The Path by Malcolm McKay

Author:Malcolm McKay
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907556180
Publisher: M-Y Books Ltd.

O'CEBREIRO

The small village perched on the top of one of the highest points of the camino had been the site of another miracle of the camino. According to legend, at a mass in the local church, the communion bread and wine had turned into the actual body and blood of Christ in front of the eyes of a doubting celebrant. Apparently the statue of Santa Maria la Real overlooking the congregation had winked. Oskar laughed out loud as he read this. His views on miracles were as idiosyncratic as his views on everything else. It’s all claptrap, he thought, but at least they illustrated man’s desire to be something more than he thought he was – an aspiration Oskar was all in favour of.

On the same night that the others had stopped exhausted in La Faba, Oskar, six hours ahead of Maria, had strode a further nine kilometres up the mountain to O’Cebreiro at the top. At around the same time that Llewellyn and Werner were buying wine and ravioli in the local La Faba shop, Oskar was sitting at a table outside a bar sipping a beer and looking out over the peaks and valleys below reading about the miracle in his guide. And why shouldn’t man want to be something else? He smiled again at the vision of the statue winking and thought, we don’t need Jesus anymore, we have our will, imagination, and, if you don’t mind, our sense of humour.

And anyway a version of transubstantiation, not to mention the virgin birth, was already happening. Take a cell, inject the DNA and already you had a cloned sheep, a dog, a cow, any number of perfect specimens. What would be tomorrow? It was inevitable for Oskar, that the next step would be to create ourselves. And why not a new Jesus Christ? Maybe the body and blood celebrated in the mass had merely been a precursor, a prediction even, of what would come. And God? He looked across at the spreading reds and oranges of the sunset seeping into one another as the light died behind the mountains. Maybe we become Him too? All of us together. Never dead. Eternally alive. He frowned, looking down into the valley and then arched his neck looking up at the sky. He’d never been more serious in his life.

His perfect virtual city was developing from its fantastic beginnings into something he felt he could make a reality. He’d decided he’d have to start smaller. Maybe a village of just a few hundred people as a prototype. Why not make a computer model of it? Why not extend that into some kind of active virtual habitation? Why not digitally photograph every resident and make virtual images of them? Perfect replicas. They could live in representations of their own houses, could work as they did, could take their leisure as they enjoyed it already. And they could see themselves doing it, living the lives they’d already created. All of this was technically possible.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.