Alive to the tenor of the strange and difficult times, I found myself moved to consider the question of religious knowledge versus fanaticism. Hard choices have to be made even in pursuit of self-indulgence. Both were dangerous to the technocratic state of 2219, of course, but of the two religion was considered the more risky because fanaticism could well be turned to the advantage of the institutions. (Then there were the countervailing arguments of course that they were partners, but these I chose to dismiss.) Sexuality was another pursuit possibly inimical to the state but it held no interest for me; the general Privacy and Social Taboo acts of the previous century had been taken very seriously by my subdivision and I inherited neither genetic nor socially-derived interest in sex for its own non-procreative sake.

Religion interested me more than fanaticism for a permanent program, but fanaticism was not without its temptations. "Religion after all imposes a certain rigor," I was instructed. "There is some kind of a rationalizing force and also the need to assimilate text. Then too there is the reliance upon another, higher power. One cannot fulfill ultimately narcissistic tendencies. On the other hand -- fanaticism dwells wholly within the poles of self. You can destroy the systems, find immortality, lead a crushing revolt, discover immortality within the crevices. It is not to be neglected; it is also purgative and satisfying and removes much of that indecision and social alienation of which you have complained. No fanatic is truly lonely or at least he has learned to cherish his loneliness."

"I think I'd rather have the religious program," I said after due consideration. "The lives of the prophets, the question of the validity of the text, the matters of the passion attract me."

"You will find," they pointed out, "that much of the religious experience is misrepresented. It leads only to an increasing doubt for many, and most of the major religious figures were severely maladjusted. You would be surprised at how many were psychotics whose madness was retrospectively falsified by others for their own purpose."

"Still," I said, "there are levels of feeling worth investigating."

"That, of course, is your decision," they said, relenting. They were nothing if not cooperative; under the promulgated and revised acts of 2202, severely liberalizing board procedures, there have been many improvements of this illusory sort. "If you wish to pursue religion we will do nothing to stop you. It is your inheritance and our decree. We can only warn you that there is apt to be disappointment."

"Disappointment!" I said, allowing some affect for the first time to bloom perilously forth. "I am not interested in disappointment. This is of no concern to me whatsoever; what I am interested in is the truth. After all, and was it not said that it is the truth which will make ye--"

"Never in this lifetime," they cut me off, sadly, sadly, and sent me on my way with a proper program, a schedule of appointments with the technicians, the necessary literature to explain the effects that all of this would have upon my personal landscape, inevitable changes, the rules of dysfunction, little instances of psychotic break but all of it to be contained within the larger pattern. By the time I exit from the transverse I have used up the literature, and so I dispose of it, tearing it into wide strips, throwing the strips into the empty, sparkling air above the passage lanes, watching them catch the little filters of light for the moment before they flutter soundlessly to the metallic, glittering earth of this most unspeakable time.

I find myself at one point of the way the Grand Lubavitcher Rabbi of Bruck Linn administering counsel to all who would seek it.

The Lubavitcher Sect of the Judaic religion was, I understand, a twenty or twenty-first reconstitution of the older, stricter European forms which was composed of refugees who fled to Bruck Linn in the wake of one of the numerous purges of that time. Now defunct, the judaicists are, as I understand it, a sect characterized by a long history of ritual persecution from which they flourished, or at least the surviving remnants flourished, but then again the persecution might have been the most important part of the ritual. At this remove in time it is hard to tell. The hypnotics, as the literature and procedures have made utterly clear, work upon personal projections and do not claim historical accuracy, as historical accuracy exists for the historicists, if anyone, and often enough not for them. Times being what they are.

