All the usual tripe about positive visualization, letting your expectations shape the universe, and receiving what you believe was just the icing on the cake.
He would have voiced at least a couple of these objections but for two important facts. The first was that his internal complaint department was so overburdened that it shut down. The second was that he was suddenly pressed on all sides by grinning, robe-wearing zealots, crowding around him, in flagrant violation of prevailing social norms about personal space.
“Say what you will about Detroit,” called Rhinnick, caught in the crush, “but between these churchy bimbos, the hospice, and the DDH guides, the place has a hopping market for robes. We ought to invest, I mean to say. And Mistress Oan appears to be their greatest fan. Surrounded by robes at the hospice, surrounded by robes in the cave. She seems to have structured her affairs with a view to minimizing her exposure to pants.”
The parishioners pressed in on Ian as though he were a magnet, or an especially heavy singularity with a habit of drawing robe-wearing yahoos into its orbit. Norm introduced a number of the inbound parishioners like a waiter listing off the daily specials.
“You know Oan, of course,” he said, indicating the Caring Nurturer, who now stood with her eyes closed, swaying rhythmically and humming what might have passed for a mystical tone. “Her teachings are based almost entirely on the OM,” Norm continued. “She does this in the hope that those she teaches will retain the knowledge that the hospice seeks to suppress.”
“I work for change from the inside,” said Oan, melodically.
“BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT IN THE WORLD!” chorused the Chorus.
“This is Jeffrey,” said Norm, indicating the next flock member eager to hobnob with the Herald. “Jeffrey is one of our most gifted princks,” Norm continued. “The details of his memories pale beside yours, of course, but are informative, nonetheless.”
“I remember being killed for my own beliefs,” said Jeffrey, conspiratorially.
“What sort of beliefs?” said Ian, shaking hands.
“Loads of ’em,” said Jeffrey, “but mostly the belief that you can escape an alligator by running away in a zig-zag pattern.”
“Exhibit C over here is Ripley,” said Norm, as one of the acolytes stepped forward and ambushed Ian with a hug. Ripley followed this manoeuvre with a blessing: “May the Great Omega guide you toward your authentic self, and heap upon you the blessings of her Favourite Things,” he said.
“SHARE YOUR GIFTS!” chorused the Chorus.
And so the long day wore on, Norm introducing the flock for a stretch of time that was hard to measure, given time’s popular habit of seeming longer or shorter depending on how much fun you’re having. The buzzing acolytes, who’d been waiting to meet their Intercessor face-to-face for at least a dozen years, would have reported that the introductions carried on for about ten minutes. Ian would have said they took three days. A wholly objective, outside observer might have avoided the controversy by saying that the process was over in a few short paragraphs. But however long it took, it ended. Rather mercifully, thought Ian. The end finally came when Norm announced, to the collective, rapturous joy of every robe-wearing zealot in the vicinity, that the prophesied Time of Sharing was at hand.
“SHARE YOUR STORIES!” chorused the Chorus.
On Norm’s cue, the masses parted and cleared a path that ran from Ian to the stage at the river’s edge — or the riverbank, if you prefer, and if that phrase can apply to the rocky lip of a subterranean channel.
Norm took Ian’s arm and led him toward the river. They mounted the stairs and reached the stage, where they joined forces with the Chorus and a few assorted acolytes, whose especially fabulous robes marked them out as church officials. Rhinnick, Oan, and Carl also made the ascent, while Llewellyn Llewellyn, looking warier than ever, stayed behind in the grotto’s centre, periodically checking his datalink while keeping his eyes peeled for signs of danger.
“The time has come,” intoned Norm. “You must share your wisdom with the devout.”
“THE TIME OF SHARING HAS COME!” chorused the Chorus, Oan beaming along beside them.
“What do I do?” said Ian.
“Share your wisdom!” prompted Carl.
“I don’t have any,” insisted Ian.
