Julian was looking in our direction but he wasn’t looking at us. His gaze was fixed on some imaginary point in some imaginary distance, which is quite a feat if you’re looking straight at a camera. It had been a rhetorical question, but I couldn’t help but say, “I’m not sure if I even want to know what it felt like.”
“Yeah,” Tummy said. “It must have been, like, awful.”
“It was
wonderful
,” Julian said. “It was the most intense experience of my entire life. Those few seconds when we were tumbling down that ravine felt like a relapse into pre-civilized times, to the very moment when animals first became humans. There were no rules, no social structures, and everyone who was able to articulate themselves did. Everyone was shouting over everyone else, which of course didn’t help anyone. It only made everybody even more scared and shouting even louder. It’s that kind of fear that sets us apart from the other animals, and that degrades us to a species of cowards, because we choose to give in to that fear instead of facing it, fighting it. Out of that fear, man was born. Back in the old days, before we became human, everyone could say and do whatever they wanted, and nobody gave a damn. The basis of our civilization crystallized out of that chaos of all voices shouting over each other, and from that, everything we know developed. For a few seconds, the people on that bus experienced that feeling of absolute pre-civilised freedom. Some of them had to pay with their lives for the realisation that whatever you say or do doesn’t matter because you can’t change anything. It’s a scary realisation, but if you’re willing to accept it, it will set you free. Only facing that primeval fear will ever let you experience that feeling of absolute freedom. It was … I think I know now what people are talking about when they’re yearning for paradise.”
There was a long moment of silence as we kept staring at Julian, and he was staring at the floor.
“You make it sound,” Ginger finally said, “as if almost dying was some kind of fun experience; as if you actually enjoyed it.”
Julian lifted his head, leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “I didn’t exactly enjoy the feeling of almost dying, because at the time I had no idea if I was only almost dying or if I was actually going to die. But I do enjoy being able to think about it and talk about it, because facing that fear of imminent death is such an intense experience that one doesn’t have very often.”
“All right, I get that,” Ginger said. “But next time just get on a roller coaster or go bungee jumping or something.” She laughed nervously.
“That is not the same, though. No matter how afraid of heights you are, when you jump off a bridge with a rubber band around your ankles, you only do it because deep down inside you know that you’re going to be fine; because you trust that rubber band and the people who strapped you to it. You may still be scared shitless, but that fear is still an order of magnitude away from the actual fear of death that you feel when you wake up and find yourself upside down on a bus that’s tumbling down a ravine, and you have no idea whether or not you will get out of this alive. It’s more like a bungee jump where you suddenly feel that rubber band snap, and you’re free falling.”
“Rock’n’roll,” Tummy chuckled.
There was something weird about Julian as he was sitting there and telling us about his near death experience. He seemed strangely subdued; a far cry from the boisterous, at times cocky media personality the world had come to know in recent weeks. Yet he was nothing like the old Julian either, the silent observer who was shy and timid all the time unless he was alone with us, his friends. Something had changed; something in his attitude towards everything.
“Don’t tell me you’ve met the Lord on your way down that ravine,” I said, “and you’re turning all religious now.”
The others laughed. The one who wasn’t laughing was Julian. He just stared at the camera, and this time it was as if he were looking directly into my eyes, looking for an answer to a question that he seemed to take more seriously than any one of us would have thought.
“Never mind,” I said, getting uncomfortable with the long silence. “How did you make it out of the wreck?”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t know. I only have one brief memory from after the crash. All I remember is that it was dark and cold. I was lying in the mud and raindrops were falling on my face. A few people nearby were crying or moaning, and then there was this huge bang, and suddenly it rained fire all around me. That’s when I passed out, and when I woke up, I found myself in a guest room at bloody St Peter’s.”
“Yeah, I still don’t get that,” Ginger said. “I mean how..., I mean who...”
Julian smiled. “The SSSS.”
“The what?”
“Sanctae Sedis Servitium Secretum.”
“Blimey!” Tummy said.
Ginger shook her head in disbelief. “Please tell me it doesn’t mean what I think it does.”
“It means exactly that. The Secret Service of the Holy See.” Julian took a moment to enjoy our baffled looks before he continued. “That’s actually less sophisticated and exciting than it sounds. Maddock created that institution when he became Pope. He figured that if the President of the United States has a secret service to protect him, then so should the Pope. The members of the SSSS are really just Maddock’s old bodyguards with new suits and sunglasses. He thought that the term ‘bodyguards’ lacked a certain gravitas that one would expect of the Vatican, hence the name change.”
“And you know all this because...?” Ginger asked.
“Mr Ed told me. After I met my mum, I had a very late night dinner with him last night, and it turns out that he gets rather talkative after a bottle of wine or two. He told me that the SSSS had been following me around to keep an eye on me ever since I set foot on U.S. soil. They even followed me back to Europe, and they were in a car right behind our coach when it crashed. So they stopped and rescued me and Tholen, and took us to Rome.”
“They basically kidnapped you.” Ginger said.
Julian shrugged. “If you want to put it like that.”
“But why?” I asked. “What do they want from you?”
“Well,” Julian said, “Mr Ed told me that as well, although I’m pretty sure the Pope would be a bit miffed if he knew that somebody spoiled his big surprise.”
“What’s the surprise?” I asked.
“The Pope, I am being told, is a big fan. Did you guys know that he even follows me on Twitter?”
“It was front page news when he started following you.”
“Right. Well anyway, apparently His Holiness is planning to offer me a job.”
We all exchanged bewildered looks.
“Rock’n’roll!”
“A job?” Ginger asked. “Like what, as a choir boy at St Peter’s?”
