June 2029
From Kristie Caistor’s scrapbook:
Sister Mary Assumpta’s webcam, shakily held up in the air, gave a vivid impression of the crowds swarming around the monumental ruins of the palaces of the Roman emperors, here on the Palatine Hill. And occasionally, as the camera waved wildly, you could glimpse the rest of Rome, heavily flooded, the ancient city once more reduced to the seven hills from which it had originally sprung.
Italian police, stationed throughout the Palatino, watched nervously. Long experience had taught them that the devout were not necessarily well-behaved, and a surge, or worse a stampede, could be catastrophic. And on days like this there was always the possibility of terrorism.
The noise of the helicopter broke suddenly over the crowd.
Sister Mary’s camera, searching, returned a blurred image of ruins and blue Italian sky. And then she found the chopper, done out in a combination of Italian police colors and papal yellow.
The helicopter lowered a cage to the Flavian palace. And when the cage rose up again, there was the Holy Father ascending into the air, surrounded by cardinals and security men in black suits, his robes dazzling white, his hand raised in blessing. A great murmur rose up from the crowd, more a groan than a cry, and the webcam’s microphone picked up Sister Mary herself muttering prayers in rapid-fire Irish.
The rumor was that the Pope would now return to his homeland, America; he would continue to address his global flock through modern communications. But everybody there on the Palatino knew that this was the day the popes had finally abandoned Rome, with the Vatican already lost, an end to two millennia of turbulent history.
The chopper ascended into the sky and turned away, heading west toward the rising sea where an American aircraft carrier waited to collect the Holy Father. The police came to move through the crowd, trying to begin the process of dispersal.
Somebody cried, in a harsh Australian accent, “Next stop Mecca!”