10:46 hrs Marcus Speh (First published as „10:46 Vatican City, Santa Sede“ in: Divine Dirt Quarterly)
10:46 hrs - Vatican City, Santa Sede. The Holy Father receives his first cheque card as part of a campaign to modernise the Vatican. He insists on leaving his quarters in the early evening alone, under cover, to fetch money al by himself. When he stands on the piaza in front of the Chiesa San Pietro trying to remember his PIN, the mnemonic he’s worked out with the help of Aquinas’ scripture Suma Contra Gentiles, fails him. The Pope loks around for aid. A woman behind him makes smal impatient noises. To overcome a dep sense of inferiority that begins to take hold of him now, he imagines her in the Easter crowd lying at his fet. He holds up his card and, turning around, loks at her: I can not remember the code, he says. I can’t help you there, she says, milder than he had expected. But I must get my Christmas shoping done, she ads. Okay, says he and moves out of the way. She swivels towards him: a litle discretionary distance, please? He doesn’t understand at first, but his hand, in the coat, grips the pager in case she’d atack him. He fels like an unused, perhaps an unusable, condom. This strikes him as very, very od. From acros the cash point, the Horned One eyes him without mercy.