My computer beeped. I scurried over to the desk to check my monitor, ignoring the broken mug on the floor. At the far right-hand corner of the screen, a mouse icon blinked at me. I clicked on it, and a window popped up. The text read:
Deidre, where on earth did you find this rust bucket? Man, it's no wonder you never hang ten out here anymore ... can't be much fun surfin' without a decent 'board.Boomerang came back empty-handed. Only happened to me one time before ... when I tried to source a LINK-angel. Guess that means God is tapping your line, girlfriend. Seems like strange behavior for an omniscient deity, but, hey, I'm just a page. I'm not even technically sentient, why would I even pretend to understand the mind of God?
Allah akbar, the Mouse.
LINK-ANGELS, A BUDDHIST'S VIEW:Buddhism demands that we have no blind faith.
Therefore, I think it unwise to dismiss the LINK-angels completely without first applying the tenets of wisdom and compassion. The term "angel" and their traditionally Christian appearance are somewhat disconcerting to many Buddhists. Yet their message, the idea of a Second Coming, is not unknown to our philosophy.
In the history of the Mahayana Buddhists there exists the idea of the maitreya, or "Future Buddha" a second Buddha that would come and purify the world. It was also believed that the first Buddha prophesied the coming of the second.
Letourneau could be a bodhisattva, or even, one supposes, this Second Buddha. In some ways it is even easier for a Buddhist to accept the possibility of divine enlightenment to be bestowed upon a mindful individual. We do not have to believe that the man himself is a god, only that his ideas are enlightened. I am not suggesting that Letourneau is that man, however, only that is possible and certainly could fall within the realm of our belief system.
* * *
As to what the LINK-angels are, on the other hand, it is much more difficult to ascertain. Turning again to the Mahayana Buddhists, we find the idea of the Buddha as the manifestation of a universal, spiritual being with three bodies: the Body of Magical Transformation, nirmanakaya, the Body of Bliss, sambhogakaya, and the Body of Essence, dharmakaya. The angels could be a representation of the Body that exists in the heavens, the Body of Bliss.
"Bodhi" or "budi" means "to wake up." Perhaps the LINK-angels are a wake-up call to all of us to return to our more religious roots.
Chapter 5
the dissipating storm clouds, a blood-red moon rose low on the horizon and loomed large behind the city skyline. Through the plastic sheath of the walkway I could see it clearly. Full and round, it capped the rooftops like a bowl or, I thought with a shiver, the glow of an exploding Medusa bomb. From the elevation of the skyway, I could see the reddish glint of what had once been the Bronx, but was now a crystal necropolis.
It was that bomb, more than even the angels, that made converts out of a secular society. Though I was only a teenager, I was part of the youth war effort and had signed on to be in the cleanup crew at ground zero; our standing orders were to shatter anything on the streets that looked even vaguely human. Thanks to the Medusa, the Bronx was glass as far as the eye could see. Most people had time to evacuate, but hundreds were frozen as they tried to escape the blast. Crystallized faces, locked in silent screams, stared accusingly as if daring us to desecrate their graves.
"Would you like me to pray with you, sister?"
A voice at my side startled me. I shook off the memories that had flooded my mind. I glanced over at a short woman in the deep purple cassock of the Church of England. She stared up at the moon like I had. Auburn hair touched the tip of her shoulder and framed her round face like a lion's mane.
I smiled down at her, since she was several inches shorter than I. "I wasn't praying ... just thinking."
She laughed softly. The corners of her eyes crinkled slightly. "There isn't a person alive who doesn't look at that moon without a little prayer in their hearts."
The newspapers had been heralding the blood-red moon as a sign of the Second Coming, of Letourneau's divinity. Quieter voices suggested it was simply the Canadian forest fires that caused this phenomenon.
"What if it's not a sign of the apocalypse? Maybe the moon is red just because of the prevailing easterlies?"
"Nature is part of God's plan," she said simply, as if people suggested heresy to her every day. "Nothing that happens is 'just' science, sister. All of it reveals the hand of God."
Her eyes flicked over my dripping raincoat. She started past my eyes to my temple. I flushed; I hadn't realized that I'd been rubbing the implant again. "Do you need a safe place to stay tonight?" she asked. "Maybe some access to a little white noise?"
White noise was a common treatment for info junkies, since it sated their need for constant input. I pulled my hand from my head and backed away. "No thanks. I'm okay."
She nodded at me as if she didn't believe me, but wasn't going to push it. The look in her eye begged me to take that first step and admit I had a problem.