Infused with the same reckless abandon, Riktor reaches for the button marked "MANAGE". The window shifts and a heading reads in pagan-speak: "TRANSACTION HISTORY" followed by a list.
"It looks just like the control panel in the Offertory Bank," Zoe mumbles in awe.
Riktor reads down the list while finger pointing.
"It's just as I feared," he says despairingly. "Each kiss with you cost me 5% of my halo."
Zoe reddens and averts her eyes from his glare. She mumbles: "Sorry about that."
"As things stand..." He goes back to studying his control panel. With a simple wink behind his visor, he takes a snapshot of the list of his so-called transactions. "... I'll end up in the first circle of the Abyss. My fate is to be eternally flung about and spun by the winds of a violent storm. Poetic justice for a carnal criminal."
With impatience, he reaches over to her control panel and taps "MANAGE". The resulting window shows a blank space under "TRANSACTION HISTORY".
"See?" he moans, almost tearing his hair out in frustration. Next to the Dismiss button, in lieu of the word "MANAGE", there's the word "BACK".
She taps Dismiss to send her control panel away.
"Stop looking if it bothers you that much," she hisses, miffed. "Just meet your quota of a thousand saved souls to buy your way into heaven."
"You know it's not that easy. How many earth-salt luminaries do you think are just hanging around at the end of the world? Within my jurisdiction?"
"So what? At least you have a chance. Your odds are abysmal but they're certainly better than those of billions of other Terrans."
"That's exactly the point. Tell me you don't see how unjust this is, how skewed the scales are against Blinkers like me."
"My feelings about it don't matter."
"They do to me."
They end up in a glaring match and Riktor makes a tremendous effort to regain his composure. As a nervous mannerism, his fingers sweep back the temples of his slicked-back hair, shiny with animal fat. Truth be told, he isn't used to talking with Seraphim, especially Seraph women. His social circle is made up of razenecks, off-site Zephyr engineers, fellow settlers, Blinker clients and, occasionally, mobsters like Claudius Borgel.
"Please," he says. "Please tell me what's going on. Share the rest of your theory with me."
As a show of good faith, he dismisses his own control panel and motions for Zoe to return to her seat on the cot. He drags a Monobloc chair to opposite the cot and plants himself on it.
"Please," he presses. "Sit down. I'm all ears."
She just keeps looking at him warily. Then, she sits down, sticks out an index finger and says: "Don't interrupt."
He mimes a zipper over his lips and waits. She takes a deep breath.
"I think..." she begins reluctantly, sighs and then blurts out: "I think we're inside a sim."
He snorts but immediately resumes putting on a straight face, especially because she has raised her index finger again. Like a Blinker pupil at community homeschool, he lifts one hand to ask permission to speak. He doesn't wait for her to acknowledge it and says in a low voice: "A sim? Like a holo?"
She nods grimly.
"I'm sorry to throw cold water on your theory, Zoe. I don't know how life is on the Firmament but down here on Terra, everything feels real and gritty. Every cut bleeds, every wound festers. In the war, Blinker brains exploded, bones broke and dead was dead."
"Amongst your kind," she pounces on his words, "especially during the war, have you ever felt the passing of a soul?"
"A MacDougall soul?"
She nods.
MacDougall is a household name amongst Blinkers. In the early twentieth century, a physician named MacDougall, together with a team of colleagues, set out to find proof of the human soul. They spent a total of six years experimenting on dying patients at different hospices. The good doctor weighed each person on specially designed and highly sensitive weighing scales, immediately before and immediately after death. Dr. MacDougall published his results thus: The instant life ceased the opposite scale pan fell with a suddenness that was astonishing – as if something had been suddenly lifted from the body... The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce.
Although Dr. MacDougall was a respected physician, his experiments were met with ridicule by the press and the public. The ethical and religious implications of his findings were simply too alarming in his time. Dr. MacDougall then diverted his attention to capturing photographic evidence of the human soul as it departed the body. Unfortunately, he failed to establish any further scientific breakthroughs until his death.
"Yes," Riktor answers. "All the time."
"When Terrans die before their Judgment Day summons, where do their souls go?"
"Are you seriously asking me this? Even Blinker children know the answer. All prematurely released souls go to Limbo."
"That's not canonical. Even the Abaddonian locusts are supposedly authorized to only torture Terrans, not kill them. Terran survivors are supposed to want to die, to beg to die, but even that relief shall be denied them."
"So what are you saying? That Blinkers whose names have been left out of the Book of Life have no soul?"
"No, quite the opposite. Human souls are very real and they're the foundation of everything. Divine judgment, eternal punishment; they all hinge on Terrans having a soul. It's the real-life equivalent of the reality test in lucid dreaming. You know, those broken links of logic within dreams. Once you spot one, it brings about the collapse of the entire dream world."
Silence falls and stretches between them. Then he bursts out laughing.
It's her turn to glare. He stops laughing and pretends to cough.
"I'm sorry. It's just that you really sounded like a Bodhic preacher just now."
"What?" she growls.
"It's true. In Bodhischism, we have a concept called maya, which translates to illusion. It's supposed to be this magic power with which the gods can make humans believe in what isn't real. Maya is also what created and holds the physical universe together."
"I don't know about Terran religion but..."
"But that's what you're saying, isn't it? That all things, all beings are like magic and dreams. Suffering, too, is rooted in desire. The desire for material things. Take away desire and you take away suffering. Then everybody's happy. Except the Seraphim are still in heaven and 99.99 percent of Blinkers are still bound for the Abyss."
****
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आप पढ़ रहे हैं
Thou Shalt Not Kiss
रोमांसHE'D RISK AN ETERNITY IN HELL FOR A TASTE OF HER HEAVEN. In the early twenty-second century, the Rapture is no longer prophecy but history. The ravaged land is populated by the unrepentant, the desperate, and the depraved. Stringent population con...
