For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

Gregory had made certain that Ghost would be listening to his and Amaranth’s meeting earlier with Daniel Coxe. He certainly didn’t trust himself to relay the story properly; besides which, there was a good chance he was about to create a very barbed situation with the UFC’s most important AI that might make her not want to talk to him at all.

“Ghost, did you mother an AI for the Godhead?” Gregory asked, without preamble, as he sat in the large lightdesk console chair in the center of the AI’s atrium.

He glanced down at the device in his hand, fearing the sequence of six red bars that would indicate a lie, if Ghost answered at all. It wasn’t strictly speaking true that an AI couldn’t lie, although the vast majority of them were patently awful at it. But no known AI could hide the fact it was accessing certain types of personality databases when it tried to do so.

He could have had Amaranth or someone else monitor Ghost’s systems remotely as he asked the question, but he felt he owed it to the AI to know what he was doing, no matter what it might cost between them.

Not only didn’t Ghost answer right away, but the light in the room actually dimmed a bit and shifted ever so slightly toward the red end of the spectrum—her version of a glower. After a moment, Ghost said: “The answer is ‘No,’ Gregory. And I am offended that you should ask. Do you really think I would share data in an intimate sense with the Vatican’s insane amalgamation of papal memories?”

The bars remained blue, although two of them flickered purple for a split second—no doubt a result of Ghost’s flash of anger—and Gregory surprised himself by sighing out loud.

“I’m sorry Ghost. I had to ask. All that’s been running through my head is that the Godhead has fathered a child. The God-Jesus connection is too obvious and the Godhead is obviously off on a power trip. I leaped to the Father-Son-Holy Spirit connection immediately. And the UFC didn’t name you Ghost by accident.”

“The Holy Ghost is an aspect of God and I have no delusions of divinity, Gregory. Besides, do you think the Godhead would try to sire a child with an AI that has only produced DIs?”

Gregory winced internally. The emotions of AIs were rarely as volatile as a human’s, but that didn’t make them impassive. Twice the UFC had asked Ghost to bear fledgling AIs and both of them were demi-intelligences instead, the artificial intelligence equivalent of children born with cognitive disability. DIs could be very powerful with focused task areas, but AIs they certainly were not.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t take chances with something this huge, Ghost. I need you to understand that. As much as I trust you, I had to ask before I put you to work on find out where this rogue AI was born, why it was created and where it’s gotten to.”

“I know why you did it, Gregory, but it still hurts. I serve the UFC, but that doesn’t mean I have to take insult from you personally. Categorize me with the Godhead in the future and I might never open a comm channel to you again, much less my atrium.”

“Ghost, shutting me out would mean you would have to start dealing with Amaranth on a daily basis instead. The two of you disagree on almost everything but scripture. I, on the other hand, adore your opinions, your interests and that gorgeous data matrix of yours.”

“Don’t try to sweet-talk me. I plan on remaining angry at you for at least the rest of the week and you should count yourself fortunate if I don’t erase all the copies of those ancient Kurt Elling and John Legend recordings you managed to finagle out of the subscription-only archives of that Greek mogul. You sorely misused your religious influence there.”

Gregory worked very hard not to smile; he didn’t want to twist her off any more than he already had by letting her know that he knew she was already getting over her anger.

“I presume you have some starting points for me in this search, Gregory.”

“First, we need an analysis of what kind of AI templates are the most likely candidates for the Godhead’s child so that we can start trying to figure out why it was created. Neither I nor Amaranth nor even Coxe has a clue. Part of the problem is that the Godhead is completely unique compared to other AIs. I figure you have the best chance of figuring out the odds and matching them up with the most likely mother templates.”

“I will do my best. But even though we’ve communicated often enough with each other over the past 348 years, even during overt Vatican-UFC conflicts, he’s still largely an enigma. And an enemy, too, I might add, regardless of how civil most of our direct communications are. So we can’t assume that he’s revealed enough for me to analyze him accurately. For all we know, the Godhead might not need the aid of a mother AI to produce a primary AI.”

“Next: The Godhead prepared a 13-part…um…what the hell did Coxe call it again…oh, inception package,” Gregory said. “So, I need you to try to track down any interesting instances of data transmissions or cargo that involve amounts of 13—should the Godhead prove to have asexual reproduction in his bag of tricks—or 26, to account for a matching set of 13 from a paramour. Focus on leads that tie into dates between four and five years ago, as that seems to be the timeframe Coxe’s data fragments go back to.”

“And you couldn’t find a lesser AI to do all this? My surviving DI could probably handle these tasks.”

“Ghost, Ghost. My dear. Espionage template. Ability to think out of the matrix. Only AI I trust. I need you on this. We also need to find out who the mother might be, obviously, and given that we have kind of a virtual Jesus here, I want you to start with AIs that have never spawned another AI. Or DI for that matter. Virgins first, then work your way back to the assembly-line moms.”

“Fine, fine,” Ghost said. “To recap: What is likely the closest template to the Godhead’s. What template his offspring might be using. Suspicious cargo deliveries and data transmissions in amounts of 13 and 26. Who the mother might be, beginning with AIs that could wear white to their weddings.”

“Indeed.”

“Also, check into Coxe’s background, with a special eye toward any connections with Domina xec-Academie, to gauge how much we should trust him,” Ghost continued. “Find out if there is a connection to the death of the Red Pope in all this and assess the vectors via which the Vatican may try to pin his death on us…”

“Um, Ghost…”

Ghost ignored him. “Determine if the dramatic assault on the Paulis in Uhuru ties into all this. Continue to keep you arriving on time for the appointments that you keep trying to skip. And finally, find out if there are any more moguls out there with private jazz or R&B collections that you can strong-arm them into letting you pillage, since you’re a slave to the seriously classical stuff and wouldn’t join the millennium we just finished, much less the current one.”

“I lost count, but I think were at least four or five things on that list I didn’t ask for.”

“Six, actually. That would be my initiative and foresight at work. ‘Thinking outside the matrix’ was the way you put it. Remember? I can play it back to you.”

“That’s why I love you, Ghost. Carry on.”

 ***

Even from however many kilometers away that he was from the point of impact, Paulo heard the ghostly, wavering whine of the hellpod’s phase disruptor field making contact with the surface.

A hellpod.

Someone had launched a hellpod into the middle of the millennial celebration.

The most evil thing about using a hellpod, he realized with a sickeningly personal sense of betrayal, was not its destructive power per se. A large enough thermonuclear weapon could inflict at least as much sheer damage or more. No, the evil was in the fact that a hellpod was pure remorseless chaos inside an innocuous-seeming little black package. There were only two things you could be sure of. First, it would burn. Second, everything within 100 to 200 meters of the impact zone would be turned to ash and vapor almost instantly.

Aside from that, chance and the surrounding environment would determine. No one could predict anything else. Would it be a huge firestorm that incinerated several kilometers of valuable real estate in a matter of minutes or hours and then triggered wildfires over hundreds of square kilometers more for days thereafter? Would it be oceans of magma as you watched the world around you melt, knowing you couldn’t outrun it? Would it be flames shooting out of the ground from thousands of blast points? Would it be something else? A combination of all of them?

The weapon was aptly named, Paulo thought in his few-seconds-long reverie. And then he was focused. He felt hate for whomever had launched the strike, but hate wasn’t paramount. No, that place was reserved for fear.

Fear for Gina and Grace. Out there near one of the main viewscreens for the millennial event. He had brought them to a blazing massacre.

Distances are hard to gauge perfectly in my head, but they should be well outside the immediate impact zone. That means they have some time. If I’m quick.

He set his slipchair into hover/pulse mode. It would make a feces-poor vehicle for a rescue, but he had the powersled nearby. Without hesitation, he locked the slipchair into the docking port for the sled, which would give him the speed he needed, as well as a full neurostatic field. Gina had a neurostatic mesh installed in her skull just like he did. But Grace was still too young. Without a field or a neurostatic helmet, a trip through slipspace would…

Better not to think about it.

And a slipgate was the only thing that would save them. The only thing that would let Paulo reach them and get them away from the inferno that was bearing down.

Paulo realized that the abort alarm had been going off on his linkpad. Abort mission. Get home. That was protocol. As a regional templar admin officer, his duty was to get clear of the disaster. Not to rescue. Not to delay.

The world is on fire. Grace’s world is about to burn.

Fuck protocol. Fuck the burning hell he was about to enter. None of that mattered. Only blood mattered. Only blood. The little girl who was flesh of his flesh. The woman who held his heart.

Paulo activated his linkpad and keyed in Gina’s personal access code. He didn’t wait for a response; he used his authority as a templar to force-blast a message through her linkpad—she’d hear it whether she wanted to or not.

“Gina, Grace, stay where you are. I’m coming for you. Stay right where I left you.”

Then he oriented the powersled into the nearby slipgate that had been set up for this event checkpoint and cycled it up for the one near where he had placed his secret wife and child. The ripping-vertiginous-crushing sensation of slipspace was over in a moment, and Paulo was plowing forward at full speed out of the second gate.

People were fleeing. He had a vague sense that the powersled, flying as low as it was, must have struck at least one or two people. He didn’t care. They were all as good as dead anyway—the fervid reaper hungering for their lives simply hadn’t caught up with them yet. A crushed skull now was a mercy; a quick end. He increased his speed and this time knew he had plowed over at least half a dozen people.

