The Light of Other Days

  The crowd spread out as they reached the rudimentary harbor. David made his way through the crush to the water's edge, ignoring the temporary dimmings as Galileans brushed past or through him in their eagerness.

  There was a single boat on the still water. It was perhaps six meters long, wooden, its construction crude. Four men were patiently rowing toward the shore; beside a stocky helmsman at the stern was a piled-up fishing net.

  Another man was standing at the prow, facing the people on the shore.

  David heard eager muttering. He had been preaching, from the boat, at other sites along the shore. He had a commanding voice which carried well across the water, this Yesho, this Jesus.

  David struggled to see Him more clearly. But the light on the water was dazzling.

  ...And so we must turn, with reluctance, to the true story of the Passion.

  Jerusalem—sophisticated, chaotic, built of the radiantly bright white local stone—was crowded this Passover with pilgrims come to eat the Paschal Lamb within the confines of the holy city, as tradition demanded. And the city also contained a heavy presence of Roman soldiers.

  And, this Passover, it was a place of tension. There were many insurrectionist groups working here: for example the Zealots, fierce opponents of Rome, and iscarii, assassins who would customarily work the large festival crowds.

  Into this historic crucible walked Jesus and His followers.

  Jesus' group ate their Passover feast. (But there was no rehearsal of the Eucharist: no commandment by Jesus to take bread and wine in memory of Him, as if they were fragments of His own body. This rite is evidently an invention of the evangelists. That night, Jesus had much on His mind; but not the invention of a new religion.)

  We know now that Jesus had links to many of the sects and groups which operated at the fringe of His society. But Jesus' intent was not insurrection.

  Jesus made His way to the place called Gethsemane—where olive trees still grow today, some of them (we can verify now) survivors from Jesus' own day. Jesus had worked to cleanse Judaism of sectarianism. He thought He would meet the authorities and leaders of various rebel groups here, and seek a peaceful unity. As ever, Jesus sought to be the Golden Mean, a bridge between these groups in conflict

  But the humanity of Jesus' time was no more rational than that of any other era. He was met by a group of armed soldiers sent by the chief priests. And the events thereafter unfolded with a deadly, familiar logic.

  The Trial was no grand theological event. All that mattered to the High Priest—a tired, conscientious, worn-down old man—was to maintain public order. He knew he had to protect his people from the Romans' savage reprisals by accepting the lesser evil of handing over this difficult, anarchistic faith healer.

  That done, the High Priest returned to his bed, and an uncomfortable sleep.

  Pilate, the Roman Procurator, had to come out to meet priests who would not enter his Praetorium for fear of being defiled. Pilate was a competent, cruel man, a representative of an occupying power centuries old. Yet he too hesitated, it seems for fear of inciting worse violence by executing a popular leader.

  We have now witnessed the fears and loathing and dreadful calculations which motivated the men facing each other that dark night—and each of them, no doubt, believed he was doing the right thing.

  Once his decision was made, Pilate acted with brutal efficiency. Of what followed, we know the dreadful details too well. It was not even a grand spectacle—but then the Passion of Christ is an event which has taken not two days, but two thousand years to unfold.

  But there is still much we do not know. The moment of His death is oddly obscured; WormCam exploration there is limited. Some scientists have speculated that there is such a density of viewpoints in those key seconds that the fabric of spacetime itself is being damaged by wormhole intrusions. And these viewpoints are presumably sent down by observers from our own future—or perhaps from a multiplicity of possible futures, if what lies ahead of us is undetermined.

  So we still have not heard His last words to His mother; we still do not know if—beaten, dying, bewildered—He cried out to His God. Even now, despite all our technology, we see Him through a glass darkly.

  At the center of the town there was a market square, already crowded. Suppressing a shudder, David forced himself to push through the people.

  At the center of the crowd a soldier, crudely uniformed, was holding a woman by one arm. She looked wretched, her robe torn, her hair matted and filthy, her plump, once-pretty face streaked by crying. Beside her were two men in fine, clean religious garb. Perhaps they were priests, or Pharisees. They were pointing to the woman, gesticulating angrily, and arguing with a figure before them, who—hidden by the crowd—was squatting in the dust.

