“And twelve thousand stadia is…”
“About two thousand kilometres. Bobby, this city of God is the size of a small moon. It’s going to take a long time to fall in. And we’ll be charged for every second, of course.”
“In that case I wish I’d had a hot dog. You know, my father mentions you a lot.”
“He’s angry at me.”
“Hiram is, umm, mercurial. I think on some level he found you stimulating.”
“I suppose I should be flattered.”
“He liked the phrase you used. Electronic anaesthesia. I have to admit I didn’t fully understand.”
She frowned at him, as together they drifted toward the pale grey light. “You really have led a sheltered life, haven’t you, Bobby?”
“Most of what you call “brain-tinkering” is beneficial, surely. Like Alzheimer studs.” He eyed her. “Maybe I’m not as out of it as you think I am. A couple of years ago I opened a hospital wing endowed by OurWorld. They were helping obsessive-compulsive sufferers by cutting out a destructive feedback loop between two areas of the brain.”
“The caudate nucleus and the amygdala.” She smiled. “Remarkable how we’ve all become experts in brain anatomy. I’m not saying it’s all harmful. But there is a compulsion to tinker. Addictions are nullified by changes to the brain’s reward circuitry. People prone to rage are pacified by having parts, of their amygdala — essential to emotion — burned out. Workaholics, gamblers, even people habitually in debt are ‘diagnosed’ and ‘cured.’ Even aggression has been linked to a disorder of the cortex.”
“What’s so terrible about all of that?”
“These quacks, these reprogramming doctors, don’t understand the machine they are tinkering with. It’s like trying to figure out the functions of a piece of software by burning out the chips of the computer it’s running on. There are always side-effects. Why do you think it was so easy for Billybob to find a football stadium to take over? Because organized spectator sport has been declining since 2015: the players no longer fought hard enough.”
He smiled. “That doesn’t seem too serious.”
“Then consider this. The quality and quantity of original scientific research has been plummeting for two decades. By ‘curing’ fringe autistics, the doctors have removed the capacity of our brightest people to apply themselves to tough disciplines. And the area of the brain linked to depression, the subgenual cortex, is also associated with creativity — the perception of meaning. Most critics agree that the arts have gone into a reverse. Why do you think your father’s virtual rock bands are so popular, seventy years after the originals were at their peak?”
“But what’s the alternative? If not for reprogramming, the world would be a violent and savage place.”
She squeezed his hand. “It may not be evident to you in your gilded cage, but the world out there still is violent and savage. What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy’s point of view. If we can’t achieve that, than all the reprogramming in the world is futile.”
He said wryly, “You really are an angry person, aren’t you?”
“Angry? At charlatans like Billybob? At latter-day phrenologists and lobotomisers and Nazi doctors who are screwing with our heads, maybe even threatening the future of the species, while the world comes to pieces around us? Of course I’m angry. Aren’t you?”
He returned her gaze, puzzled. “I guess I have to think about it… Hey. We’re accelerating.”
The Holy City loomed before her. The wall was like a great upended plain, with the doors shining rectangular craters before her.
The swarms of people were plunging in separating streams toward the great arched doors, as if being drawn into maelstroms. Bobby and Kate swooped toward the central door. Kate felt an exhilarating headlong rush as the door arch opened wide before her, but there was no genuine sense of motion here. If she thought about it, she could still feel her body, sitting quietly in its stiff-backed stadium seat.
But still, it was some ride.
In a heartbeat they had flown through the doorway, a glowing tunnel of grey-white light, and they were skimming over a surface of shining gold.
Kate glanced around, seeking walls that must be hundreds of kilometres away. But there was unexpected artistry here. The air was misty — there were even clouds above her, scattered thinly, reflecting the shining golden floor — and she couldn’t see beyond a few kilometres of the golden plain.
…And then she looked up, and saw the shining walls of the city rising out of the layer of atmosphere that clung to the floor. The plains and straight line edges merged into a distant square, unexpectedly clear, far above the air.
It was a ceiling over the atmosphere.
“Wow,” she said. “It’s the box the Moon came in.”
Bobby’s hand around hers was warm and soft. “Admit it. You’re impressed.”
“Billybob is still a crook.”
“But an artful crook.”
Now gravity was taking hold. The people around them were descending like so many human snowflakes; and Kate fell with them. She could see a river, bright blue, that cut across the golden plain beneath. Its banks were lined with dense green forest. There were people everywhere, she realized, scattered over the riverbank and the clear areas beyond and near the buildings. And thousands more were falling out of the sky all around her. Surely there were more here than could have been present in the sports stadium; no doubt many of them were virtual projections.
Details seemed to crystallize as she felclass="underline" trees and people and even dapples of light on the water of the river. At last the tallest trees were stretching up around her.
With a blur of motion she settled easily to the ground. When she looked into the sky she saw a blizzard of people in their snow-white robes, falling easily, without apparent fear.
There was gold everywhere: underfoot, on the walls of the nearest buildings. She studied the faces nearest her. They seemed excited, happy, anticipating. But the gold filled the air with a yellow light that made the people look as if they were suffering from some mineral deficiency. And no doubt those happy-clappy expressions were virtual fakes painted on bemused faces.
Bobby walked over to a tree. She noticed that his bare feet disappeared a centimeter or two into the grass surface. Bobby said, “The trees have got more than one kind of fruit. Look. Apples, oranges, limes…”
“On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations…”
“I’m impressed by the attention to detail.”
“Don’t be,” She bent down to touch the ground. She could feel no grass blades, no dew, no earth, only a slick plastic smoothness. “Billybob is a showman,” she said. “But he’s a cheap showman.” She straightened up. “This isn’t even a true religion. Billybob has marketeers and business analysts working for him, not nuns. He is preaching a gospel of prosperity, that it’s okay to be greedy and grasping. Talk to your brother about it. This is a commodity fetishism, directly descended from Billybob’s banknote-baptism scam.”
“You sound as if you care about religion.”
“Believe me, I don’t,” she said vehemently. “The human race could get along fine without it. But my beef is with Billybob and his kind. I brought you here to show you how powerful he is, Bobby. We need to stop him.”
“So how am I supposed to help?”
She stepped a little closer to him. “I know what your father is trying to build. An extension of his DataPipe technology. A remote viewer.”