“Of course you do,” said Norm, chuckling indulgently. “You have knowledge of the beforelife. You have looked upon the Omega —”
“HE HAS LOOKED UPON HER FACE!” chorused the Chorus.
“All right,” said Ian, eager to get through this. “Fire away.”
“‘Fire away,’ Your Holiness?” said Norm.
“I mean, ask your questions,” said Ian. “What do you want to know?”
“You misunderstand, your Intercessorship,” said Norm. “We do not seek to question you. We seek perfect understanding. We seek communion with your mind.”
“Whatever,” said Ian, exhibiting all the patience of a six-year-old at a sermon. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Very good,” said Norm, taking Ian by an arm and leading him toward the edge of the stage. The acolytes crowded in on Ian and Norm, leaving only a smallish semi-circle of space around them.
“Now, your Holiness,” said Norm, placing his hand on Ian’s shoulders, “kindly take the Leap of Faith.”
“THE LEAP OF FAITH!” chorused the Chorus
“Excuse me?” said Ian.
“Into the river,” prompted Norm. “Let the currents of the Styx sweep over you. Let the healing waters drown you, let —”
“A point of order, Your Worshipfulness,” said Rhinnick, shouldering his way front and centre. “I don’t wish to cast a gloom upon the proceedings,” he added, “but, when you say you want Brown here to pop into the river, letting its currents do their business, I wonder whether you’ve thought this through.”
Norm made a puzzled face as two of the burliest faithful steamrolled through the crowd and took up posts on each side of Ian.
“The nub of the problem, as I see it,” Rhinnick continued, “is this whole business about the river’s neural whatsits. It’s what I read in Peericks’s books — E.M. Peericks, prominent loony doctor, colleague of Oan, once charged with the care of both the undersigned and Brown. But what the renowned shrink’s textbooks claimed was this: if you chuck some Johnny or other into the Styx for an adequate slice of time, the neural flows get down to business, roll up their sleeves, and erase the poor chump’s mind. A clean slate, I mean to say. Carte blanche. And these were no ordinary books, mark you,” he continued. “They had footnotes in them and everything.”57
He turned to Ian for a sidebar. “You want to be careful dipping into the drink, old man,” he said. “You’d hate to swim out even more profoundly baffled than you are in statu quo, if that’s the expression.”
Ian had read those textbooks too: the books that detailed the abandoned “cure” for Beforelife Delusion. A mindwipe, they called it. Toss a princk into the Styx, let him stew in the neural flows, and presto, no more BD. No more memories, either.
Dr. Peericks had even suggested that Ian had been mindwiped already, and that his memories of Penelope, of his job, and everything else that Ian thought of as his life were simply side effects of a botched mindwipe procedure. Ian had almost believed him. Almost. But that was the past. Ian knew his memories were real — he could . . . well . . . feel it, he supposed. He wasn’t about to lose those memories now.
Ian said so.
“But the prophecies command it,” said Norm, matter-of-factly. “You shall take the Leap of Faith and cast your memories to the flows, where the faithful will be baptized in your wisdom. So it is written,” he added, firmly.
“SO IT IS WRITTEN!” chorused the Chorus.
“Begging your pardon,” said Rhinnick, sidling up to Norm, “but since you yourself are the prophesying geezer who, if I’m not mistaken
, unleashed this juicy bit of fortune-telling on the masses, I imagine it’ll be fine if you break out your editing pen and put your initials to a few official amendments. I would suggest cheesing the bit about leaps of faith and substituting ‘the Intercessor dips a toe into the river, thus preserving his much-needed marbles for later use.’ A marked improvement, if you ask me!” He followed this with a winning smile, presumably one designed to ingratiate and persuade.
Norm gave Rhinnick a look. It wasn’t a smile. More of a glare, really. Then he snapped his fingers. At his signal, a press gang of particularly attractive and giggly female acolytes mounted the stairs, surrounded Rhinnick, made tsk-tsk noises at his wounds, and insisted on doing an assortment of nice things to him with a view to easing his pain. He steadfastly protested for about three seconds, heroically changed his mind, and was chivvied away stage left into an alcove somewhere in the cavern’s depths.
