The New World

Ishtar

"Is everything going well for Your Excellency?", asked Paul. "Perhaps a cold drink? You're off to a hot country..."

"That's right! One of your delicious non-alcoholic cocktails will be perfect", replied the fat man reclining in the imposing armchair that occupied the entire cubicle.

"What about Brother Tom?", continued Paul, turning to the cardinal's secretary standing in the corridor.

"The same for me", said the little man curtly.

Paul had wondered several times how the cardinal, an aesthete, historian and lover of good food, put up with the daily company of this stubborn-looking secretary. He stepped out of the cubicle. Cardinal Bush was one of the company's most loyal customers, having used its services for years.

He could have made his trip from home. But like other good customers, he preferred to do it at RealTravel, where he enjoyed a warm welcome and the comfort of a cozy cubicle. Above all, he was reluctant to use his own terminal for escapades that were not always strictly orthodox. As a cardinal, his connections were probably not monitored by Network dogs, but he was a cautious man, and here everything was anonymized and erased, with guaranteed destruction of all traces.

Real Travel provided exclusive content of the highest quality, both in terms of multi-sensory experience and historical veracity, of course within the limits authorized by official history. This time, the cardinal had set his sights on Mesopotamia. Soon he would be in Babylon in the middle of ancient Past, high priest of Ishtar for the Capital district.

Paul returned a few minutes later with two tall glasses filled with a drink iridescent from pink to yellow where floated berries and leaves.

"A fruit cocktail for His Excellency... and for Brother Tom".

"Thank you, my son."

The cardinal extended his chubby arm, which protruded from a scarlet silk sleeve, and took hold of the glass. Paul gazed at him for a few seconds, pumping greedily into the liquid.

"Delicious."

"All right, then. I'll start the trip. Brother Tom? Would you like to use another cubicle like last time while you wait for His Excellency?"

Paul closed the cubicle door and accompanied the secretary down the corridor. Real Travel's three other cubicles were all free. He installed Brother Tom in the first one, quickly switched on the terminal and walked away, leaving the man who would be fine on his own, connoisseur of the place that he was. The click on his back meant he'd locked himself in for some peace and quiet.

He returned to his desk and settled in. Two screens reflected back to him images of the cabins where the two priests had taken up residence. The cardinal, his arms folded across his chest, seemed to be asleep in his armchair, which he had turned into a reclining position. The secretary was gesturing into the halo of his terminal.

Paul switched on a terminal and connected in thought. When everything was ready, he announced, "Your Excellency, have a good trip!"

Virtual travel administrators routinely invited themselves into a customer's session to check that everything was running smoothly. Despite high-security protective barriers, one was never totally safe from intrusion. To counteract minor cases of insertion of decorative elements such as banners and advertisements, automated systems were sufficient. But to counter more complex attacks, such as those from intelligent automatons or even human-guided characters, human intelligence was required. For Paul and the other RealTravel employees, it was therefore acceptable to intervene without looking too closely at what the customers were up to. This time, if he entered the Cardinal's World, it was mainly to make sure he had enough time for what he was planning to do.