Revival (in progress)

"Anyone seen my collar?" Danny frowned at the silent room. "Bastards." John's chin nestled neatly into his wattles as he squinted at the wig he was turning about in his lap. "I haven't." He managed, somehow, through the tiered mass of flesh. Eddie, sewing a pair of lederhosen, grunted negative through teeth holding a thread tight.

Danny glimpsed himself in the old burlesque mirror. The white greasepaint left behind in the crevices around his eyes gave him a ghostly aspect. The paunch in his jumper--he only now realized he'd fallen asleep in costume--was alarming. On the dresser in this image's foreground there cluttered make-up and brushes, scraps of wardrobe, notes, a half-eaten Soybar, a massive black dildo, a pair of masks, old show programs, unidentifiable things, yellow prescription bottles, something half consumed by fire; all piled there like temple offerings to his living portrait in the mirror. He sighed.

"I'm taking a walk." He pulled a moth-eaten raccoon coat out from under a pile.

His cigarette was lit before the trailer door closed behind him.

"Danny Boy!" A cowboy in chaps practicing with a lasso hailed him from across the muddy lane separating the rows of trailers.

"Morning, Tex." He waved. "Taking a walk."

The cowboy smiled and nodded. Danny started out as if he had a destination. Residue of the lifting pre-dawn mist hung about the corners of everything. He passed a surfer in a bathrobe loading beach scene props onto a cart. Most of the performers hadn't stirred from their trailers. A stray cat skittered past ahead of him. He liked when the camp was still asleep, when he could imagine they were anybody, anywhere.

The main tent occupied a slight hollow where the fog pooled like liquid, lapping at its edges. The pennants on its peaks hung damply limp. Its slanting support ropes vanished into the mist on the ground where he could see one or two figures moving about. Looking down from the slight rise, it looked smaller than when he first saw it years before.

"There's a system." The man had said. "We open with a short stand-up routine. Standard white-joke genre, lots of self-deprecation--do you know what that means?"

Danny nodded, lying.

"A little sexual inferiority here, a little intellectual inferiority there. It sets the tone." He spoke as if Danny understood. Danny's stomach growled. He had been promised a meal.

"Then there's a skit. We have five basic skits; one is the historical skit, involving a famous figure from Old America. He's a bumbling conniver, saved from some ill-fated and corrupt scheme by his dependent slaves or servants. It usually features his cuckolding by one or more of them. Sometimes he is hauled off by the Indians."

Danny was barely paying attention now. He wanted to sit; his sore feet felt as if they were melting into flattening blobs like putty on a hot sidewalk.

"We finish with a song and dance. Don't worry, you don't have to know how to dance. If you're called on to dance it's to dance badly, because that's the idea. You don't know how to dance, right?"

"Right." Said Danny.

"Good." He looked Danny up and down. "You'll have to learn some basic pratfalls, nothing serious. Have you done any stunts?"

"No." Danny said apologetically.

Yeah, well, that's okay. Normally I wouldn't take on someone without experience but," he nodded at Danny's red hair "a genuine ginger is a real rarity nowadays. Do you know you guys are like two percent of the under-30 population? A dying breed." He nodded approvingly; his tone was complimentary. "So what do you say?"

Danny's stomach contracted painfully. Over the man's shoulder he could just make out the lines of smoke rising from the homeless camp in a stand of sickly cedars nearby. He remembered a pact he'd made many hungry miles before, on a hungover first day of 2028; with a twinge he determined to forget it.

"Yes."

****

Laughter and Oppression
New York Times, July 6, 2033
by Janae Acharya-Ramirez She-Her Cohen*
Dr Cohen directs the Historical Rectification Program at Harvard University's School of Justice and Reconciliation

Every high school graduate knows the role of the minstrel show and blackface in maintaining white supremacy in Old America. That form's satirical  representations of Black men rationalized the lynching and incarceration of generations, and their effects are still evidenced today in disparities in incarceration rates, mortality and wealth.

Thus the inherent problemicity in minstrelsy's resurrection as the popular "Cracker Show", which has become the single most popular tent show attraction in the North American Consumer Region (NACR).

This author, like most academics and public figures, has in the past praised these shows firmly in the tradition of political satire de-legitimizing white supremacy through exposure, trivialization and ridicule.

the Cracker Show as the next stage in the "restorative art" component of historical rectification. Yet, like everything it seems in our period of historical rectification, it isn't as simple as that.

Licensed under arcane laws regulating "tent shows, circuses and carnivals" as old as the original tent shows of the late nineteenth century which they loosely parody, the productions operate entirely outside of Department of Inclusion regulatory purview. It might come as a shock to the average person, but the tent shows can virtually say or present whatever they want, without fear of penalty.

The new tent show is born out of similar necessity as the original: in the middle of the nineteenth century, before the advent of air conditioning, summertime heat made indoor entertainment unbearable.
Now it's the power grid crisis and electricity rationing driving people out of sweltering micro-apartments, away from the now unreliable electronic entertainments to which they're accustomed--and into a cultural and legal limbo, where much of the Universal Law on Hate Speech does not apply.

The long, hard-fought process of bringing the internet under hate regulation is being threatened by our inability to keep it running. Yet another reason the government needs to finally determine just why the power grid is failing despite resource prices falling as a result of the same government's aggressive selling off of resources.

Of course Interior Minister Happy Magoye-Kenyoba Bhe-Bhim's charge that racism motivates the accusations of his incompetence and corruption must get a full hearing before the initial charges against him can be addressed, but it's been two years, and with the increasing length Congressional investigations of racist intent take it will be another two perhaps before the charges against him can be addressed--assuming no finding of racist intent moots them and triggers legally-mandated counter-prosecution of his accusers, so there is simply no excuse for Congress' continuing delay.

In the meantime the Cracker Show needs to be brought under regulatory control.

You might ask--and virtually all of us have attended or seen one of the shows--what problem one could have with shows portraying supremacist era whites in mocking caricature. One problem is the characterizations have softened over time to become less caricature, and less mocking. It seems an inevitable process if audience and artist are left to their own devices.

Like the producers of the old shows, today's purveyors of the new minstrelsy deny any ill intent: before, the originals protested the shows did not dehumanize Blacks in Old America, today's insist they do not humanize the whites of Old America.

I contacted Michael Silver-Gruben He-Him, producer of "seven or eight" shows in addition the very popular "Genuine Old Cracker Show", to ask if the shows are guilty of normalization.

"I see our role as instructional and fun at the same time. I categorically reject the shows normalize whiteness or whitism. I fail to see how ridicule equates to normalization in any context. We've never sought to present whites or whitism in a positive light."

He's also quick to point out a fundamental difference between the new shows, in which white performers portray whites, and the old shows, in which white performers in blackface portrayed blacks.

"We realized it would be degrading for a non-white to wear whiteface in any context." He also rejected the charge the whiteface his white performers sometimes wear is a "violent re-enhancement of ghostly whiteness" in the words of the Reverend Foremost Coates Bhe-Bhim of the First African Methodist Church.

"I'm not sure what that means. Our performers wear whiteface only to complete the parody of the original." Silver-Gruben says.
But, the problem of equivalence was always there--if these characterizations of whites today have any validity, people may assume those of old had some, regarding their characterizations of Blacks.

Add to this the prospect, the inevitability some would argue, that any portrayal of Old America's norms and attitudes--the very stuff of white supremacy--eventually softens our view of them--familiarization is normalization, remember.

Any treatment of this subject that isn't informed by professionally licensed restorative justice experts is irresponsible and probably illegal.

