Father Eduardo Arroyo rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. The short half hour of kneeling in prayerful adoration before his God severely stiffened the joints of the fifty-seven-year-old cleric. The priest winced at the pains which lanced through his thin legs. Father Arroyo resisted the temptation to lament over how much soft tissue, ligaments and tendons, he had lost to the plague eating away at him from the inside. Instead, the priest recited Saint Paul’s words to the Colossians and made them his own as he took three faltering steps on numbed feet towards the Eucharist centered in the golden, sunburst-shaped monstrance. “I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I fill up what is lacking in your afflictions, O Christ.”
With his hands placed on the chapel altar, Father Arroyo genuflected carefully. A fiery stab of pain shot through the bending knee.
“For you, my Lord,” the priest prayed, silently offering up his pains, joining them to the tortures suffered by his loving God.
A minute later, when the pangs subsided, Arroyo pulled the lunette out of the back of the monstrance. The small, silver, crescent held the Blessed Host firmly in a groove carved into its concave edge. The priest transferred it to the tabernacle and closed its’ doors. Arroyo then bowed, pushed the horn-rimmed glasses back up the aquiline nose which dominated his broad face and finally limped out of the chapel.
The smell of roasting garlic greeted Arroyo in the hall. A heavier scent, oily and meaty, wafted through the air beneath it. His taste buds stirred to life as he made his way slowly down the long hall. With every step down the long corridor the sharp pains receded to a dull throbbing.
All three members of the parish staff were gathered in the kitchen. Johnny Chang, the priest’s deacon was sitting straight and upright at a round table centered in the room. The tall and lean-limbed young man was slicing up a small loaf of bread. Chang was the native New Yorker of the staff, baptized in the very Chinatown church where they all now served. Behind him were two nuns. Sister Josephina was a middle-aged Haitian, her dark and plump features were wrapped in the white habit of the Dominican Order. She was bent over the stove, fluffing up a pot of rice. To her left, Sister Angelica, a milk-pale and freckled young Iowan, habited in Benedictine black, was cutting up a head of lettuce on a counter beneath a bank of cupboards.
“Smells great in here,” Father Arroyo announced as he entered the kitchen.
“That would be the garlic-roasted pigeons, father,” Sister Josephina said as she slipped oven mitts over her hands. “They should be ready.”
“Good, because I’m famished enough to eat a whole flock of pigeons, sister.”
“That would be a kit of pigeons, father, not a flock of pigeons,” Sister Angelica corrected him.
“Are you certain, sister?”
“Fairly so, father.”
The priest shot his deacon a questioning look.
Johnny Chang shook his close-cropped head. “I wouldn’t challenge Our Lady of Trivial Pursuit if I were you, father. That’s never ended well for any of us.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Father Arroyo said, turning back to Sister Angelica. The Benedictine nun was grinning impishly as she divided the shredded romaine into four glass bowls. “Fine, I’m hungry enough to eat a whole kit of pigeons.”
“And I could eat the whole caboodle,” Sister Josephina added as she pulled the sizzling iron pan out of the oven. “But there were only four birds in this squadron. We’ll have to settle for one a piece, I’m afraid.”
“Bless you Sister Josephina,” Arroyo said. “You have saved me yet again from falling into the sin of gluttony.”
“Remember that next time you’re prescribing penance, father,” Sister Josephina said, placing the pan across two of the oven’s burners.
“It’s a deal, sister. Henceforth I shall insist self-flagellation be administered by nothing harsher than a wet noodle.”
“You’re too kind father.”
“Vocational hazard, my child,” Father Arroyo said taking a seat at the table. “So Johnny, how did your shift go?”
“It was quiet, father,” Johnny said, cutting the last slice. “Mr. Simmons and Mr. Highet have started coughing up blood, however. You might want to pay them a visit later tonight.”
Arroyo nodded somberly. “I’ll see them after dinner.”
The plague that was killing them and everyone on Manhattan was popularly referred to as the Mold because of the fibrous lesions it left in the wake of its passage through the body. The Mold spores initially nested themselves in the lungs before spreading throughout its host. While the steady erosion of tendons and ligaments was a constant and painful drain on the quality of life for the infected, it was the loss of the lungs that usually killed them off.
“And Mrs. Greeley, father,” Sister Angelica said while quartering a pair of tomatoes. “You should add her to tomorrow’s morning visits. That poor woman is suffering terribly. But oh my, she is so brave about it. I don’t think she has but a few days left in her.”
“I’ll make her my first stop in the morning, sister.”
“I’ve already scheduled her in,” Deacon Chang handed the priest his electronic tablet.
Father Arroyo scrolled slowly through the itinerary for their weekly dinner meeting. It was Monday afternoon, the only opportunity their busy schedules allowed for a shared meal. They used the time to take stock of their situation and plan the week ahead. There would be an accounting of foodstuffs, medicines and the other sundry supplies the parish needed to function. Schedules for visiting the sick and burying the dead would be drawn up around their shifts at the hospice and other duties. The schedule for volunteers would also be tinkered with until they were sure that the most was being made of their ever-dwindling number.
And always at these meetings, they would remember and pray for those that died during the previous week. The tablet listed eleven souls to pray for.
The Mold was deliberately designed to kill slowly, giving it a large window of opportunity to spread. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers were first exposed to the virus four years ago when three dirty bombs, detonated at major subway hubs by eco-terrorists, released its toxic spores into the air. Before the next day dawned, these unlucky ones infected tens of thousands more. When the exact nature of the attack was finally discovered on the third day, the Federal government was forced to quarantine Manhattan and round up the thousands who had carried the plague outside of the city.