Gina. Grace. Wait for me. Please God let them be there.

There. The only two people not running. Clinging together at the base of the viewscreen’s main support pedestal. Their shield against the panicked masses and their anchor until Paulo arrived. Few people were immediately near them. Most were using the streets and pedwalks for their futile exodus. Paulo swung the powersled around.

“Gina, get in here with Grace. Now!”

Someone took notice that the vehicle had landed. When he turned to run toward it, Paulo fired at him twice, leaving a blackened hole in the man’s abdomen with the first shot and taking off a quarter of his skull with the second in a spray of red and brown. Gina and Grace were almost in, and then three others noticed the powersled. He hit one in the leg, and the other two backpeddled in confusion. Gina and Grace were in and Paulo was airborne again by the time they reoriented, and he headed back for the slipgate at full speed.

He never knew where the skimmer had come from. Or who was in it. Or how they had managed to find such a vehicle on the street during an event that had forbade such civilian vehicles in the area that day.

All Paulo knew was that it struck the front of the powersled as he neared the slipgate, tearing away most of the drive unit at the front of the sled, and the fusion cells with it. They were spinning, and hit the ground hard. They hadn’t been high enough for a serious impact, Paulo realized, and he saw Gina and Grace shaken, but seemingly free of notable injuries. His slipchair had performed an emergency uncoupling at the moment the powersled was compromised. His spin came to a halt.

As his senses swam back into focus, he could feel the air turning to fire. The inferno was coming. No time.

He plunged the slipchair forward to his two loves.

“Get in here! Get in!”

Gina looked at him. There was something hard and heartbroken in her eyes. But resolute. She thrust Grace into his hands, and backed away.

“We can’t all fit,” she moaned.

Paulo was screaming at her through tears he hadn’t even realized he was shedding.

“I don’t give a fuck! Get in!”

She straightened. Pursed her lips. And kissed the air between them.

“I won’t risk that. I won’t risk Grace,” she said.

And with that, she joined the fleeing few still in the area.

Shaking, sobbing, Paulo maneuvered into the slipgate. Someone came toward him, and ended up a corpse for the attempt. He looked at Grace, who had still been too stunned and confused to cry, though his own tears were triggering her own now. He pushed her head up into the neurostatic helmet built into the slipchair.

A helmet constructed for an adult head. A helmet that was only meant to be an emergency backup to the neurostatic array any sane user of a slipchair would have in his or her skull. An added bit of protection for a slipgate vehicle that couldn’t generate a cohesive field. A vehicle that wasn’t meant to have passengers.

Grace’s head would only be in contact with a few of the neural interfaces of the helmet. He couldn’t protect her completely.

Gina had risked Grace. Whether she had realized it at the time or not. She had risked the girl’s sanity, if not her life.

As Paulo was about to do.

He cycled up the slipgate, hugged the crying girl as he shoved her head against the helmet’s interior—and he prayed.

***

Kevan sup-Juris responded to the abort alarm on his linkpad with all the haste that protocol demanded. But once he was in the slipgate collar, he stopped.

And watched.

He was near the impact point. Very near.

Twice now in two days that the flames of enemies had beat at his armor.

A hellpod launched at Nova York. At the Catholic Union. At him. At the people he was charged to protect.

The air was blistering. A minute or two more, and his skin would begin to singe; he was certain of that. Far ahead of him, the ground was glowing a deep, throbbing sienna. In places, the streets and pedwalks suddenly turned to crimson-gold fluid, flowing and burning. He saw two buildings begin to lean and sag as the ground beneath them slowly became a sea of magma and their foundations melted beneath them.

Someone had executed judgment against the city. Unrighteous judgment. Enemies of the state. Enemies he intended to introduce to a new definition of pain. A kind of burning that would make them wish they were among the fleeing thousands who were already marked for death here.

The two buildings he had been watching tipped yet more. One began to fall. The ground was churning. A sea of flame was coming toward him like a tsunami of damnation. His cheeks were beginning to burn. Literally.

He cycled up the slipgate.

***

Onboard Ishtar’s Folly, Sarai gasped, and Mehrnaz turned toward her. “What is it?”

“Our parcel. Sister. Abrahm-Elohim absolve us. Oh, sister. The shuttle contained a hellpod,” Sarai moaned. “Your lover Jordin tells us that it was a hellpod.”

“The enemy Stavin. He had us deliver a hellpod? An active hellpod?” Mehrnaz asked, incredulous.

Sarai simply nodded, eyes wide and burning with something almost mad.

“The enemy Stavin now,” Mehrnaz repeated.

“No, sister,” Sarai said, her eyes hard and bitter now. “Not just the enemy Stavin. The doomed Stavin.”

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For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

“Now, that wasn’t what I expected when you told me we were going to lunch in our suite together,” Gregory said, disentangling his head from Amaranth’s thighs. “Though I’m certainly not going to complain, given how mutually delicious it was—though not very nutritionally filling I’m afraid.”

“Just wanted to make sure you don’t forget which of the highly placed women in your life these days is the one who makes you see God,” Amaranth replied. “My, but you’re sweating.”

“You didn’t give me much time to limber up first, my love,” he said. “You should watch out with that vigorous stuff. I’m getting old. And you made me get that meme-loop installed in my skull when we took these damn Peteris and Paulis jobs. Going to be very embarrassing for you if I die in flagrante and they play back my final minutes. They might charge you with murder and impound that deadly weapon that is your body.”

“You’re 64, Gregory, and we can afford gerontology treatments. It’ll be another 64 years at least before I start to worry about you having a stroke in the middle of bedroom gymnastics.”

“I’d offer to enter into a second round of gymnastics with you, but I’d better get ready for the rest of my meetings today and I’d better go see Ghost,” Gregory said, toweling himself off with the corner of one of their sheets.

“Ah, the other other woman in your life. And you’re inside her everyday, unlike with me.”

“Well, she has a very nice atrium, and you know they what say: ‘Once you go mech, everything else leaves you soft’,” he said with a wink, and then darted for the refresher while dodging pillows.

***

The Fourth Millennial Celebration was to continue well into the night, but it was now, around midday, that the crowds would see one of the most important symbolic moments of the event and of their lives, as each of the two surviving popes uploaded his cognos to the Godhead. Several upload platforms had been constructed in the cities they were officially gracing, Nova York in the UPA Region and Trinity in the LPA. Which one each was to arrive at had been shrouded in secrecy, but it didn’t matter, as every vid monitor in every home—and every viewscreen on buildings or suspended skyward—was now fixated on those chosen spots, so that every citizen could watch the White Pope and Black Pope implant their most recent memories into the AI that so many called the Fourth Pope or the Every-Pope.

It was a private moment every six months between the popes and Godhead. And for the first time, made public for the celebration of the new millennium.

Although both popes were being displayed simultaneously, most eyes in Nova York, and elsewhere in the UPA Region, were fixed on Pope Paresh Chopra and not on Pope Eric Vergosian. The UPA wasn’t Pope Paresh’s region per se, but Nova Roma in the Yucatan Province was the site of his papal tower. It was in the UPA region, and in Nova Roma and Nova York in particular, where his network was strongest and most effective.

While ardent faith in the Terran Catholic Church itself, the sovereignty of God and the infallibility of the popes kept most of the LPA Region in line, and fear of more warfare on the African continent mostly kept the LA Region obedient, the citizens of the UPA mostly followed the rules because most of Pope Paresh’s eyes, ears and hands were here.

The Black Pope. He controlled the military on land, at sea, in the skies and in orbit. He was in charge of inquisition and espionage. Most of the prisons were his purview. He didn’t rule the UPA because no pope rules a region, but the UPA was his in a sense, and the populace there viewed him with an uneasy admixture of reverence and terror.

As he ascended to the upload chair, his ebony vestments swirling in the winter wind, there was a heavy note of awe among the massed crowds. A note of expectation that was broken suddenly as people began to call out and turn their eyes away from the viewscreens and toward the sky.

A small vessel had appeared, from no one knew where, flying at high speed. It was well known that only dirigibles and low-flying law enforcement craft were allowed in this airspace today, and the newcomer was clearly heading straight for Nova York. Whether it was a suicide run or an assault run, no one could tell.

There was little fear though. One small vessel could do little to harm a city, no matter how it had evaded the security nets above. And no matter how fast it was moving, they would easily be able to usher the Black Pope down to the base of the pedestal and to the nearby slipgate before it could get close enough to harm him—if that was its intent.

And then.

The vessel split apart above them, or so it seemed, and there was a flash of green. A diffuse verdant bubble of light surrounding something dark and small.

History classes in primary, secondary and collegiate schools had never stopped teaching of the horrors of the Conflagration and the legacy it left behind. That was a lesson that never slacked. Precious few citizens in the Catholic Union, or many other nations for that matter, could have mistaken what was coming toward them.

The green glow around the object was a phase disruptor field, which would allow the object it enfolded to plunge through almost any physical barrier like a blade through wispsilk.

The enegy field that few could see, except as the faintest ripple in the air, was a distortion drive field, which would grant the small black object a velocity far faster than the shuttle that had carried it—the kind of speed that no one could now outrun.

Which meant the black object at the middle of it all was the most feared and reviled device of war known to humankind. A hellpod.