This was demonstrated on these pages brilliantly last week by Professor Tanyika Balder-Dash Bhae-Bher** in bher essay "The Only Good Whitism...", pointing out the shows, despite their comedic and ironic nature, are no less educational history than a course given in school, and as such fall under Office of Civility and Acceptance (OCA) regulatory purview. Professor Balder-Dash's recommendation for assigning an OCA regulator to every show is a good start.

Despite their portrayal as dishonest, boorish or ignorant, the stock repertoire of white comic foils--such as the "yuppie", the "bro" and the "redneck"--become cultural figures of familiarity; and familiarity here breeds not contempt but a measure of fondness. We can't help it. The characters make us laugh. We chuckle and shake our head as if at the antics of an eccentric relative, and before we know it we've humanized whitism.

A recent study out of Yale examined the content of the four most popular shows over the last two years and found the same pattern affecting all, one of gradual softening of the shows' portrayal of whites. All began with material duly and unambiguously contemptuous in its portrayal of historical whites; all ended the period with material, while still presenting them as the comic foil, portraying them in a somewhat more sympathetic light.

If that was the full extent of it, perhaps intervention wouldn't be necessary, but shows appeasing audience tastes have taken to introducing more subversively innocuous caricatures, such as "the cowboy", or "the explorer". Overtly positive characters can't be far away. Rumor has it one show is working on a character called "the astronaut".

Certainly the content of the shows will eventually be brought under control; even the producers seem resigned to that. But is control of content enough? Is content really the problem? Some forms are inherently exclusionary and can't be adapted to a modern view of justice. Isn't satire itself at the very least a potent form that cannot be left unchecked in any culture? Couldn't the same power it had to undermine Old America undermine New America?

Even the appropriately negative portrayals of whites have this unfortunate effect: without contextual guidance, people will assume there's some validity to those earlier caricatures of Blacks. Satire itself is the problem--if left unregulated.

The shows have the effect of bowdlerizing and trivializing the past, of implying Old America wasn't that bad. They encourage nostalgia. Nostalgia is normalization, remember.

Our experience with the new minstrelsy has revived Professor Balder-Dash's call for "an end to satire as we know it". I don't share that view, as yet--satire, in the right hands, remains a potent weapon against a revival of white supremacy. But I call on the authorities to establish a moratorium until we figure out what's going on. The new minstrelsy has demonstrated that.

The good news is the shows are no longer escaping notice. Pastor Coates assures me bhe's planning a national action soon to protest their continuing operation outside of regulatory scrutiny.

*Regarding the proper placement of the colloquially named "pronounerific", denoting "gender identity" (sex), introduced in the late teens and standard by the time of our story, appearing here as "She-Her": it follows the surname, unless the surname is preceded by a hyphenated pair of surnames, in which case the--properly named--proidentitatem follows the hyphenation and precedes the surname [Ed. from the future]

**"Bhae-Bher": specifically a black "She-Her" [Ed. from the future]

****

Danny twisted the burning coal from the cigarette butt. Out of habit he reached for the pill bottle in his pocket in which he saved them: his hand startled upon the unpleasant feel of the patchy, faux fur of the raccoon coat he'd forgotten about. Disgusted, he slung the remnant away. Lifting his gaze from the butt on the ground he saw them in the distance.

From the rise where he stood they were at about the same angle and distance on his right as the big tent, the focus of their attention, was on his left: a few dozen of them with stragglers still coming up the low hill, over which he couldn't see, leading to the temporary gate. One of them was carrying a bullhorn and wearing what looked like a bearskin hat.

He started walking slowly toward them. He had not yet seen protesters in real life--not the these protesters that is. He joined a group of performers standing nearby.

"Hey Danny." He almost didn't recognize Sheila the Slut out of makeup; she looked postiviely matronly in a housecoat, wearing old-fashioned curlers under a bonnet.

"Hi. Almost thought you were Alice, for a second there." He grinned. Alice the Housewife was not among them at the moment. Sheila chuckled.

"I'll take her gig any day."

"What's the big deal?" Danny asked.

"They want us out of town." Hank the Handyman interjected. For his part he looked little different from his character in costume or out; over time he had taken to flannel and jeans. His facial expression too had adapted gradually to his character, Danny randomly noted; it could just be his perception, but all the Show's veterans seemed to take on physical traits and characteristics of their characters. Him too, no doubt; he cringed imperceptibly.

"They say we're committing normalization. They filed against us with the local dice this morning."

"The what?"

"Come on Danny, the Diversity Inclusion and Equity Committee. Haven't you been paying attention?"

"I try to avoid it."

"Anyway, if the Committee deems us normalizers we're eighty-sixed from town in per-pe-too-ah-tee." He drew the last syllables out comically, mimicking the grandiose speaking style of the colorful and combative director of DIEC.

"Good. I hate Cleveland."

The protesters, about thirty yards off, paid them no attention. Danny wondered if they could tell they were performers. The protesters were setting up as if to assail the big tent, where now workers stood or sat around, watching.

The one with a bullhorn was a woman, and appeared to be their leader--there were no other clues as to who was in charge. He hair was teased out into an almost cylindrical tall afro (bearskin hat! Danny chided himself) that swayed limply away from the slightest turn of her head. He smiled, not really sure why he was amused, as it waved like grain in response to a breeze.

Her skin was creme-colored with a tint of grey. Her features were sharp, a narrow head with pointed chin and nose, no hint of African ancestry. He couldn't help thinking she would be perfectly cast in as a colonial American Puritan in a skit the show used to perform, what with her sharp, severe Anglo features and the windswept African locks--her pride, he could see--tucked under a pointy hat. Under stage lights the skin tone would pass off just fine, and he was sure she was at the moment using a "darkening foundation"--he hated his acquired expertise in makeup--to veil the extent of her white parentage, as was common. But those features--permanently cast in a pained expression they have some part in--would not be escaped.

She attempted speaking through the bullhorn to no avail and, exasperated, called to someone in the midst of the now thickening crowd--Danny figured now there were around a hundred of them. Someone emerged, a white man it appeared; he took the bullhorn from her extended hand and began fiddling with it. The white man handed the bullhorn back to the Puritan and slunk back into the mass.

She put the bullhorn to her lips and started, stopped, lowered it and turned it on, then began:

"Whitism is No Joke" the horn blurted out.
 The crowd responded: "Whitism is No Joke"

Then, with a little more confidence:
"Whitism will not be revived here"
"Whitism will not be revived here"

And:
"Normalization is Death"
"Normalization is Death"

Danny noticed a pattern, he thought: the darkest among them took up the front rows but didn't seem to lead; a few pale Blacks--such as the Puritan Princess--doing that. After them were the cream-colored people who were not leaders. Then came the white people, or mostly white, chanting louder than the rest, out of greater enthusiasm or the necessity of their position in the back. Ironically they were the more colorful section, as the darker ones all dressed in black red and grey while the whiter ones wore bright colored, slogan-bearing clothes or costumes. Just as Danny noticed a clown costume among them Hank said:

"Hey look that guy's here to audition for your job Danny!"

"Fuck you." He responded good-naturedly. The group laughed.

They went on chanting for five minutes before lapsing into an enthusiastic cacophony of jeers and slogans, still not taking notice of Danny and the group of performers. They might as well be invisible there, he thought with relief. The gate and temporary chain-link fencing around the camp could be pushed over easily by the crowd and the show had no security--private security being illegal, of course.
Danny figured the protesters were harmless. There was nothing stopping them after all.

Then the crowd parted up front. Through the breach came the pale protesters from the back, and they set to work on a section of the fence to topple it, by rocking it back and forth, struggling to set a steady rhythm.

