Diabolus (3 page)

While she was asleep, the room was evacuated so that she could “gain her rest and begin her recovery.” While the bishop talked with holocasters, reporters, and local faithful including priests and other bishops from the area, his medical team was in the room administering the proper treatments to the girl. When the girl woke the next morning, she had improved so much that it seemed to be a miracle to those who had witnessed it. Within his first three exorcisms, it started to seem a miracle to more than just the witnesses. Salvatore’s name and his accomplishments exploded onto the front pages of all the network news sites, holovision news programs, and more importantly, the social networks that dominated the human addiction to technology.

† † † † †

Everything went wrong for Bishop Salvatore Domenico Antonelli in March of 2096. He’d done his best to keep from becoming too bold in his exploits, always preferring to talk about the Church’s involvement in the ordinary, and the medical achievements that those he visited succeeded from. He downplayed the exorcisms as well as he could, and when cornered, he simply told the story from his point of view as a man of the cloth. He was doing God’s work, and he was only a vessel, not the actual power that drove whatever darkness from the poor unfortunates that he’d had to administer the exorcisms to.

Then came Joanna Marchand. The Toronto diocese had suggested Bishop Antonelli take up her case, and Antonelli agreed. Ms. Marchand suffered from severe schizophrenia, Post Traumatic Emotional Detachment, epilepsy, and the beginning stages of multiple sclerosis. All easily treatable if only she’d had the credits for it. As she was a disabled prostitute from the Downland section of Toronto, one of the worst ghettos to spring up in the last twenty years, she couldn’t afford the private care, and the Canadian Primary Health System claimed she qualified for no benefits because of her murky immigration status from America.

Salvatore should have known it was too good to be true, but he’d fallen into the belief of his lie so completely that he almost imagined that the demons he had been driving out were real. Pope Leo had elevated him to become a Cardinal by the end of summer, and because of Bishop Antonelli, the ranks of Roman Catholicism had swelled from just under two hundred million when he’d started four years ago, to almost seven hundred million as of the first of January. Salvatore was humble inside still, thankful for his ability to help grow the church, his doubt and unease at the ‘scheme’ long burned away from his memory by his success.

He performed admirably, as was expected after four years of refining the exorcism into an art, putting on a show worth a live broadcast on NANN, the global news aggregator that almost three-quarters of the world visited at least once per day. The next day, as he went to meet Joanna Marchand and reveal to the world that yet another faithful member of the Church had been cured, he was greeted in the hotel lobby by the largest crowd of reporters and newscasters he’d ever seen. The questions they shouted at him the instant the elevator doors opened made him cringe with guilt and shame at what he’d done, what he’d become. Bishop Salvatore Antonelli collapsed in a sad heap inside the elevator and was rushed to the local Mercy hospital, where his Vatican crew arrived to take charge of the situation.

Joanna Marchand was really Nicole Meriwether, an investigative reporter for Tracert, a well-known net site for investigative reporting and fraud exposure. Her partner, Erik Karlsson, had set Salvatore up, hook, line, and sinker. They’d fabricated her backstory, received legitimate documentation from the Canadian government to expose the fraud, with the knowledge that if the pair failed, their careers would be ruined and their names blacklisted by every reliable news organization on the planet. They’d sweated the part where Nicole would have to get the remote sedative implant, but that just made the spectacle all the more revealing of what the Catholic Church had become under Pope Leo XIV.

After the implantation of the sedative device by the Vatican doctors, Nicole had been examined and scanned by CPHS doctors, the implant verified and recorded. The exorcism footage, after the fraud had been revealed, looked corny and ridiculous, as if performed by third-rate actors. It turned into a disaster for the Vatican, and within three months, the seven hundred million faithful had been reduced by half, with the bleeding continuing at a record pace. Pope Leo XIV had a stroke on June 4, 2096 and never recovered. He died three nights later, which only spurred the deserters to abandon ship even faster.

