Unseen Worlds: SciFi Challenges

Take me to Church

Jorge arrived early. When Moira arrived and he waved to her, her face lit up.  Deep inside him, Jorge felt something similar happen.

She shook his hand before sitting down across from him.  She ordered a beer and started to set up recording equipment.  "You don't mind do you? It's all pretty standard.  If you want anything off the record I'll turn it off."

"No, I don't mind," Jorge assured her, though he felt his stomach lurch at the suggestion that he might reveal something he didn't want shared.

He eyed his drink warily, wondering if it was about to betray him.  Moira caught the glance.  "I wasn't sure you were allowed to come to places like this," she joked mildly.

He smiled.  "Yeah, bars aren't a problem.  Just operating rooms."

She laughed at that.  He was completely entranced by her laugh.  It may have been the ugliest thing about her.  It was a loud guffaw, dumb and flat and completely unlike the rest of her.  He loved it, her ugly, stupid laugh.  He resolved to make her laugh again.

"So what's the basis behind your religion?  It's  Christian, but most denominations don't have any problems with enhancements.  Even the Pope has a cybernetic eye."

"I guess that's why I'm not Catholic," he smiled wryly.  "The Bible says we're made in God's image.  So we just can't imagine anything man made improving it."

"People aren't perfect.  If we're made it God's image, it's a rather poor likeness.  Take me, for instance.  I got my first splices in utero when my parents discovered I had a birth defect.  You think I was damned before I even took my first breath?"

Jorge shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  It wasn't that he hadn't realized there were cases like Moira's.  He'd just never had to face one before. "You can always be saved, whatever you've done or has been done to you."

"And how would I redeem myself?  Tear off my cybernetic arms?"

"The Bible says that if your left hand causes you to sin you should cut it off."

Moira's eyebrows rose but she remained quiet for a moment.  "So you would expect your followers to obey such commandments.  To swear off enhancements, even if it meant their life."

Jorge didn't expect anything of anyone.  He opened his mouth to say something but words failed him.  Moira could see it.  So she did him a kindness.  "Why don't we finish our beers and talk about something else?  We can always finish the interview another time."

Jorge could only nod. 

* * * *

Jorge had been everything Moira had hoped for.  She could feel the crisis of faith boiling under the surface of Jorge's skin. 

And yet her perfect sense of a story just waiting to be told had failed her.  When she should have pushed him she backed off.  Not once, but every time.  They met again and again.  She was supposed to be interviewing him.  But he asked as many questions as she did.  Her editor was beginning to get suspicious.  To be honest, so was she. 

"Can I make a confession?" She asked one night.

"I'm not that kind of preacher."

She laughed.  That priceless laugh that Jorge loved so much.  And then he laughed too.  And the next thing they knew they were both laughing hysterically though neither knew why.  Finally when they could both breath again Moira took a deep breath, averted her gaze and bared her soul.

"I think I'm falling in love with you." It was barely more than a whisper but the words rang in Jorge's ears.

It was the worst time possible for him to be struck speechless.  Before he could recover Moira had collected her things and run out of the pub.

* * * *

Jorge's mother had prepared his sermon as usual, but when he saw Moira in the crowd - her eyes cast down, her face long and drawn - he threw it away. 

"Saint Paul once said that when I was a child I indulged in childish things, but when I became a man I put childish things away.  For too long, I've avoided putting away childish things because it was inconvenient or uncomfortable.  Like the idea that our connection to God could ever be severed by something as trivial as a cybernetic enhancement or that we should deprive ourselves of something as vital as genetic splicing if it could save a life.  Are we so proud that we don't think God could find us behind a few meager additions?  Is our hubris so profound we think we are literally perfect?  I, for one, do not.  And I have not for a very long time.  But it took the love and acceptance of a very special person to help me find my voice.  In the coming days our church will change - maybe merely by my absence, but then again maybe in much more profound ways.  That lies with you to decide.  But I, for one, will no longer be preaching the Gospel of Humanity, unless it also be the Gospel of Inclusion.  For we are all God's Children."

When his speech was over he finally brought himself to look at Moira.  She had tears in her eyes and was laughing her special laugh.  She had finally pushed him as far as he needed to go.