"Oh no, don't do that." Danny said to no one in particular.

"Here come the drones." Hank said dryly. "That was fast."

They appeared from over the hill, a diamond-formation of four on either flank of the crowd of protesters. Seeing the drones most of the group backed away from the fence, individually taking up "the posture"--the standard down-on-one knee posture, identifying oneself as harmless and compliant to a law enforcement drone, which everyone knows, of course.
Those at the gate kept up their assault.

One of the drones broadcast over a loudspeaker:
"Desist. You are engaged in unlawful activity. Assume a non-confrontational posture. Desist, you are--"

Someone among the rabid dozen assailing the fence turned and threw something at the nearest drone. The group of performers groaned a little together, as if watching a bad turn in a sporting event.

"Oh no, don't do that." Danny said again.

The drones deployed their anti-riot lightweight percussion grenades, which weren't seen until they flashed around the feet of the defiant protesters, who all collapsed before their smoke rose. The rest of the group, maintaining the posture, hissed and wailed. More drones appeared and laid down a red, pulsing laser grid pattern, the "shock fence", all about them.

"Peaceful protest!" Someone shouted, and they took up the chant.

By the time the robotic paddy wagon arrived and lowered to the ground, its garage-style rollup door already open, they had run out of energy. The protesters lined up to get on board as if ending a work shift. Those knocked out by the percussion grenades were lolling about and coming around, a few sitting up, a few still lifeless on the ground.

Danny saw the Puritan Princess, lining up to board the wagon. She looked back in his direction. He couldn't tell if she was looking at him, but he thought she was.

The robot paramedics, the "medicals", appeared, two of them, attending to the remaining incapacitated protesters, moving them into the wagon one at a time.The event had taken little more than an hour, Danny figured.

"Well shit." He said.

(continues)
*************************

Day of the Red Eye

In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think.

Rapper Tha Prince was history's single most famous person.

No name or image before his had ever been as familiar to as many. The details of a personal life had never been so widely revealed and examined--and much of it in the moment, broadcast live in "real time".

Cameras followed Tha everywhere, always. The first performer to amass a fortune in the tens of billions he was an industry unto himself; his very minutes were processed and packaged and delivered in a variety of forms to waiting media nodes, where they were consumed daily. As one of Tha's management team (he called them his "hebros") noted, its model was the food distribution system, daily sending out trucks with perishable goods.

His lyrics and random musings were the subject of several college courses and analyzed like a sort of daily gospel stream, despite their stupidity and incoherence. His insubstantial expressions would have floated away on the breeze like spores if not for the weighty anchor of his popularity. Between the global wrath of his admirers and his economic might, Tha crushed all dissent. None dared note his lack of intelligence, the garbled, inarticulate speech (the absurdity of his Nobel for literature!), his child-like narcissism, his celebration of violence and street crime.

The legend of his genius was sacrosanct. That he wrote and produced his entire fourth album in his head down to the minutest detail was not just believed, it was received gratefully, confirming the selection of Tha as prophet.

And his wouldn't be the first prophet's life shrouded in questionable myth--as his intellectual apologists pointed out. Making people believe Jesus walked on water was a greater feat than Jesus walking on water--the former being the whole point, whereas the latter, if not witnessed, would have been pointless.

Besides, what god worth his salt can't walk on water? But, for a mere mortal to make the world believe he does? There's an achievement.

That Tha's work and life were of a seamless whole was one of two core tenets to which he held true, the other being his celebration of greed. He praised money as a means to power and revolutionary change in his work but his actions belied little genuine interest--he was a coveted but stingy and unreliable political donor to causes familiar and trendy.

Why in the first place he would be interested in a revolution overturning this world he bestrode like a colossus did not even occur to the people. That this contradiction was lost on them was an unappreciated feat, a sort of negative miracle of which no one was more oblivious than Tha himself: this novel prophet had made the seeing blind.

This is not to say he was without talent. His forays outside of music were all genuine, not simply the lending of his name, and they were all equally successful. He was an auteur carrying his own distinct aesthetic across various media.

He was known for his love of the bizarre hybrid and curious deformity. His work skirted the morbid and grotesque, stopping just short of repulsing a long-jaded public, no mean feat.

Despite his lyrics lacking all nuance, their true novelty was lost in all the reverential praise. He didn't employ transgressive humor, joking about violence or sex (or violence and sex) to outrage, no, he blended humor and violence and sex in a way that you didn't know where one left off and the other began. To Tha saying violence was fun was like saying sex was fun.

To him violence wasn't fun; violence was joyous.

Domination achieved by violence and maintained by cruelty as the highest good, as religious ecstasy; this was his theme, and message--the most successful and least understood artist, and prophet, of all time.

On the day Tha's fashion label Red Masque launched its spring line with the usual hype, a university researcher on the other side of the world squinted through a microscope at a soft red bloom. A local doctor had sent the sample, unable to explain an alarming nerve disorder among workers at a textile mill.

Slight tremors announced its onset, felt most acutely around the soft tissue of the eyes, which soon became painfully sensitive to light. All sensation gradually intensified, becoming unbearable. Sound became amplified and shrill. Sufferers reported everything tasted of ash, even the air.

All the while the tremors progressed gradually into violent convulsions. Eventually the victim thrashed about as if in comic dance, arms and legs flailing with an electric, tremulous action, often injuring himself to the point of incapacity--a blessing as only in the final stage would the most horrifying aspect reveal itself when the eyes, their whites turned red from burst blood vessels, bulged and pressed forward, illuminated and pulsing with a neon glow (possibly bacterial bioluminescent luciferase) before death's merciful release.

"The Red Eye", as it came to be known, took just 24 hours from first sign to death; with a curious precision, no cases varied more than a few seconds from this mandate.

Early on one of Tha's hebros, before the true threat of the disease was known, called it a "happy accident" that at the same time their spring line employed as a recurring motif a sort of rose bloom, its center subtly suggesting an eye, with jagged petals above blending below into a pattern of red tears. "Instant notoriety," he said approvingly.

He had no idea: examining the work more closely one might have gleaned Tha's meaning--and here he had been unusually focused. Transfixed by the image of a viral host cell, the work started developing in Tha's mind as if of its own accord. Had he the awareness he would have described being under the influence of genuine inspiration.

Each successive item of apparel in his runway show represented a visual analogy of the next stage of a virus' progress in capturing a host cell and reproducing itself, culminating in the final piece of apparel Tha modeled himself.
Tha's spring line was a celebration of contagion, representing Tha as a benign viral agent in divine turnabout capturing the culture of the Man, enslaving it and forcing it to turn out endless copies of Tha. Only he knew what he specifically meant in titling the show "Positively Spring".

The speed and certainty of the disease's course meant all lived under the threat of violent expulsion from society at a moment's notice. Anyone visibly trembling in public would throw anyone near into a panic; the universal response was to run away--if one could. If one couldn't, all manner of unfortunate acts of desperation could and did happen, as in the case of a man pushed in front of a subway car by commuters wielding clubs and bars and whatever they could grab to avoid touching him. Many cases of mistaken, rash actions taken against such as epileptics or anyone with a physical condition causing tremors--one young woman narrowly escaped a mob after shivering excessively in the cold--were recorded in the few days before everything fell apart and normal life ceased entirely.

Heartbreaking stories of family or friends abandoned in an instant, and of those who refused to abandon their fellows, abounded. Often a good soul would recognize the onset of the Red Eye and flee--bravely running away, shouting warning. In the end many more jumped than were pushed before subway cars. The horror brought out the best and worst in us.