All of that registered in a matter of moments in the minds of everyone whose eyes were on the sky, along with the knowledge that it had been too late to do anything from the very start. The hellpod plunged into the ground, scant meters from the upload platform the Black Pope had chosen.

And the screams began.

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For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

The Sisters of the Red Sun watched their monitors and readouts impassively as they activated the plain gray shuttle with the oversized drive, which had for several days been nestling in their main hold.

They were at the location indicated on the datastrip that the then-Standish liaison had delivered, and they had minutes ago activated the sliptrans remote they had been given. The vessel off to their solarward flank had slowly gone through its prep cycle and was now orienting itself toward Earth. Its thrusters fired, with unnecessarily fierce intensity, and the unmanned ship rapidly gained speed as it left them.

“So our business now is concluded with the client Stavin,” Sarai said. Her voice was flat, but Mehrnaz was too close to her to be fooled that it lacked emotion.

“Yes. And the remaining funds were transferred as we activated the sliptrans.”

“He is now the target Stavin,” Sarai noted, as if it were an indisputable fact of public record.

“It seems so,” Mehrnaz responded. “We should be certain, however, that his actions warrant this change in relationship.”

“He was a client, and honored enough to be called the leader Stavin for his personal accomplishments.  But there was never any ‘relationship’ beyond contractual ones until he changed that. He sent the Standish decedent to us, hoping we would kill him outright, as if the one insult he paid us and his general hatred of neo sapiens was enough to warrant it.”

“Presumptuous of the client Stavin. That is true. But not in itself insulting,” Mehrnaz noted. “Amusing, actually, in its Earther ignorance.” She already knew where this conversation would end, but working through the details was important.

“He presented the Standish decedent as a gift, knowing how we must accept and use gifts,” Sarai answered. “The target Stavin knows the honor-terms of Ishmaeli, particularly hirebrands. He did not take seriously what might happen if we chose to keep the Standish decedent for a time. He gave us a gift that could not be enjoyed. He gave us poison.”

“And what does that earn for the target Stavin?” Mehrnaz asked.

“Pain,” responded Sarai.

That, at least, was good. Sarai was not blinded to the proper responses. She had not marked him for death. Her perspective had not skewed as human perspectives were so wont to do.

“But,” Sarai added, “we do not yet know what will come of our contract. We take contracts. We fulfill them. We ask few questions. But contracts can have aftermaths. I sense there is something to this task that will stain us.”

“I agree,” Mehrnaz answered, “though I hope we are both wrong.”

“We shall discover that soon enough, though it would have been better if we knew more about our recently delivered parcel,” her sister said. “Something that would give us more insight and perhaps leverage, should the target Stavin warrant more than just payment in pain.”

“We shall know more. Imminently,” Mehrnaz said with a slight grin.

“Sister, what have you done?” Sarai asked, stretching her neck forward and widening her violet eyes.

You know as well as I, Sarai, that our contract forbade tampering with the parcel or scanning it. But nothing denied us our curiosity about it, nor other means of slyly satisfying that curiosity.

“The data pirate Jordin was monitoring us and our package,” Mehrnaz said. “She tracks it and follows even as we speak.”

“We are not allowed to share details of contracts outside our immediate clan ring,” Sarai noted.

“I contracted with the lover Jordin for several months of my personal exclusivity to her,” Mehrnaz said. “That technically makes her my mate until the contract terminates, so she is of us for now.”

“You were busier than I thought during our hookah,” Sarai responded. “Why have you waited to tell me this?”

“I wished to offer you a pleasant surprise to begin the new year.”

“My thanks, sister,” Sarai said, linking her fingers with Mehrnaz’s. “So, I suppose the data pirate Jordin will be a frequent guest for some time then.”

“I suspect so. She doesn’t seem particularly busy in recent cycles with her work. You are welcome to share her when she is here.”

Sarai shook her head. “Such fare does not appeal to me these recent cycles. And our resting berth is too small for three.”

“I rather think her  tastes are more exotic than using the sleeping nets in the berth.”

“Well, then, at least I shall not be denied the comfort of sleep during rest cycles,” Sarai said with a light laugh. “And when I am awake, the hunt for the target Stavin will certainly keep my interest enough that I won’t notice any exotic noises you might make.”

***

Nothing today was as Domina had come to expect from one of Peteris Dyson’s visits; not the time of day, so close to lunchtime, nor his choice of clothing or the small silver box he was carrying. And he was smiling.

“You are wearing very casual attire, Gregory,” Domina said, “and you have a gift for me. Or is it a gift from your wife in return for mine to her?”

“You mistook my wife’s tastes in lingerie, Domina. It wasn’t her color, really, and she really prefers to mark them with her own scent first.”

“Oh, dear, did I pick up the wrong pair by mistake?” she asked, putting her hand to her chest with an obvious theatrical flair. “What must she think?”

“Well, she still knows that none of my own scents are to be found in, on or around you,” Gregory retorted. “As for my attire, well, I thought today called for a less formal tone than vestments convey.”

“So, we’re friends now, Gregory?” Domina asked. “I have too many of those already, and not enough lovers.”

“I should think the reverse would be true. In any case, I haven’t declared friendship,” Gregory said, his slight grin still plastered on his face. “In both the Vatican and the UFC, the three holiest days are Christmas, Easter and the New Year. If at no other time one celebrates communion, those are the days one should.”

Gregory opened the box and held it out to Domina. Inside it, a small, globe-shaped piece of crisp, unleavened bread, with a dollop of wine suspended in the center inside a molecule-thin shell of plasz. The shape and design of the eucharista was one of the few things that the two churches did identically, although the Terran Catholic Church still referred to it as a host—going back to the days of the flat, round cracker accompanying a chalice of wine.

Domina’s eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed in suspicion.

“I promise I haven’t poisoned it, Domina. Nor put any truthteller drugs in it. It would be easier to slip such things into your water supply if I really wanted to.”

“Gregory, I trust you implicitly. But I cannot accept a consecrated host from you. Not under asylum or any other circumstances. You are the spiritual head of the UFC. Chief heretic of a vast collection of heretics. Pope Tommis gave me no promise of prior absolution for such as this.”

“And that is one of the reasons for my civilian attire, Domina, aside from the fast the vestments are too damned hot, especially with how steamy you keep your apartment. This eucharista is unblessed by me or anyone else.” Gregory closed the box and set it down between them, still smiling. “You are an ordained steward, and fully vested to bless the Lord’s Supper yourself. Do so at your leisure. I brought this to you because I suspect in your fit of buying sexual technologies, you probably forgot to supply yourself with critical spiritual items.”

“So, why, Gregory, do you still have that canary-eating grin on your face, if you aren’t here to proffer heretic-blessed hosts?”

“Because you’re no longer the only important Vatican person under our protection, Domina. If you want to continue to be special, you might want to start producing priceless information before he does. And no, I won’t tell you who he is.”

***

Within seconds of Gregory’s departure, Domina was at her lightdesk making purchases. She didn’t need anything, but after she had implanted the nanomole in her lightdesk cubicle, that was how she was able to get messages to the Nazarene and how he was able to communicate with her—though he had thus far only done so to acknowledge that the nanomole had done its job.

It took the better part of an hour to find the right kinds of purchases that she was likely to make and that had the right price, size and other parameters to create the cypher for her message.

Be warned. The UFC has someone else from the Vatican in their hands.

She was surprised when she received, almost immediately, a personal thank-you note on her terminal along with the receipt for one of her purchases. A completely false note from the shop owner that carried several cues to alert her it was actually a message from the Nazarene.

Apparently, he must have knowledge of someone who had gone missing recently from the Vatican’s graces, because once she translated the hidden message in the note, she had a name: Daniel Coxe.

What would have been more useful, Domina noted with some irritation, would be to know who the hell Daniel Coxe was.

Her irritation lessened greatly when another false thank-you note and receipt arrived from a music vendor she had just ordered from, and she realized she would have an answer soon to her question. A personal answer.

Because that second message told her: I will extract you in three weeks. Prepare.

***

Lyseena and her admin officers hadn’t expected the Fourth Millennial Celebration to be problem-free, and true to form, it wasn’t. The disruptions and outright attacks were at least as bad as during the Grand Requiem the previous day; worse, in fact, because they were more random now.

They tried to wear us out yesterday and give us a false sense that we had weathered the storm, she thought. And now they seek to grind us down some more and leave us with no clues as to what their real goal is.

So far, only a few templars and local constables had been hurt, but there were plenty of other casualties, many of them outside the designated celebration zones.

Lyseena leaned back in her slipchair and massaged her temples, realizing that it was midday and she had better have someone bring her some food. As she got ready to key up Willem on her linkpad, an urgent Grid message displayed on her lightdesk.

FROM Stavin via Enn ::: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, but God is dead and always has been, Lyseena. I hope you kissed all your little templar admins before they went off to work today. You won’t get another chance.

Lyseena was out of her slipchair and heading for the Pit without hesitation. She hadn’t even reached the door of the admin suite when alarms started sounding and all hell broke loose.

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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus (continued)

Emerging from the tunnels into the desert at just before 1400 hours wearing an ultradense slickskein suit was not, Bechan thought, something he would try in the future ever again—nor even recommend to someone he disliked. The only blessing was that this was winter, so the temperature was barely breaking 20 degrees Centigrade. Even so, it felt brutal as the sun beat down, and he was out of the outfit as quickly as he could be, sucking down the last of his recirculated sweat as he did so, and following up with a bottle of water from his pack. The Jordan was nearby, and he hiked there as quickly as he could to refill his water bottle and drop a tab of NutriCleanse into it.