FEMA set up screening centers to sift for the uninfected. Throughout the search, despite every precaution, the plague continued to spread. In the end, only a little over a million Manhattanites found their way off the island through the screenings. The rest were condemned to permanent quarantine. Six months later the first victims began to die. These initial deaths, dozens a week at first, were chiefly among the very young and the very old. Before too long however, scores and then hundreds were dying every week from every age group.
The world did what it could for the city. Food and other aid came in from every corner of the globe and an international effort was launched to find a cure. Eighteen months and three million deaths later, a vaporized inhalant which slowed the parasite’s growth was created and streamlined by the World Health Organization into mass production. Two years and two million more deaths after the introduction of what came to be called, the Mist treatment, a cure remained as elusive as ever.
Father Arroyo regretted that hope was even more elusory. The overwhelming majority of the remaining two million Manhattanites (we no longer think of ourselves as New Yorkers, reflected the priest) thought of themselves as good-as-dead rather than still alive. A pall of morbid fatalism hung over the city thicker and more poisonous than any cloud of smog ever did.
The Mold Plague reduced Manhattan to a third-world leper colony. The bicycle had since become a major means of transportation on the island, second only to walking. There were very few residents who could still afford to keep an automobile. And there were few among them that saw any point to it. One rarely saw one on the streets anymore, except for the gutted and burnt husks that littered the no-man-lands north of forty-second street. The island’s once unrivaled public transportation system was reduced to a half-dozen buses and her fleets of yellow cabs were replaced by swarms of pedal and moped-powered rickshaws. Wall Street was no longer a titan among the giants of financial centers. Lower Manhattan could only boast now of being the world’s largest call center. The offices of the once-proud, once powerful corporate elite were now filled with workers manning phone banks. Instead of juggling the fortunes of empires, these workers now guided customers from around the world through software installations, product updates, program downloads, financial statements and endless billing queries for thousands of online services. And they did it for a pittance, working eight to twelve hour shifts for a small stipend of cash over the cost of their housing, food and their monthly supply of the life-prolonging inhalant.
“Oh, and Bill McQueen showed up asking for another bottle of Mist,” Chang added.
“That’s the third time in two weeks for Billy,” said Sister Josephine.
“Multiple hits of the Mist produce an addictive, speed-like high,” Sister Angelina said as she brought the salad bowls to the table. “Its use as a narcotic is getting out of hand, I’m afraid.”
“There seems to be no good the devil can’t twist to his vile purpose,” Sister Josephina added with a shake of her wimpled head.
“I’m afraid not, sister,” Arroyo concurred.
“People are being mugged for their bottles,” Sister Angelina added. “Others are reducing themselves to prostitution, trading sexual favors for hits of Mist. It’s tragic.”
“Billy’s getting creepy about it too,” Chang continued.
“How so?” Arroyo asked.
“I got the distinct impression that he was casing the place,” Chang said.
“It was only a matter of time before the addicts realized we were accumulating a stash of extra bottles from the dead,” Sister Angelina said, fetching oil and vinegar bottles from a cupboard. “Maybe we should hide them and the other medicines, or lock them up?”
“Maybe,” said Father Arroyo. “But then, if Billy or some other addict broke in, they might tear the place apart looking for them. We might consider…”
The phone chirped to life.
“I’ll get it,” Johnny Chang said and pushed himself away from the table. He stepped to the kitchen’s doorway and plucked the phone from its wall mounted base. “Church of the Transfiguration; this is deacon Chang speaking. How may I help you?”
Chang nodded as he listened. “Yes, he’s right here.” Johnny cupped his palm over the mouthpiece as he handed the phone to Father Arroyo. “It’s Mrs. Sawyer. She sounds upset.”
“Hello Bernice,” the priest said when he took the phone from his deacon. “How are you?”
“I’m fine father,” Bernice Sawyer answered in a hushed, strangely strained voice. “It’s Mrs. O’Toole I’m calling about.”
“What about Mrs. O’Toole, Bernice? Has she..?”
“No father, she’s still with us. It’s just… It’s her children. They’re here with her and they brung them people with them…them and their machine.”
Father Arroyo felt a knot forming in his intestines. “Machine? Are you talking about Singularity Dynamics, Bernice?”
“Yes, yes. It’s them. They’re here, them and their machine.”
The priest shot to his feet and immediately regretted the sudden movement when his left knee nearly buckled under a sharp, wrenching pang. His chair tipped over behind him, hitting the ground with a jarring crash. “Have they attached her to the machine, Bernice?”
“Not yet, father. They just got here, like I said. There’s a couple of them messing and fiddling with it and the third one, she’s just talking to Mrs. O’Toole and the children.”
“Get the phone to Mrs. O’Toole, Bernice. I must talk to her.”
“Yes, father. Hold a sec.”
The priest waited. The knot in his guts tightened. After nearly a minute he could hear voices, low and seemingly distant.
The first was a male voice. “What is it, Bernice?”
“It’s a phone call for your mother, Mr. Kevin sir.”
“A call for mother on your phone?”
“It’s Father Arroyo.”
“I’ll take that,” Kevin said. “Hello?”
“Hello Kevin, this is Father Arroyo. I would like to talk to your mother, if I may.”
“I’m afraid you may not, father.”
“Please Kevin, I must talk to her. Bernice tells me Singularity Dynamics is there.”
“It’s none of your business father, if they’re here or not.”
“Please son, you mustn’t let them attach her to that infernal machine. They’ll kill her!”
“First of all, I’m not your son. Secondly, it’s the Mold that is killing my mother. And thirdly, it is the machine, which you superstitiously denounce as infernal, that will save her. Mother knows it. She wants to be uploaded.”
“I’m her priest, young man. I must insist on hearing it from her.”
Kevin snorted. “Take a look at a calendar sometime, priest. It’s 2049. Your church is no longer in a position to insist on anything.”
“Please Kevin!”