It is, in any case, interesting to be the Lubavitcher Rabbi in Bruck Linn, regardless of the origins of the sect or even of its historical reality; in frock coat and heavy beard I sit behind a desk in cramped quarters surrounded by murmuring advisors and render judgments one by one upon members of the congregation as they appear before me. Penalty for compelled intercourse during a period of uncleanliness is three months of abstention swiftly dealt out and despite explanations that the young bride had pleaded for comfort. The Book of Daniel, reinterpreted, does not signal the resumption of Holocaust within the coming month; the congregant is sent away relieved. Two rabbis appear with Talmudic dispute; one says that Zephaniah meant that all pagans and not all things were to be consumed utterly off the face of the Earth, but the other says that the edict of Zephaniah was literal and that one cannot subdivide "pagans" from "all things". I return to the text for clarification, remind them that Zephaniah no less than Second Isaiah or the sullen Ecclesiastes spoke in doubled perversities and advise that the literal interpretation would have made this conference unnecessary, therefore metaphor must apply. My advisors nod in approval at this and there are small claps of admiration. Bemused, the two rabbis leave. A woman asks for a ruling on mikvah for a pre-menstrual daughter who is nonetheless now fifteen years old, and I reserve decision. A conservative rabbi from Yawk comes to give humble request that I give a statement to the congregation for one of the minor festivals, and I decline pointing out that for the Lubavitcher fallen members of the judaicists are more reprehensible than those who have never arrived. Once again my advisors applaud. There is a momentary break in the consultations and I am left to pace the study alone while advisors and questioners withdraw to give me time for contemplation.

It is interesting to be the Lubavitcher, although somewhat puzzling. One of the elements of which I was not aware was that in addition to the grander passions, the greater personages, I would also find myself enacting a number of smaller roles, the interstices of the religious life, as it were, and exactly as it was pointed out to me there is a great deal of rigor. Emotion does not seem to be part of this rabbi's persona; the question of Talmudic interpretation seems to be quite far from the thrashings of Calvary. Still, the indoctrinative techniques have done their job; I am able to make my way through these roles even as the others, on the basis of encoded knowledge; and although the superficialities I babble seem meaningless to me, they seem to please those who surround. I adjust my cuffs with a feeling of grandeur; Bruck Linn may not be all of the glistening spaces of Rome but it is a not inconsiderable part of the history, and within it I seem to wield a great deal of power. "Rabbi," an advisor says opening the door, "I am temerarious to interrupt your musings, but we have reached a crisis and your intervention is requested at this time."

"What crisis?" I say. "You know I must be allowed to meditate."

"Yes," he says. "Yes, we respect your meditations. It is wrong to impose. I should not," and some edge of agony within his voice, some bleating aspect of his face touches me even as he is about to withdraw. I come from behind the desk saying, "What then, what?" and he says, "Rabbi, it was wrong to bother you, we should protect, we will respect," and now I am really concerned, from large hat to pointed shoe he is trembling and I push past him into the dense and smoky air of the vestibule where congregants, advisors, women and children are gathered. As they see me their faces one by one register intent and then they are pleading, their voices inchoate but massed. Save us, Rabbi, they are saying, save us, and I do not know what is going on here, an awkward position for a Talmudic judge to occupy but I simply do not know; I push my way through the clinging throng pushing them aside, Oh my God, Rabbi, they are saying, oh my God, and I go through the outer doors, look down the street and see the massed armaments, see the troops eight abreast moving in great columns toward the building, behind them the great engines of destruction, and in the sky, noise, the holocaust, Rabbi, someone says, the holocaust has come, they will kill us, and I feel disbelief. How can this be happening? There was no purge in Bruck Linn to the best of my recollection; there have never been any great purges on this part of the continent. Nevertheless here they are and behind me I can hear the children screaming. It is all that I can do to spread my arms and, toward them, toward the massed congregants and advisors behind, cry, "Stay calm, this is not happening; it is an aspect of the imagination, some misdirection of the machinery." Surely it must be that, some flaws in the fabric of my perceptions being fed through the machines and creating history out of context, and yet the thunder and smell of the armies is great in the air and I realize that they are heading directly toward this place, that they have from the beginning, and that there is nothing I can do to stop them.

"Be calm, be calm," I cry, "you are imagining this, indeed you are all imagining," but the words do not help, and as I look at the people, as they look at me, as the sounds of Holocaust overwhelm, I seem to fall through the situation leaving them to a worse fate or perhaps it is a better, but it is only I who have exited, leaving the rest, these fragments of my imagination, to shore themselves against their ruins, and not a moment too soon, too soon.