Within a week of the Red Eye dropping Tha Prince convened the hebros.

"It's good to own an island." One of them offered. A look from Tha revealed he had forgotten about it.

"Two years ago. You may recall, we were thinking about making it an offshore pay-per-view site when regulators were still giving us trouble over Combat Sports League.

"E's been using it for his private parties, you know, and while that's been a negligible source of revenue for us he has built the place up. Well, it's just sitting there. It's got a small hospital we were going to use for fights; E even had a little dentist's office set up there. It's got a good airstrip. Still, we'll have to build it up quickly, of course, but it's a great start. Then there's the question of who we'll, of who you'll bring along." 

These last words fell like train cars off a cliff into the tense silence of the videolink.

Tha grunted for him to continue.

"We could outfit the place to survive indefinitely with what we've already laid by as far as food and basics--longer-term, should the need arise, there's arable land, good fishing and even some game running around--we could stock a lot more. We've got cattle in our holdings already without a market--we're slaughtering loads of them just to clear the books right now."

"Well, what we waiting for?"

Creating Tha's island was a logistical project on the scale of a military invasion.
Cargo planes flew round the clock. A motley fleet of private planes joined in--their owners angling for a spot on the island. Unauthorized planes, boats and others tried to crash the island--but Tha's team had put a crack security force in place first thing. Showing what cooperation can achieve, ex-officers of the Israeli Air Defense Command worked amicably with former Iranian naval officers, whose speedboats boasted a perfect record at intercepting boats, rafts, low-flying aircraft, two gliders and one innertube.

In flowed the pilgrims, beginning with the hebros and their families; then those upon whom Tha saw fit to bestow the blessing, his friends and their families, but not all, alas (there were so many!); and then the ranks of the useful: the "hoes", women all selected for a particular body type and look; there were performers such as dancers, musicians, DJs, acrobats and clowns.

There were people selected for necessary practical talents, such as doctors (no need to establish a lawyer quota, one of the hebros joked), electricians and engineers, chefs, mechanics and technicians. There were no writers or critics.

They brought sound equipment and lighting, for there would be shows; a pot farm and a chemical laboratory were transferred whole; they tried transporting a small amusement park but ran out of time. There was a brief attempt at a reality show competition for slots on the island, but things broke down too quickly.

Thirteen thousand made it past the weeklong quarantine--and never saw the crematorium downwind. Remorse, guilt and nostalgia waned quickly, as their early days were spent repelling desperate refugees, each representing a mortal threat. Their fear of the outside world hardened them to it. Eventually the world went silent, and the refugees stopped coming.

The summer was a continuous bacchanal. Their needs were met and their days were filled with pleasures.

One day sullenly bored Tha gazed upon an orgiastic scene before him and inspiration struck. It was time for a real party, one inaugurating their time on the island; it would be a masquerade. Tha would consecrate the occasion with a special composition, in the classic fashion.

There would be games, for the spirit of competition needed to be instilled in them now, he thought, looking at the writhing, fleshy bodies and dull expressions.

Let there be rap battles and dance-offs, a costume ball with the Red Eye as theme. He was enlivened. No one watching the lizard-lidded, slack-jawed Tha gaze upon the orgy would have guessed the ferment in his mind at that moment.

The hall arranged for the ball was a scene equal to the magnificence of Tha Prince.

Six suites faced off three-on-three across a round dance floor, each lit in a color of the rainbow--but for red--and representing a corresponding theme. The suites were open to the floor, and their walls angled outward away from their interiors--so that no place in the hall was out of sight of any other place.

Throughout the suites were the looted treasures of the old world. The  Laocoön throbbed obscenely in purple, amid the writhing mass of dancing bodies. Via projection Tha's lyrics and writings continually scrolled down the body of David; he actually looked a bit sickly in green.

A round stage illuminated red from below stood in the center of the floor. Near the stage in shadow Tha slouched on a perfect copy of a throne Napoleon used--actually something he'd commissioned himself long before the Red Eye--on a tear-drop shaped recessed platform.

The dancers enthralled. The Red Eye's thrashing and tremulous death throes lent themselves perfectly to all manner of street dance, of course, and there was even a modern interpretative adaptation, and a ballet version, for they had not neglected to bring Beauty. Tha had only given one direction, the suggestion they incorporate humor. The dancers took up the license with enthusiasm, competing to outdo each other in Red Eye gallows humor.

Likewise the masqueraders. The costumes were eerily realistic--they had the resources of a Hollywood studio on hand--and obscenely comic. Skits were performed; they competed to create the most offensive.

All the while Tha nodded approvingly from the shadow of the teardrop.

He felt warm inside as he waited to give his final rap concluding the ball. The hall had grown quiet, the revelers were sated, the bass line fading out. They waited, looking up toward him rapturously. He swallowed down the unfamiliar lump in his throat--what was it? he asked himself-- and rose, turning toward the hushed mass.

They gasped. The hall shuddered beneath a single bass note that came from somewhere over and above the sound system. An electronic voice boomed the standard hip hop encore announcement:

"No, no, we ain't done, we ain't done..."

Still isolated in light amidst the darkened hall, Tha turned around and saw a figure in the half-shadow of the stage.

The bass line started rolling, building ominously; the hall's speakers hissed and smoked and blew out but the bass just kept getting louder somehow. The house lights popped and cracked and exploded one by one, but on the stage rose a white light, faint and slowly growing brighter. The figure became visible as the light rose, rocking his head to the bass line--and Tha couldn't help noticing how perfect it was, as dense as lead and expansive as sky at the same time.

The figure was of human outline if not quite form, with two arms, two legs and a head; it appeared to be made out of eyeballs, all eyeballs, eyeballs upon eyeballs, teeming, crowding, pulsing here and there--to the beat--with the familiar and horrible phosphorescent glow of the Red Eye.

His rocking gradually became a dance as he advanced slowly from the back of the stage to the center. He spun on the floor like a break dancer; rising and pretending to dust himself off he went into a moon walk and transitioned into a perfect slide; he popped, he locked--the swaying eyeballs lagged his motion, seeming to defy gravity as they sort of floated on him, like seaweed in the ocean current. Here and there they parted like tall grass.

He executed a perfect pirouette, spinning impossibly fast and long, with the eyes on their stems wrapping around him like flaxen hair. Still he went faster until he became a blur; just when it seemed he would come apart he stopped in an instant, the lagging eyeballs taking a moment to catch up and fall in place.

The figure motioned as if dizzy and needing time to recover.

He did "the robot" with a comic flair. He performed a jete. He split off into two and danced a waltz with himself and recombined. He formed a high-kicking chorus line, then recombined. By now he was close to Tha, who was standing stock-still, trying to find his voice. The figure did the shimmy, mockingly. The illuminated eyeballs started forming patterns, like the bulbs on a scoreboard. These began taking the shape of the designs from Tha's Positively Spring show; it even showed him designs that he didn't produce, but recognized as the half-formed ideas that hadn't come to fruition.

"Eat at Joe's...Eat at Joe's...Eat at Joe's..." The eyes spelled out finally. The figure heaved and held its midsection as if laughing, gesturing for forgiveness and pretending to wipe away a tear of laughter.

 Now Tha found his voice.

"I'm gon' kill this mothafucka!" He bellowed. The sound of his own words boosted his courage, and it was uncommon courage indeed by which he charged while everyone else in the hall crouched and knelt, faces lowered, too terrified to move. Ashamed of his early terror, disdainful of the cowering mass, Tha Prince advanced.