“Buh-bye.”
The line went dead. Father Arroyo dropped chin to chest and clenched his fist around the phone. He closed his eyes and silently begged God for strength. Inhaling, he raised his head again. “Johnny, would you please fetch me my stole and viaticum pouch.”
Chang nodded and left the kitchen.
The priest turned to the nuns. “I’m sorry to bail on our dinner date, ladies.”
“Would you like me to come along, father?” Sister Angelica asked.
“Thank you sister, but no; you stay and get some rest before your shift.”
“Yes, father.”
“We’ll keep your dinner warm, father,” Sister Josephine said, setting aside one of the plates she had prepped.
“Thank you,” Father Arroyo said. “Maybe I’ll have my appetite back by the time I return.”
“I’ll see if I can hail you a rickshaw, father,” Sister Angelica said, leaving the kitchen.
“It’s Mrs. O’Toole’s kids, isn’t it?” Sister Josephine asked, covering the plate in foil. “They’re putting her up to it, pressuring her?”
“I don’t want to presume anything, sister.”
“But Kevin wouldn’t even let you talk to her,” Sister Josephine pointed out.
“No, but none of Emma’s children have ever had any fondness for the Church. I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess as to what’s going on over there right now. I do intend to find out however.”
“You don’t think she will go in for that uploading nonsense, like Mr. Burns did last month?”
“Not if I can help it, sister.”
“Be careful out there,” Sister Josephina said. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“I will.”
Johnny Chang returned. The stole was wrapped around the small leather pouch. Arroyo took them from him and stuffed them into his left cassock pocket.
“I’ll come with you, father,” Chang offered.
“Absolutely not, Johnny. You have just come off a sixteen-hour shift. Here, take the phone and text Mrs. Sawyer. Tell her I’m coming over. Tell her to stall them if necessary.”
“But father you’re not…”
“I’ll be alright Johnny. I promise. It’s nothing a shot of Mist can’t get me through.” Arroyo pulled an inhaler out of his right cassock pocket, put it to his mouth and squeezed. He breathed in the fine vapor the pump ejected, held his breath for a few seconds and then exhaled slowly. “That should get me there and back. You stay. Eat and get some sleep after the meeting, the both of you. We’re not going to remain the greatest parish staff in the city if we don’t get our rest.”
“Yes, father,” the deacon and the nun responded in unison, a wan smile on each face.
“And pray,” the priest said. “Pray for the soul of Emma O’Toole.”
Father Eduardo Arroyo made the sign of the cross in the air, blessing the two before hurrying out of the kitchen. He made his way back down the long hallway, past the chapel and to the rectory’s front door. Sister Angelica was outside standing at the curb, looking one way and then the other for a rickshaw.
“No luck, huh?”
“I’m afraid not, father.”
“They’re all taken at this hour.”
There were pairs of bicycles hanging on either side of the entrance. Arroyo pulled his off of its wall hooks and, grabbing it by the handlebar, carefully guided the bike down the stoop steps.
“You be careful, father.”
“I will,” Arroyo assured the nun. He blessed her and pushed off the curb, grimacing from the pain produced by the first several pedal strokes.
Arroyo rounded the corner onto Mott Street and peddled past the simple Georgian façade of the Church of the Transfiguration. It was the oldest Catholic Church in Manhattan and after four years of the Mold Plague, it was the only Catholic Church still open on the island. Three churches (a Presbyterian, a Baptist and Father Arroyo’s Catholic parish) as well as a synagogue and a Buddhist temple were all that remained open for those few who sought heavenly succor from the desperation deepening all around them in the once-greatest city in the world.
It wasn’t like this in the beginning. Almost immediately as the deaths began, pews all over the city had filled up with the Church’s prodigal sons and daughters as well as many a secularist seeking penance, conversion and the peace they brought. The island’s churches, mosques, temples and other houses of God also experienced similar surges in attendance. It was a short-lived phenomenon, however. Death thinned the ranks almost as quickly as despair had swelled them. Many of the others, survivors of those first harrowing years, were unable to sustain their new or re-kindled faiths against so dark a tide of death. They left quietly and all-too-soon.
Father Arroyo crossed Columbus Park, riding carefully through the narrow paths between graves. So many deaths in so short a time had turned the island’s green spaces into cemeteries. There were at least a dozen graves around him over which he had performed the burial rite. These were the lucky ones who had loved ones to bury them. Too many died alone now, bereft of any comforter, their bodies dumped unceremoniously into the streets by neighbors. The Sanitation Department was tasked with picking up the bodies. They ferried them across the river to Ellis Island which the Federal government had converted into a crematorium.
Beyond the park, Father Arroyo turned the bike onto Worth Street and Club Sodom loomed loudly into view. It was the largest of the orgy clubs which had sprung up everywhere to serve the growing number of Manhattanites who sought their solace in mere sex. The priest considered the club as hellish a sign of the times as was the column of ashen cloud that rose from the ovens in the city’s former port of entry. The building once housed the Supreme Court of New York State but was now a hollowed-out, drug and alcohol fueled orgy pit. Even a block away the priest heard the incessant throbbing of bass-driven dance music like the beating of a savage heart. He couldn’t begin to imagine what monstrous decibels the noise reached within the building’s granite walls. Outside, long lines had already formed to enter the maelstrom. There were men and women, young and old, all of them hoping to drown their despair in blind, slavish surrender to concupiscence.
The priest rode by quickly on the other side of the street. He prayed for the poor souls as he passed them on the way into Thomas Paine Park. Arroyo was still praying when three youths suddenly leapt at him from a nearby bench. He was knocked from his bike, landing hard on his right side. One of the kids grabbed the bicycle, mounted it and rode away giggling maniacally.
