CHAPTER 2   In the Presence of the Lord

“Beautiful…” Audrey’s voice lingered, “…The Waltz of the Snowflakes...” She stood mesmerized, staring up out the sloping window of her Old Town walk-up, wrapped in a pale-grey sweater, the raw wintry light highlighting goose bumps on her pallid slender legs.  The sky outside was white, and the furniture inside, what little there was, also white. 

“Cherie.  Come back to bed--”

Audrey tilted her head slightly.  The chip on her temple sparkled like a cut aquamarine, but it was inactive, no inner glow.  Wherever her mind was, it was in Real, not in some SIM world somewhere.  She turned from the window and studied Marc for a moment, then stepped briskly across the cold wood floor, dropped her sweater, and snuggled up to him naked, under the white down comforter.

“The Waltz of the Snowflakes?” Marc asked, “I did not know you were into Tchaikovsky.”

“Everybody knows the Nutcracker.”

“Nutcracker!  That reminds me!  Joyeux Noël!”

“And Merry Christmas to you, too!”

“Speaking of Christmas, what time do we meet your parents?”

“10:00.”

“Not so bad, n’est-ce pas?”

“Yes, they’re elegant that way.  But they weren’t up until 6:00 AM.”

“Who needs sleep?” Marc tenderly kissed Audrey as he rolled her on her back.

“Don’t you ever tire?” Audrey murmured seductively as she wrapped her legs around him.

“Of you?  Jamais.”

“How do you know?” Audrey traced the tip of her finger inquisitively across Marc’s bones and hollows face.  His ocean green eyes regarded her soulfully, not at all like the catch-of-the-day she thought she’d be to this impossibly handsome Frenchman.  “I mean,” she touched the roughness of his sandpaper cheek, “what do we really know about each other...?”

“I know that you’ve set our chip preferences so we both see your apartment white.”

“How do you know it isn’t white?” Audrey smiled mischievously.

“Because that Gio Ponti vase was never made in white...”

“The vase!” she slapped him playfully, “you would notice that!”

“Maybe, but I expect to be part of your fantasy.”  

“Yes, fantasy we do well together, but what about Real?  I mean, like for instance,” she looked Marc in the eyes and touched his lip, “I don’t even know what you’re going to order for breakfast.”

“Quoi?” Marc was mystified, but that’s what he loved about Audrey, these things that came out of nowhere.  “I do not know myself what I will order...”

“...I know my mother will order mimosas all around, my father will have eggs Benedict...but you, there is so much I don’t know...”

“Because you don’t know what I want...for breakfast?”

“Something like that.  I mean, because...I don’t really know you.”

They nestled onto their sides, faces separated just enough for deep conversation.  “Does that scare you, Audrey?”

“Scare me?  Yeah, maybe.  A bit.”

He looked into her azure eyes.  “I am afraid I am going to disappoint you. I am an open book.  It is you who are the enigma.  Like just now, when you were looking out the window...you seemed so far away.”

“I was.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know...”

“Tell me.”

“It’s nothing really...”

“I want to hear.”

“I woke up thinking about Dano...” Audrey’s eyes lost their focus, “lying there, shot, his blood all over me...over you.  He almost died.”  Her eyes welled up with tears.  “Dano almost died.  What if you hadn’t been there to save his life?”

“Life is like that, Cherie, there’s always another door...in this case we are lucky the right one opened and Dano survived.”

“Yes, always another door…what could have been...” Audrey’s long platinum hair glowed softly, scattering magenta, cyan, lime green and lemon yellow highlights across the white pillowcase.  “I feel so alone...everything has changed...nothing is solid anymore…it scares the hell out of me.”

Marc perched himself on his elbow, his eyes seeing but not reflecting the glints of chip generated colour, and tenderly caressed Audrey’s cheek.  “It makes you envious of people who find security in God, non?”

“But then, what is God?”

“To an existentialiste like you, perhaps not much, but...” he tipped his head, “to, for example, John Lennon, ‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain.’”

“Pain?  Maybe…I can see that…or, maybe, is God about,” Audrey searched for the word, “truth?” 

“Oui, to some people God is Truth.”

“Or…peace?” Audrey sounded wistful.  “I could use some of that, some peace…in my mind...my dream, it was like it was happening again, it was so real.  The blood, thinking he was going to die…it just kept going round and round in my head, and I couldn’t sleep, so I got up...and then I looked out the window and I saw the snowflakes...and I was wishing I could be out there with them, dancing with them.  And then I think I got hypnotized because I started to fall into them, it was like one of my treatments…I mean I really fell into them...and then I was out there with them, floating, swirling, I was a snowflake, and they were all around me, millions and millions, all different, all the same.”

“Your imagination is beautiful, Audrey.  I love that about you.”

“…Are we like that, one little snowflake lost in a gazillion snowflakes?”  Audrey stared off into the distance.  “Is there a purpose?”

“Oof!” Marc rolled onto his back.

“What?”

“You are a cruel woman.”

“Me?  Cruel!  Why?”

“I spend all night making the sweetest love of my life and then you have one of your attacks of existentialisme, and I’m out in the cold with a gazillion unrequited snowflakes?” 

