The Celestial Instructi0n (11 page)

Finally, “Jim” expressly acknowledged that the
Church could end its relationship at any time without further obligation or
compensation, that all work Jim might do for the Church was strictly volunteer
and unpaid, that no social security, workman’s compensation, unemployment
compensation, retirement deduction or tax was provided for by the Church under
the Religious Exception Act and that any disputes may not be litigated in a
secular court but exclusively by an ecclesiastical court whose members were
selected by the Church, and whose decision was final.

Some attorney pleasured himself with this, Joex
thought. It is legal pornography. Joex considered it for a moment, the arc of
his life, the threat of overwhelming violence against him, his lack of property
and fixed relationships, and his probable short, insignificant future whether
or not he unraveled the craft against him. He felt the surveillance cameras
swivel toward him in their onyx shells as he selected and clicked “AGREE.”

Joex pushed himself back in his chair, Serena
appeared next to him. “OK. Serena, what next?”

“I am Angel Millen, you are Angel Rogers, this way,
please.”

Serena took Joex though the hallway to the group cells
to his niche containing a thin mattress, which hid a sewn tear along one edge
in order to augment the stuffing with socks and surplus clothing; it had a dirty
pink duvet with the right-dominated cross in a repeating pattern. There was no
pillow.

“Before we start your training, your first
assignment is to clean up—indicating a bathroom—replace your clothing, with an
Angel kit at this commissary—she pointed vaguely back the way they came—and get
a meal and a haircut.” She looked around the empty dormitory. At noon, I will
introduce you to your immediate superior.

He turn to follow her instruction. “Just a second,”
she said. Without waiting for a response, Serena straddled Joex’s knee as he
sat on the edge of his bunk, leaned toward his ear until he could feel the
warmth of her face. His unshaven face rubbed into hers. She slid toward his hip
until his body stopped hers. He probably smelled. He, surprised, involuntarily
cupped his hand around her buttocks and squeezed her closer. He heard a hitch
in her breath. She said nothing, breathed out through her mouth, then slid back
out against his hands to his knee. She leaned back, got up, tugged on her
blazer, turned and walked out. Joex was almost too surprised and tired to be
aroused.

Joex was going to be late to his noon appointment
with his superior. He had fallen asleep after his haircut as he was stowing his
new gear under his bunk. He was awakened by the clatter of other Angels
returning to quarters before lunching off steel compartmentalized trays. He had
been able to toss the jar of rubber cement and the rest of the contents of his
pockets into a trash bin undetected before he showered. It was hard to shower
while keeping your fingertips as dry as possible; despite his precaution the
rubber film on his little finger was lost. With a good lunch of a vegetable
primavera in his stomach, he looked forward to sleeping well tonight.

Joex was exhausted. Not just the usual homeless
red-rimmed fuzz of random rousts and hard plastic benches, the cold and lack of
circulation biting into your legs, but he was sick unto trembling. He knew if
he really thought about it logically, as in the older days, his fear would
master him and he would curl into some kind of catatonia, cry, or perhaps begin
shouting and uselessly threatening those around him. Shall he curse God and
die? But he had a stronger need to taste of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil. At least he deserved to know why he was a marked creature—marked for
extinction. In all his formal training and career as an engineer, the one skill
he lacked was being comfortable with uncertainty. Things leaking out at the
edges. Enigmatically, he had learned and practiced that one skill as a homeless
person even as he possessed nothing else. Figure and ground. The delineation of
negative space. He realized that his previous night’s Games Machine introduction
had catalyzed him to understand that relationship for the first time. Joex
trembled, visibly. The Games Machine had power. Maybe it also had answers. Joex
could sense why people might give up their own life to taste the life of an
Angel.

Until that time, his fear was to be a silent
companion. It was large and it was exceedingly dangerous, he had to tip-toe
around it, but he couldn’t gaze upon it or speak to it. Or even think too
clearly about it. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must pass over in
silence.

It was a rare warming day in Portland as Assistant
United States Attorney Rauchmann answered his phone on the first ring.

“US Attorney’s office, Jim Rauchmann speaking.”

“Jim, this is Mark. We are going ahead tomorrow
with the Riu Bao custody.”

“I thought I had more time.”

“Things are changed. I think Bao is in danger.”

“What are you talking about?” the US Attorney said,
clicking the phone into speakerphone mode and opening up a browser on his
terminal.

We asked Portland Metro to id a car that was
surveilling Bao’s street. “It came back two private investigators who directed
them to their boss; an attorney in town.”

“So?”

“An attorney with the Church of the Crux.”

Jim paused. The investigative prowess of the Church
was well known. “What were they doing?

“Metro said they just asked for their lawyer. We
have called the lawyer three times since last night. Perhaps needless to say, he
is not available. We are going to bring Bao in.”

While Special Agent Langley was updating the
prosecutor, the US Attorney was in turn searching a social website for a
handful of key words, memorized along with many more months before. No hits.

“Why would the Crux have anything to do with Bao?”
Rauchmann said casually, as he frantically searched for another set of key
words. Only partial hits.

“No idea. I don’t even want to think about it,”
said the Special Agent.

“Okay, Mark. We’ll have the grand jury prepped and
ready with the current complaint. Just send me your affidavit in the morning,
Mark.”

“No problem, Jim. I am glad that we took this
bastard down on my watch.” Special Agent Langley pressed the secure button on
his phone and hung up, completely unaware of the turmoil in the assistant
attorney’s mind.