The other two, a tall Hispanic and short black youth, looked Arroyo over as he struggled to get up off his knees. A cursory sweep of the surroundings failed to turn up his glasses.
“Aww shit, man, we rolled us a priest,” the taller of the two observed. “He ain’t gonna have nothing.”
“Won’t know till we roll him proper,” said the shorter, flint-eyed assailant.
“I don’t have anything you’d want,” Arroyo said. “You’ve got my bike; let me be.”
The short one stepped closer. “You don’t mind if I check for myself, priest?”
“Please, just let me go,” Arroyo said rising to his feet. “Someone needs my help.”
“What about my needs, father?”
“We got us needs too, padre,” the Hispanic echoed with a laugh.
“I told you, I don’t have anything you would want.”
“Which tells me you’ve got something hidden in that dress of yours,” the black thug said closing the distance between them.
“Please,” Arroyo said. “I’m on my way to take care of a dying woman. Let me pass.”
“I’m dying too, priest. Take care of me!” The young man plunged his right hand into the left cassock pocket, coiling his fingers around the viaticum pouch. “What’s this?”
“It’s our Blessed Lord,” Father Arroyo said, struggling with the short but solidly built mugger, turning and twisting his body, trying to writhe out of the thief’s hold. “It’s the Eucharist, you mustn’t touch it. You’ll defile it.”
The young robber yanked out the pouch and stole. “It’s mine now!”
The priest managed to slip his hand through the pouch strap as it was pulled from his pocket. Arroyo tried to pull it free of the young man’s grip but he was not strong enough. The thug swung his arm left and then right, laughing as he jerked the priest one way and then the other.
Desperate not to allow the Blessed Host to fall into barbarian hands, Father Arroyo threw a right jab that, to his surprise, connected squarely on the rogue’s nose. The young man yelped and jumped back, releasing the pouch. Arroyo clutched it to his chest and took a step back. The Priest’s stole was still clenched in the thief’s right fist while his left hand was cupped over his wounded nose.
“Yo, that ain’t right,” the taller assailant complained while he took a faltering step forward. “Priests ain’t allowed to punch people in the face. Nah, man!”
Father Arroyo watched his assailant’s eyes narrow and water from the pain he inflicted and he felt the sting of guilt. “I’m sorry, but…”
Seeing past the tears, Arroyo watched the young man’s glare darken with murderous intent. The guilt was quickly forgotten, eclipsed by the sudden fear that he would be strangled with his own stole. “Jesus! Mary and Joseph!” he cried out.
Some long buried reverence for the Holy Family stopped the Hispanic mugger in his tracks and compelled him to cross himself clumsily. There was no such trace of religion in his partner who took a step towards the priest. At a prompting that some might have said was urged by sheer panic but Father Arroyo could only attribute to divine inspiration, he reached into his right cassock pocket and pulled out his Mist inhaler. He held it over his head long enough for both thugs to get a good look at it before throwing it as far from him as possible. After only the slightest hesitation the two young men scrambled after the inhaler. The short thug even dropped the stole as he bolted after the sprayer. The priest swept up his stole and ran off as quickly as he could.
Arroyo stopped when he reached Broadway, the western edge of the park. He was breathless and his ankles, knees and hips were ablaze with pain. He looked back to make certain that he was not being pursued. He wasn’t. The Hispanic thief was running east, sucking on the inhalant as his partner gave chase. Father Arroyo said a quick prayer of thanks as he returned his stole and pouch to his pocket. He then took a minute to catch his breath and collect his wits.
His wits were easier to gather than his breath. His chest felt tight. His breathing was labored. He rubbed his breast, trying to soothe the heart and lungs within. The beating of his heart slowed gradually but his lungs continued to burn with each inhalation. The burning in his lungs became an irritating itch deep in his bronchial tubes. He pulled out his handkerchief and managed to cover his mouth as the coughing fit began.
Arroyo doubled over from the pain. The wracking cough then drove him to his knees. The light crowd bustling up and down Broadway merely glanced at him as they passed. It was a sight they had all seen too often, an unwelcome reminder of the death that awaited them all. If he keeled over and died, the priest knew that his body would be stripped of everything of value and left for the Sanitation Department to pick up. When the coughing fit passed and his eyes were able to focus again, Arroyo saw blood on his handkerchief.
“My friend, upload today and end your suffering forever!”
Father Arroyo rose to his feet and straightened out to face a smiling middle-aged woman whose makeup seemed to have been applied nearly as thickly as the shoulder pads of her familiar neon-green blazer. The priest looked from the Singularity Dynamics logo stitched into her jacket breast pocket to her wide open eyes.
The woman’s smile collapsed upon sighting the clerical collar. Her eyes narrowed with recognition. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Get thee behind me, Satan!”
“What a relic,” she said, turned on her heels and walked away.
The priest took another look at the handkerchief and the dark splotches which augured his approaching death. ‘Not my will,‘ he prayed silently. ‘Your will be done, O Lord.’ He folded the handkerchief and returned it to his pocket while casting a final, contemptuous glance at the retreating figure of the woman from Singularity Dynamics. She was headed north on Broadway, offering brochures to all she passed.
Consciousness digitization, its proponents hailed it as a true miracle, a cybernetic wonder that offered humanity true salvation and genuine immortality. The idea of digitally replicating the human mind was over a century old but with as many neurons in the brain as there were stars in the universe, the very idea of even mapping the brain, let alone replicating and uploading the mind into a computer, had been thought of as the stuff of science fiction. Three years ago however, Singularity Dynamics Corporation, a small Artificial Intelligence company announced to the world that they had achieved just such a breakthrough. They claimed that their cumbersomely named procedure, Electrochemoprotophotosis, could map the brain down to the microtubule level, creating a detailed model that they were then able to reproduce as software. The only drawback was that the brain was electrocuted by the mapping process, giving up its ghost even as it gave up its blueprint.
