Diabolus (2 page)

Bertacelli had no intention of leaving this lowly bishop alone with the Holy Father. He sat and crossed his robed arms, pretending to look out the small window overlooking the narrow street.

“Please continue, Salvatore,” Pope Leo said.

“Your Holiness, reformation of the Church in a disruptive or heretical way is not what I had in mind,” Antonelli said, glancing over at the Cardinal again. The Cardinal was busy pretending to watch the evening LED street lamps come on outside. “I meant we need to embrace technology. Use it to our advantage. Look how many governments have been won because of the youth of the country in particular being almost integrated into the Earth-Net. Look at what ignoring technology and the use of the network has done to governments and other movements, quite like ours in some cases, when it comes to long-term trends. The young generations eat, sleep, and breathe technology.

“The older generations, like ours, use whatever technology is current when we are young, but as we age, especially as we age within the Church, we move more towards spiritual bonding and reading, studying scripture, and doing personal networking face to face. The Church needs to take the necessary steps forward to enter into the twenty-second century ready to reclaim the lost of our flock.” Bishop Antonelli was afraid he’d gone too far, lecturing the Holy Father of the remaining two hundred million faithful.

“I quite agree,” the Pope said, surprising both the Bishop and the Cardinal with his agreement that the Church was too far in the past to be interesting or relevant to anyone born and raised within a technological society. “Calm down, you two. I just said that I’m not a doddering old man. I was a human being before I put on the big hat. It’s time to reform the Church.”

Cardinal Bertacelli almost fainted in shock.

CHAPTER 2 - 2090-2096

Pope Leo XIV summoned Bishop Salvatore Antonelli to the Vatican in 2092 to reveal to him the plan for restoring the Church to its former glory and influence. The plan, a conversation with God according to Pope Leo, was to achieve the goal in two steps simultaneously. The first step was to indeed digitize all Vatican and other Church records with modern methods, including purchasing a central AI. That the Church would own an Artificial Intelligence and rely on it to keep all records and functions of the church working smoothly with the thousands of diocese across the globe was almost unbelievable.

Pope Thomas II had decreed in 2041 when AI had first become self-aware that they were an abomination, that humans had never been commanded to become gods themselves, that only the true Lord had the power to create life where none had existed before. Pope Leo XIV was about to rescind that decree by the end of the day, announcing that within two years, all churches and offices of the Roman Catholic Church would have modern technological amenities. They would have a private network link, one routed and monitored by the AI when it was delivered. The seminaries where young men trained as priests would have their curricula updated to reflect the changing views of the Church by requiring all graduates to be proficient in networking, network security, and one branch of computer engineering.

Even more incredible was Leo’s pronouncement that not only would the Church have an AI, he would also abolish the decree that stated no Catholics were permitted to have neural implants. This wasn’t such a big deal to the regular faithful who attended church on Sundays, as most of them had ignored that decree once the implants were being given away for free by the governments of the world. Salvatore remembered Leo scoffing at the notion that the implants were the mark of the devil, that they would lead to the world being enslaved and brainwashed by propaganda or entertainment.
If every government on Earth is going to subsidize the neural jacks for each of its citizens
, he’d said,
regardless of class or income status, then Catholics had better get on the ball
. The big deal was that priests, bishops, cardinals, archbishops, even the Pope himself would now be allowed to have the implant.

Salvatore wanted to kiss the man’s ring a hundred times for this decision alone. Keeping up with the other religions was going to be hard enough, even with the influx of modern computing and networking. Allowing the officers of the church the ability to directly interface with the technology as well as requiring their training in the fields of networking and AI, application, or nanotechnology engineering would give the Church a fighting chance. Salvatore had doubted that he would ever get the neural jack implanted in his skull, but if the young priests coming out of seminary had them from the time they turned twelve, the legal age that had been mandated by the UN and agreed to by NATO, RFIT, and the IF, they would be on equal footing with the rest of the world that actively poached members from an ancient religion that still read books that were made from dead trees.