Pope Augustus I was elected by the Cardinals on June 12, 2096. The new Pope’s first order was to command Bishop Salvatore Antonelli to renounce his lies, demote himself back to priest, and be exiled to a place that holos and newsies wouldn’t easily be able to find him, in case he wanted to reveal the truth of the entire affair. Pope Augustus had no reason to worry, though, as Salvatore punished himself far worse than anything the Pope or the press could do to him. He willingly, gladly took his leave of disgrace and entered the orbital shuttle two nights later with only the plain robes and shoes he wore, his biretta folded and carried in one of the pockets of his robe. The shuttle landed in Managua Spaceport an hour and a half later. He spent the next six days traveling to his new assignment, the Church of Isabella Ignacio in Tabron, Nicaragua, near the border of Honduras.

CHAPTER 3 - 2101

Benito Felipe Castillo finished his final test question and queued it to the grading cycle. He knew that Aggelos, the Vatican’s AI, would grade it once the last test had been turned in. Benito sat at his terminal, unplugged from the neural interface, and waited for the rest of his classmates to finish their exams. He was free to leave, but he didn’t like to be disruptive in any fashion to his classmates.

Benito allowed himself to daydream a bit while waiting. Being unplugged helped him have a clear mind, and he closed his eyes to daydream about which parish he would end up at. He was happy to become a priest. Compared to the ghetto he’d grown up in, even being a prisoner was better. But the serene life of learning, helping his fellow humans, and working to expand the Catholic message to any willing to listen appealed to him.

Benito probably would have ended up dead or in prison if not for Father Paul Kristoff. Father Kristoff had been the priest for his ghetto, aptly named “Helltown.” The priest had recognized something more in Benito and a few others, and nurtured them along, helping them receive their neural interface implants when they’d turned twelve, even without at least one parent present. Most drifted away after getting their implant, only using the priest to further their goals. Benito and another boy had stuck around, doing chores and odd jobs for Father Kristoff, being paid in food, shelter, and education.

The other boy, Danar, had been killed in a street brawl before he turned thirteen.
Such is the way of the ghetto
, Father Kristoff would say softly whenever the boy’s name was mentioned. He was only one man, a religious man of a religious belief that had once claimed over two billion followers. The priest saved who he could, but if a boy was taken from him, there was nothing he could do but find more. For most, it would be the only way out of the ghetto that didn’t consist of becoming ashes swirling in the wind beyond the crematorium.

For Benito, it had been an easy choice. He was a bright boy with no future other than joining a gang or dying in the alleys to one before turning twenty. Father Kristoff recognized the young man’s intelligence, and did his best to keep Benito safe from the dangers of life outside the doors of the little church. However, sometimes violence found its way into the church, and the only thing the priest could do then would be to cower over the boy, shielding Benito with his own body. Most of the gangs avoided the church even though they professed to be Technist or Atheist. The blood of Catholicism ran deep in Spain’s people, whether wealthy or destitute, whether Atheist or any other converted faith.

Father Kristoff had helped him get his implant and then opened his mind to the world beyond Helltown. Beyond the church he slept in, swept daily, and polished furniture for. The implant and the church’s Vatican net link accelerated Benito’s early exit from Helltown by giving him petabytes of data to browse and digest. The young street orphan devoured information like the desert devoured any water that came its way. The Vatican rules for entering students into the new Tech Seminary programs required that the boys be at least sixteen years of age. Father Kristoff had been able to get Benito admitted to a pre-Seminary boarding school at fourteen, and by his fifteenth birthday, he was a full-time student at Barcelona Catholic Seminary.

Benito could have graduated five years ago and been assigned to a parish somewhere in the world. Instead, he stayed on at the school and worked towards first a Master’s degree in Applied Computing Technology, then a PhD in Advanced Artificial Intelligence Systems. He had no idea where he would end up, but he wanted to have as much knowledge at his fingertips as possible when he arrived. He believed firmly in Pope Leo XIV’s and Augustus I’s views that modernization and technology integration were the keys to the future for Catholics as well as humankind in general. Benito’s only fear was that he would get assigned to Helltown somehow. He wasn’t afraid of the ghetto or its people anymore. He just didn’t want to ever have to set foot in it again.