“I said no such thing!” Audrey laughed leaning into Marc perched on his chest, her breasts resting on his. “Besides, I believe I used the pronoun ‘I’--”

“If you are a snowflake then it necessarily follows that I am a snowflake too.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Non, pas du tout.” He pulled her head down and grazed her lips with his. “I take you very seriously.  But you know what Camus says, ‘It is necessary to fall in love...if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair...”

“That’s not much consolation.”

“Falling in love?”

“No, the random despair bit...”

“Ah, but this is Camus.  I think there is much magic in the world.”

“Yeah…” Audrey kissed him, her luscious lips lingering on his, “…is this magic?”

“Falling in love is the best kind of magic there is.”  

 Their eyes gazed into each other and they fell in deep, slipping into SIM, into Audrey’s deepFreak interface, where they floated enlaced within each other.  He filled her, filled her flower, and she blossomed white, pink, and crimson, inviting him deeper and deeper into a zone that was violet and blue and private and forbidden but craving for his unyielding penetration.

*  *  *

No time for espresso, a wakeUp pill instead, and they hustled across the Old Town Square.  It was 10:20, and they were late, seriously late.  Even for Audrey.  Rush past the Christmas tree, all lit and stunning but no time to look.  She cast a glance at the gothic spires, and then at the incomprehensible old astronomical clock and it scolded her as it ticked away celestial time. “Shit, they’re going to kill me...” Something lit the corner of her eye and she turned to see what it was...a cloud forming, a luminescent cloud took shape, suspended in the air above the center of Old Town Square. Who the fuck is doing holoVerts on Christmas?  And right next to the tree!?  Marc sensed the abrupt change in Audrey and also turned to look.  Everybody, everything, stopped and stared.  The cloud darkened, becoming inky and impenetrable, lightning flashed, angelic beams of sacred light descended from heaven, and a hard-core case of Opus Dei mortification materialized­—a giant Christ decked out in industrial strength post-crucifixion blood, gore and glory.

“STOP!”  Christ’s voice reverberated across the square.  “Look at yourselves!”  He thrust forward an accusing finger, trembling in righteous indignation.  Everybody stared.  He was terrible and beautiful to behold, that perfect Catholic blend of pathos and horror.  Ecstasy in agony.  “Do you not see what you are doing?  Do you not see that you desecrate the celebration of my birth?  That you cheapen it with material gifts?  Look at me!”  Blood trickled down his face from a forehead lacerated by the crown of thorns and ran along his forearms from the nail punctures in his hands.  His pierced feet dripped red.  The gash on his rib cage bled through his white tunic.  “LOOK AT ME!  I suffered and died for YOUR SINS!   And you celebrate my birth with MATERIAL GIFTS?  SINNERS!  Repent before darkness claims you!  REPENT!  For I am the truth and the light, and only I can free you from Satan’s shadow!  I AM the light!”  Christ began to shine, lit deep from within, his white luminescence glowing ever brighter.  “The material world is sin and the wages of sin are death!  God will reclaim His world!  I am the light of God’s sacred truth!  I am the vengeance that will purify you!  The Apocalypse of the Singularity is upon us!  I AM THE LIGHT!!  I AM THE SINGULARITY!!”

Christ was now a screaming blinding white radiance.  Those that believed bent their heads in supplication, fervid eyes glazed in pious passion.  Those that didn’t shielded their eyes from the blazing intensity and wondered, open-mouthed, what the fuck?  An elderly lady dropped her shopping bags, scattering brightly wrapped presents in the brightly lit snow, and fell to her knees sobbing.  She pressed her hands together in prayer, her face twisted in agony, her black shadow stark in the fiery white light.  She squinted her eyes, looked directly at Christ, and readied herself for the reproach of Divine Justice, but instead the apparition extinguished suddenly, as if the extreme surge of voltage that had given it existence had fried the wires and thrown the circuit breaker.  The loud bright garish vision was gone in an instant and everyday life abruptly snapped back into existence.  People rubbed their over-exposed eyes and stared at a world that now felt strangely unreal: very grey, very quiet and very ordinary.  Even the Christmas tree’s stunning array of constantly transforming lights seemed oddly prosaic.  Just another prop.

“Incroyable!”

“Totally!” Audrey agreed.  “I wonder what the hell is going on?”

“Winteur, Audrey?  This way, please.”

 “Did you hear what happened?" Audrey exclaimed excitedly as she and Marc were shown in by the Maitre D’.  A waiter was pouring Marta and Karl, her parents, a second cup of coffee at their table, set for four in the luxurious Art Nouveau dining room.

“Other than you’re late?” Marta replied.

“Seriously, someone staged the second coming of Christ in the Old Town Square!  Right in front of us!”

“People, they were falling to their knees,” Marc added.

“It was amazing!” Audrey sat down.  “No thanks,” she said to the waiter as he was about to pour her a coffee from the silver pot.  “I’ll have a double espresso, please.”

“You need a miracle as an excuse for being late?”  Marta deadpanned.

“Very funny,” Audrey rolled her eyes.

“Perhaps we should see this remarkable event as you did,” Karl suggested, “undoubtedly your chip recorded it.”