Singularity Dynamic’s young and charismatic CEO downplayed the fatal drawback. “Yes, the organic medium of consciousness is destroyed by the flash of high energy particles which our mapping process subjects it to,” he admitted to his critics. “But that is a small matter compared to what the procedure yields. Ladies and gentlemen, Electrochemoprotophotosis is nothing less than the gate to eternal life. It is true salvation. Transferring our consciousness from wetware to software will make us immortal. We’re talking about the death of death! If ever there was a genuine miracle, this is it!”
When the story on Singularity Dynamics Corporation and its fantastic claims first broke, Father Arroyo had dismissed it all as snake-oil for the computer age. The priest was not fooled by the bells and whistles of Singularity Dynamic’s ‘gift’ to humanity. It was a false hope. No, it was worse. It was a diabolical lie. Their much-hailed cybernetic miracle amounted to nothing more than another invitation to kill oneself.
He never imagined that anything would come of it.
A year later however, he was dismayed to read that the corporation was flourishing, selling their service around the world. The terminally ill, the depressed, and even the more morbidly curious devotees of transhumanism were throwing money at the company, hand over fist, for the privilege of being uploaded into the new Empyrean of cyberspace. In hindsight, the priest realized that he should not have been surprised. A burgeoning suicide industry, every bit as homicidal as the abortion industry had arisen out of the culture of death that gripped the world. Suicide hotlines were now as likely to offer would-be suicides encouragement and instructions as they were dissuasion. All over the globe, clean and clinical abattoirs had opened up with names like Dignity Houses, Mercy Hostels and Peace Homes for those who wished to die in comfortable, controlled settings where their lethal injections were administered by smiling counselors in pastel-colored lab coats. Those on a budget or those merely wishing to die at home or in private could visit their pharmacists and readily avail themselves of either the Doctor Kevorkian or Socrates brands of suicide kits.
The priest made it the subject of one of his sermons during the height of the company’s cross-media public relations campaign blitz. “Singularity Dynamics’ promise of consciousness digitization is just the latest innovation offered by the growing suicide industry,” he told his parish. “Suicide, euthanasia, sodomy, drug addiction, abortion, terrorism, war, all these seemingly separate threads are in fact interwoven. Together they make up the seamless garment of the Anti-Christ. It is this, his home-spun culture of death, which he would have become humanity’s burial shroud.”
Six months ago Singularity Dynamics partnered with the Federal government and, with much fanfare, began offering its service for free to Manhattanites. It was a step too far for Father Arroyo. When the company hung its’ shingle on Liberty Street, the priest took the fight, bullhorn and clutch of protesters in hand, to its front door. Father Arroyo even confronted the company’s CEO via satellite on the very night of the protest.
CNN’s moderator began the exchange with the question: “Just what is it about Singularity Dynamics that you object to, Father Arroyo?”
“The short answer to that would be that I object to them selling desperate people a false hope.”
Caleb Sorenson, the company’s bronzed and white-maned CEO wasted no time responding. “The charge of peddling false hope is a farcical one, coming from a priest.”
Arroyo disregarded the slight and continued. “The objections to Mr. Sorenson’s claims are neither merely nor exclusively religious. He has many critics among scientists who feel he is not fully representing what his company has actually accomplished. More than a few have said that Singularity Dynamics has created nothing more than a massively comprehensive quote machine run on an, admittedly, highly advanced and dynamic expert systems recursive search program.”
“Even scientists can be tempted to denigrate what they don’t understand,” Sorenson said with a dismissive shrug.
“We could all come to understand exactly what you have accomplished if you would be good enough to open source the programming,” Arroyo suggested.
Sorenson shook his snowy head. “That’s proprietary information that Singularity Dynamics is not obliged to divulge.”
“I see,” the priest said with a sage nod of his small head. “You disparage faith when it’s placed in the claims of religion but insist upon it for the claims of your corporation. I would’ve thought you’d appeal to reason and science.”
“I do,” Sorenson said. “Any reasonable person seeing the results of electroprotophotosis would conclude that the science behind it is sound, which is more than can be said for your profession’s claim to regularly turn crackers into God.”
“Testimonials of duped customers do not count as results produced,” the priest pressed on.
“The same could be said of the testimony of your faithful, priest.”
“Attacking my church and her faithful doesn’t advance your cause, Mr. Sorenson. Providing some scientific proof of your claims would.”
“Our proof, as I’ve said, is in our results,” Sorenson insisted. “Our procedure has already granted immortality to more individuals than has your church’s two thousand-plus years of Hail Mary’s and holy hosannas. Your church can only offer the world the promise of eternal life. My company delivers it!”
“You cannot grant people what they already possess.”
“What do you mean, Father Arroyo?” the news anchor intervened.
“I mean that we are already immortal souls,” Arroyo answered.
“Souls?” Sorenson all but spat the word out. “I’ve never seen a soul. Have either of you?”
“Well, it’s a tricky question really…” the news anchor responded.
The priest shook his head emphatically. “No it’s not. I see souls everywhere, every day. I’m talking with two souls right now.”
“No, priest,” Sorenson said with a wag of his finger. “What we have here is three human minds communicating with each other, or trying to at any rate.”
“That begs the question Mr. Sorenson,” the news anchor said. “Has anyone ever seen a mind?”
“Yes,” the young CEO answered. “Mind is just the name we give to the consciousness produced by neural activity. We can see a mind, albeit indirectly, when we watch a brain at work. The priest can point to no such corollary for the existence of souls.”