Julian chuckled. “No, I think it’s going to be a bit more sophisticated and exciting than that. According to Mr Ed, the Pope is hell-bent on tapping into the youth market. The Church is in desperate need of new, young blood, and simply having a Twitter account and presenting the New Commandments on an iPad just doesn’t cut it. What they want is a young voice that young ears are willing to listen to.”
“They want to turn you into a poster boy for Christianity!” I said.
Julian shrugged. “If you want to call it that.”
I slapped my thighs in amusement. “That is so hilarious! So what would your job title be? Junior Pope Julian the First?”
Once again, Julian wasn’t laughing, and that’s when it slowly began to dawn on me.
“Julian,” I said, “you’re not seriously considering this, are you?”
He shrugged again. “They do have a big problem with getting the message of Jesus Christ across to young people.”
“Julian!”
I looked at Ginger and Tummy, at Momoko, Cameraron, and Audiomike. All their jaws had dropped to the floor.
“It would be such a great chance to make a difference,” Julian said.
I almost crawled into my laptop camera, trying to get through to him. “Julian, how many more differences do you need to make? Just look at what you’ve done already! Isn’t that enough?”
“Can there ever be enough messages of love and kindness?” Julian asked. “Can there ever be enough reason? Can there ever be enough truth?”
I looked at him. “Who are you? And what have you done to my best friend?!”
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” he said.
And then he winked.
The Gospel According to Ginger – 16
Mesmerised, the audience in the park and millions more at home watched at the video we had—unbeknownst to His Holiness—recorded when the Pope and Julian had sat down to have dinner. We had two cameras. One was hidden in a brooch on Mrs Monk’s blouse; the other was in Peter Tholen’s sunglasses. They didn’t carry any recording equipment, though. The audio and video signals were transmitted directly to our truck that was parked just outside the walls of Vatican City.
During that dinner, the Pope had made Julian an offer. He wanted to give Julian his own daily TV show so that he could spread the word of God’s eternal, unconditional love among the youth of the world.
“And why would I want to do that?” Julian asked.
“I like you,” the Pope said and smiled. “I think you have great potential, and a lot of your thoughts go in the right direction. What you have yet to realize, though, is that the message of love, compassion, and kindness that you have been preaching in recent weeks and months is the message of God. All love comes from God.”
Julian laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve read the same book as I have, but to me your God seems like a rather grumpy, begrudging, and vengeful character.”
“It’s tough love, but it is love. Keep in mind that He let us kill His only son, only so that He could forgive us. That, my dear young friend, is infinite love.”
“That, my dear old friend, is infinite creepiness. He let us kill Jesus, and then He forgave us not because He’s such a nice, compassionate guy. He did it to make people feel indebted to Him and to make them feel eternally guilty. It was a setup, and I think people need to know the truth about that.”
The Pope smiled. “I’m sorry that I have to go all Jack Nicholson on you here, but people can’t handle the truth.”
“You should give them more credit. The truth will set people free.”
“Exactly!” the Pope exclaimed triumphantly. “That is exactly my point. People can’t handle freedom. Well, most of them can’t anyways. I’m sure you can, and a few other people as well. But the vast majority of people are mindless sheep that need to be herded and—occasionally—culled. Why do you think the 23rd psalm starts with the words ‘the Lord is my shepherd’? That is not a coincidence, my friend. Man can never be free. Myths are necessary to give ordinary people a sense of meaning and purpose. Do you know what the biggest challenge is that the world is facing in the 21st century? It’s not poverty, or hunger, or disease. It’s crowd control. Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people. I call it crowd control. The so-called opium of the people is not some fancy kind of recreational drug designed to expand people’s minds and to broaden their horizon. It’s a sedative. It’s supposed to make people numb to the pain of their existence, and to give them an illusion of hope. If people were aware of that pain and of the vanity of their hope, if they were allowed to grasp the pointlessness of their existence, the world would descend into chaos and mayhem.”
“Wow,” Julian said. “You really don’t have a lot of faith in the human race, do you?”
“Let me tell you something, Julian,” the Pope said. “I appreciate and admire your youthful idealism and your belief that man is inherently good, I really do. But once you grow older, you will change your mind.”
“All right, so you don’t believe in man,” Julian said. “But do you really believe in God, though?”
“What, do you think I’m stupid?” The Pope laughed roaringly. “Of course I believe in God. I believe that man created God in his image in order to keep his fellow men under control. And I believe that you, my dear young friend, are intelligent enough to understand that for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, that misguided belief in God is good and necessary.”
Julian shook his head very slowly. “Why are you so afraid? Why are you so afraid of a world without God?”
“Because I have seen how the world works,” the Pope said solemnly. “And believe you me, once you have seen it all, once you begin to grasp the scope of all the cruelty, all the atrocities that man is not only capable of but all too often even willing to inflict on his fellow men, you will be afraid, too. Very afraid.”
That’s where the video ended.
Julian was still standing in the middle of the stage, overlooking the crowd. There were a few scattered boos and catcalls, but most people in the audience were too aghast, too stunned to say anything.
So Julian started to speak.
The Sermon in the Park
“Everybody’s scared. You, me, everyone I know, and everyone you know. And those who claim not to be scared are the scaredest of them all. Everybody’s scared.
“As humans, it is in our nature to feel a deep-rooted fear of insignificance, of purposelessness. It is also in our nature to seek answers to every question we can possibly imagine, because having answers gives us the illusion of safety, even if the answers we have aren’t always the right answers. Knowledge is power, as they say, and therefore the lack of knowledge comes with a feeling of helplessness, confusion, and fear. Nobody likes feeling helpless or confused. I don’t, you don’t, and neither did our ancestors in the African savannahs a hundred or two hundred thousand years ago.