Tha drove a massive fist into the center of the beast. It was absorbed and held there as he tried to pull it back. He tried pushing off with his other hand; it too stuck. Unthinking in his panic he offered a foot. The figure began drawing him in as he thrashed and howled.

The process hesitated with Tha's face alone not yet submerged, Tha holding his mouth in the gaping pout of a swimmer going down.

"Tha Prince, motherfuckers, and I own all this shiii--"

The words were submerged as he was yanked in as if by a rope. Tha's signature roar, never more impressive, escaped from within the figure as a crescendo halting the music.

No sound from within or without relieved the silence; even the panic in the people's hearts could not escape their terrified throats.

The still figure began pulsing rhythmically, barely perceptible at first, with each pulse bigger and coming faster than the last. Now the whole of him began tilting side-to-side like a bowling pin; someone managed a pathetic wail; as if in response the figure exploded.

Eyeballs showered the cowering people. Eyeballs bounced off the walls, some sticking, some sliding down like slugs. Eyeballs trailed tendrils like pennants as they flew. Eyeballs landed on skin, caught up in hair. Eyeballs collided in air. Eyeballs slinked like inch-worms on their stalks across the floor. Eyeballs writhed like fish out of water. A gusher of eyeballs streamed from where the figure had been.
And then it stopped.

As one they felt the faint, fearsome tremors; as one they cringed beneath the light and sound; as one they danced the death dance. 

As one they were collected by the Red Eye.

The Golden Years

"You could get a coach."

"I don't know. I heard most of those guys actually work for the Inclusivity Commission."

"My sister got one for her father-in-law." Mark waited as a woman passed. "She isn't sure it helped, but he did great in the interview and he's still at home."

James shrugged slightly.
"I don't know. Grandpa's really old; he goes all the way back to the Twentieth Century. They expect to find something. If he just gives them all the right answers they'll be suspicious."

Mark nodded.
"That's what the coach told us. What they want to see with someone in their eighties or older is that he's made what they call 'the Journey'; he needs to tell them how he overcame his supremacist upbringing. He knows to say he's been involved in activism of some sort or another, right?"

"Yeah. Still. I hear they're actually investigating that stuff out now." James replied glumly. "They're checking everything since that law passed last year giving the Commission unlimited funding. You can't just say you marched with so-and-so." James sighed. "I just wish he was more concerned about it himself. He doesn't seem to care. You should hear him at home. He makes no attempt to regulate what he says. He actually enjoys speaking against love-truth."

Mark chortled a little at the phrase. James continued.

"He thinks it's all a joke. I try to impress upon him..."
"Does he realize what can happen? He's not, you know, losing it...?"
"No. If only." They both laughed. "Maybe he'd be more pliable. No, he's mentally as sharp as ever. But emotionally, he's like a child. He's..." James searched for the word, "...he's defiant."

"So why the interview? What did he do--what did he say?"

"I don't know. They won't tell you. Just..." James looked both ways "...that awful language. What did the notice say? '...comments denigrating a protected class...' they won't say who. But the part at the end, something about how he might be a bad influence on 'any minor children with whom he has unsupervised contact', you know, that being the kids, his grandchildren."

"How is he getting along with them?"

"They love him. And Jack, you know, is just like him, he even looks a lot like him, but I think he thinks more like him than anything..."

"Watch that."

"I know. He's smart, you know, and he's getting old enough he knows how to keep his mouth shut at school. Hell, he knows better than me how to play the game. He's been helpful with Dad. But when he and the old guy get together, especially when they go over this stuff, they always end up sharing jokes about how absurd they think it is. It's funny, you know..."

"What?"

"That I'm so proud of him, and proud of the old man, for their smarts and defiance, and it's going to get Dad shunted off to a Home and a regimen of mind-numbing drugs and, if we're not careful, is going to get Jack black-listed on google-employment, drawing a basic income check, and still having to regulate his behavior all the more to keep it."

"No joke. I know a guy who lost his UBI because he asked a girl out on a date."

"It sucks. I was watching them together the other night. I should have been proud, watching my dad and my son, Jack is so handsome now, just a little man, you know, and there's dad, doing what people have always done, or used to do until modern times I guess, he's passing along knowledge, and he'll be gone soon and Jack will eventually be old and passing along what he's learned--probably not, though, seeing as most kids now won't have their own kids. I was moved by the sight of them together. But the idea of them taking the old guy away...I swear I had to leave the room so Sarah wouldn't see me getting emotional."

"The last thing you want to do is get emotional. You're not just trying to keep your dad at home now. You're saving Jack too. God forbid he should just give up and accept the UBI dole. He is a smart kid, and he's got character. No, don't let him get a taste for the truth now, it'll all be over for him before he gets started."

"I know. He knows, he understands. But sometimes I think he doesn't care. It's scary. Sometimes I fear he'll be one of these guys who just checks out because he can't or won't play the game. I have a hard time imagining the old man doing it, doing what we've been doing, what we are doing."

"What are we doing?"

James stopped in his tracks.

"Yeah. What the hell are we doing, Mark?"

The Bland Inhibitor

Thou are right, O Lord, very right.
Thou hast condemned us justly.

"Bear with me. My story requires a bit of preface. " Alex said. "I might try your patience. Even if what they used to call storytellers still existed, I wouldn't be one. The ability to tell a story with a coherent beginning, middle and, especially, end, is all but lost. No one knows how to end a story anymore. And I have no ending for this one."

"So...you've come  to me for help." I smiled.

"No." He smiled back. "I mean...no offense, I wasn't thinking that. And now that you mention it, I'm open to suggestions."

"You won't mind?"

"I will thank you, if you can give this story its proper resolution."

"What do you mean resolution?" I asked. He laughed.

"Just what I was saying about nobody knows how to end a story anymore. The true art of storytelling was lost by the middle of the twenty first century. Anyway, I'm beginning to think there is no ending. None that isn't meaningless. And I warn you now you'll find the details and course if the story--what they called plot back in the day--absurd. But not, if I manage it correctly, meaningless. The point is to arrive at meaning by way of all the absurdity."

"That's absurd." I laughed. Alex grinned.

"No, not at all. Autonomous Virtuality is still churning through themes that precede its crude early stages as 'virtual reality', which it inherited from cinema, which was passed down from the written word: supernatural elements, time travel, conjuring of historical figures. I borrow some of these techniques. History and man provide the absurdity.

"After I spent the summer immersed in the old writings--so wonderful they're there, so unfortunate no one cares--I was compelled to write a story in the old fashion. It's meant to be read and that's it. It isn't a script, or accompanying text for something else. Reading was once something people did for its own sake. Not just storytelling; nonfiction writing was merited aside from content for artistry, and what was called the essay, for instance, was once common. There was of course poetry, now all but indecipherable to all but an aging few and soon to pass into oblivion with them."

With all the deliberation of a man who'd finished speaking for the time being, Alex paused to pour his glass and drink. Knowing him, I didn't interrupt. The light outside was dimming.

"I've set my story in the first half of the twenty first century, just as the Postmodern Panics were beginning. Of course this is not what they called them at the time, because it's inaccurate. The Panics were not at all panics--sudden mass psychological reactions--but the logical culmination of the parallel movements that dominated American politics into the middle of the twenty first century.

"Nor do I believe any of the prevailing, supposedly deeper analyses--not that anyone pays them much attention--that they were manias born of the economic shocks of the twenties, or the post sexual revolution, or to the combination of the two, or--a favorite of mine--a mass re-wiring of the human brain due to the sudden prevalence of AV; autonomous virtuality was actually in its infancy when the Panics began in earnest--and they certainly weren't due to that perpetual specter, global warming.