“Like all devotees of materialism, Mr. Sorenson asserts that consciousness is produced by the brain, even though all that neuroscience has been able to determine is that there is a correlation between thought and brain activity,” Father Arroyo responded. “However, as any first year science major could tell you, correlation is not necessarily causation. Mr. Sorenson cannot prove that our minds are created by our brains any more than he can prove that his company can convert them into software. And as for the soul, science, which is limited to the study and measurement of the physical universe, can neither prove nor disprove the existence of our immaterial souls.”
“Well, that’s mighty convenient for your profession, priest.”
“It’s no less so for the quackery you’re peddling as science.”
“There’s real science to consciousness digitization, certainly more than there is to the magic cookies you pass out on Sundays.”
And on it went for the five minute long segment. In the end, Caleb Sorenson walked away from the exchange the latest hero for the New Atheists and their secularist hordes. Father Eduardo Arroyo became the butt of jokes, ‘the magic cookie man.’ Despite the priest’s protests, Singularity Dynamics successfully set up shop in Manhattan. They plastered the town with billboards and sent out green-blazered missionaries inviting the populace to shorten their misery by uploading their consciousness. Commercials featuring teary testimonials of family and friends talking with uploaded loved ones on their laptops and smartphones saturated the airwaves and the net. As a further inducement, the company offered to bequeath its waived fee to whatever charity or person the volunteer chose. In short order, Singularity Dynamics began uploading upwards of a hundred islanders a month.
Roused by this latest encounter with the enemy, Father Arroyo urged himself onward across Broadway, dodging bikers and rickshaws. Two blocks west of Broadway the crowds began to thin. The red-bricked towers of Battery Park loomed in the distance. The setting sun was sinking slowly below their roof lines. Arroyo quickened his pace but, rushing proved a mistake. Halfway over the footbridge which crossed the Westside Highway, the priest was stopped for several minutes by another violent coughing fit.
When the coughing fit passed, Father Arroyo straightened up slowly, grabbing the rail tightly against his light-headedness and, with great effort, willed himself forward through the swirling fog in his head. Beyond the bridge the priest made his way over the meandering walkways between towers until he found the right building.
Inside, a uniformed concierge looked up from an electronic tablet when Arroyo entered. “May I help…?”
“O’Toole. Apartment twenty-nine-C,” the priest said, rushing past his station to the elevators.
“You can’t just go up unannounced,” the concierge protested.
“Emergency,” Father Arroyo said tapping his collar with one hand and pushing the Up button with the other.
A pair of polished bronze doors split open on his right.
“I’ll have to call, father,” the concierge said. “Let them know you’re on the way up.”
“You do that,” the priest said and entered the elevator.
Father Arroyo steeled himself with prayer as the elevator shot upward. A short walk down a carpeted corridor led him to apartment 29-C. The priest took a deep breath and pushed the door buzzer. It was opened almost immediately by Bernice Sawyer. She only opened it a foot wide and wedged her lean frame in the narrow breach. Her dark, age-splotched face appeared strained to the priest; taut with tension. Arroyo sensed she was having a hard time meeting his gaze. “Hello father,” she whispered through the tight, thin line of her lips.
“Hello Bernice. I’m not too late, am I?”
“No, father, she’s still… still with us.”
“Then for goodness sake, Bernice, let me through.”
“I’m sorry father,” she said opening the door wide enough to let Arroyo through. “I’m sorry father,” she said again as he passed her on his way to the master bedroom. “I’m sorry…”
The priest stopped before the door and knocked. “Emma, this is Father Eduardo. May I come in?”
After a few beats of silence the door opened onto a crowded bedroom. Emma O’Toole was in her bed, a canopied, king-sized bed squeezed between two large windows that looked down on the Hudson River. A pair of the gunboats that enforced the quarantine passed each other on the stretch of dark water framed by the north window. Emma looked older, weaker and much sicker than when last Arroyo visited her a mere three weeks ago. Her body was a pale gray and glistened with sweat. Her breath whistled lightly through the narrow constrictions that still allowed air into her lungs. He knew that her every breath came with searing pain. She was near death; the priest guessed that she had at most a couple of days of life left in her. Emma’s head was shaved, exacerbating her gauntness, and it was studded with wireless leads taped to her scalp. Her eyes were hooded and they struggled at first to focus on Arroyo, but after a short while they lit up with a slight gleam of recognition. Emma O’Toole managed a weak smile for her priest.
On either side of the dying woman sat her two daughters, each one holding a mother’s hand in theirs. Edith, the middle child, was a mousy young woman with brown hair that fell in flat, lusterless sheets to her shoulders. Arroyo recalled her as a pleasant young lady with an unfortunate predilection for New Age movements. The youngest girl, Eva sat across from her. Her sharply -chiseled head was crowned by a blond buzz cut. Her earlobes were pierced, hollowed out by black, rubber rings wide as pennies. Eva, the priest recalled, was outright hostile to the Church, though the animus seemed to be more philosophical to Arroyo than it was personal. She was one of scores of protestors who demonstrated outside of his church three years ago when Father Arroyo publicly rebuked the Health and Human Services Chief, insisting that his parish would neither cooperate or comply with the birth control mandate HHS imposed on the island. Behind the door, still gripping its knob was Kevin, Emma’s eldest child. Gaunt, gray and stoop-shouldered, he appeared much older than his twenty-seven years. Kevin had been studying to be a doctor before the Mold changed everything, though the priest remembered his mother being concerned that his partying at school would make earning a medical degree very difficult. No one would ever know now.
The O’Toole family had adapted quickly to the changes suffered by Manhattan. They took over one of the island’s many abandoned restaurants and made themselves as comfortable a life as was possible in the dying city. Bernice Sawyer had been hired on as Emma’s housekeeper and nursemaid after Mr. O’Toole’s death a year ago. Arroyo looked from one of Emma’s children to the other. The siblings stared at the priest with unabashed distaste in their eyes.