“You have to take the plunge,” said Carl, snapping Ian back to the here-and-now. “It’s the only way. The OM says to share our stories. ‘Let your voice be heard,’ stuff like that. And Norm has foreseen that you’ll release your truth by diving into the water. It’s the only way,” he added, earnestly.
“What my brother says is true,” said Norm. “Thus is it written in the OM: ‘Everyone can make a difference. Help each other live your best lives — share your stories, voice your passions, and let your ideas be heard!’ The Intercessor’s story must be shared through the neural flows,” he added, although whether the non-italicized bit was scripture or apocrypha, Ian couldn’t really be sure.
“SHARE YOUR STORY!” chorused the Chorus.
The burly faithful gripped Ian about the shoulders and directed him to the business end of the stage.
Ian struggled against them, but it was useless: they seemed to have spent a good deal of time in a fundamentalist gym. Tonto or Zeus might have been able to shake them off, but not Ian.
“But how do you know you’re supposed to throw me in?” said Ian, wriggling.
“The OM tells us —” Norm began.
“Screw the OM,” said Ian, drawing gasps from those assembled. Even the burly faithful stopped and gaped. “What do I care about some old book?” Ian continued. “I’ve never even read it. How do I know you aren’t just making the whole thing up?”
As if on cue, every single robe-wearing zealot on the stage engaged in a bit of impromptu pocket delving. Before Ian could say “religious pamphleteering” they’d each whipped out a copy of the OM, some clutching the scripture to their bosoms, others waving them overhead, as though they’d managed to yank Excalibur from a stone.
The copies looked a good deal more like rolled-up sheaves of paper than the sort of scriptures you generally find in hotel drawers. The flock pressed in, every member bent on shoving a copy of the rolled-up scripture into the Intercessor’s hand.
Ian took a copy from Oan, who promptly fainted.
The impressive way to describe what happened next might be The Intercessor unrolled the Omega Missive. Or, if you wanted to be slightly less theatrical about it, you might just say that Ian unravelled a rolled-up magazine. Either way, that’s what he did.
“It’s a magazine,” he said, dully.
“THE TRUTH IS REVEALED PERIODICALLY!” chorused the Chorus.
“Just as you, say, O Herald of the Omega,” said Norm, devoutly. “The OM is a magazine from the beforelife — it carries wisdom and guides our paths.”
Ian scratched his head, bewildered. “And every one of you has one?” he said.
“Merely copies,” said Norm, reverently touching his own rolled-up copy to his forehead. “Copies of copies, to be sure, though highly accurate. Every detail has been faithfully preserved, down to the torn pages, the missing text, the soiled and unreadable passages. Brother Lewis is responsible for the placement of Sacred Smudges on its cover.”
A tiny acolyte waved and grinned.
“Every jot and every tittle is an accurate reflection of the original,” Norm continued, “though the original Missive has been lost to our flock these many years.”
Ian looked at the book again. It was just a magazine, and one that had definitely seen better days. It looked to have passed through the grubby hands of several hundred grimy readers. The pages were worn, the cover tattered. The text itself was barely legible — large tracts of it were missing, several pages had been torn out, and the entire volume looked as though it had spent a longish time submerged in last year’s laundry water. You could barely make out the images on the cover, apart from the outline of a woman’s face and a large O displayed in the top left corner.
He licked his thumb and cleared away some of the Sacred Smudges, wondering whether he was breaching some important religious taboo, but not especially minding if he was.
It seemed to go over with a bang.
“THE INTERCESSOR REVEALS THE TEXT!” chorused the Chorus.
Ian looked at the magazine. Then he blinked. It was one of those “oh my god” blinks you sometimes get from people who can accurately be described as “agog.”
