The Light of Other Days

part 1: THE GOLDFISH BOWL Chapter 5 - VIRTUAL HEAVEN
Bobby was late arriving at RevelationLand. Kate was still waiting in the car lot for him as the swarms of aging adherents started pressing through the gates of Billybob Meeks" giant cathedral of concrete and glass. This "cathedral" had once been a football stadium; they were forced to sit near the back of one of the stands, their view impeded by pillars. Sellers of hot dogs, peanuts, soft drinks and recreational drugs were working the crowd, and muzak played over the PA. "Jerusalem," she recognized: based on Blake's great poem about the legendary visit of Christ to Britain, now the anthem of the new post-United Kingdom England.

The entire floor of the stadium was mirrored, making it a floor of blue sky littered with fat December clouds. At the center there was a gigantic throne, covered in stones glimmering green and blue-probably impure quartz, she thought. Water sprayed through the air, and arc lamps created a rainbow which arched spectacularly. More lamps hovered in the air before the throne, held aloft by drone robots, and smaller thrones circled bearing elders, old men and women dressed in white with golden crowns on their skinny heads.

And there were beasts the size of tipper trucks prowling around the field. They were grotesque, every part of their bodies covered with blinking eyes. One of them opened giant wings and flew, eagle-like, a few meters, The beasts roared at the crowd, their calls amplified by a booming PA. The crowd got to its feet and cheered, as if celebrating a touchdown.

Bobby was oddly nervous. He was wearing a tight fitting one-piece suit of bright scarlet, with a color morphing kerchief draped around his neck. He was a gorgeous twenty-first-century dandy, she thought, as out of place in the drab, elderly multitude around him as a diamond in a child's seashore pebble collection.

She touched his hand. "Are you okay?"

"I didn't realize they'd all be so old"

He was right, of course. The gathering congregation was a powerful illustration of the silvering of America. Many of the crowd, in fact, had cognitive-enhancer studs clearly visible at the backs of their necks, there to combat the onset of age-related diseases like Alzheimer's by stimulating the production of neurotransmitters and cell adhesion molecules.

"Go to any church in the country and you'll see the same thing, Bobby. Sadly, people are attracted to religion when they approach death. And now there are more old people - and with the Wormwood coming we all feel the brush of that dark shadow, perhaps. Billybob is just surfing a demographic wave. Anyhow, these people won't bite."

"Maybe not. But they smell. Can't you tell?"

She laughed.

"One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth."

"Huh?"

"Henrik Ibsen."

Now a man stood up on the big central throne. He was short, fat and his face shone with sweat. His amplified voice boomed out: "Welcome to RevelationLand! Do you know why you're here?" His finger stabbed. "Do you? Do you? Listen to me now: On the Lord's day I was in the spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: "Write on a scroll what you see..." And he held up a glittering scroll.

Kate leaned toward Bobby. "Meet Billybob Meeks. Prepossessing, isn't he? Clap along. Protective coloration."

"What's going on, Kate?"

"Evidently you've never read the Book of Revelation. The Bible's deranged punch line." She pointed. "Seven hovering lamps. Twenty-four thrones around the big one. Revelation is riddled with magic numbers-three, seven, twelve. And its description of the end of things is very literal. Although at least Billybob uses the traditional versions, not the modem editions which have been rewritten to show how the Wormwood date of 2534 was there in the text all along..." She sighed. "The astronomers who discovered the Wormwood didn't do anybody any favors by calling it that. Chapter Eight, verse ten: The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water-the name of the star is Wormwood..."

"I don't understand why you invited me here today. In fact I don't know how you got a message through to me. After my father threw you out."

"Hiram isn't yet omnipotent, Bobby," she said. "Not even over you. And as to why-look up."

A drone robot hovered over their heads, labeled with a stark, simple word: GRAINS. It dipped into the crowd, in response to the summons of members of the congregation.

Bobby said, "Grains? The mind accelerator?"

"Yes. Billybob's specialty. Do you know Blake? To see a World in a Grain of Sand,  And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, / And Eternity in an hour... The pitch is that if you take Grains your perception of time will speed up. Subjectively, you'll be able to think more thoughts, have more experiences, in the same external time. A longer life available exclusively from Billybob Meeks."

Bobby nodded. "But what's wrong with that?"

"Bobby, look around. Old people are frightened of death. That makes them vulnerable to this kind of scam."

"What scam? Isn't it true that Grains actually works?"

"After a fashion. The brain's internal clock actually runs more slowly for older people. And that's the mechanism Billybob is screwing around with."

"And the problem is..."

"The side effects. What Grains does is to stimulate the production of dopamine, the brain's main chemical messenger. Trying to make an old man's brain run as fast as a child's."

