Bobby was late arriving at RevelationLand.  Kate was still waiting in the car lot for him as the swarms of aging adherents started pressing through the gates of Billybob Meeks' giant cathedral of concrete and glass.

This "cathedral" had once been a football stadium; they were forced to sit near the back of one of the stands, their view impeded by pillars.  Sellers of hot dogs, peanuts, soft drinks and recreational drugs were working the crowd, and muzak played over the PA.  "Jerusalem," she recognized: based on Blake's great poem about the legendary visit of Christ to Britain, now the anthem of the new post–United Kingdom England.

The entire floor of the stadium was mirrored, making it a floor of blue sky littered with fat December clouds.  At the center there was a gigantic throne, covered in stones glimmering green and blue - probably impure quartz, she thought.  Water sprayed through the air, and arc lamps created a rainbow which arched spectacularly.  More lamps hovered in the air before the throne, held aloft by drone robots, and smaller thrones circled bearing elders, old men and women dressed in white with golden crowns on their skinny heads.

And there were beasts the size of tipper trucks prowling around the field.  They were grotesque, every part of their bodies covered with blinking eyes.  One of them opened giant wings and flew, eagle-like, a few meters.

The beasts roared at the crowd, their calls amplified by a booming PA.  The crowd got to its feet and cheered, as if celebrating a touchdown.

Bobby was oddly nervous.  He was wearing a tight-fitting one-piece suit of bright scarlet, with a color-morphing kercheif draped around his neck.  He was a gorgeous twenty-first century dandy, she thought, as out of place in the drab, elderly multitude around him as a diamond in a child's seashore pebble collection.

She touched his hand, "Are you okay'?"

"I didn't realize they'd all be so old."

He was right, of course.  The gathering congregation was a powerful illustration of the silvering of America.  Many of the crowd, in fact, had cognitive-enhancer studs clearly visible at the backs of their necks, there to combat the onset of age-related diseases like Alzheimer's by stimulating the production of neurotransmitters and cell adhesion molecules.

"Go to any church in the country and you'll see the same thing, Bobby.  Sadly, people are attracted to religion when they approach death.  And now there are more old people - and with the Wormwood coming we all feel the brush of that dark shadow, perhaps.  Billybob is just surfing a demographic wave.  Anyhow, these people won't bite."

"Maybe not.  But they smell.  Can't you tell?"

She laughed. "'One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.'"

"Huh?"

"Henrik Ibsen."

Now a man stood up on the big central throne. He was short, fat and his face shone with sweat. His am-plified voice boomed out: "Welcome to RevelationLand! Do you know why you're here?" His finger stabbed. "Do you? Do you? Listen to me now: On the Lord's day I was In the spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: 'Write on a scroll what you see " And he held up a glittering scroll. Kate leaned toward Bobby. "Meet Billybob Meeks.