  David wondered if this incident had left any trace in the Gospels. Perhaps this was the woman who had been condemned for adultery, and the Pharisees were confronting Jesus with another of their trick questions, trying to expose His blasphemy.

  The man in the dust had a phalanx of friends. They were sturdy-looking men, perhaps fishermen; gently but firmly they were keeping the crushing crowds away. But still—David could see as he approached, wraithlike—some of the people were coming near, reaching out a tentative hand to touch a robe, even stroke a lock of hair.

  I do not think His death—humiliated, broken—need remain the center of our obsession with Jesus, as it has been for two thousand years. For me the zenith of His life as I have witnessed it is the moment when Pilate produces Him, already tortured and bloody, to be mocked by the soldiers, sacrificed by His own people.

  With everything He had intended apparently in ruins, perhaps already feeling abandoned by God, Jesus should have been crushed. And yet He stood straight. A man immersed in His time, defeated and yet unbeaten. He is Gandhi, He is Saint Francis, He is Wilberforce, He is Elizabeth Fry, He is Father Damien among the lepers. He is His own people, and the dreadful suffering they would endure in the name of the religion founded in His name.

  The major religions have all faced crises as their origins and tangled pasts had become open to scrutiny. None of them have emerged unscathed; some have collapsed altogether. But religion is not simply about morality, or the personalities of founders and practitioners. It is about the numinous, a higher dimension of our nature. And there are still those who hunger for the transcendent, the meaning of it all.

  Already—cleansed, reformed, refounded—the Church is beginning to offer consolation to many people left bewildered by the demolition of privacy and historic certainty.

  Perhaps we have lost Christ. But we have found Jesus. And His example can still lead us into an unknown future—even if that future holds only the Wormwood, and our religions' only remaining role is to comfort us.

  And yet history still holds surprises for us: for one of the most peculiar yet stubborn legends about the life of Jesus has, against all expectation, been born out...

  The man in the dust was thin. His hair severely pulled back, prematurely greying at the temples. His robe was stained with dust and trailed in the dirt. His nose was prominent, proud and Roman, His eyes black, fierce, intelligent. He seemed angry, and was drawing in the dust with one finger.

  This silent, brooding man had the measure of the Pharisees, without even the need to speak.

  David stepped forward. Beneath his feet he could feel the dust of this Capernaum marketplace. He reached forward to the hem of that robe.

  ...But, of course, his fingers slid through the cloth; and, though the sun dimmed, David felt nothing.

  The man in the dust looked up and gazed directly into David's eyes.

  David cried out. The Galilean light dissipated, and the concerned face of Bobby hovered before him.

  As a young man, following a well-established trade route with His uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus visited the tin mine area of Cornwall with companions. He traveled further inland, as far as Glastonbury—at the time a significant port—where He studied with th
e Druids, and helped design and build a small house, on the future site of Glastonbury Abbey. This visit is remembered, after a fashion, in scraps of local folklore.

  We have lost so much. The harsh glare of the WormCam has revealed so many of our fables to be things of shadows and whispers: Atlantis has evaporated like dew; King Arthur has stepped back into the shadows from which he never truly emerged. And yet it is after all true, as Blake sang, that those feet in ancient time did walk upon England's mountains green.

  Chapter 22—THE VERDICT

  In Christmas week, 2037, Kate's trial concluded. The courtroom was small, paneled in oak, and the Stars and Stripes hung limply at the back of the room. The judge, the attorneys and the court officers sat in grave splendor before rows of benches containing a few scattered spectators: Bobby, officials from OurWorld, reporters tapping notes into SoftScreens.

  The jury was an array of random-looking citizenry, though some of them were sporting the highly colored masks and SmartShroud clothes that had become fashionable in the last few months. If Bobby didn't look too carefully he could lose sight of a juror until she moved—and then a face or lock of hair or fluttering hand would appear as if from nowhere, and the rest of the juror's body would become dimly visible, outlined by a patchy, imperfect distortion of the background.

