[Torg] Visions of Paradise (The GodNet and The Grid: 5 of 7)

[Jasyn Jones]

Malraux’s Vision

In the cosm of Magna Verita, Heaven is real. One of a number of Divine Realms (fringe realities infused with the essence of the Divine), especially devout Catholics could receive a vision of Heaven and rare individuals even travelled there, in spirit.

As with all Divine Realms, Heaven could only be entered by the devout and only with miraculous intervention. No other technology or spells could enable one to walk the streets of the City of God. It was the domain of angels, the souls of the virtuous, and God. The Surge would change all of that.

When Jean Malraux was attacked and plugged into a data plaque, it sent him sensory images of Tharkold as it once had been, some of which depicted people accessing a virtual world in the Grid. Malraux, lacking the context to understand the images, saw something that wasn’t there. He saw a miracle.

In his vision, people used computers to enter another world, a world without pain, without hunger, without aging, without death. A world where time didn’t wear architecture down, where storms didn’t bring floods, where food didn’t decay. There was no cancer, no pox, no leprosy. It was a perfect world. These people used computers to enter Paradise.

When the possibility energy surged through him, Malraux’s vision was made real. The transformed computers of the (now) Cyberpapacy became able to do the impossible: through them, the souls of users can leave their bodies and travel to Heaven (and Hell and every other Divine Realm of Magna Verita). Through computers, people can enter the realm of God.

New Jerusalem

There is a city, in which is the Throne of God. Next to the Throne is the Tree of Life and from out the Throne flows the River of Life. The city walls and streets are built of an unknown stone, which at times shines with a golden luster and at other times is crystalline and translucent.

Described in some detail in the Book of Revelation, New Jerusalem is the absolute center of Heaven, the place where God rules and the virtuous dead live. Angels and saints walk its streets and parks. There is no hunger. There is no pain. There is only peace.

There was only peace.

As the Surge raced across the False Pope's realm on Earth, it transformed computer after computer, changing them to match the vision of Malraux. Circuits flared with energy, and pierced the barrier between this world and the next.

In New Jerusalem, the walls of the city began to change. Instead of translucent crystal, they began to resemble metallic circuits, datapaths. These circuits grew along the streets and walls, changing the buildings to match the architecture of Avignon's houses and cathedrals. Those angels and dead souls who were caught by the surge were changed. The angels became stronger, fiercer, bereft of all mercy. The souls of the dead were molded into net entities, the closest GodNet equivalent to A.I.

This wave of change washed over the city, until other angels appeared, angels armed with flaming swords, angels who turned the Surge back. They stopped the Surge, walling off the rest of the city from Malraux's twisted vision of Heaven. Behind the walls they guard, the pristine City of God can be seen, but not entered. All those who come to New Jerusalem through the GodNet can only traverse Malraux's ghetto, the rest is beyond their reach.

Jasyn Jones
jasynj (at) gmail (dot) com

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Check out my Torg webpage, Storm Knights:
darleyconsulting.com/games/stormknights/