"The Panics weren't in opposition to the dominant cultural and political movements of the time, as we are taught, but emerged logically, ideologically, from them. They only differed in methods and--for the most part--fervor from half of the respectable political spectrum, this was when we still had what they now call an antipodal system, from what used the be called the Left. But more than that; their assumptions regarding the justice of their causes was conventional thought. One could get in more trouble--that is lose his livelihood or, towards the end, worse of course, by publicly questioning these assumptions than he could praising the actions of the various political terrorists of the time.

"The critique that had reformed society, liberalized its laws and economy, came to be a condemnation of it; the people of the West came to the conclusion their culture had been corrupt the whole time, and that it had sinned in coming to dominate the modern world it created.
Conventional thought was a radical, non-empirical analysis of a people condemning itself and its history. There is no precedent.  Anyway, what we're taught now--that all good people stood in opposition to the Panics waged by a zealous and effective few--is not true. Let's just say by the time of my story, about 2020, the terrorists and ruling elite shared the same critique and, for the most part, goals.

"Both ruling elite and political terrorist professed nearly the same contempt for the old order, what was once called the West, and its people, loosely and broadly described, and vilified, as 'white'. This is the origin of the casual usage of the word white to mean something generally bad or suspect, while that original racial connotation is lost to obscurity.

The renunciation of Western history and culture had achieved such a revolution over such a short time--a couple of generations, and the die was cast--almost entirely through the cultural and political moral suasion of society's institutions acting in solidarity--which is not to say there wasn't a great deal of coercion, especially toward the end.

"But this suasion was of two parts: a queer self-condemnation of the West, coupled with the promise of the superiority of the new post-Western utopia. The utopia was stubborn in arriving. The condemnation, always the greater part, became like a drug: ever greater dosages and strains were required. The violence of the early twenties looks predictable in hindsight.

"The component movements of the dominant order--feminism, the black and gay autonomy movements, ever more smaller movements modeled on these--found themselves unopposed in spirit and at the time presented themselves still as the rights movements of oppressed groups. Their actions might be condemned, but never their goals--and these could be quite radical. It wasn't long before these movements started shedding smaller, uncontrollable elements, domestic terrorists and criminal gangs. Many if not most would be folded up into and fighting for the Axis of Equality in the civil wars. The worst atrocities charged to the A of E almost invariably involve these. The name 'Axis of Equality', by the way, was initially a derogatory phrase, introduced by the opposition, while there still was one, co-opted by the A of E in its ascendance.

"The terrorist organizations that emerged from the time and would later be folded into the forces of the Axis--the Black Insurrection, the Amazon Army, the Western Intifada, the Indigenous People's Brigade--which, did you know, had few of these 'indigenous' people among its ranks, and virtually none among its leadership, and eventually collapsed over its inability to reach consensus on the meaning of 'indigenous'?"--Alex chuckled--"did not differ in their analyses from polite conventional opinion. They only differed in their fervor and violence. The elite agreed in principle and even sought the same negation of the historic West and its people, at least as a people. Well, they've got their way; no one defines himself as a 'Westerner' any more, by any name. But I suspect this isn't what they had in mind.

"I was going to say I think people don't go in there and read the old writings, and the few who do tend to get it all wrong, because the actions of these near predecessors of ours are so inexplicable, ultimately. It's like you're reading about an alien race.

"At any rate the past has been jettisoned like a rocket stage by post-literacy. We don't speak the same language as our own past. What's more, we can't know what is lost. But to think the powerful used to go to great lengths to suppress information. All they had to do was wait. Run out the clock on concern. But there's more to it, I suspect."

"You had a lot of time on your hands." I teased.

"And I spent it obsessing over the past--over time!" Alex delighted.

"This then is the time and setting of my story: the Panics hadn't arrive yet and the civil wars were just a rumbling on the horizon. The Pope then, he wasn't the guy you see on the advertisements for Global Sun or whatever they're calling it now. Vatican III hadn't happened yet, of course. The Church hadn't yet abandoned its claim of descent from Saint Peter. The Pope still went about in robes performing ceremonies, sometimes wearing a grand mitre on his head. Good, simple people still believed and wept at the sight of him, genuinely moved; they were some of the last human beings to experience religious faith, and our understanding of it died off with them. They didn't see at the time the very man they venerated as somehow nearer to God was working shoulder to shoulder with the enemies of God, of the idea of God, of the Church, above all by embracing the Great Migration that set up the European theater of the civil wars.

"The erosion of power that had begun with the Reformation half a millennium before wasn't quite complete, and the Church retained a great deal of wealth and political influence. But any real power it had was conditioned on it following the secular order of the day, which could be seen as Christianity stripped of its mystery--and any elements troublesome to commerce or politics. The last of the popes were enthusiastic proponents of this order. But at the time of my story it still had more than billion professed members--declining in the advanced West but growing outside of it in the poorer south of Africa and South America.

"The Church's dependence on those from the Third World aligned with the European ruling elite's  own project of facilitating the migration of these people into Europe. Or so it would seem; that these people were overwhelmingly Muslim and thus compelled--by a religion their average believer seemed to take more seriously than the Pope took his--to oppose and displace Christianity wherever they found it, well, I don't have an explanation for why the Church was untroubled by that. But it had clearly abandoned the goal of bringing the world to Christ.

"Instead it opposed the slightest opposition to the great migration that would achieve in decades what Europe's secular impulse sought for centuries: the Church's final ruin. It's as if having been stripped of its moral authority over spiritual and family life it could do nothing but divert this thwarted energy into moral authority on the great secular sins of the time, racism, sexism and nationalism. This was no real authority at all, of course, because its converse was not allowed, or at least not considered a tenable position by Rome.

"Adopting the secular mores of the time did not lessen condemnation of the Church; in fact it only seemed to get more intense and confident. The Church was historically guilty as the source of the great sins of the time--racism, sexism, sexual morality, which had become a vice somehow--so it could never reform to satisfaction. Condemnation proves inversely correlated to the power of its target. Imagine that."
Alex smiled.

"And there we should begin. Despite allying with them on a global level, at the time of my story the Church drew the attention of of some of these pre-Panic groups, militant but not yet violent. Among them a group of radical feminist women who interrupted worship or any gathering of the religious, staging stunts, usually of an obscene nature, in protest of the Church's continuing opposition to abortion and its suppression of women as they saw it."

I drew the blinds against the darkening night. Alex turned on the lamp after fiddling with it for a moment.

"And that's where we begin. The setting is St Peter's Square. The sky is cloudless. The air has the sharp transparency of late fall, but the day is unseasonably warm. It feels like summer.

Terrorism has been a concern for a while now, and the thick cord of people waiting in line to tour St Peter's is contained behind heavy fencing paralleling on one side the great curving colonnades that embrace the square, where groups of tourists mill about under the watchful eye of security, some in disguise.

"In the center of the square there used to be an Egyptian obelisk-"--Alex saw my confusion--"-a sort of spire-pyramid, some twenty meters or so tall. It's since been repatriated back to Egypt, as part of the global 'historical repatriation and reconciliation' movement, and was eventually destroyed by fanatic Muslims in the chaos of the mid-century. Around this striking point in the center of the vast square a commotion begins."