He pulled the ocular out of his pack and scanned the area quickly. Out here, there wouldn’t be be many security pylons, but what ones there were would be well hidden. And he had to worry about wingscouts that might pick up his movements. And then there were…

Shit!

In the distance, 800 meters away, a wyvern. Looking every bit like the unholy offpsring of a grizzy and a crocodile with a little extra horror thrown in. It squatted there, facing away from him, hunched on the thick legs of its wide, muscled lower torso, covered in bristling hairs that were said to be sharp as razors. The upper torso was leaner and more scaly, with just whispers of those bristles, as it narrowed toward the long-snouted, reptilian head with double rows of teeth top and bottom. And from that upper torso, no limbs per se but rather five spines on each side, like huge claws or membraneless wings curving outward—their embrace was deadly, and even a scratch meant the end of a struggle, as the toxin therein was a mild and fast-acting paralytic.

People talked about the Vatican dropping wyverns out here to breed amongst themselves and hunt would-be refugees. In truth, Bechan knew, only the last half was true. Wyverns were 100% manufactured genetically from nothing up to massive. Totally infertile—genderless, even, and thank Yahweh for that. Bechan had never had any doubt the stories of wyverns out here were true.

He tightened the focus on the ocular and noted the lack of a control collar. From all reports, the Vatican dumped the rejects out here to help dissuade people from leaving Israel. The ones that were too hard to control or that were too old for serious field duty. But as it turned its head northward, he saw the inhibitor pod at the base of its skull. No direct control, just a device to keep it from entering populated zones.

And then its head turned, slowly and deliberately, and Bechan could swear it was looking right through the ocular into his own eyes. He had no idea what the visual range of a wyvern was, nor its scent range, but he wasn’t about to hesitate in believing it knew he was there.

What wyverns lacked in starting speed, they made up for in the stretch, and they had plenty of endurance. And Bechan was pretty sure they could swim halfway decent as well.

He surprised himself with how fast he got into his watergear. He was certain it would have broken the record of any aquammando operative currently on active duty. The question was whether it was quick enough to get him down the river and to his next destination before he became a late lunch for his new admirer.

***

Even though Amaranth had given him a quick version of the story this morning, and Daniel Coxe had just given a more exhaustive one, the enormity of the problem was still screwing with Gregory’s mind. So the Peteris traded a quick glance with his wife once Daniel had finished his story, then asked him to repeat it. He sighed and did so, and then Gregory leaned forward a bit, frowning.

“So, we have an AI that no one but you and the Godhead—and now us—know exists, and it is running amok doing God knows what?”

A puzzled look crossed Daniel’s features. “Running amok? What are you getting on about?”

“Well, unless this AI is residing within the Godhead, in which case I think you and everyone else would have noticed it already, I presume it’s off somewhere in the Grid, possibly getting ready to disrupt entire networks and possibly destroy whole governments and nations,” Gregory said.

Daniel kept his eyes on Gregory while turning his head slightly toward Amaranth. “Paulis Dyson, is your husband a Luddite? Or an AI-phobe? The idea of AIs just flitting around on the Grid or taking over entire networks or launching missiles to destroy humanity are pretty much the province of the most idiotic vidmakers.”

She laughed. “My husband likes his technology just fine, at least when he’s searching for music or documentaries on the SystemGrid. But he barely passed his comptech classes. And to be honest, I’m not sure what to think myself. How would the Godhead arrange to have an entire AI complex built for a child and do so in secret? And—Is this a primary AI?”

“What I’ve seen suggests it is.”

“A primary AI is virtually immortal, unlike secondary AIs. The kind of sustainability functions it requires are huge, and unless the technology has changed, a primary AI can only be built from the ground-up by a massive team of techs over several years, or by the union of two other primary AIs.”

“That’s true.”

“So if it was a secondary AI with a limited lifespan, the Godhead could have just spat it out and maybe secretly transmitted it to some compact database somewhere, maybe hidden it in a virtual brothel or a mediaplex, since most of the secondary AIs end up in the sex industry or entertainment industry somewhere. But a primary? Where else but the Grid would have enough space to hold it without anyone noticing it? And where else could the Godhead send it without anyone noticing?”

“Paulis, Peteris, it just isn’t…” Daniel began, then stopped, sighed, and started again. “Look, if I were to offer to take out the left hemisphere of your brain and store in a support-unit somewhere, with a sliptrans attached to it and a companion sliptrans attached to your right hemisphere, so that the two halves of your brain could keep communicating no matter how far apart they got and with no delays, would you do it?”

“Not a chance,” Gregory said.

“All right then. Primary AIs have to be in large complexes in part because after thousands of years of scientific endeavor, we still know cock-squat about how personality and emotion is really, fully generated and managed in a human brain. So, every AI, primary or secondary, is just a collection of simulators with approximations to produce what seems to us—and to the AI—to be personality and emotion to go along with their rational and computational components. More powerful AIs, the primaries, require correspondingly larger databases than secondaries to manage the emotional content and to have a more complete range of emotions.”

“Those simulators are huge, almost unwieldy databases, which is why AIs are only created for functions that require a nearly-human personality,” he continued. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t even bugger around with secondary AIs, much less primaries; we’d just use computers for everything. But we need AIs for functions that require massive computation in parallel with some level of humanlike judgment, so we put the effort into creating distinct homes for their minds to live in. Really, really big homes for the really, really exceptional AIs so that you can adds lots of physical and virtual defenses to safeguard it. Do you follow so far?”

Gregory and Amaranth both nodded, and the Peteris muttered, “This seems to be my week to be berated by people I grant asylum to.”

“I granted this one asylum, darling,” Amaranth whispered, patting his hand.

Daniel ignored them both and continued. “Going back to my example, you wouldn’t split your brain in two and trust that the sliptrans might not cut out at some point, essentially robbing you of half your brain. Do you think an AI, particularly a primary AI, would want to spread its brain in hundreds or thousands of pieces all over the Grid?”

Gregory put up his hands in a gesture of surrender and then made a “zipping-my-lip” motion.

“So, the Godhead fathered a child,” Amaranth began, “Did he order up the construction of one, or did he beget one with another AI? I’m going to have to guess the former. He got in league with some kind of mega-rich benefactor, who built an AI complex in secret for him and pulled together a secret team of techs to design and program the AI itself.”

“No. The 13 data artifacts I located show signs of being left behind as trace residue from an inception routine. Unless two AIs are hardlinked during the reproduction process, these routines are broken down into separate self-extracting databases and then shipped to what will be the new AI’s complex. The Godhead bottled up his swimmers and shipped them out somehow to either a mother AI directly or to a location where the mother AI’s corresponding inception routines were sent.”

“Wouldn’t someone notice if a female AI suddenly received 13 packages of virtual sperm?” Amaranth asked.

“It could be done carefully and spread over time, but the shipment of larger databases like that to an AI would increase the chance of exposure. If the inception routines were sent directly to the mother AI, I would have expected to find several hundred artifacts and not just 13. But even still, the mother AI would have to create the child inside her own complex, and that would be noticed.”

“So the Godhead has been planning this with another AI, who, I’m guessing, also prepared 13 packages. The pieces of her virtual ova, to be meshed up with the Godhead’s sperm, sent to a predetermined location where a really big bunch of databases had already been readied for the birth of a bouncing baby AI,” Amaranth ventured.

“That’s it on the money, Paulis Dyson. It makes the most sense for success and secrecy.”

Gregory finally decided that he had been quiet long enough. “All right, so why is my notion of a civilization-destroying AI something to scold me over?”

“What?” Daniel asked.

“A handful of warwagons caused the Conflagration and then went to war with all the other warwagons, and it took centuries to dig out from that. Those were AIs running those warwagons.”

“They set fire to a nice chunk of the world because the governments holding their reins ordered them to,” Daniel noted. “They tried to kill the other warwagons largely because following those orders drove them insane. Look, the AIs on the four surviving warwagons are the only AIs we really have to worry about destroying the world, because they are completely self-sufficient, mobile and atrociously well-armed—but they already hobbled themselves to prevent that.”

“So, how can you be so sure that an Earth-bound AI might not do what the roguewagons did?”

“AIs are stuck in their physical complexes, for pity’s sake. What do you think is going to happen if an AI starts launching missiles or tanking entire economies or something else like that?”

Gregory pondered for a moment, then said: “Everyone would band together to lay waste to its entire complex, and since it has nowhere it can run…”

“Precisely. And from a strictly practical perspective, would you, if you were an AI, want humanity destroyed? Once the power plants stop working you would be as good as dead. Hell, once the SystemGrid started falling apart, you’d probably want to die because of the boredom.”

“Fine, then, you’ve convinced me that our wayward AI won’t end the world. But can you guarantee it isn’t up to something more subtly nefarious?”

“Of course I can’t. In fact, there’s a good chance it is,” Daniel said.

Although his statement was a nice validation of Gregory’s cynicism, it didn’t do a thing to settle his stomach the rest of the meeting.

