The Light of Other Days

“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 fell: 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.”

He said nothing.

“I don’t expect you to confirm or deny that. And I’m not going to tell you how I know about it. What I want you to think about is what we could achieve with such a technology.”

He frowned. “Instant access to news stories, wherever they break.”

She waved that away. “Much more than that. Think about it. If you could open up a wormhole to anywhere, then there would be no more barriers. No walls. You could see anybody, at any time. And crooks like Billybob would have nowhere to hide.”

His frown deepened. “You’re talking about spying?”

She laughed. “Oh, come on, Bobby — each of us is under surveillance the whole time anyhow. You’ve been a celebrity since the age of twenty-one; you must know how it feels to be watched.”

“It’s not the same.”

She took his arm. “If Billybob has nothing to hide, he’s nothing to fear,” she said. “Look at it that way.”

“Sometimes you sound like my father,” he said neutrally.

She fell silent, disquieted.

They walked forward with the throng. Now they were nearing a great throne, with seven dancing globes and twenty-four smaller attendant thrones, a scaled-up version of the real-world display Billybob had mounted out in the stadium.

And before the great central throne stood Billybob Meeks.

But this wasn’t the fat, sweating man she had seen out on the sports field. This Billybob was taller, younger, thinner, far better looking, like a young Charlton Heston. Although he must have been at least a kilometre from where she stood, he towered over the congregation. And he seemed to be growing.

He leaned down, hands on hips, his voice like shaped thunder. “The city does not need the sun or the Moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp…” Still Billybob grew, his arms like tree trunks, his face a looming disc that was already above the lower clouds. Kate could see people fleeing from beneath his giant feet, like ants.

And Billybob pointed a mighty finger directly at her, immense grey eyes glaring, the angry furrows on his brow like Martian channels. “Nothing impure will ever come in to it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Is your name in that book? Is it? Are you worthy?”

Kate screamed, suddenly overwhelmed. And she was picked up by an invisible hand and dragged into the shining air.

•

There was a sucking sensation at her eyes and ears. Light, noise, the mundane stink of hot dogs flooded over her.

Bobby was kneeling before her. She could see the marks the Glasses had made around his eyes. “He got to you, didn’t he?”

“Billybob does have a way of punching his message home,” she gasped, still disoriented.

On row after row of the old sports stadium’s battered seats, people were rocking and moaning, tears leaking from the black eye seals of the Glasses. In one area paramedics were working on unconscious people — perhaps victims of faints, epilepsy, even heart attacks, Kate speculated; she had had to sign various release forms when applying for their tickets, and she didn’t imagine the safety of his parishioners was a high priority for Billybob Meeks.

Curiously she studied Bobby, who seemed unperturbed. “But what about you?”

He shrugged. “I’ve played more interesting adventure games.” He looked up at the muddy December sky. “Kate, I know you’re just using me as a way to get to my father. But I like you even so. And maybe tweaking Hiram’s nose would be good for my soul. What do you think?”

She held her breath. She said, “I think that’s about the most human thing I’ve ever heard you say.”