Divine Intervention.
© Tim Barker 2000
City life squealed past his window
but he was engrossed in a post-industrial scenario of computer-mediated
communication. So-called ‘friends’ had left numerous messages detailing their
innermost thoughts and desires yet they were all devoid of essential emotional
content.
Sam, a twenty-something urban
misfit, was sifting through the debris of the nights emails, searching for
inspiration for his next story. After about fifty such messages and fifty
corresponding presses of the ‘delete’ key he came across an interesting
correspondence. It read :
“Rendez-vous avec moi çe soir dans
la gare.”
It was anonymous. Sam checked for
the signature but it was encrypted beyond recognition. There was no hint of the
correct key he should use. It left him wondering : why French, an archaic
language from the last millennium ? Which church ? He immediately thought of
the old deserted church downtown in the Mexican quarter then thought again.
Perhaps they meant a virtual church ?
Sam executed a search for an on-line
church, narrowing his query to French language based congregations upon finding
just too many. This produced just three possibilities so he decided to add a
note in their visitors books with an intelligent agent attached which would
notify him when anyone browsed his message. He popped a caffeine pill, in
preparation for a long night, and continued examining his dull, lifeless
emails.
As sunlight began to seep through the
holes in Sam’s blacked-out skylight a warning window chirped its arrival and
gave him an email address. He immediately sent a message to this address enquiring
of the sender’s identity. The reply was prompt and consisted solely of the
number three. Now, Sam was not stupid, if a little misdirected, and correctly
equated this digit with the holy trinity. He attempted to trace the senders
address to a physical location but it wasn’t in the Clinton database, an unavoidable
requirement since the end of the twentieth
century. Sam could only conclude that the message did not originate on Earth.
His life would never be the same again.