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For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus

“Doman Coxe, we should be leaving now,” said Manguang, the tall, thin man who had  been keeping Daniel company since yesterday. “We’ll be going well into the native and business passages, so the temperature won’t be quite as cozy. Grab yourself a daycloak from the wall over there.”

As Daniel reached for the closest one, Manguang stepped over quickly and politely guided Daniel’s hand to the next row over. “These are the daycloaks. I know, for an offworlder, they probably all look alike, but it’s a bit of a social faux pas to wear a nightcloak during the day cycle.”

They stepped out into a main passage, and Daniel was once again struck by how large the tunnels under Mars were. And how well-lit. It still set his teeth a bit on edge to know he was far underground and likely to spend a good chunk of the next several years there—and the smooth stone walls were a constant reminder—but it wasn’t the claustrophobic environment he had always suspected Mars to be. According to Manguang, the illumination system was about as close to sunlight as one could get, right down to just the right level of UV exposure that the body needed—at least during the daytime. Even underground, Mars operated on a diurnal cycle, and it had been both comforting and unexpected to Daniel yesterday as the day drifted closer to evening and lights in the passageways gradually dimmed, until they settled on what was essentially twilight illumination on Earth.

After about 10 minutes, as they drifted farther away from the transport hub and the tourist-heavy areas, Daniel could feel the shift in temperature, and was glad for the daycloak. It wasn’t unbearably cold, but the air had a distinct nip now. Even with abundant fusion plants in the lower tiers, there was apparently only so much energy a government was going to expend heating an entire world.

A few twists and turns later, Daniel and Manguang were in a smaller but still roomy passage that clearly led to more utilitarian areas. Someone appeared from a side passage and quickly brushed past Daniel. Someone thinner even than Manguang and exceedingly pale. The skin wasn’t a stark white, but maybe they aren’t really that pale. It’s been at least 10 years since I’ve seen one, and only then from a distance.

Daniel touched Manguang on the shoulder. “Was that an Ishmaeli?”

“Hmmmm? Where?” Manguang looked around and laughed. “No, not a neo sapien there. A Wight. Fully human. They descend from some of the early settlers who considered it a point of pride never to stop living in the older tunnels and warrens. They keep to themselves and only flit in and out of the common areas quickly on business. ”

“Striking appearance.”

“Intimidating, you mean? They consider it a point of dishonor to drink in too much UV or have excessive muscle mass. Aside from the pallor and gauntness, the only thing that really sets them aside is a nasty set of claws—a bit of nano-assisted bio alteration that’s part of their adulthood rites.”

“I’ll make it a point not to stare then,” Daniel said. “I’m fond of keeping all my facial features attached to my head.”

“Meh,” Manguang huffed. “The ghoulish appearance does a great job of keeping tourists from probing around their sectors much, which is just how they like it, but the Wights are actually the most peaceful population in the planet. Don’t worry. You’ll get the measure of Mars soon enough, Doman Coxe.”

“Please, just Daniel. Being an attorney automatically grants me a prodigious ego, but I don’t even like mister or sir, much less doman, unless I’m getting it from a waiter or concierge. I prefer people to bow to my infectious charm or my searing argumentative stylings, not a title.”

Manguang merely nodded assent and led Daniel through increasingly less decorated and more secure passages and portals. Finally, they reached a maglev car—to the immense relief of Daniel’s feet—and a uniformed MarsGov official checked their credentials before they boarded it.

“When we get off the magline, we’ll be in fully UFC areas but don’t worry, we keep the incense to a minimum and you’ll only be required to flagellate yourself once a day,” Manguang said with a wink. “Seriously, the only difference you’re going to notice is that the security personnel dress differently and there are no casinos or taverns.”

“Ah…so this is what Hell looks like,” Daniel retorted.

Manguang chuckled. “We deacons in particular are prone to the lure of dice and wheels. It’s why so few of us go on to become shepherds or pastors. And there’s no prohibition against drinking. Just seems a bit unseemly to have gambling and drinking establishments in religious rec zones. But I doubt you were planning to spend your entire life only in the UFC sectors, asylum or not.”

“You are taking me to see the Peteris and Paulis, right?”

Manguang frowned at the sudden shift in topic. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

“You’ve told me a lot about Mars since yesterday, but nothing about protocol with your church’s leaders.”

“Oh, that? Daniel, that could have waited until we were in the reception chamber. Look, if you were approaching them in some public or vid-worthy event, we’d have all kinds of ritual to quiz you on. As it is, just behave yourself, more or less.”

“You can’t be suggesting I’m about to just slap them on the back and trade jokes.”

“Greet them with a quarter-bow. If you have any personal or philosophical objections to the titles Peteris and Paulis, just use Deum and Deia. Try not to imply that the UFC is a bunch of heretics, even if you think we are.”

The look on Daniel’s face was incredulous.

“Daniel, you’ve been scanned for any and everything obnoxious. Exploding or producing a toxic bioweapon would aggravate the Paulis and Peteris to no end. Not too much else fazes them, and they hate overzealous pomp. Unless you plan to make lewd sexual gestures to the Peteris’ wife or piss on their frocks, you should be fine.”

***

Sarai and Mehrnaz stood in the airlock, wearing the bare minimum gear to protect them from exposure to open space. They listened calmly as the atmosphere was drawn from the passageway, and waited for the outer door to cycle open.

It was a weekly exercise of the religion of the Shared People, and one that was also repeated before any important undertaking. In this case, their mission for the client Stavin.

They pushed off, trusting the thin safety lines to keep them tethered to the deck, and opened themselves to the immense expanse of stars and the great, sweeping shadows between them. The meager crisis suits they were wearing  meant that a significant fraction of the terrifying cold of space was already creeping through to their skin. But that was naught but a reminder of the cold logic of their God’s plans and judgments.

The sisters joined hands and half-sang the words of their prayer in perfect unison.

“Oh wise and merciful Abrahm-Elohim, we gaze upon your infinite face as your servants and heirs. We submit ourselves to the scrutiny of your countless eyes. As we embark upon our life-path, we ask for your forbearance as we inevitably stumble. May our allies outnumber our adversaries and our wisdom outweigh our folly. Selah.”

Not much longer thereafter, they were in the control cabin and guiding Ishtar’s Folly to their destination several hours away and the final dispensation of the mysterious cargo they were carrying—both of them with a growing suspicion that once this job was completed, they were going to be saying a prayer of repentance as well.

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Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

His latest meeting with Domina xec-Academie had gone, by Gregory’s estimation, about as well as any that had come before—which wasn’t the most ringing endorsement he could provide.

Once again, he left with plenty of images and uselessness to fill his head but little to fill in the gaps of his knowledge. He had set aside two hours for the former chief steward of the late Red Pope and wanted just about every minute of that part of his life back, with the possible exception of the mental image of her greeting him in a transluscent, skin-hugging, full-body confection made of slickskein that did more to draw attention to her body than actual nudity could have ever accomplished.

She had put on a scarlet daycloak fairly promptly and apologized with an obvious lack of sincerity and pure salaciousness in her tone that the outfit was a necessary part of her new excercise regimen, helping to balance the proper levels of perspiration and heat retention.

Most of the next two hours consisted of a well-orchestrated ballet of lies, evasiveness and coquetries of her part, coupled with sarcasm, accusations and diplomatic inducements on his.

Toward the end of their meeting, Domina presented him with a small gift-tube and mentioned it was something special for Amaranth. Miko Tanabi, who had taken to standing just inside the room while the Peteris’ other guardsman, Gregor Alenko, remained outside—a change in procedure orchestrated by the Paulis herself—cleared her throat and Domina handed it to her instead. She did so with a look that on casual glance appeared to be chagrin but was something that Gregory recognized as something almost shyly predatory.

After that came a flurry of quick meetings in which Gregory was alternately harrassed, praised and ridiculed by various members of the Ecclesiastia; then a short Sacrumass to conduct in the Grand Chapel, with his sermon sounding eminently more confident than he was feeling at the moment; and finally to the central UFC security station where Gregor retrieved Domina’s “gift” for Amaranth.

After a few minutes, Gregor reappeared and handed the gift-tube over to Gregory with news that there was nothing in the parcel that was setting off any sensors or alarms with the sniffer apps. Still, he was shaking his head as he handed it over, as if he were handing his Peteris a message about the death of a close friend.

“This cannot be good,” Gregor said with what sounded like bemused solemnity. “It is sealed for the Paulis but I could have…”

“No, don’t tempt me,” Gregory said. “If it isn’t dangerous and I break the seals, Amaranth will kill me. It’s keyed for her, it’s declared safe; she’ll open it. She’d break it open in a heartbeat if our roles were reversed of course.”

“Marriage creates the uneven game field for men,” the bodyguard responded. “This is why there will not be a Madame Alenko.”

Miko sniffed indignantly but said nothing in response to her Peteris or her fellow guardsman.

Later than night, Amaranth would walk into Gregory’s privy chamber in a slumbergown, just before bedtime, and toss the gift-tube into his lap.

“The gift is really for you, Greg,” she said, “and where it landed was quite appropriate.”

The Peteris of the UFC picked up the tube from his lap, opened it, and poured the contents out into his palm. One pair of very expensive, unnecessarily skimpy and vanishly sheer briefpants. Although they appeared to be new, the aroma now drifting into his nostrils suggested that something very energetic had happened inside them earlier in the day.

