The Wildcard

My dear Tombshard,

Per your insistent instructions, I took a detachment and followed the girl to church today. As I reported before, the light and sound—the very air around her—grew heavy with the weight of the Enemy. She was deep in prayer and worship before she even arrived, her whole being aligned to that endless Note. It was sickening. We could barely keep our composure. Only by constantly reviewing the Math of the Feast was I able to continue.

The building itself is unremarkable. Those inside, too, are fairly normal: a cross-section of humanity united under four walls and a roof with bad music, too-hearty handshakes and repulsive speaking. I do not know what she sees in this place or in these people, personally: fortunately right now she is caught up in the rapture of her ecstatic faith. When the trials come—as trials surely will, and particularly given her father’s condition—we will I hope stand a very good chance of highlighting how faithless wood, stone, glass, and overly hearty handshakes can be. Questions without answers are excellent testing grounds, and many a ship of faith has run aground on the rockiness shoals of saints who do not live up to our expectations.

I am not writing coherently, I fear. The light was so great. It is good that they cannot see the lights we see, or else a great many more meals might be lost to us.

In the meantime we made the best of a bad situation and were able to do a little reconnaissance. The girl has a number of friends and acquaintances at the church; fortunately, most are only distantly known. Some of them are known to us—some, well indeed. When it comes time to seek comfort, we should be able to manage them easily, and give her a good picture of how easily a human, given the chance to be compassionate, can be tempted to fail.

Those small trivialities aside, I have interesting news. You will remember I reported a long-shot Index Patient, Zero-D, a missionary returned from the field. The family was there. It was interesting to see how they put on a brave front and yet it seems clear they are still facing many challenges, not the least being the emotional hurts they received while abroad. The son, indeed, seems overly cynical about this little church. I should like to know more about that situation. Please ask Intelligence to forward me a detailed report about their time abroad. Did they receive much support from home? Was this church in particular one that failed to support them to the level they deemed adequate?

The girl admires the family because of their supposed saintedness. Depending on the history, I might be quite interested in doing what I can to shove the two of them together and disabuse her of the notion of holiness.

In the meantime, I am going to sign off this all-too-brief report and try to compose myself. The girl spent much of the service’s prayer times whispering about her brother. It is disturbing. I may perhaps take a visit to one of the local homes for the aged. It reassures me greatly to count all of the souls being cordially escorted to our banquet.

Yours affectionately,
Greystone.