The chime from his wireless Biblet brought him back to the real world. The electronic bible-tablet was worlds ahead of the old paper bibles that he’d used as fuel to cook and stay warm with in Helltown. The Biblet was thin, had a holo-capable screen, held more data than he could ever possibly stuff into it, and kept him connected to the world via the Vatican net link. He cringed internally at the thought of the priests having to only carry books made of dead trees for a thousand or more years.

He opened the message from Aggelos. He’d scored a 99.234 on his final exam, a score that put him at the top of the entire class. Benito tried to suppress the pride he felt, as it was unbecoming of a humble priest-to-be, but he couldn’t. He immediately forwarded the message to Father Kristoff back in Helltown parish along with a heartfelt note of thanks. His Biblet chimed again, a directive from Bishop Morgan, summoning him to the bishop’s office. Benito wondered what it meant. Normally Father Dure handed out the parish assignments during the evening meal after finals. He gave the message an automatic read-reply, letting the bishop’s office know he was on his way.

† † † † †

“Ah, Benito Castillo, please sit down,” Bishop Daniel Morgan said to him from behind an exquisitely polished wooden desk. When the bishop noticed Benito’s wide eyes staring at the desk, he chuckled and said, “Please, sit, my son. You’ve seen wood before, yes?”

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Benito replied, sitting down, but unable to take his eyes off the fine grain that seemed to swim below a centimeter of clear polish. “I have seen wood before, but nothing like this.”

“I imagine there’s not much wood left in Helltown, is there?” the bishop asked him. When the young graduate shook his head, the bishop went on, “Congratulations, my son, on your exams. Almost perfect work for an entire nine year stretch. We’ll have to call you
Doctor Castillo
now, I suppose,” he finished with a wink.

“Your Excellency, I will accept any title you bestow on me,” Benito said.

“Would you say the same thing if I told you that you had been assigned to take over for Father Kristoff?” the bishop asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I… yes, Your Excellency,” Benito lied as best he could.

“Nonsense. You were never a good liar, Benito.” Bishop Morgan smiled at him. “Don’t worry, we have no intention of wasting your talents. I’ve received your assignment orders. Would you like to hear them?”

“Your Excellency, I thought that you made the assignments.”

“Normally yes, but in your case, no. Your orders come straight from the Vatican.”

Benito’s armpits kicked in with sweat at the news. The Vatican.

“Yes, it is a good assignment,” the bishop said as he saw the veiled joy at the announcement. “Cardinal Nazari himself has requested you at the Papal apartments within the next two hours. I suggest you hurry back to your room and gather the few things you will need.”

Benito was out of the chair like a spring, almost forgetting to kneel and kiss the bishop’s ring.

“Nonsense, my son, get going,” Bishop Morgan said, waving his ring hand away. “And don’t stress if you can’t take everything,” he called to the young man. “The Vatican will provide you all the necessities.”

Bishop Morgan picked up his Biblet and sent a message to Aggelos that the orders had been given. Aggelos would set an itinerary for Benito and have the orbital shuttle fueled and waiting when the young man showed up at the spaceport in twenty minutes.

† † † † †

Benito had an hour to daydream while the shuttle made the trip to the Rome spaceport. The actual flight only took around fifteen minutes, but the traffic in and out of the spaceport would guarantee that they’d be held up at least forty-five minutes or more. Aggelos might be one of the most powerful AI on the planet, but he was a slave to the spaceport AI traffic controllers. The freshly graduated priest leaned his seat back, enjoying his first ever flight of any kind, especially grateful that he was the only passenger. Aggelos would control the shuttle from takeoff to landing.

“Are you prepared for takeoff?” Aggelos asked him over the speaker above his head.