The Insane Journey

Chapter 3

 Into a large stone visitors’ chamber in the Cape City Mayoral Mansion walked a tall, well-built man with thick blonde hair plastered back across his head and a substantial matching moustache. He wore a black tailored suit together with the tabbed shirt of the clergy, albeit an expensive silk example.

 “May I help you?” asked the young woman sitting at a reception desk beneath a rather drunk-looking gargoyle.

 “Why yes, my child. Would you be so kind as to tell the mayor that Reverend Phineas Forge has arrived and is at his service,” said the visitor in a deep drawl that immediately identified his origins as being the Southeastern bit of the United Evangelical States of America, or UESA.

 Like many who had been born and raised in the vast region of North America that had turned into a Christian evangelical theocracy during the last century, the Revered Phineas Forge had a very specific vision of God and His Son branded into his brain, to the point where it was an unquestionable truth. Indeed, questioning this alleged truth only made the Reverend and his kind deeply uncomfortable and occasionally aggressive.

 They had been brought up to believe in faith over facts and prayer over results. That the population of much of the rest of the world, and particularly Europa, failed to appreciate – much less beholden themselves to – the Evangelical vision, was a point of pain and concern among Phineas’s countrymen and women. Hence, preachers like Phineas in his early days were sent out with sackfuls of cash as sugar-daddy missionaries to various European cities to share the love of Jesus. Not surprisingly, it was never difficult for these missionaries to find powerful people who would happily profess their love of God, Jesus and the Evangelical Church in exchange for some of that cash. Or better still, a lot of that cash.

 Fresh out of the seminary, Phineas was sent as a junior missionary to Cape City on what should have been a temporary assignment. However, he soon came to feel that his beloved Jesus wanted him to stay longer and truly clean up this southern European city of sin. So he stayed on.

 That he had taken a fancy to a local girl was doubtless a major influence in this decision, though Phineas would have denied it. She probably also played a part in his signing up to do a master’s degree in European history at the University of Cape City, where she happened to be a student herself. Nevertheless, the course enabled Phineas to understand better the country of Europa and her people.

 As so often happens with young, idealised love, Phineas’s affection for the young local lady was eventually shattered by reality, with some assistance from Maxwell. By then, Europa had become his home as well as his religious mission, and he had stayed on for two decades, transforming from an enthusiastic youth to an obsessive, middle-aged man during those years. Today, he was considered a prominent raving religious madman in Cape City society, albeit a madman who was generous with his church’s funding.

Moreover, following the great economic recession of recent years and the resulting wave of social conservatism in what had been Europa’s hotbed of naughtiness, a large portion of society was beginning to buy into this whole religious thing. After all, if life is difficult, it’s easier to blame it on God’s will rather than on one’s own actions – or inactions. And praying for solutions is far easier for the simple minded than making solutions happen.

 Thus, after a couple of decades, Phineas finally found himself achieving some of the respect he long felt he deserved in this region he had long served.

 “Do you have an appointment, Father?” asked the receptionist.

 “Of course I have an appointment, young lady.”

 “One moment, please.”

 “Bless you, my child.”

 The receptionist raised an eyebrow while calling the mayor on the internal telephone. She was not sure she wanted to be blessed, particularly not by a loud American with an excessive moustache.