Read Online The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross - Free Book Online
Authors: Charles Stross
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they’ve booked the O2 Arena for a week now, and another week in a month’s time.
It takes Zero the best part of an hour to drive into Greenwich. He drops Johnny just around the corner from the O2 complex, then drives on to find a spot in the VIP car park. Traffic is heavy—the arena is able to hold more than 20,000 spectators, and a lot of them are coming by car for this one. It’s not just a church service—it’s an evening out for all the family, with a gospel choir, a band, and a star-studded cast led by Pastor Raymond Schiller of the Golden Promise Ministries.
The arena itself is huge—a domed performance space the size of a medium-scale sports stadium. Tiered blocks of seats tower above the central stage, lit by distant spotlights far overhead; the atmosphere among the audience is as deafeningly expectant as at any rock concert or football match. Johnny, who walks in among the regular punters, finds himself a roost halfway up one of the rear stands, with a bottle of Pepsi and a cheeseburger. He settles back in his seat and scans the crowd below him. Somewhere near the front of the stage there’s a roped-off VIP area, accessed via a red-carpeted subway. The Duchess is down there now, chatting and laughing with the others on the restricted guest list: company directors with sick wives and children, wealthy widows, the children of the idle rich come in search of some additional meaning for their lives. Potential deep-pocket donors for Christ.
Back here in the bleachers it’s another matter. It’s an everyman (and everywoman) cross-section of London, emphasis on the cross. Family groups with children, some couples without, fewer men and women on their own, and larger groups—church trips, youth groups, some that Johnny can’t identify or can’t credit. ( A hen night? he jots discreetly in his notepad.) There are a lot of non-white faces: religion is a minority pursuit in England these days. They come from all walks of life: builder, trader, website-maker. They’re here for the music, the pizzazz, the excitement, the joy, and the sense of common purpose. It’s like a reflection of his misplaced childhood, cut off behind the broken mirror of his adult cynicism.
Johnny watches with studied detachment as the show begins. People are still arriving, filtering in in knots and clumps and talking in quiet, excited tones as the warm-up man starts on stage, a younger preacher from Golden Promise Ministries’ Mission to Miami: “Welcome, Welcome! Open your hearts to the golden promise of a love that will make everything right—”
He’s an inspiring speaker, and he promises joy on a plate, heaven on a stick. There is a prayer. Everybody joins in. There is a chant. It’s impossible not to stand and clap in time with twenty thousand other sweaty, excited pairs of hands, as Johnny rediscovers: they’ve got the script letter-perfect. Then the warm-up man segues into an introduction for the first act, a squeaky-clean rock band who are impossibly young and skinny behind the electric guitars they grip as tightly as their faith. There follows half an hour of power ballads where the punch line is Jesus.
Johnny gives up on the notepad, and settles down to wait. An old professional, he gives no outward sign of his irritation. Three more hours of this shit, he thinks disgustedly. Amanda’s banker was stuck overnight in Zurich; he won’t be home for hours yet. What price an immortal soul, when booty beckons? He makes a private guess with himself, and wins a fiver when the band give way to Warm-Up Man in his shiny electric-blue suit, who invites the audience to pray with him and starts the workup towards the main act. Johnny’s boredom is just beginning to strengthen towards anomie when Raymond Schiller strides on stage, arms spread in benediction, a larger-than-life figure.
Johnny forgets everything else and focuses on the stage with the total nerveless calm of a sniper.
The Duchess was absolutely right to bring him
It takes Zero the best part of an hour to drive into Greenwich. He drops Johnny just around the corner from the O2 complex, then drives on to find a spot in the VIP car park. Traffic is heavy—the arena is able to hold more than 20,000 spectators, and a lot of them are coming by car for this one. It’s not just a church service—it’s an evening out for all the family, with a gospel choir, a band, and a star-studded cast led by Pastor Raymond Schiller of the Golden Promise Ministries.
The arena itself is huge—a domed performance space the size of a medium-scale sports stadium. Tiered blocks of seats tower above the central stage, lit by distant spotlights far overhead; the atmosphere among the audience is as deafeningly expectant as at any rock concert or football match. Johnny, who walks in among the regular punters, finds himself a roost halfway up one of the rear stands, with a bottle of Pepsi and a cheeseburger. He settles back in his seat and scans the crowd below him. Somewhere near the front of the stage there’s a roped-off VIP area, accessed via a red-carpeted subway. The Duchess is down there now, chatting and laughing with the others on the restricted guest list: company directors with sick wives and children, wealthy widows, the children of the idle rich come in search of some additional meaning for their lives. Potential deep-pocket donors for Christ.
Back here in the bleachers it’s another matter. It’s an everyman (and everywoman) cross-section of London, emphasis on the cross. Family groups with children, some couples without, fewer men and women on their own, and larger groups—church trips, youth groups, some that Johnny can’t identify or can’t credit. ( A hen night? he jots discreetly in his notepad.) There are a lot of non-white faces: religion is a minority pursuit in England these days. They come from all walks of life: builder, trader, website-maker. They’re here for the music, the pizzazz, the excitement, the joy, and the sense of common purpose. It’s like a reflection of his misplaced childhood, cut off behind the broken mirror of his adult cynicism.
Johnny watches with studied detachment as the show begins. People are still arriving, filtering in in knots and clumps and talking in quiet, excited tones as the warm-up man starts on stage, a younger preacher from Golden Promise Ministries’ Mission to Miami: “Welcome, Welcome! Open your hearts to the golden promise of a love that will make everything right—”
He’s an inspiring speaker, and he promises joy on a plate, heaven on a stick. There is a prayer. Everybody joins in. There is a chant. It’s impossible not to stand and clap in time with twenty thousand other sweaty, excited pairs of hands, as Johnny rediscovers: they’ve got the script letter-perfect. Then the warm-up man segues into an introduction for the first act, a squeaky-clean rock band who are impossibly young and skinny behind the electric guitars they grip as tightly as their faith. There follows half an hour of power ballads where the punch line is Jesus.
Johnny gives up on the notepad, and settles down to wait. An old professional, he gives no outward sign of his irritation. Three more hours of this shit, he thinks disgustedly. Amanda’s banker was stuck overnight in Zurich; he won’t be home for hours yet. What price an immortal soul, when booty beckons? He makes a private guess with himself, and wins a fiver when the band give way to Warm-Up Man in his shiny electric-blue suit, who invites the audience to pray with him and starts the workup towards the main act. Johnny’s boredom is just beginning to strengthen towards anomie when Raymond Schiller strides on stage, arms spread in benediction, a larger-than-life figure.
Johnny forgets everything else and focuses on the stage with the total nerveless calm of a sniper.
The Duchess was absolutely right to bring him
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