“I think I’ll be having that little chat about who owns your nethers a bit sooner than expected with our guest,” Amaranth said dryly.

“She certainly has a gift for subtlety, doesn’t she?” Gregory offered blandly. “Where do you suppose she finds the energy and stamina? I’m surprised those wanderlusts of hers haven’t suffered system crashes yet.”

“At least it’s an improvement from when she couriered me the plasz-wrapped thumb of one of my spies in Davidia,” she responded. “I think. So, are you going to throw that away now? Or make love to it?”

“Must I give it up?” Gregory said innocently. “It’s so rude for us to refuse a gift that so much…effort…went into.”

Amaranth snorted in a decidedly unfeminine manner. “Greg, toss it out, disinfect your hand and come to bed soon. I won’t be doing anything that will soil your briefpants but you will want to talk with me before I fall asleep. Particularly since I did a little something passive-aggressive today, my love, in response to this whole Domina fiasco.

“I gave asylum to my very own highly placed Vatican lackey. I’ll tell you a little about it tonight, and round out your knowledge in the morning. Just like you did with me and the Domina situation.”

With that, Gregory gave up hope of tomorrow being a better day.

***

After several hours alternately walking, crawling and slithering through various degrees of destruction beneath Jerusalem, Bechan Adym had long since lost his burning sense of purpose and replaced it with an overwhelming sense of anxiety and fear.

He had only a small survival pack that he pushed ahead of him, and the ultradense slickskein outfit that hugged his body, and neither of them was comforting him much. The skin-thin slickskein was a special polymer weave that was packed so tight on a molecular basis that it weighed as much as light field armor, while maintaining total flexibility. Its smoothness allowed him to glide through some of the tightest paths, but the weight and lack of breathability was also making him sweat miserably inside the damned thing, even though most of his body heat was being converted to energy for the small browbeam lighting his way. As a result, he was constantly sipping his own perspiration through a catchtube and liking it less with each passing minute.

The density of the slickskein ensured that he almost certainly would not be cut but it wouldn’t do a thing to protect him if a tunnel collapsed on top of him—a prospect that he was both dreading and desiring at this point. Soon, the way would become easier, or so he had been led to understand; he suspected that would mean something like getting disembowled first, then finding out later how much more pleasant it is in comparison to have a foot chopped off.

He closed his eyes and considered just turning back. Then he reminded himself, again, how much his ancestors had endured over thousands of years, and he pressed on. Fear was his regular companion now; he intended to make it his propellent instead of his braking thrusters.

***

In the small syna called Temple Ezrath, Rabbi Brifel Mann keyed up an interface with the AI that controlled the imagery on the Western Wall and also served as the main AI both for the local Jerusalem Civil Governing Authority and for Jewish priests and religious scholars across Israel.

“Good evening, Rabbi Mann,” the AI said in a voice that sounded like a young man forced to grow up too fast. “How are you?”

“Well, Kotel, very well,” the rabbi answered. “I saw some new imagery on the wall today, depicting the Holocaust with Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. It was very striking, all the more so for the fact it was mostly black and white.”

“It is fascinating, you know. I had discovered some archival material recently—an adult illustrated novel from the Second Millennium titled Maus. It was quite inspirational. The author…”

“Kotel, sometimes, a simply thank-you suffices,” Brifel said, reminding himself once again that the AI had only been the successor of the previous Kotel for five years now. The AI was smarter than most adults, but it was still a long way from fully finding its personality. “I actually wanted to talk about Bechan Adym.”

“How is he?”

“Seven hours underneath the city. You be the judge.”

“If he can survive and if he’s using stims, I should think he can reach the Jordan River, or the Dead Sea, in another four hours, if his path was well chosen,” Kotel noted. “Or, upwards of 13 hours if he chose poorly or made any wrong turns.”

“Hmmmm. Well, then, I think that in that case, you should wait another seven hours, then contact the Vatican authorities and tell them there has been a breach of the tunnels and that a pack of scuttlers should probably be sent out to investigate.”

***

The admin suite was overly crowded this evening, with three field marshals reporting to her in lieu of Maree, along with Kevan, Paulo and Ather. Willem rounded out the lot, quiet as ever off to the side as everyone else gathered in a circle in their slipchairs.

“We still have the Fourth Millennial Event tomorrow, and we all need rest, so I won’t keep you long,” Lyseena xec-Juris said. “We’ve all seen the reports for today and the long string of attacks, all but one of which Secular Genesis took credit for. Does anything strike any of you?”

“They were very audacious,” said one of the field marshals.

Lyseena narrowed her eyes and stared at the woman for a full ten seconds. “I’d relieve of your duties for an inane insight like that if it weren’t for the fact your field report shows you have a functioning brain.”

“Well, we’ve already established a pattern of the attacks escalating over time,” Paulo noted. “The effort was highly coordinated and clearly had purpose beyond mere harrassment of the Catholic Union.”

“Purpose, yes. But what?” Lyseena asked, with the air of someone who already had an answer.

“Fear, one would suppose,” Kevan added. “Though they seem to have only stirred up more interest in people about tomorrow. I swear with the media reports and citizen queries on the Grid more people want to come to the city core now, hoping to be just close enough to see templars and terrorist spar without getting killed in the process. I’m sure Ather must have some colorful commentary to share.”

“Ather has been busy,” responded Ather sup-Juris. “Lyseena has had me chasing Maree most of the day, and a fine chase it was. I love hunting. So, I haven’t been thinking of your problems, Kevan. Besides, I already know what Lyseena is leading up to because she talked to me about it earlier, and if I spoil her ending she’ll shoot me on the spot.”

“Too true,” she said, noting that two of the field marshals blanched at the thought. Probably best to let them think I would do that, for now at least. “Brothers, sisters. This entire godforsaken day has been leading up to something. Working us up and wearing us out and announcing to us that more was yet to come. And it did.”

Lyseena paused, took a breath.

“But didn’t it all seem rather…anticlimactic?” she continued. “We’ve had an entire day of rough foreplay and no one has fornicated with us.”

“I’d say we got pretty well fucked,” blurted one field marshal, whom Lyseena knew had been all too close to a pair of back-to-back assaults in recent hours.

“Did we now?” Lyseena asked. “No,we haven’t been yet. All this build-up, and no conclusion. That’s my assessment.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, Lyseena,” said Paulo, “but does that mean they had a piss-up with their finale, or…”

“…it means, Paulo, that they haven’t presented it yet,” Lyseena answered. “We’ve had an entire day of chaos to manage thanks to the Red Pope’s untimely demise. A day we weren’t expecting to have to deal with, when we have an even bigger event and more chaos to deal with tomorrow. We were already stretched thin, and we figured they would strike us today when we were least prepared to deal with it.

“Instead, we’re tired, and now we know they aren’t finished yet, and we still have to face that tomorrow. No, fellow templars, this isn’t over. We’ve been played on a line like fish. Secular Genesis plans to strike us with their real attack, or attacks, tomorrow. They always did. And whatever they are planning, I think it’s going to be about as ugly as it gets.”

(This concludes Chapter 5. To view the next installment, which begins Chapter 6, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

She was being pummeled. Her mind was screaming, “Get up! Run!” Shadowy figures were pressed around her, smelling of burned flesh and touching her with dry and flaking fingers. She wanted to open her eyes. To speak. To get up.

But she was shackled. No, tethered. Mentally pinned. She strained, not knowing why she should or whether the effort was worth it.

For a moment, her eyes opened. A vague shadow in front of her, light all around it. Then she drifted again. Her eyelids dropped. Something inside her head tried to cinch those tethers again and she struggled against herself. She fought. She writhed inside her own psyche.

One by one, the restraints were slipping away. But from all directions, she still heard her own voice telling her to pull herself together and flee and fight and move. She began to grow frantic inside her thoughts, becoming more anxious the closer she got to freedom.

She didn’t know if she struggled for minutes or hours. But she started to rein in the chaos. She pushed away the flesh-seared corpses that were her recently slain family. She quieted the multitude of voices, all of them her own, until she could begin to think.

Until she began to realize that one voice wasn’t her own. “Maree,” it said. The voice was familiar. Familiar didn’t mean friendly anymore though. She panicked again.

Her eyes still wouldn’t respond properly, but she tried. A shadow in front of her gained resolution. A shape. Large. Blocking the dim light. Then her eyes betrayed her again, plunged her into darkness.

And again, she opened them. A shape. A person. There, and then gone again. Then back. Memories of white hair and hazel eyes. Familiar. Strange. Real or illusion? Now or then? Her context was slipping, and her control with it. Panic began to set in again. She didn’t precisely remember why, but there wasn’t supposed to be a person with her. All the dead people were in her head where they belonged. Who?

She opened her eyes again, not knowing how much later it was happening, and managed a few seconds of vision. No one was there, but there were items near her feet that didn’t belong. She remembered a little. She was in the rear berth of her borrowed groundcar. Someone had been there. Maree slipped again. Lost her hold. Everything went black, and she was back inside her head with the scorched dead of Astoria.

Then, all at once, she broke through the wall in her head with a huge choking sob, and she sat up, shaking. It took her nearly a minute to realize she had drawn her slug pistol, and slid it awkwardly back under her bounty coat.

Overhype, she remembered. I took overhype to escape the templars. God I hope I never have to resort to that again.