  It was a sweet irony, he thought, that SmartShrouds were another bright idea of Hiram's: one new OurWorld product sold at high profit to counteract the intrusive effects of another.

  ...And there, sitting alone in the dock, was Kate. She was dressed in simple black, her hair tied back, her mouth set, eyes empty.

  Cameras had been banned from the courtroom itself, and there had been little of the usual media scrum at the courthouse entrance. But everybody knew that restraining orders meant nothing now. Bobby imagined the air around him speckled with hovering WormCam viewpoints, no doubt great swarms of them clustered on Kate's face and his own.

  Bobby knew that Kate had conditioned herself never to forget the scrutiny of the WormCam, not for a second; she couldn't stop the invisible voyeurs gazing at her, she said, but she could deny them the satisfaction of seeing how she hurt. To Bobby, her frail, lone figure represented more strength than the mighty legal process to which she was subject, and the great, rich corporation which had prosecuted her.

  But even Kate could not conceal her despair when her sentence was at last handed down.

  "Dump her, Bobby," Hiram said. He was pacing around his big conference desk. Storm rain lashed against the picture window, filling the room with noise. "She's done you nothing but harm. And now she's a convicted felon. What more proof do you want? Come on, Bobby. Cut yourself loose. You don't need her."

  "She believes you framed her."

  "Well, I don't care about that. What do you believe? That's what counts for me. Do you really think I'm so devious that I'd frame the lover of my son—no matter what I thought about her?"

  "I don't know, Dad," Bobby said evenly. He felt calm, controlled; Hiram's bluster, obviously manipulative, was unable to reach him. "I don't know what I believe anymore."

  "Why discuss it? Why don't you use the WormCam to go check up on me?"

  "I don't intend to spy on you."

  Hiram stared at his son. "If you're trying to find my conscience, you're going to have to dig deeper than that. Anyhow it's only reprogramming. Hell, they should lock her up and wipe the key. Reprogramming is nothing."

  Bobby shook his head. "Not to Kate. She's fought against the methodology for years. She has a real dread of it, Dad."

  "Oh, bull. You were reprogrammed. And it didn't hurt you."

  "I don't know if it did or not." Bobby stood now, and faced his father. He felt his own anger rising. "I felt different when the implant was turned off. I was angry, terrified, confused. I didn't even know how I was supposed to feel."

  "You sound like her," Hiram shouted. "She's reprogrammed you with her words and her pussy more than I ever could with a bit of silicon. Don't you see that? Ah, Christ. The one good thing the bloody implant did do to you was make you too dumb to see what's happening to you..." He fell silent, and averted his eyes.

  Bobby said coldly, "You'd better tell me what you meant by that."

  Hiram turned, anger, impatience, even something like guilt appearing to struggle for dominance within him. "Think about it. Your brother is a brilliant physicist. I don't use the word lightly; he may be nominated for a Nobel Prize. And as for me." He raised his hands. "I built up all this, from scratch. No dummy could have achieved that. But you..."

  "Are you saying that's because of the implant?"

  "I knew there was a risk. Creativity is linked to depression. Great achievement is often linked to an obsessive personality. Blah, blah. But you don't need bloody brains to become the President of the United States. Isn't that right? Isn't it?" And he reached for Bobby's cheek, as if to pinch it, like a child's.

  Bobby flinched back. "I remember a hundred, a thousand times as a child when you said that to me. I never knew what you meant before."

  "Come on, Bobby."

  "You did it, didn't you? You set Kate up. You know she's innocent. And you're prepared to let them screw around with her brain. Just as you screwed around with mine."

  Hiram stood there for a moment, then dropped his arms. "Bugger it. Go back to her if you want, bury yourself in her quim. In the end you always come running back, you little shit. I've got work to do." And he sat at his desk, tapped the surface to open up his SoftScreens, and soon the glow of scrolling digits lit up his face, as if Bobby had ceased to exist.