"Which is a bad thing," he said uncertainly. "Right?"

She frowned, baffled by the question; not for the first time she had the feeling that there was something missing about Bobby. "Of course it's a bad thing. It is malevolent brain-tinkering. Bobby, dopamine is involved in a lot of fundamental brain functions. If dopamine levels are too low you can suffer tremors, an inability to start voluntary movement - Parkinson's disease, for instance - all the way to catatonia. Too much dopamine and you can suffer from agitation, obsessive-compulsive disorders, uncontrolled speech and movement, addictiveness, euphoria. Billybob's congregation - I should say his victims - aren't going to achieve Eternity in their last hour, Billybob is cynically burning out their brains.

"Some of the doctors are putting two and two together. But nobody has been able to prove anything. What I really need is evidence from his own labs that Billybob knows exactly what he is doing. Along with proof of his other scams."

"Such as?"

"Such as embezzling millions of bucks from insurance companies by selling them phony lists of church members. Such as pocketing a large donation from the AntiDefamation League. He's still hustling, even though he's come a long way from banknote-baptisms." She glanced at Bobby. "Never heard of that? You palm a bill during a baptism. That way the blessing of God gets diverted to the money rather than the kiddie. Then you send the note out into circulation, and it's supposed to return to you with interest... and to make especially sure it works, of course, you hand the money over to your preacher. Word is Billybob picked up that endearing habit in Colombia, where he was working as a drug runner."

Bobby looked shocked. "You don't have any proof of that."

"Not yet," she said grimly. "But I'll get it."

"How?"

"That's what I want to talk to you about..."

He looked mildly stunned.

She said, "Sorry. I'm lecturing you, aren't I?"

"A little."

"I do that when I'm angry."

"Kate, you are angry a lot..."

"I feel entitled. I've been on this guy's trail for months."

A drone robot floated over their heads, bearing sets of virtual Glasses-and-Gloves. "These Glasses-and-Gloves have been devised by RevelationLand Inc., in conjunction with OurWorld Corporation, for the full experience of RevelationLand. Your credit card or personal account will be billed automatically per online minute. These Glasses-and-Gloves..."

Kate reached up and snagged two sets. "Show time."

Bobby shook his head. "I have implants. I don't need..."

"Billybob has his own special way of disabling rival technologies." She lifted the Glasses to her head. "Are you ready?"

"I guess."

She felt a moist sensation around her eye sockets, as the Glasses extruded membranes to make a light-tight junction with her flesh; it felt like cold wet mouths sucking at her face.

She was instantly suspended in darkness and silence.

Now Bobby materialized beside her, floating in space, holding her hand. His Glasses-and-Gloves were, of course, invisible.

And soon her vision cleared further. People were hovering all around them, off as far as she could see, like a cloud of dust motes. They were all dressed in white robes and holding big, gaudy palm leaves-even Bobby to and herself, she found. And they were shining in the light that streamed from the object that hung before them.

It was a cube; huge, perfect, shining sun-bright, utterly dwarfing the flock of hovering people.

"Wow," Bobby said again.

"Revelation Chapter Twenty-one," she murmured. "Welcome to the New Jerusalem." She tried to throw away her palm leaf, but another simply appeared in her hand. "Just remember," she said, "the only real thing here is the steady flow of money out of your pockets and into Billybob's."

Together, they fell toward the light.

The wall before her Was punctured by windows and a line of three arched doorways. She could see a light within, shining even more brightly than the exterior of the building. Scaled against the building's dimensions, the walls looked as thin as paper.

And still they fell toward the cube, until it loomed before them, gigantic, like some immense ocean liner.

Bobby said, "How big is this thing?"

She murmured, "Saint John tells us it is a cube twelve thousand stadia to each side."

"And twelve thousand stadia is..."

"About two thousand kilometers. 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 gray 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 lobotomizers 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 mink 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 gray-white light, and they were skimming over a surface of shining gold.

Kate glanced around, seeking walls that must be hundreds of kilometers 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 kilometers 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 kilometer 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 gray 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."

"Then let's do it."

She forced a smile. She'd got what she wanted.

But the world around her still seemed unreal, compared to the vividness of those final moments inside Billybob's mind.

She had no doubt that - if the rumors about the capability Hiram was constructing were remotely accurate, and if she could get access to it - she would be able to destroy Billybob Meeks. It would be a great scoop, a personal triumph.

But she knew that some part of her, no matter how far down she buried it, would always regret doing so. Some part of her would always long to be allowed to return to that glowing city of gold, with walls that stretched halfway to the Moon, where shining, smiling people were waiting to welcome her.

Billybob had broken through, his shock tactics had gotten even to her. And that, of course, was the whole point. Why Billybob must be stopped.

"Yes," she said. "Let's do it."