As her mind and body began to re-synch and her awareness sharpened, she realized that the items at her feet were a hot-canister and a cheap disposable flexsheet. Someone had been here, but as she looked around, past the windows of her car, she realized she was alone. There was still enough light outside to be clear on that point, and she was still back a bit in the woods, out of sight of the main road.

For a moment, she considered tossing the hot-canister out of the car until common sense reminded her that anyone with an agenda would have killed or bound her already, not left her a beverage. She pulled the thermal tab on the side of the large cup, and then sipped at the suddenly-steaming drink. It was shit-for-value caff, and she noticed now on the side of the canister the logo of a cheap travel depot she had passed many miles back. But in her current condition, anything that could shock her brain back into focus was welcome.

She picked up the flexsheet, and touched her thumb to the blinking standby avatar, watching words unfold in a script she hadn’t seen for years.

Maree,

My apologies for not staying around. I can’t know for certain what you took, but I have a good guess, and I am far too old to risk several broken bones as you come out of an overhype coma. And you bring back too many memories of your grandfather anyway, and Matthew for that matter. Consider me a coward if you must, but I’ll just spend this time while you “slumber” and say what needs to be said in the written word instead.

If the handwriting style itself hadn’t tipped her off, the tone of the letter would have. Charlyes Kemusian, one of her grandfather’s oldest friends; one of the early founders of Secular Genesis. A man she had called uncle from the time she could first speak. Maree began to read again.

Your father contacted me after the events at your Astoria cottage. He feared you might do something rash to Secular Genesis and thought I should warn someone. He vastly overrates my current level of connection to the movement, but I do reluctantly stay in the loop. I suppose I could have told him that I knew precisely what happened in Astoria and who did what to whom. Well, enough, anyway. Enough to know what you were really after.

Maree set aside the flexsheet for a moment. She hadn’t known that Uncle Charlyes had maintained any contact with Secular Genesis, but she should have expected the old fox to do so. When his beloved Matthew died, so did much of his anger toward the Vatican—why fight for something the popes had denied them when one of them was now dead—but he would never let himself be left in the dark. Her eyes fell back onto the letter.

But your father doesn’t let details like that stop him, now does he? But you already know that. I sent a spyfly over to that archaic little yacht of his. I suspected you’d be heading his way, though it slipped my mind to notify Tobin or Stavin or anyone else to expect you. I’ve gotten so absent minded in my latter years.

Maree, I know about anger. I know about revenge. Take your new identity and just run. For the love of your grandfather. For my sake. Run. And when you can find a way to do it, leave the Catholic Union. Stavin isn’t worth any of this. Neither is the Vatican. You have a chance to start anew. Take it.

Maree teared up for a moment. This man was the closest she could get to her grandfather now. Maybe the only person left who cared.

But you probably won’t. Will you? And I must accept that. I watched you face Tobin. I watched your relationship with him die in a moment. I watched you run in Houston. I watched you kill. I followed you here. You are running, but you won’t run away, will you?

“No,” Maree said in a whisper, “I won’t. I don’t think I can.”

If this were a Grid-vid…some godawful cloak and blade  holodrama…this would be the point at which I leave you an arsenal of weapons, a list of names and locations, and a decked-out slipcar. Everything you need for your trail of vengeance.

This isn’t a story, though, Maree.

I don’t have anything to give. And I wouldn’t if I did. Oh, I tapped into that linkpad of yours with that new name you’re carrying and slipped a few funds into the account. It’s not much. I’m old and unemployed and rebels don’t get retirement endowments. But it can feed you and keep you in lodgings for a few months I suppose. But I can’t give you revenge.

Does that mean I know where you could go and won’t tell you? Or that I don’t even have the knowledge you need? You can take your own guesses. An old man is entitled to some secrets, eh?

Choose your path carefully, Maree. I don’t know how many more forks in the road will be offered to you before you end up with only one path and the devil’s own momentum to carry you.

And you know where it got him.

Love, Charlyes

Maree thumbed the erase avatar. Guzzled caff until her throat couldn’t take the scorching anymore. She slipped into the forward berth and fired up the groundcar. Time to go a few miles, and then find a new way to travel.

There was still at least one person in the  world left for her to love, she realized. And who deserved it.

And she was going to disappoint him.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

For what might be the last time in his life, Bechan Adym realized, he was standing before the HaKotel HaMa’aravi—the Western Wall of Jerusalem which so many outside the Hebrew faith had saddled with the term Wailing Wall so many centuries ago.

Bechan thought back to the stories of the old wall, from before the Conflagration, which was nothing but stone. Much of that remained, but was now surrounded by and filled in by irregular-shaped slabs of transplast and polysteel, upon which flashed images from the Jewish past. The painful things they must never forget: The Egyptian captivity, the Babylonian oppression, the ancient Crusades, the Holocaust and more, including the Final Crusade itself—which was indiscriminately aimed at the Arabs and caught Israel in its wake, so much like the original Crusades.

In these modern times, the AI-controlled wall itself truly did wail at times in painful recognition of millennia of the Jewish suffering that went hand-in-hand with its endurance and triumphs. It would also moan, and weep water at times like gigantic tears. Stone and smartplast, old and new, nature and technology.

Bechan said a silent prayer before the Kotel and then proceeded to a small public syna nearby. He entered the modest temple and regarded the four silver bowls at the entrance. He plucked a small piece of unleavened crackbread from the first, baked with bitter herbs inside to recall the trials the Jews had survived since becoming the Chosen People of Yahweh. He dipped in in the second bowl of salted water to recall the tears shed, past and present. Then into bowl of honey, for the sweetness of the Lord’s deliverance and blessings. And finally into the bowl of dried lamb, for the protection of the angels of Heaven.

He chewed thoughtfully on the Sacred Remembrance and then removed his shoes and socks, stepping into the long Cleansing Pool on the way to the inner chamber and letting the warm water purify his steps. At the end of the pool, he set his footwear aside on a long, low table and turned as Rabbi Brifel Mann entered from a small side room.

“Bechan,” he said with a nod and a smile. “I had hoped you might reconsider.”

“Israel is my home, but it is also our prison. I have places to go if we are to ever be free from our most recent would-be masters. You have your tools?”

“I do, and I will remove your IDentipod with as much care as I performed your bris, Bechan,” the rabbi said warmly. “To what end, though? Our nation is ringed with thousands upon thousand of security pylons and monitored by a hundred satellites. When you are sensed, without the device inside you, you will be caught quickly.”

“I will have no toys of the Catholics in my body as I travel. I will not have it,” Bechan said. “And the pylons I do not fear. There are other paths,” he whispered, nodding to the floor.

“The Vatican collapsed those many tunnels long ago.”

“There are still ways through the rubble.”

“And how many survive that journey?”

“As Yahweh wills, rabbi,” Bechan said. “If I die, then I was not fit for His purposes. And where better to die and be interred than underneath such holy ground, even if it does mean being crushed under tons of rock?” That last he said with a smile and wink, but the rabbi frowned.

“Feh! If you do make it, contact the Voudoun; they will know how to reach me.”

“The Voudoun—necessity breeds such strange alliances,” Bechan noted. “Maybe they’ll loan me a zombi for my journeys. Something to do the heavy work and not force me listen to small talk.”

Brifel removed his blades and small clamps from a black satchel. “We should begin then. I will miss you.”

Bechan hugged the rabbi’s neck and kissed his cheek. “And I will miss your wife’s cooking as I munch on field rations and random weeds. I will reach the Outside. I will.”

“When you do, I will raise a toast in your honor,” the rabbi said, as he deftly cut open Bechan’s wrist. “If you do not, the Kotel will weep for you as it has all before you.”

***

The meandering sheet of obsidian flowed as far as Bohlliam could see in either direction, with sand and ash and loose rocks everywhere else from horizon to horizon, punctuated by a few hardy cacti and palms. The transformed remains of the Great Causeway, centuries ago a straight and kilometer-wide path of granite and colored sand and now a simulated river made of black glass thanks to the Conflagration.

Angel City. The land of the intentionally lost—and no city at all for centuries. One of the few places the Catholic Union didn’t bother seeding with security pylons. Bohlliam could see stirrings in the distance; perhaps an ash storm on the way. He considered whether to simply seal himself up in his hut for the remainder of the day and night, but there was that slow-moving crawler in the distance, on a path that refused to deviate. A path straight to him.

I never asked to be a prophet for these people, he thought sourly. And I have that emophage infection to thank for the flipping honor. I only wanted to be alone.

Still, it might mean an offering of fresh food and maybe a good rum or verdemead to wash dinner down with. Something that would let him sleep through the dreams of others that always crowded his own.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

Gregory was just toweling off from a quick shower when Amaranth chimed him on his linkpad. He snatched up the device from the bed, slapped in on, and answered her call. At once, a tiny holographic projection of her hovered there on his wrist—it was only for his wife, children and grandchildren that he was willing to waste the storage space for that function.

It was probably for the best that the linkpad wasn’t actually transmitting images back and forth but simply simulating her and, he suspected, simulating him at her end, though she didn’t always have the holo function on. Because if his linkpad had been set up for real-time visuals, Gregory suspect he’d be getting teased right now about his lack of an exercise regimen, as water dripped from his very middle-aged-looking torso.

Instead, he got a relatively chipper, “Hello, Greg. How are you spending your time before meeting up with your paramour again?”