The second part of the plan was one that fell squarely on Bishop Antonelli’s shoulders. When Pope Leo XIV sat him down, alone, in the private apartments within the Vatican, and explained it to him, he’d been dumbstruck. The grand plan, according to Pope Leo, was to take advantage of humanity’s beliefs in a greater power. If there was indeed a greater power, one of good and of light, there had to be an opposite. Satan. Lucifer. Mephistopheles. The Devil. While the Catholic Church had been in a coma, Leo explained, Satan had not taken a vacation. In fact, the Evil One had ramped up his efforts to delude God’s children to get them to turn away from the light.

Technology wasn’t evil, according to Leo’s plan, but using it for evil or immoral purposes was a sin. The Church would finally move away from its stance against evolution, and embrace it as part of God’s plan. The Church would use technology to wage war against Satan in many ways, the most important being to use technology like neural jacks, holotainment, networked learning centers, and netcasts to fight the growing influence of evil. The next step in human evolution was melding machines and man together in their journey to promote the Lord God, reaching out to the billions of others who had already turned to technology as their religion.

That would take time, according to Leo, and there wasn’t much sensationalism in it. That’s where Bishop Salvatore Domenico Antonelli came in. There were reports all across the planet, according to Leo, of humans who were still being tormented by the evil one and his demons. Some of the possessions were of the spiritual nature, while some were emotional, and some were technological. Bishop Antonelli’s new job would be to travel the world and visit each case, to see for himself. He was to use his knowledge and his learning as a man of the cloth to determine whether or not these cases were valid. Should they not be valid, Salvatore would be required to use the powers of the Church, including the Papal Credit Link he carried on a chain around his neck, to resolve the problem.

For the person or persons that Salvatore would evaluate, any physical, mental, or emotional ailments that could be cured with modern medical science would be attended to. It would, promised Leo, give the Church some needed publicity, and positive publicity at that. Gone were the dark ages after the turn of the century that had put a dark cloud over the Vatican and the rest of the faithful and caused them to migrate towards atheism or other faiths. Bishop Antonelli would begin a new era for the Catholic Church. Money was no object, and could not be used by Salvatore as an excuse for failure. There were almost no diseases or maladies that couldn’t be cured with proper first-world medical technology and medicines, including the ones originating in the mind. Even emotional traumas could be resolved with the neural jack implants and expensive memory therapy.

But the bombshell would be the cases that weren’t curable by mundane means. Bishop Antonelli hadn’t heard the word
exorcism
but one time in his fifty years of service to the church. It had been in a seminary class about Roman Catholic history. He asked Pope Leo to repeat himself twice when the plan for the incurables had been explained to him.

“You will be the exorcist, and drive the demons from these unfortunate persons,” Leo had said, a small smile on his lips.

“An exorcist?” Salvatore had asked.

“Yes, Salvatore. You have access to the preliminary Vatican network. I’ve tasked the scholars to digitize all the works involving exorcisms as their first priority to make your task easier.”

“But… Your Holiness, I know nothing about performing exorcisms!” Salvatore exclaimed.

“Think of it as on-the-job training, my son,” Leo replied. “Not every case will be an exorcism. You have Papal authority to spend whatever credits are necessary to help the majority of cases reach a positive conclusion. We will, of course, make sure you receive public network coverage. We want the Church to look good, to attract the faithful, Salvatore, not be the laughing stock of the world for another century.”

“But we will be, Your Holiness.”

“Not if you use your best judgment,” Leo told him.

“But what is my ‘best judgment’ when I don’t even believe in demonic possession?” Salvatore asked, still not believing he was having this conversation with a Pope. The Pope.

“Domenico, my son, your best judgment is
whatever is best for the church
.”