The US Attorney considered the exchange. He knew
that this was sooner than his associates wanted. Was it too soon? He didn’t know.
His associates had shown him before exactly how deep he was involved and the
overwhelming evidence that they had ferreted God knows how out of his
computers. He selected the check box for “new submission” and carefully typed
the innocuous key words that he was taught. They would be globally searchable
in seconds.

Joex “Jim” Baroco showed up at the transept desk at
12:10 p.m., Serena was waiting for him, stood and spoke to him, “Angel Rogers,
you are very fortunate that Archangel Jack isn’t here yet.” Joex said nothing,
chilly in his new work garb and decorated buzz cut.

A thin, tall woman approached them from an assembly
room from the direction of the narthex entrance. She walked with a deliberate,
measured cadence, as if she were self-conscious of her appearance upon them.
She was as tall as Joex, wore the same work overalls and matching severe buzz
cut; she was distinguished with a plain red scarf she wore around her neck as a
single flash of color.

Serena said “Good afternoon Archangel Jack. This is
the newly ascended Angel Rogers. Agent Rogers, this is Archangel Marla Jack.”
Marla made no motion to shake hands or otherwise acknowledge the introduction
to Jim. She just said, “Time for our first Games interview. Come with me,
Angel.”

She turned and walked toward the Scriptorium, then
into one among a handful of conference room that lined its far edge. Joex
followed several paces behind. When both of them were in the room which had
nothing; not a light switch, or a whiteboard or a power outlet, or window or
carpet, except a tiny cheap battered red table that looked like child’s pretend
furniture, two plastic chairs and a luminous ceiling. She pushed the table
aside and moved the chairs so that they were facing one another. She motioned
for Joex to sit. Marla then closed the conference room door, which was a
several times thicker than a normal door and dogged it shut with two handles at
its top and bottom. “No disturbances” she said, noticing Angel Rogers
curiosity.

“I can hardly hear the people outside anyway,” Joex
said, politely.

Archangel Jack had a instant succession of
expressions that squalled over her face. “It is not to prevent them from
disturbing us.”

She then sat and began: “This is a Games interview.
You cannot advance in the Choirs without success with both the Games Machine
and these interviews. I think you learned how to succeed with the Games Machine.
You play and simply do as you as instructed according to its running analysis.
As you have deduced, it varies its presentation depending upon the current
context of you, what you have learned, how fast your progress and your current
success with the presentation.

There are hundreds of thousands of hours of Games Machine
play available and our Games Machine engineers are both adding hundreds of
hours of raw content every week and changing the strategic pruning to
streamline the process of delivering the service to you. Since it varies with
the circumstance and player, in a sense the Games Machine content is endless. But
despite the engineers’ acumen in test generation and integrating the electronic
sensorium of the Games Machine with its content and its players, we need these
interviews to ensure the training is managed properly. Someday we will not need
engineers to cradle the Games Machine. It will be able to acquire, produce, and
tune its owns results and interactions. Nor will we need these interviews. For
now, we do. To do well here you simply need to be honest.” Marla paused and
then continued. “Let’s begin.”

Archangel Jack first asked about information “Jim”
had already given to the Church. His lies were not yet too much of a burden to
handle, but Joex had no idea how long he could parrot the same information
without making an error. He could feel the heavy sensation of his fingertips
from their rubber cement coating.

After the preliminaries, Marla began to format her
questions as the Games Machine had, first a statement or an explanation, then a
question to elicit information from Joex. “Every part of your brain is
exercised in context with each other part. “The advantage is quadratic. As you
double the distinguishable cognitive functions, you square the possible
interactions between them. What does this imply about the growth in the size of
the Games Machine corpus compared to its efficacy?” He answered the best he
could, sometimes with a question, which she ignored. She was completely in
control of the interview.

The questions then took an odd and disturbing turn.
Marla asked Joex to imagine strangling an infant. She recited as if from a
script, going into elaborate and gruesome detail of the baby’s choking and
twitching, the ligature marks from his blanching fingers, and the baby’s
dilating pupils in its dying eyes. “What do you feel?”

“What do you mean how do I feel? Joex said. “I feel
horror and remorse, I am calling for emergency response, I am giving the infant
artificial resuscitation.”

Archangel Jack said, “That is a Fallen answer. You
now must imagine three things. First, the Church has unequivocally directed you
to strangle the infant. Two, you believe the directive from the Church is
absolutely just, even if you do not know why. Nor in fact will you ever know
why. Third, you feel absolutely no emotion as you carry out the Church’s
direction. Can you do that? This is an exercise. You are simply imagining.”

Joex thought about this, “I’ll try.” He wanted to
understand this sick business completely.

She then recited the script again, varying it
slightly in detail and gore, so the image would not grow stale in the
retelling. Each time she waited for him to digest the disturbing images.
Sometimes she cocked her head slightly as if she were listening to a far-off
forest animal.

“Again. Watch your breathing. Think about something
pleasant to you. Again. Let your heartbeat fall. Again. Do you know you are
making fists? Unclench your shoulders. Open your knees slightly. Vary your
position in the chair. Look above my eyes. Think of emptiness. Think of the Games
Machine. Think of Serena.” This was the only time she referred to Serena by
given name. Then she was done.

“Fine. Just a few more questions. Remember, honesty
is what I am looking for. Complete honesty. Without it you will go nowhere
within the Church, or in life.”

Once again, things began to veer off in direction
Joex did not expect.

“Have you ever masturbated?” Archangel Jacks asked.

“What?” It was a question that wasn’t linked to
anything Joex expected. It was like seeing Picasso’s “Femme” illustrating the
Proper Liturgies for the Eucharist.