  After she was released, Bobby took her home.

  As soon as they arrived she stalked around the apartment, closing curtains compulsively, shutting out the bright noon sunlight, trailing rooms of darkness.

  She pulled off the clothes that she had worn since leaving the courtroom and consigned them to the garbage. He lay in bed listening to her shower, in pitch darkness, for long minutes. Then she slid beneath the duvet. She was cold, shivering in fact, her hair not quite dry. She had been showering in cold water. He didn't question that; he just held her until his warmth had permeated her.

  At last she said, in a whisper, "You need to buy thicker curtains."

  "Darkness can't hide you from a WormCam."

  "I know that," she said. "And I know that even now they are listening to every word we say. But we don't have to make it easy for them. I can't bear it. Hiram beat me, Bobby. And now he's going to destroy me."

  Just as, he thought, Hiram destroyed me.

  He said, "At least your sentence isn't custodial; at least we have each other."

  She balled her fist and punched his chest, hard enough to hurt. "That's the whole point. Don't you see? You won't have me. Because by the time they've finished, there won't be a me anymore. Whatever I will have become, I'll be—different."

  He covered her fist with his hand until he felt her fingers uncurl. "It's just reprogramming."

  "They said I must suffer from Syndrome E. Spasms of over-activity in my orbito-frontal and medial prefrontal lobes. Excessive traffic from the cortex prevents emotions rising to my consciousness. And that's how I can commit a crime, directed at the father of my lover, without conscience or remorse or self-disgust."

  "Kate."

  "And then I'm to be conditioned against the use of the WormCam. Convicted felons like me, you see, aren't to be allowed access to the technology. They will lay down false memory traces in my amygdala, the seat of my emotions. I'll have a phobia, unbeatable, about even considering the use of a WormCam, or viewing its results."

  "There's nothing to be afraid of."

  She propped herself up on her elbows. Her shadowed face loomed before him, her eye sockets smooth-rimmed wells of darkness. "How can you defend them? You, of all people."

  "I'm not defending anybody. Anyhow, I don't believe there's a them. Everybody involved has just been doing her job: the FBI, the courts."

  "And Hiram?"

  He didn't
try to answer. He said, "All I want to do is hold you."

  She sighed, and laid her head down on his chest; it felt heavy, her cheek warm against his flesh.

  He hesitated. "Anyhow, I know what the real problem is..."

  He could feel her frowning.

  "It's me. Isn't it? You don't want a switch in your head, because that's what I had when you found me. You have a dread of becoming like me, like I was. On some level." He forced it out. "On some level, you despise me."

  She pulled herself back from him. "All you're thinking about is yourself. But I'm the one who's about to have her brains removed by an ice-cream scoop." She got out of bed, walked out of the room, and shut the door with cold control, leaving him in darkness.

  He slept awhile.

  When he woke, he went to find her. The living room was still dark, the curtains closed and lights off. But he could tell she was here.

  "Lights on."

  Light, garish and bright, flooded the room.

  Kate was sitting on a sofa, fully dressed. She was facing a table, on which sat a bottle of some clear fluid, and another bottle, smaller. Barbiturates and alcohol. Both bottles were unopened, their seals intact. The liquor was an expensive absinthe.

  She said, "I always did have good taste."

  "Kate."

  Her eyes were watering in the light, her pupils huge, making her seem childlike. "Funny, isn't it? I must have covered a dozen suicides, more attempted. I know there are quicker ways than this. I could slit my wrists, or even my neck. I could even blow out my brains, before they get screwed up. This will be slower. Probably more painful. But it's easy. You see? You sip and swallow, sip and swallow." She laughed, coldly. "You even get drunk in the process."

  "You don't want to do this."

  "No. You're right. I don't want to do it. Which is why I need you to help me."

  For answer he picked up the liquor and hurled it across the room. It smashed against a wall, creating a spectacular, expensive splash stain on the plaster there.

  Kate sighed. "That's not the only bottle in the world. I'll do it eventually. I'd rather die than let them screw with my brain."