“Sursum corda!” chanted the priest and the people all around me chanted right back.
My consciousness rejoined my earthly form in the middle of a Latin mass, during the breaking of the bread thing—the Eucharist—I guess. Mom tried to teach me some religion, but her heart wasn’t into it, so it never took hold. Sounds like I’m blaming her, but I’m not. Whatever faith she could have imparted would have been torn to shreds by what I had witnessed in Root.
Had I seen evidence of a higher power?
Probably.
Was this higher power worthy of worship?
Fear? Respect? Certainly. Worship? Not from what I had seen.
And I’m not talking about Luther. His soul was just a pawn like the rest of our souls. I’m talking about the raw material of Root itself, the Reapers and whoever made them. Evil could be the only word that described them.
My first reaction at being back in the pews of St. Peter’s was sheer horror. Lille’s screams still reverberated in my ears. One more minute working on that wall and I could have helped Bern and Lille make a clean get away from those dogs. Luthersburg had gone from quaint and curious to Nazi nightmare in the span of three visits. I couldn’t blame them for wanting out. Luther might not be Hitler, but he was a fool and a dangerous one at that.
I got up and left my pew during the breaking of the bread. I don’t know if people thought I was jumping the gun for Communion or what but I drew plenty of stares and mutterings.
I was in a foul mood and let these servile wankers know it with my glare. They were wasting their time on a silly charade. No amount of praying would save them from what was to come. I turned my back to the altar without as much as a genuflect or a nod and headed for the exit.
I paused on the steps of the Basilica and took in the scene outside. The day was crisp and bright but I didn’t feel worthy of breathing this air. This was not my world anymore.
I had no idea why I kept getting kicked back here. Hope was the drug that supposedly fueled this shared hallucination, but I had to wonder where this hope was hiding in me. It sure didn’t feel like I had a shred of it left.
As I gazed out over St. Peter’s Square, this place and Luthersburg began to blur together in my head. I saw no distinction anymore. Root and Earth were just different facets of the same existence. I suspected there might be other facets I had yet to witness, some I’d better hope I never saw.
Hope. There was that word again. Amazing how closely it was linked with despair, because I was infected with both and it was getting harder and harder to tell the two apart.
All these other people though, the couples hand in hand, the lonely old spinsters maneuvering with their walkers—where did they find their hope? Did those with good lives hope things stayed good a little longer if not forever? Did those with crap lives hope things got better even a little bit, or at least that things didn’t get much worse?
Couldn’t they see the futility of it all? On a geologic scale, their lives had the significance of a gnat. They would be over in a blink and they would have nothing to show for it but a photo album and a headstone. Why did they bother? By what miracle did they not crowd the tunnels of Root?
I searched in my heart for the cursed seed of hope that had separated me from my friends in their time of need. I bet it was that damned sheet of hospital stationery I had found in Luther’s hospital play room. It had made me believe that I could track down Luther in the flesh, and possibly that would lead me to Karla, though a few pictures of a longish lake were a pretty feeble connection if you asked me. I guess it didn’t take much hope at all to get a guy like me kicked out of Root.