“I thought you hate it when I project holos at the table,” Audrey looked at her father accusingly.

“This seems like a very special event, Audrey,” Karl said, “so today we’ll make an exception.”

“Okay, but actually, the news is better because,” Audrey moved the poinsettia centerpiece to the side, and her necklace projected a little holo of the ongoing news coverage on to the starched white tablecloth, “the really amazing thing is, it wasn’t just here, it was all over the EU!  Watch.”  

“...locally it seems the Apparition materialized in the Old Town Square.”  As the newscaster, Mike, spoke, a holoVid of the apparition played in the background.  “Skeptics immediately labeled it a holo.”

“Thank you Mike,” the vid cut from Mike and the Christ to a close-up of Mary, wearing a mini-dress, Christmas-red and low-cut for sugar plum cleavage.  “We can now confirm that the Christ vision has, in fact, appeared in five other European cities, these being London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Amsterdam…”  The holo feed switched to vids of Christ apparitions in the five cities.

"I wonder if it was that group of hackers...” Marta thought for a moment, searching for the name, “…you know, the ones that projected the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore?”

“BLANK?” suggested Marc.

“Yes, yes,” Marta smiled at Marc, “that’s the group I was thinking of...” Such a handsome young man!

“Is this just the craziest Christmas?” the waiter remarked, politely gesturing toward a Christ (the one in Berlin) preaching in German on the table-top.  HoloPad in hand, he was ready to take their order.

“Yeah, crazy,” Audrey agreed,  “and they’ll run these Christ vids endlessly until the instaRatings start to fall.”  She turned the newscast off and slid the poinsettia back into the center of the table.

Breakfast arrived served on Wedgwood china.  They had decided on traditional sweet Christmas bread, vanočka, and eggs Benedict all around, Marta's with smoked salmon.  Marc looked to see if Audrey’s anxiety regarding his order had been eased, but she seemed to have forgotten, so he said nothing.

“What is it about religion that makes people suspend all rationality?” Karl speculated and Audrey braced herself for a long diatribe. “I mean, if someone had projected a giant pink panda, everyone would have taken it for what it was, a holo of a giant pink panda!  But when they project a holo of Christ, then the assumption is automatically that it is Christ, not a holo, which is simply absurd.”  Karl paused for a moment as the waiter set mimosas around the table. “And it isn’t just that rational thought goes out the window when religion comes in.  For instance, if I said to you, Marc, that I don’t want you to marry my daughter because you are French, I would be considered a xenophobe. Or, if I forbade her from marrying a man because he was black, I would be a racist, a woman, and I would be a homophobe.  But if I were Catholic, or Muslim, or Jewish, or whatever, and I wanted my daughter to marry within my religion, then my prejudice is cloaked in respectability.”

“You know, I’ve always wondered why,” Marta gestured with her glass, “when the president of the North American States admitted he talks directly to God, and that apparently God talks back and tells him what to do, people consider him a pious man.  But if this same president were to confess that he talks to a giant pink panda, to use your analogy, dear, and that this pink panda tells him what to do, he would be impeached and probably committed.”

“Don’t bet on it,” observed Audrey wryly, “besides, it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s about to be replaced by Mickey Mouse,”

“Disney won the election in the North American States,” Marta corrected, “not Mickey Mouse, and it has yet to be determined exactly how a corporation will assume the presidency.”

“But regarding the equivalence of Christ and a pink panda,” Marc said, “many would be outraged at this comparison.  People can be very touchy about their religious beliefs, non?”

“Touchy, or downright crazy?  Come to think of it, dad, how do you deal with religious nuts in your practice?” Audrey asked.

“It is not for me to criticize the religion of my patients,” Karl cut himself another piece of vanočka.  “If it doesn’t interfere with their ability to function in the world—but then, if they come to me it means they already need help in coping with something, and sometimes religion can be the problem.  When it goes wrong it can lead to, for instance, intense, sometimes debilitating, feelings of guilt.  But, I do think there are good aspects to religion.  For example, rituals.  They can give life significance, and religions are a rich source of rituals.  Unfortunately too often we lose the meaning behind them, and rituals become just a choreographed series of empty gestures.”

“Then try this out for a religious ritual,” Audrey reached for the butter. “There are cyber theorists who believe that by downloading the mind and merging with the net you can achieve immortality.”

“Great!” Marta raised her glass.  “It’s about time religion got an update.”

“The funny thing is, rumour has it that some chipHeads have actually done this,” Audrey explained as she buttered her vanočka, “downloaded all the way, losing the body, never coming back...but I don’t know...maybe it’s BS, maybe they just tripTabbed, zoned-out, deadEnded and fried…”

“And I suppose that’s how you’re planning your immortality,” Marta suggested sarcastically.

“—I would like to propose a toast,” Karl raised his glass before Audrey could retaliate, “to Christmas, a ritual that despite the corporate world’s best efforts, seems to manage, if you look for it, to keep it’s meaning intact.”

“Bien dit,” Marc clinked his glass with Karl’s.  “Joyeux Noël.”

Audrey and Marta joined in.

“Merry Christmas!”