There were a total of five strangers in the room with Emma and her children and they stared at Arroyo with an odd air of expectancy. The first two, a young man and a woman, were beside the North window. The woman was sitting behind a U-shaped, waist-high console of colored buttons and lit screens. The man stood behind her left shoulder. Singularity Dynamics was etched across the center of the console and stitched into the breast pockets of their neon green polos. The trio of strangers which rounded out the tableaux consisted of a middle-aged brunette and two young men. She was tall, sharply dressed and wearing a microphone and earpiece. The two young men were dressed casually. Their faces were half-hidden by the large video cameras they wielded. The cameras were emblazoned with the A and M logo of the reality show, Apocalypse Manhattan. One of the cameramen stood by the South window and he had his lens aimed at Arroyo. The second young man was off to the priest’s right, filming mother and daughters.
Father Arroyo realized with a painful wrenching in his guts that he had just walked into an episode of the salacious television series. It was the most popular of the reality television shows which tried to squeeze as much drama as they could from the moral decay and slow death of the city’s population. Did he stumble upon the filming or had they known he would come tonight, the priest wondered? The answer came to him immediately. He turned to look back at the hall. Bernice Sawyer was standing there, watching sheepishly. When their eyes met, Bernice lowered her head, turned and retreated down the hallway.
Oh, Bernice, thought the priest, how did they get to you? How much did they offer you? One soul at a time, he told himself with a sigh, turned back and walked to the foot of the bed. “Emma! Daughter, what have they done to you?”
“We haven’t done anything to her, priest,” Eva spat out. “This is what our mother wants.”
“Then she shouldn’t have any problem telling me so herself,” Arroyo snapped back.
“She’s very weak, father,” Edith said.
The priest glared at the technicians from Singularity Dynamics. “Just the way you vultures like them, no?”
The technicians did not respond.
“We didn’t ask you here, father,” Kevin said behind him. “Not even mother.”
The priest turned to the son. “No Kevin, I know that you didn’t ask me here, certainly not to pray over your mother. I know it was these…” Arroyo pointed at the cameramen and the woman with the headset. “…these peddlers of filth who used Bernice to lure me here. And for what, ratings and thirty pieces of silver? Tell me your mother is worth more than that to you and your sisters.”
“We love our mother,” Edith protested. “That’s why we’re doing this.”
“We’re doing this?” asked the priest. “I thought it was your mother’s doing.”
“It is,” said Eva. “It’s for the best. Everyone’s best. Momma agrees.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear her say it.”
“Fine, go ahead and ask her then,” Kevin said. “She’ll tell you.”
“Emma,” Father Arroyo waited for the old woman’s eyes to focus on him again. “Emma, is this your idea?”
“Don’t be mad at the children, Father Eduardo,” Emma said in a small, raspy voice. “They love me, they do.”
“If they truly loved you, they would disconnect you from that infernal machine and they would throw these monsters out of here!” Arroyo said with a gesture to the techs and video crew. “And you Emma, if you love God, you will refuse to go through with this. Suicide is a sin. You know that Emma, a grave and mortal sin!”
“But it won’t kill me,” Emma said with a slight shake of her head. “They said so. Promised…”
“They’re lying to you Emma,” the priest said grabbing the footboard and leaning forward. “They’re liars; sons of perdition, all of them!”
“But my friend, Rachel,” Emma protested. “And Brandon, my old boss, he uploaded too. I’ve talked to them on the computer. They both told me they’re alive, Father. Rachel and Brandon, they both told me it really works. They said it’s true.”
“It’s not true, Emma. It’s an illusion. It’s just clever algorithms and fancy programming using the tons of personal data each of us has generated to create virtual personalities. That’s all there is to it. None of it is real. Our salvation is in God, Emma. It’s not in software. You know that.”
“Immortality,” the old woman’s eyes widened. “We can become immortal, father.”
“We are already immortal, Emma,” said the priest. “Our souls are immortal, undying creations. You will live forever, Emma; with or without that contraption, you will live forever my daughter. You need not worry yourself over that. Worry instead about where you will spend eternity.”
Emma’s eyes welled with tears. “I’m a good person, father,” she said through shallow breaths.
“Yes, you are Emma, so don’t risk eternal hellfire by throwing God’s gift of life away,” the priest pleaded.
“I’m afraid, father.”
Father Arroyo stepped around to Edith’s side of the bed, sat on its edge and cupped Emma’s wrist in his hand. “I know that you are my daughter. We all are, myself included. Offer up your fear to our Lord. He will take it from you.”
Twin streams of tears spilled down the old woman’s face. “And the pain father, it never ends. Not even with medicine, not for long anyway.”
“Offer up the pain, my child. The fear and the pain, offer it all up.”
“So much pain,” Emma stammered through a stifled sob. “I can’t afford… my children can’t… I can’t have them do… they shouldn’t suffer for me… I can’t.”
“I’ll help them to help you,” Arroyo offered. “We have pain killers at the church. Sister Josephine brought you over some with her last visit, didn’t she? We’ve got more. We’ve some money too if ever we need to buy extra from the black market. The Vatican bends over backwards to keep us supplied, you see. So please, let me continue helping you and your kids.”
“It never ends, father, not with the Mist or the pills or… it never ends and I’m so tired,” Emma said with a slow swaying of her head. “I’m too tired to fight anymore.”
“You must fight!”
“I can’t.”
“You must, Emma.”
“Aren’t you listening to her?” Eva hissed across the bed. “She doesn’t want to fight anymore.”
“She’s suffering so much, father,” Edith added. “Shouldn’t we end her suffering if we’re able?”
“I know, Emma. I know that you’re suffering but our Lord never asks more of us than we can bear. Ask him for the grace to endure until the end.”
“I can’t father,” Emma said through wheezing breaths. “I just can’t fight anymore.”