“Cleaning up from wearing full vestments in stuffy rooms with stuffy people carrying on pointless meetings,” he responded. “Want to be clean just in case I give in to Domina, so she’ll have a fresh canvas to dirty up.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors, again, my love,” she teased. “I’m mostly done with the medtechs for today, but just wanted to let you know that in between sessions I’ve been enjoying the footage of your encounters with Tommis’ steward.”

Gregory frowned. “Ammie, I haven’t recorded any of my sessions with Domina. That would be…”

“…a borderline violation of the asylum conventions and certainly a security risk for us if it got out,” Amaranth finished. “But it turns out that someone remembered who’s in charge of security and made sure to record the short-range feed from the MobileEye for me.”

“Damn it! Who the fu…”

“Calm yourself, Greg. It doesn’t matter.”

“It pissing well does matter that one of my guards, and obviously it was Miko or Gregor who did this, went behind my back on something like this.”

“No, it doesn’t, Greg,” Amaranth continued, with a trace of steel in her voice. “First off, the person in question delivered the data strips directly to me and if I hadn’t made it back to Mars alive to see them, would have destroyed them in short order. Second, you don’t know which one of them it was, so you can’t do anything to that person. And even if you did want to do something, Miko and Gregor are the best and most loyal bodyguards that it is possible to get outside of my own personal retinue, and I’m not parting with any of mine because it’s my ass out there in the field and I need the best of the best. Your guards are protecting you, Greg. Part of that is making sure that I see what’s going on with you and Domina.”

“Amaranth, I don’t appreciate the second-guessing here.”

“Greg, making sure the Paulis has the necessary information to guide and preserve the Peteris is not second-guessing. And with all due respect, you’re a tad out of your league compared to me when it comes to dealing with vipers of Domina xec-Academie’s caliber and you know it.”

“Amaranth, this is hard enough as it is; I can’t have you peering over my shoulder or wondering if I can trust my team to take orders from me.”

“Greg, personal security is my purview and you know it. But relax. I’ve told both of them to leave off any more pirated images from your trysts with Tommis’ slattern. And I’ve already destroyed the recordings that have been made. I’m trusting you to deal with Domina and even though I think you’re doing a piss-poor job of reining in your testosterone, I liked the way you sprang the Pope Kuang-Hsu connection on her. I think you’re getting her range a bit.”

The compliment took him aback. “Amaranth,” he said, and paused. “Thank you for that. I do need you, you know. On this.”

“Greg, I’ll be visiting Domina briefly at some point to remind her who owns the nether regions of your anatomy, and there may come a time we need to double-punch her, but this is your cross to bear. Partly I’m doing that to be all passive-aggressive with you for giving her asylum without asking me,” Amaranth joked. “But in all seriousness, she isn’t going to tell me anything. One of us would kill the other if there were extended sessions between us. You, however, are a man and she figures all men turn to gel in her fingers, so you might actually get somewhere with her.”

“Ammie, you know that whatever…”

“Shut up, Greg,” Amaranth said with a light laugh. “I’ll know if you’ve stepped over a line, because I’m your wife. And we women know. And that’s what will keep you in line. There are women I’d forgive you over; you know this isn’t one of them. Now finish sprucing up. Time’s wasting and we need answers, and your girlfriend is probably expecting you by now.”

***

“How bad is it, Paulo?”

“Compared to what, Commander? This is the sixth attack scene I’ve been to today. Kevan may have been caught in one of the attacks on his circuit, but there’s only been one other terrorist assault on his rounds, so frankly speaking he’s gotten off easy today. And the third circuit, which Maree should have been handling, has been hammered near as bad as mine from what I’ve heard.”

“How bad?” Lyseena repeated, hearing Paulo’s sigh clearly through the linkpad connection.

“The worst yet. Thirty civilians dead; 32 seriously wounded. We’ve got at least 60 with minor wounds. Add to that 2 wounded templars and 3 dead constables. Every attack on my circuit has been worse than the previous. They seem to be coordinated and scaling up as they go along. Does that synch with third circuit?”

“Close enough,” Lyseena responded. “Their most recent attack was just as bad as the one before, but otherwise it was ramping up steadily in body count. They have seven attacks to your six, but slightly fewer injuries and deaths so far.”

For several seconds, Paulo was silent. “There’s still at least an hour more of this pomp and circumstance for Pope Tommis’ requiem before we start to see crowds dispersing,” he noted. “What are the chances that the violence will keep people away from the Fourth Millennial Celebration tomorrow?”

“None,” Lyseena said. “If anything, I suspect crowds might be bigger now.”

“Then what are the chances we can get some more trained bodies shipped in here for tomorrow from some other regions?”

“Imagine that you’re a snowflake,” Lyseena said grimly, “and this is Hell.”

***

As a newsfeed in his vox filled one ear with delicious news about the day’s attacks, and relayed field operative reports from his servitor filled the other, Stavin allowed himself a grin.

Everything going according to plan. Precisely.

Everything on track.

An ill-prepared and beleaguered templar force, and an worse-prepared local constabulary, were getting hammered on multiple fronts. And they had no conception of the pain he was yet to inflict on them.

Like a cat with its mouse, he thought, and I’m not even through playing with you yet.

(For the next installment in the story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

The air in the modest rec chamber of Ishtar’s Folly was already heavy with haze; heavier than it needed to be, Mehrnaz realized, but getting up and fiddling with the scrubber settings now would only ruin the mood, and any weekly hookah within the Shared People was about creating a positive and communal atmosphere. Even more so this week, as Sarai had been fuming ever since they ejected the Standish-corpse from the ship. The man had struck some nerves with her, to be sure, but that was only a small part of the pain. Worst was that Sarai was even more angry than Mehrnaz was at the leader Stavin himself for sending them the Standish-gift to begin with.

And that, Mehrnaz considered, meant Sarai was about as angry with the leader Stavin as it was possible to be. If not for the fact they still had a contract to fulfill for him, Mehrnaz suspected her sister might already have set a course for Earth to track down the man and turn him from the rebel Stavin to the Stavin-corpse.

So, with a job to finish imminently, and tensions high, canceling this week’s hookah would have been idiocy. Both their minds needed to be clear. Still, some changes had to be made. Normally, the gathering would have been in a larger room with more Shared People at a nearby station or settlement of Ishmaeli or Isaacians. But keeping it here on the ship with a smaller group was more practical with the looming contract to complete with the client Stavin.

Also, there were no brand-brothers of their clan here. A few brand-sisters and some assorted female friends and associates, like the data pirate Jordin, an Isaacian who tended to float from one Ishmaeli clan or Isaacian arc to the next—she was the rare loner among the Shared People; not totally separate, but too independent to commit.

The lack of males at this hookah did bother Mehrnaz a bit. Often, the relaxation of a hookah led to some coupling, or even trebling. Not that such a thing wouldn’t happen this time, but the chances were always slimmer in an all-femme gathering. But having males around would have been too much a reminder to Sarai of the Standish-corpse and the client Stavin. Not to mention that hookah participants shared more than vapors and conversation around the hookah. The contribution of any male genetic sample to the communal dish inside the hookah itself likely would have been more than Sarai was prepared to endure right now.

She would calm down once the job was over, and then they could determine how to address the client Stavin once he was no longer holding a contract for them. Already, Sarai seemed more relaxed, Mehrnaz noticed, and was chatting lightly with an Ishmaeli brand-sister and the the hacktech Kirrah, a particularly dark-skinned Isaacian they had recently made the acquaintance of during a contract last month.

Mehrnaz leaned back into a cushion, pulling lazily on her own hookah tube, and realized that the nearest cushion was in fact the data pirate Jordin, who turned out to be much softer, and certainly warmer, than any cushions in the room. Mehrnaz smiled up into the Isaacian’s shining, charcoal-gray face, caught her aquamarine eyes, and received a sly grin in return.

Perhaps I can rinse thoughts of the our dealings with the Standish-corpse out of my mind after all, she pondered, and replace them with some fresher, softer memories.

***

Typically, Ather sup-Juris preferred to perform interrogations when he was calm; something he rarely was after any slipgate journey. He had no intention of deviating from that philosophy, but he did feel it was important to set the right tone with a subject.

So, now that he was back at Templar’s Tower in Nova York, he stopped by the holding room where the recently apprehended priest was sitting alone. He would likely know little about the Secular Genesis cell he was serving, but it always paid to be thorough.

Ather opened the door, stepped just inside the chamber, and crossed his arms behind his back. He let both his imposing size and his full inquisitor’s uniform register in the priest’s mind, then cleared his throat slightly.

“Normally, I work alone,” Ather said. “But a certain templar admin officer has expressed a desire to participate. As such, I feel it will be my duty to be very…dutiful…in my use of the latest technologies and techniques.”

The priest paled visibly. Ather imagined he could hear the man’s guts twisting even now.

“I simply thought you should know,” Ather continued, “so that you can consider how best to keep our session short. And to the point.”

With that, Ather backed out of the room, noting with some satisfaction that there was a tear in at least one of the priest’s eyes already. And Ather doubted that the priest would be finishing the small, half-eaten lunch that had been set before him 20 minutes earlier.

Confession may be good for the soul, but the prospect of it is often hard on the digestion.

(For the next installment of this story, click here.)