“Oh my god,” said Ian, agog.
“PRAISE THE HERALD!” chorused the Chorus.
“How is this possible?” said Ian.
“What do you mean, O Intercessor,” said Norm, wringing his hands in anticipation. “This is our most sacred text, sent here by the Great Omega to provide spiritual instruction and to guide us on our —”
“But that isn’t an Omega,” said Ian, pointing out the de-grimed symbol on the cover. “It’s an O. Just an ordinary O. As in ordinary. Look — it’s partly blocked by the picture on the cover, and the whole thing has been smudged. But how did it get here?”
“As I said,” Norm began, “the Sacred Smudges were placed by —”
“Not the smudges,” said Ian, “damn the smudges. I mean the book. How does a magazine get from the beforelife to Detroit?”
Carl chimed in at Ian’s elbow. “We were kinda hoping you’d clear that up,” he said. “We have no clue how it got here. Even Norm has no idea.”
“It is one of the great mysteries,” said Oan, who’d regained her feet and was now adjusting her hairpins.
“The original OM is said to have come to us from the Styx,” said Norm, twitching slightly. “Twenty years ago. Other than that, we know nothing. We assume that it was conveyed to us by the power of the Great Omega, she whose countenance graces the cover.”
“She’s not the Great Omega,” said Ian. “She’s a person. Her name is Ophmpht?!”
Carl apologized profusely for abruptly slapping his hand over the Intercessor’s mouth.
“Mrrmph!?” said Ian.
“We do not speak her name, Your Reverence,” said Norm, fretfully.
The smiling face of the Great Omega peeped back at Ian through the grime. It was a face he’d seen a thousand times before. It was a face that everyone had seen a thousand times before. It was a face that practically anyone would recognize at a glance — provided only that they’d visited the beforelife anytime within the last twenty or thirty years and had a cable subscription.
There are worse people to worship, thought Ian, still a bit stunned by what he’d seen. It’s not as though they’re worshipping Lex Luthor, or Simon Cowell, or one of the tentacled things in H.P. Lovecraft. At least they’ve chosen a nice Omega. But how had it happened? How does a magazine from the beforelife cross the Styx? Books from the beforelife had no business being here — it’s not as though they had souls and could “cross over” when they died. Books didn’t die. They couldn’t die, and they weren’t reborn. Recycling, yes. Rebirth, no. It stood to reason.
It was while Ian was pursuing this particular line of thought that realization finally dawned.
Ian stared at the magazine. He turned it over. He thumbed his way through several pages. He stared at some of the pictures. He scanned a shredded advertisem
ent and ran his hand along the text.
This wasn’t just any magazine.
This was a magazine he had seen before — weeks before — in the beforelife. Penny had bought it. It was the edition she’d been reading on the night that Ian had died. The same edition. And here it was, in Detroit, serving as scripture for an underground gang of weirdos. What were the chances? How could that happen?
This couldn’t be a coincidence.
Ian broke out into a sweat. He wiped more grime from the OM, frantically clearing away the smudges, searching for something. The nearby faithful crowded around him, jostling each other for the best vantage point from which to peer over the Intercessor’s shoulder.
Then Ian found it, tucked beneath a stubborn bit of the OM’s Sacred Schmutz, which he cleared away with a thumbnail.
He almost swallowed his Adam’s apple.
The missive’s cover had been stamped with a small white tag — a tag that had previously been hidden. The tag had writing on it. And what the writing said was this:
June 2015
Union Station News
$12.99 CDN
* * *
57That makes them special.
Chapter 42
Penelope ran flat out toward the tracks.
Find out what you need, and get it.
She needed Ian. She had to save him.
She sprinted across the platform and threw herself on the tracks. The train was bearing down on Ian, who seemed transfixed.
Why didn’t he move? Why didn’t he run? Why didn’t he try to save himself?
She wouldn’t let Ian die. She couldn’t.
Beforelife Page 45