“I know you can, Emma,” said the priest. “With God’s grace, you will endure to the end.” Arroyo reached for one of the wireless leads taped to her scalp. “Let’s take these things off you.”
Kevin grabbed Arroyo from behind and yanked him off the bed. “Oh, no you don’t, priest. You will not make my mother endure more pain than she has to.” Kevin knelt at his mother’s side. “Don’t listen to him, momma. He’s just a superstitious little man. We’re your family. We want what’s best for you.”
“That’s right mother,” Edith said nodding. “No loving God would demand this much suffering from you.”
“Let go mother,” Eva cooed. “End your suffering and ours. It’s breaking our hearts watching you go through all this needless pain.”
Emma O’Toole nodded weakly, looking from one to another of her children. “Okay, my loves, I’m ready. I’m ready to let go.” She turned to Arroyo. “Father Eduardo, would you give me Communion one last time?”
“Absolutely not,” said the priest. “Not if you intend on killing yourself.”
“Don’t be cruel, Father,” Edith pleaded. “You’re her priest. You should comfort her, especially right now.”
“Not at the cost of profaning the Blessed Sacrament,” said Arroyo.
“It’s a piece of bread, for God’s sake, it’s a symbolic gesture which will ease her mind,” Edith’s voice sharpened with exasperation.
“It is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
“I don’t care if it is the moon and the stars wrapped in a friggin’ rainbow,” Eva yelled. “Let her have it!”
Father Arroyo fixed his attention on Emma O’Toole. “If you want Communion Emma you will have to demonstrate your firm intention of rejecting suicide by allowing me to remove those things from your head and throwing these ghouls out of your apartment. Give me leave to throw them out and I will grant you absolution and give you Communion.”
“You’re one sadistic son of a bitch, priest,” Kevin said.
“What do you expect from the man who insists that babies be born into this hell of ours?” Eva added.
Father Arroyo ignored them. “What will it be, Emma?”
“I’m sorry, Father Eduardo,” Emma O’Toole said. “And I forgive you.” She turned her head to the techs and nodded at them. “I’m ready.”
The male tech leaned over her and fitted a wire mesh cap over the relays. “When you are ready Mrs. O’Toole, speak the words ‘upload now.’ Speak them as out loud and as clear as you can and we will initiate the procedure. You will see a bright light and feel a slight surge of electricity run through your body. It will not be painful but it might be startling. It will last only a moment. In a blink of the eye you will be uploaded. All your pain and suffering will be over. Have you understood these instructions?”
“I have.”
“Good,” said the technician. “Then we will wait for your command.” He returned to his colleague by the window.
Father Arroyo prayed for a miracle as Emma O’Toole and her children said their goodbyes. The priest looked on the faces of mother and children. There was not a dry eye among them. The children held her hands and each other’s. They squeezed them tightly and kissed them. They kissed their mother’s fevered brow, her sunken cheeks; the daughters sobbed at the breasts that nursed them. The son wept at his mother’s feet. They told her that they loved her again and again. And Emma comforted her children as best she could with tears and kisses, with trembling caresses and protestations of her own love.
Arroyo looked on the scene and his heart ached with pity and shuddered with fear. There before his eyes, behind the human tragedy was the devil’s darkest deed, the perversion of love. Satan’s twisting and turning of love to his own vile end, the defiance of the Creator God; the deliberate throwing away of God’s gift of life was as clear a display of the devil’s fearful power as any the priest had ever witnessed.
Suddenly overwhelmed with rage, made desperate by it, Father Arroyo rushed the Singularity Dynamics console. He tried to overturn it but couldn’t get a good enough grasp on it before the male technician shoved him away from the machine. Arroyo lunged again, trying to push past the larger and younger man. The cameramen shuffled along the walls of the bedroom angling for the best shots of the action. The priest was pushed back again, slammed against a heavy, claw-footed wardrobe.
“Please don’t, father,” Emma called out to him. “I choose to do this.”
Father Eduardo Arroyo pulled the pouch out of his cassock pocket, opened it and pulled out the pyx which contained the Eucharist. He clasped the small gold box between his palms, dropped to his knees and prayed to the greater power within it. The priest beseeched the Blessed Sacrament, he begged his Lord, Jesus Christ for the strength to banish the evil at work in the bedroom.
“Don’t do it, Emma,” the priest opened the pyx and pulled out the Sacred Host. He held it up in the air. “For the love of God, don’t do it, Emma!”
O’Toole looked at the Eucharist briefly before turning to the technicians and nodding. She then turned back to her children. “I love you all,” she said with a smile. She took one last painful breath and said, “Upload now.”
Her body stiffened for a moment. Her eyes went wide, rolled back then forward and finally closed.
God have mercy on your soul, Father Arroyo prayed silently.
The priest returned the Blessed Host to the pyx and rose with a great grunting effort. He turned and limped away. He stopped in the doorway when he heard Emma’s voice behind him. It was coming from the console’s speakers.
“It worked! Oh, my children, can you hear me?”
“Yes, mother,” they said in unison. “We hear you.”
“Don’t be afraid for me, my loves,” Emma’s voice came from the console. “I’m fine. I’m better than fine.”
Father Arroyo could hear her children crying again behind him. The sobs were mixed with laughter. They were crying for joy.
“Father Arroyo,” Kevin said from the bed, his voice softened. “Don’t go just yet, stay with us a while. Come and talk to mother.”
“Your mother is dead Kevin,” Arroyo said without turning around. “And you helped kill her.”
“I’m alive, Father Eduardo. Alive!”
The priest walked out of the bedroom, the apartment, the building and Battery Park. He crossed the footbridge and the breadth of lower Manhattan on his way back to his little church.
He wept the whole way.
The End
Carlos Carrasco 