Salvatore finally understood. He was to have the power to visit hundreds, maybe thousands of persons per year who were suffering from any number of problems, use the Papal Credit Link to buy their healing, and choose a few here or there who couldn’t be ‘saved’ even by the wealth of the Catholic Church. Those few would have true spiritual maladies that couldn’t be cured with money, only by cleansing of the spirit by trained exorcists like Bishop Salvatore Antonelli. He was to make a big show of those few cases, big enough to make the rest of the world take notice, especially those who had fallen out of the faith, but not so big of a show that the circus tent would collapse on him. Or the Church.

“Your Holiness,” he practically begged Pope Leo, “I feel this is wrong. This is a lie. God would not approve of such a scheme.”

“This is not a
scheme
!” Leo thundered without warning, causing Salvatore to shrink back into his high-backed, crushed red velvet chair. “This is the beginning of the rebirth of the Roman Catholic Church! It is not a lie to equate mental illness or emotional instability with the evil influence of Satan. It is not a lie to show the world that the Catholic Church has relevance, that sometimes money and power cannot cure every ill, especially those of the spirit! I’m sure you’ll be convincing. The fate of the Church rests upon your shoulders to be the public face of our faith, Salvatore. How is that a lie? How is it a lie to remind those who have fallen away from the Holy Trinity that they have left behind the most powerful influence in the universe? How is it a lie to bring believers in front of the Lord God? To teach them once again that our Father has a place in their lives, just like they’ve always had a place in His?”

“I… I’m sorry, Your Holiness,” Salvatore wept, falling out of his chair to his knees at Leo’s feet.

He reached for Leo’s hand to kiss the ring, but Pope Leo stood up and rested a hand on his bishop’s head.

“Enough, Bishop Antonelli. It is a sign of faith that you have seen the truth of it, the need to recall the followers to the flock. It is also a sign that Satan has at least a tiny grip on your faith as well as your heart, yes?”

† † † † †

Salvatore Antonelli was an excellent bishop. He excelled at his task of bringing the faithful back in droves. In each city he visited, he used the modern technology and social networks that he’d advocated the Church utilize to draw crowds, or at least a holocaster to each case he visited. He learned all about performing exorcisms while traveling to each new case. By the sixth month, he was ready to reveal to the world that demons were indeed a real possibility, and that at the behest of Pope Leo XIV, he was trained in the ancient art of exorcism, the last known one being almost sixty years previous. It was time to reclaim the world from the evil of Satan, whether it be through electronic, emotional, physical, or spiritual means.

He’d been nervous performing his first exorcism, a young girl with severe emotional trauma and a mental disorder that caused her to scream vulgarities and make sexual advances to those around her, whether male or female. Tourette’s Syndrome was curable with chemical therapy and a cranial implant that regulated electrical signals in the brain, and the trauma could be resolved using regressive emotion immersion therapy. However, he needed a good first exorcism, and she was the perfect candidate. All through the
act
, he followed the words and motions that others before him had, minus the harmful aspects, such as cutting limbs open to let the evil spirits out, or submerging the patient in water to drown the demon.
This is the twenty-first century, after all
, he’d scoffed to one of the journalists who had brought the subject up,
and less than a decade until the twenty-second
. Both men knew that most of the techniques from a thousand years ago were ignorant, brutal, and completely unnecessary.

Near the end of his brilliant first exorcism act, he’d pressed a key on his Biblet, activating an implant in the girl’s head that had been surgically added during the initial medical exam to determine her ailments. Since the Bishop traveled with a small contingent of assistants from the Vatican, there was no chance of the truth getting out, as the patients were always examined by the Vatican doctors, who were under the same orders from Pope Leo as Salvatore. The implant released a sedative, and the girl immediately stopped shrieking and passed out. Salvatore sighed in relief. His ranting, raving, shouting, commanding, and screaming while flicking holy water on her for an hour had made her screams of fear worse than the trauma she suffered from, which in turn made her Tourette's more volatile than normal.