkable voice, the most remarkable he had ever heard, because it struck him immediately that this voice was another facet of the intense cold and the pure white light that had been his first exposure to the noötic field. It was another dimension of a totality he was not equipped to perceive except broken down, disassembled. Yet even so, it couldn’t be experienced in isolation, couldn’t be grasped except by reference to what had been removed from it, an absence that retains the shape of what is missing. So it was that the mere sound of the voice left him shivering and snowblind, and it took a moment, or what passed for a moment in this place, for O’Malley to wake up to the words that had come through the grill.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
CHAPTER 20
Papa Jim shut down his implant with a frustrated sigh and leaned back in his chair. After a moment, he surged to his feet, plucked a fresh cigar from the humidor on his desk, lit up, and began to puff furiously as he paced back and forth before the window that looked out over the Arizona desert. Once again, President Wexler had refused to take his call. The message had been delivered respectfully, politely, to be sure, by the chief of staff, a man Papa Jim had known for more than thirty years. “He’ll get back to you,” the man had said. “This isn’t a good time.” But Papa Jim had heard such assurances before. He had made them. He knew what they were worth.
It was an ominous sign.
Three days ago, after the near riot in Miami, Papa Jim had decided to cancel the next two weeks of appearances and bring Ethan and Kate back to the Conversatio compound outside Phoenix to rest and regroup. He’d told them that he wanted to give the public mood a chance to calm down a little before Ethan preached again, and to reevaluate their security procedures. What he didn’t mention to them was that his contacts in the government had warned him that President Wexler was very close to stepping in and forbidding Ethan to continue his tour on the grounds that he was encouraging civil unrest and exacerbating international tensions. As people around the world flooded into the United States to be closer to Ethan, airlines and Homeland Security were having trouble keeping up with the inflow. It was feared that terrorists were slipping in through the cracks. Not only that, but purported followers of bin Laden and leaders of religious and Marxist terrorist groups had lashed out against Ethan, calling his message just one more example of American arrogance at work and threatening to kill Americans in retaliation. According to Papa Jim’s contacts, Ethan was going to be subjected to house arrest or even taken into preventative custody. Papa Jim was pulling every string at his disposal to prevent that from happening, but in quitting the government as precipitously as he had, he’d burned some useful bridges, and his influence was limited now. A lot of old enemies, and friends, too, for that matter, had caught a whiff of weakness, and that was usually enough in politics to bring out the long knives.
Papa Jim’s trump card was the munchies, but it was a risky card to play, maybe even too risky, and everybody knew it. To use his private army against the government would cross a line that could never be recrossed. Papa Jim’s plans had always been predicated on taking the reins of power lawfully, acting within a constitutional framework. If he went outside that framework, the legitimacy of his actions, even if successful, would be forever questionable. And he doubted very much that they would be successful. His munchies were a formidable force, highly trained and well equipped, but they couldn’t stand up for long against the United States military, even assuming that they would all join him in open rebellion, which he couldn’t assume. His munchies were not traitors to their country. They were patriots, most of them with deep religious convictions. Some would follow him, but not enough. Still, as long as his enemies believed he might play the munchie card, out of pure spite and regardless of its cost, they would hesitate. That would give Papa Jim time. And time, properly understood, was the most powerful weapon of all.
Papa Jim stopped before the window and looked out over the walled compound to the mountains beyond. He shook his head sadly. If only Ethan had proved to be more malleable, less of a maverick! It all could have worked. It should have worked. But his great-grandson was impossible to control. He attacked the rich and the powerful, spoke out heedlessly against the government, threatened people with eternal damnation. And as time had gone by, the words of his sermons and godcasts had grown harsher, more controversial and divisive. Papa Jim had watched everything unravel over the last few weeks in a kind of horror, helpless to intercede as Ethan squandered everything that had been handed to him on a silver platter. The boy had more raw potential than any preacher or politician Papa Jim had ever seen, but he refused to be guided. He refused to compromise. Papa Jim wondered if Jesus had been the same way. He decided that he probably had. And look how he’d ended up! Being the Son of God only took you so far. You might be a big deal up there in Heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, but down here on Earth, slumming among the mortals, you needed a good manager.
With real anguish, Papa Jim had finally admitted to himself that he’d backed a losing horse. He should never have resigned from Homeland Security. He should have kept his relationship to Ethan a secret, kept the boy at a distance, and worked to smooth his way from within the halls of power, instead of joining him on the outside. But he’d been swept away. Ethan had appeared like the answer to his dreams, the son and heir that he’d always longed for. For once, his heart had ruled his head. In politics, that was a recipe for disaster. Now he was paying the price.
But it wasn’t too late. Papa Jim wasn’t beaten yet. He had other irons in the fire. All he needed was time. A few more days . . .
A knock at the door interrupted him.
“Come in,” he grunted, turning from the window.
The door opened, and Ethan stepped into the office. He didn’t look pleased. “Did you shut down the web site?”
“That’s a complicated question,” Papa Jim replied evenly, gesturing with his cigar for Ethan to take a seat.
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Ethan remained standing just inside the door, his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s been down for two days now. Denny said it was just a glitch. But it’s not, is it?”
Papa Jim subjected his cigar to a close examination, rolling it between his fingers. Then, as if perceiving some flaw in its construction or flavor, he jammed it down into a heavy green glass ashtray on the side of his desk, twisted it violently, and let it rest there. A thin gray ribbon of smoke leaked into the air from the mashed and shredded end. “No, it’s not,” he admitted at last.
“See, that wasn’t so complicated,” Ethan said. “I need that site back up, Papa Jim. It’s the only way I have to communicate with people now.”
Papa Jim sighed again and moved behind his desk, lowering himself gingerly into the chair. His bones ached. He felt like an old man. “This isn’t a good time,” he said, and suddenly realized that he had used the same words that the president’s chief of staff had just addressed to him. It was hard to appreciate the irony, however.
“Mind telling me why?”
“Do you have to ask? You were there in Miami. You saw what a close-run thing it was.”
“This is about more than just Miami.”
“Of course it is. Thanks to you, this whole country is like a powder keg. Do you want to throw a match into the middle of it? Those godcasts of yours have been going too far, Ethan. You’ve been buzzing around the blogosphere like an angry wasp, preaching doom and gloom. That kind of thing is bad enough in peacetime, but during a war? Sooner or later, you’re going to get swatted.”
“I know that. I just didn’t think it would be you who did the swatting.”
At that, Papa Jim flushed with anger. “Why, you ungrateful . . . !” He leaned forward across the desk, jabbing a finger sharply at Ethan. “Who do you think has been protecting you, keeping you safe from the Congregation and from the government? If it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead by now, or locked away in an internment facility somewhere.”
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