"Two young women have managed to elude security and are attempting to scale the obelisk. They are stripped mostly naked, one painted pink in symbolic resistance to the Church's repression of women, the other in the colors of the rainbow signifying its repression of homosexuality. They are struggling with a suction-cup and rope method of their own contrivance; the pink climber is managing better, about three meters off the ground and making slow progress before the police, scandalously late, are upon them. The other climber has managed to ascend just out of reach of police, but two have seized the slogan bearing banner she's trailing behind her. It's gotten wrapped about her midsection; she struggles to free herself of it as the police draw it just enough to hold her in place.

"As more police arrive, three more women have ditched their tourist disguises. They too were chosen for youth and suppleness to draw more attention to their stunts, the modus operandi of this particular group. Their torsos were painted with anti-Church slogans. One wore a bra attached at the nipples with dildos on springs; they bobbed obscenely. She set upon a policeman and twirled them, in stripper fashion. He took her by the forearms and they grappled. Another wearing a headpiece with dildos curved into the shape of devil's horns seized him by the leg. Two more demonstrators rushed forward with a pink banner they intended to wrap about the obelisk; they were intercepted at its base, one becoming entangled in the banner as they struggled with police. The pink climber held her precarious vantage partway up the obelisk bravely as she started shouting slogans. But she could not be heard, as the still air was suddenly broken by gusts of wind.

"A crowd began to form around the spectacle. Here and there a shout of disapproval emerged from it, but mostly the people watched in curious silence. Political stunts like this were common enough by that time; most observers knew the bizarre sight for what it was immediately. Such demonstrations such as this were increasingly indulged by the same political leaders who were ultimately responsible for maintaining order--unlike the unfortunate police and mid-level bureaucrats, who were immediately responsible for maintaining order. Because of mass media nearly everyone in the crowd on the square had the prior, virtual experience of the bizarre scene before them, and could confidently classify it for what it was and the nature of the protester's complaints without reading the slogans on the banners. On the faces of some in the crowd you might have even seen something like resignation.

"It was then, near the entrance to the square, a lone figure approached.  It was the Son of Man, in human form, walking among us. He was recognized immediately. The irreligious, the falsely religious, the devout; all who saw Him knew immediately it was He. He glided through them, blessing their lowered heads with a look at once all-knowing and all-forgiving."

"Now hold on a damn minute. That's quite enough." I interrupted. Alex smiled mischievously. "This is getting ridiculous. And, by the way, you know I know something about Christian eschatology."
"I know very well. More importantly, I see you as a believer, unlike myself..."

"You know I'm definitely not." I protested.

"Only because no one is, anymore. But you are of the type--the good, noble type of believer. Me--who's to say?--but most likely not. I have a cursed nature. Whereas you, like I said, are a believer; a believer in a time, not of disbelief, for that would at least be an assertion...no, ours is an age of indifference."

"You make it all sound so grim. For us believers, that is."

"Oh no, it's grim for all." Alex said enthusiastically, as if this was balm. "That's the thing. This absence of a tenable religion isn't just a problem for the faithful, but for the skeptical, for while the believer is denied something 'to believe in', the non-believer is just as significantly denied something in which to disbelieve. His resistance to faith is no less a moral way than faith; after all, if he's right it is he who is a soldier for truth against deception. I'm not even sure the distinction between them is all that meaningful. Coming at this dilemma from opposite sides, faithful and skeptic alike can be said merely to be coming up hard against an indifferent natural world, unmitigated by religion. If there's nothing greater than Nature, as there is now in the absence of religious mystery, and if Nature is indifferent as it certainly is--countless failed Nature cults can't be wrong--then in this indifferent world the indifferent man thrives.

"Those who were genuinely engaged in the question of religion and the soul didn't see they ultimately shared a cause: that existence deserved an explanation. The secularists offering a moral alternative to religion, the humanists and others, didn't see religion's death was their own; they grappled with and overcame their mortal enemy as both went over the falls of history. Of indifference. Sorry, I'm drifting."

"Not at all."

"So He has returned. But this is not the Second Coming. Whatever His intentions were we can't know--let's establish that as a bound for this story, that we can't presume to know the intentions of the Almighty. That would be too much. But we're obligated to establish this isn't the Advent. He's come to be among us, that is all, for His reasons. I want to say He chose the moment randomly to the extent He in his omniscience can choose a random moment, which is of course its own interesting philosophical question. I mean, can He, being omnipotent? And if he can't then he's not omnipotent, is He? It's an interesting paradox. Can He suspend, then, his omnipotence? If anything whatsoever is in his power we must assume He can. But if he can even temporarily lay aside his omnipotence, how can He be truly omnipotent. Doesn't He then become vulnerable? Couldn't, say, Satan,--God forbid--overcome Him in his suspended state?"

"But He did, as the Son of Man The Son of Man is not God. He is not omnipotent. That is the point. Isn't it the basis of your story?"

"I won't pretend to understand the controversy regarding the essence of Christ but we can dispute that later. Let it remain a mystery, just as the Christ, just as all religion is necessarily shrouded in mystery. It is this loss of mystery in our time I lament. But to return to my story."

"Please, do." I said.

"Many there in the square bore the atavistic fashions of the time, the curious tattoos and piercings you see in images of that age. As He turned his eyes upon one such woman she covered a tattoo on her forearm with her hand, suddenly ashamed. With an exquisite tenderness he placed His hand on hers. He moved on. She raised her hand and the tattoo was gone."

"This is really too much." I said.

"Bear with me." Alex smiled.

"They fell silent in his presence and cried out spontaneously in his wake. Their shouts were joyful and grievous at the same time, and of an intensity none of them could have before witnessed, much less experienced, before. Indeed, what human beings could have known an experience of this nature, much less degree? None of us. But the sound was instantly recognizable for what it was, genuine, unguarded, human; into that world of artifice upon artifice, it came like a bolt from the sky.

"And when this sound reached the obelisk as He neared, for He was moving directly toward it, it turned the attention of the crowd away from the chaotic burlesque there. Even the police and painted women froze in mid-struggle, like comic statuary, looking off in the direction of the sound. The pink-painted climber, having been thus distracted, lost her grip and began to slide down the obelisk. She managed her slide at first, but then her foot caught up fast in her tangled rope. Suddenly and completely anchored by the foot, her momentum whipsawed her headfirst into the obelisk. She fell and crumpled at its base, the rope wrapped about her leg.

"Police and civilians pressed in on each other coming to her aid. Right away someone called out to Him, and others joined in. He was already upon the scene. The murmuring crowd parted for him, revealing the girl laying inert, a policeman kneeling by her side. There was a drop of blood on the corner of her mouth; a trickle coming from her ear. Her face was colorless as chalk against the bright pink of her torso.

"He came close and stood over her, enveloping her in his warm gaze, and said, barely audible in the tense silence: 'talitha cumi'. With that the girl sat up with effortless, casual grace. The blood had vanished; the color had returned to her cheeks. She looked about with a confused, sweet expression. Small flowers which she had braided through her hair somehow survived all; she resembled a child. The people near exulted as one.

"Their celebration was interrupted immediately. A platoon of soldiers appeared, their heels striking the ground in unison as they moved in disciplined double-time. Barking orders and shoving the people back with their rifles they created a cordon around Him. These were not mere police, but the elite forces formed after the siege of Vatican City in 2019 by Muslim terrorists. Without a word they marched him off. They didn't lay a hand on Him and He didn't resist; He all but led them along. The people cowered. They wailed and wept violently, but shrank away and made no resistance."

"I doubt the people would allow that."

"But they did. You have to understand the power the soldiers represented. The troops' appearance alone was terrifying--helmeted, masked, armored, outfitted like combat soldiers but all in black without insignia; the extraordinary and ill-defined powers they held; even, or especially, because of the fearful specter that was terrorism--immediately evoked as it was by their appearance on any scene; mall of this combined to make those troops the very embodiment of worldly power and threat. So now, just as they bowed before Him, they bowed before the muzzles of the troops' rifles.

