Already-cleansed, reformed, refounded-the Church is beginning to offer consolation to many people left bewildered by the demolition of privacy and historic certainty.
Perhaps we have lost Christ. But we have found Jesus. And His example can still lead us into an unknown future-even if that future holds only the Wormwood, and our religions’ only remaining role is to comfort us,
And yet history still holds surprises for us: for one of the most peculiar yet stubborn legends about the life of Jesus has, against all expectation, been born out …
The man in the dust was thin. His hair severely pulled back, prematurely greying at the temples. His robe was stained with dust and trailed in the dirt. His nose was prominent, proud and Roman, His eyes black, fierce, intelligent. He seemed angry, and was drawing in the dust with one finger.
This silent, brooding man had the measure of the Pharisees, without even the need to speak.
David stepped forward. Beneath his feet he could feel the dust of this Capernaum marketplace. He reached forward to the hem of that robe.
… But, of course, his fingers slid through the cloth; and, though the sun dimmed, David felt nothing.
The man in the dust looked up and gazed directly into David’s eyes.
David cried out. The Galilean light dissipated, and the concerned face of Bobby hovered before him.
As a young man, following a well-established trade route with His uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus visited the tin mine area of Comwall With companions. He traveled further inland, as far as Glastonbury-at the time a significant port- where He studied with the Druids, and helped design and build a small house, on the future site of Glastonbury Abbey. This visit is remembered, after a fashion, in scraps of local folklore.
We have lost so much. The harsh glare of the WormCam has revealed so many of our fables to be things of shadows and whispers: Atlantis has evaporated like dew; King Arthur has stepped back into the shadows from which he never truly emerged. And yet it is after all true, as Blake sang, that those feet in ancient time did walk upon England’s mountains green.
Chapter 22 – THE VERDICT
In Christmas week, 2037, Kate’s trial concluded. The courtroom was small, paneled in oak, and the Stars and Stripes hung limply at the back of the room. The judge, the attorneys and the court officers sat in grave splendor before rows of benches containing a few scattered spectators: Bobby, officials from OurWorld, reporters tapping notes into SoftScreens.
The jury was an array of random-looking citizenry, though some of them were sporting the highly colored masks and SmartShroud clothes that had become fashionable in the last few months. If Bobby didn’t look too carefully he could lose sight of a juror until she moved- and then a face or lock of hair or fluttering hand would appear as if from nowhere, and the rest of the juror’s body would become dimly visible, outlined by a patchy, imperfect distortion of the background.
It was a sweet irony, he thought, that SmartShrouds were another bright idea of Hiram’s: one new OurWorld product sold at high profit to counteract the intrusive effects of another.
… And there, sitting alone in the dock, was Kate. She was dressed in simple black, her hair tied back, her mouth set, eyes empty.
Cameras had been banned from the courtroom itself, and there had been little of the usual media scrum at the courthouse entrance. But everybody knew that restraining orders meant nothing now. Bobby imagined the air around him speckled with hovering WormCam viewpoints, no doubt great swarms of them clustered on Kate’s face and his own.
Bobby knew that Kate had conditioned herself never to forget the scrutiny of the WormCam, not for a second; she couldn’t stop the invisible voyeurs gazing at her, she said, but she could deny them the satisfaction of seeing how she hurt. To Bobby, her frail, lone figure represented more strength than the mighty legal process to which she was subject, and the great, rich corporation which had prosecuted her.
But even Kate could not conceal her despair when her sentence was at last handed down.
‘Dump her, Bobby,’ Hiram said. He was pacing around his big conference desk. Storm rain lashed against the picture window, filling the room with noise. ‘She’s done you nothing but harm. And now she’s a convicted felon. What more proof do you want? Come on, Bobby. Cut yourself loose. You don’t need her.’
‘She believes you framed her.’
‘Well, I don’t care about that. What do you believe? That’s what counts for me. Do you really think I’m so devious that I’d frame the lover of my son-no matter what I thought about her?’
‘I don’t know. Dad,’ Bobby said evenly. He felt calm, controlled; Hiram’s bluster, obviously manipulative, was unable to reach him. ‘I don’t know what I believe anymore.’
‘Why discuss it? Why don’t you use the WormCam to go check up on me?’
‘I don’t intend to spy on you.’
Hiram stared at his son. ‘If you’re trying to find my conscience, you’re going to have to dig deeper than that. Anyhow it’s only reprogramming. Hell, they should lock her up and wipe the key. Reprogramming is nothing.’
Bobby shook his head. ‘Not to Kate. She’s fought against the methodology for years. She has a real dread of it. Dad.’
‘Oh, bull. You were reprogrammed. And it didn’t hurt you.’
‘I don’t know if it did or not.’ Bobby stood now, and faced his father. He felt his own anger rising. ‘I felt different when the implant was turned off. I was angry, terrified, confused. I didn’t even know how I was supposed to feel.’
‘You sound like her,’ Hiram shouted. ‘She’s reprogrammed you with her words and her pussy more than I ever could with a bit of silicon. Don’t you see that? Ah, Christ. The one good thing the bloody implant did do to you was make you too dumb to see what’s happening to you … ‘ He fell silent, and averted his eyes.
Bobby said coldly, ‘You’d better tell me what you meant by that.’
Hiram turned, anger, impatience, even something like guilt appearing to struggle for dominance within him. ‘Think about it. Your brother is a brilliant physicist. I don’t use the word lightly; he may be nominated for a Nobel Prize. And as for me.’ He raised his hands. ‘I built up all this, from scratch. No dummy could have achieved that. But you.’
‘Are you saying that’s because of the implant?’
‘I knew there was a risk. Creativity is linked to depression. Great achievement is often linked to an obsessive personality. Blah, blah. But you don’t need bloody brains to become the President of the United States. Isn’t that right? Isn’t it?’ And he reached for Bobby’s cheek, as if to pinch it, like a child’s.
Bobby flinched back. ‘I remember a hundred, a thousand times as a child when you said that to me. I never knew what you meant before.’
‘Come on, Bobby.’
‘You did it, didn’t you? You set Kate up. You know she’s innocent. And you’re prepared to let them screw around with her brain. Just as you screwed around with mine.’
Hiram stood there for a moment, then dropped his arms. ‘Bugger it. Go back to her if you want, bury yourself in her [???]quim. In the end you always come running back, you little shit. I’ve got work to do.’ And he sat at his desk, tapped the surface to open up his SoftScreens, and soon the glow of scrolling digits lit up his face, as if Bobby had ceased to exist.
After she was released, Bobby took her home.
As soon as they arrived she stalked around the apartment, closing curtains compulsively, shutting out the bright noon sunlight, trailing rooms of darkness.
She pulled off the clothes that she had worn since leaving the courtroom and consigned them to the garbage. He lay in bed listening to her shower, in pitch darkness, for long minutes. Then she slid beneath the duvet. She was cold, shivering in fact, her hair not quite dry. She had been showering in cold water. He didn’t question that; he just held her until his warmth had permeated her.
At last she said, in a whisper, ‘You need to buy thicker curtains.’
‘Darkness can’t hide you from a WormCam.’
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘And I know that even now they are listening to every word we say. But we don’t have to make it easy for them. I can’t bear it. Hiram beat me, Bobby. And now he’s going to destroy me.’
Just as, he thought, Hiram destroyed me.
He said, ‘At least your sentence isn’t custodial; at least we have each other.’
She balled her fist and punched his chest, hard enough to hurt. ‘That’s the whole point. Don’t you see? You won’t have me. Because by the time they’ve finished, there won’t be a me anymore. Whatever I will have become, I’ll be-different.’