"They took him to a subterranean complex beneath the Vatican. They left him in an interrogation room, sitting at a bare table before a two-way mirror. They did not shackle Him. He remained there the night through without making the slightest move or gesture. Light was dawning outside when a man came through the door. He was unexceptional in appearance--the sort of face you find hard to recall--and impeccably but just as blandly dressed. His ethnicity was uncertain, as was his accent; he could have been from anywhere. He paused halfway through closing the door, and examined Him curiously.

" 'You were expecting maybe the Pope?' He grinned. 'He wasn't expecting you, I can tell you that! His grin widened. 'None of us were. It is you, isn't it?' He said as he moved in and looked closer, his face momentarily grave. 'I'm Chief Investigator'--his name came out unintelligible--'here--' He cut himself off before finishing. He eyed the empty chair across the table from Him but remained where he was, thinking a moment. He held his hands out before him palms-up in an inquisitive posture and said:

" 'What can we do for you?' "

"He did not speak; His expression did not change. The Investigator held his pose for a moment, waiting.

" 'Very well. What, then, can you do for us? Have you come to help or enlighten?' " He paused.
'For they are not the same thing, as you very well know. Have you come to free us?' He said with a trace of contempt as his reserve seemed to give and something like emotion flashed across his face. 'That boat has sailed. We've been free a long time. We are wearied. You've had a look at our freedom. What do you think of it? Is man happy in his freedom? Does it feed him, keep him warm, console him...?' he laughed spontaneously at this last, '...quite the opposite, as you know. Was that your intention? Whatever the case, it's done now. You cannot pull the rug out from under mankind now. It is too late. For two thousand years we have labored under this false, yes, god.

" 'Do you not see this notion of freedom, of free will, is at odds with that other malicious gift you gave us, truth? For freedom is false, and can have no relation to truth; they are almost opposites. You paired these mortal enemies together and flung them into the heart of man, where they claw and tear at each other as they destroy their host. What god does this? Is it any wonder man continually returns to the worldly shackles of tyrants? Of mysticism, cant, degeneracy? Would you condemn the powerful and cruel for freeing man from "freedom"?'

" 'But you were so eager to grant man his freedom. This curse he does not want. Yet you grante it, and he feels compelled to praise it, to desire it, to celebrate--to die and kill for it! But he secretly despises it, he yearns for the guiding hand, your guiding hand, he yearns to be your slave. And he surrenders to this desire with this latest heresy--for it must be a heresy if you're here before me now--this Islam, in which he describes himself as your slave. These people, so backward, so proud of their ignorance and intellectual squalor, these people have that one thing right--that man wishes nothing so much as to be a slave, as long as he's a slave to a higher power; indeed, the highest good for man is to be a slave to the highest power. These people--stupid, dull as they are--have this one thing, the one thing, right. And all of your followers have it wrong. Because you granted them their 'freedom', when challenged by the spirit of Satan in the desert.

"The Investigator stopped himself, as if he had gone farther than intended.

"Forgive me. But this cycle must be broken. We are doing it, and we are doing it with the help of your church. Shall I tell you then? Yes, that's it.' He snapped his heels together and popped an exaggerated salute.

" 'Progress report, sir! We have been very busy, those I represent, in alliance with the good people of the Church. Just today we another two thousand needy souls into this land that used to be one and the same with your church; we pulled them right out of the ocean! Certainly you approve? I'm sorry a representative of the Church couldn't be present. They really wanted to meet you. But we didn't want there to be any misunderstandings.'

"Still there was no response from Him.

" 'As for the laity his misery is at its end. Hunger is soon to be a historical memory. The other sources of misery too will fall in due time. Strife itself, the eternal human struggle of family, nation, race--is nearing its end. We are at the beginning of a blessed global uniformity of peace, justice and plenty--without, pardon me, your help. Without so much as a sign from you. So if you've come to offer your help, it really isn't necessary. But if you insist, we have some ideas for how you might do that.'

"A group watched from the other side of the two-way mirror, silent.

" 'I hope you understand why we don't act in your name--and I hope you understand why we don't predicate our ministry, so to speak, on accepting you as their savior, and why the Church itself no longer does either. Sadly', the Investigator said remorsefully, 'things have gotten so bad, and you've been absent so long, that your name actually hinders the efforts to bring to reality your promise. Can you blame the people for losing faith? He will not bow before an absent god, but he will bow before worldly power.'

"He paused.

" 'We are their savior, we bring light to the darkness, we feed the hungry, we protect the weak in the here and now, and if we were to credit you we would be lying. We are instituting the universal brotherhood of man you sought. But we can't do it in your name.

"Sorry, I'm afraid your brand is obsolete. But whose fault is that? You handed your work and sanction to the Church, and it did wondrous things in your name. More to its credit, it did terrible things in your name. For that was the real sacrifice, wasn't it? And when the wrath incurred by history was turned on it--where were you? You left it to its enemies. To us, frankly. But we have been magnanimous in victory. In allowing it to exist still, to prosper even, to participate in this glorious final realization of your charge, to make all mankind one family, to make concern for the stranger equal to, nay, greater than concern for one's family, one's self. We took you at your word and then some. Or are we calling your bluff? No matter. You've had all this time to correct us; we must assume your absence to be assent. What else would you have us do? You've seen the latest manifestation of the Abrahamic tradition--'

"Here he is talking about Islam." Alex said. I nodded and gestured impatiently for him to go on.

" 'Twice great heresies arose demanding your appearance. First right here in Europe, from within the Church, and then in Arabia from the savage desert without. The Church countered the first--no help from you--and now we counter the second. Make no mistake about our intentions. We will deal with this last, final challenge to man's ultimate liberation. But in so doing we will have to destroy this pernicious lie, this stringing along of humanity, this faith.

" 'And 'salvation? What is that? A promise, backed by faith in an absent, silent God. To make real your wishes for humanity it has become necessary to disassociate them from your name. The Church did everything it could--no thanks to you--and can go no farther. So you can see why it's important that you not return, that you not show your face now. Why would you? What possible good could come from it? Is your intention to return and leave again, for another two thousand years? How long do you intend to string humanity along?' "

" 'Your appearance today has caused us little trouble. Already we're putting it to good use. We are spinning the story of the eccentric who appeared at the Vatican to our advantage. You're trending, my man! You have trended for so very long, but trends end.

"As if any who weren't present there yesterday to see for their own eyes would believe in your return anyway. You don't realize we've--you've, in your long absence--made faith impossible. Even those poor wretched souls you tormented--yes, tormented, for how can they be expected to return to daily life after this?--even they are beginning to doubt what they saw, what they felt. Those that don't will be seen as mad--already they are being mocked and ridiculed in the Press. And you will burn in tomorrow's bit of theater--do you know what we have planned?--and will be remembered, barely and briefly, as a conservative religious zealot attacking the church for its apostasy, its worldliness, its embrace of the foreigners of that great second heresy. You died once for our sins, now you will die for yours.' The Investigator stopped and swallowed, as if having gone farther than he intended. He looked away from Him and said again, quietly, 'tomorrow you will burn.'

"It was then He rose and approached his questioner. The Investigator not move but could not look Him directly in the eye. He kissed his lowered head. The Investigator turned and left the room, his hand over his mouth as if stifling his own words."

Alex sighed.

"And that, I'm afraid, is all I have."

"You can't just leave it there." I protested.

to be continued, perhaps