At the centre of the town there was a market square, already crowded. Suppressing a shudder, David forced himself to push through the people.

At the centre of the crowd a soldier, crudely uniformed, was holding a woman by one arm. She looked wretched, her robe torn, her hair matted and filthy, her plump, once-pretty face streaked by crying. Beside her were two men in fine, clean religious garb. Perhaps they were priests, or Pharisees. They were pointing to the woman, gesticulating angrily, and arguing with a figure before them, who — hidden by the crowd — was squatting in the dust.

David wondered if this incident had left any trace in the Gospels. Perhaps this was the woman who had been condemned for adultery, and the Pharisees were confronting Jesus with another of their trick questions, trying to expose His blasphemy.

The man in the dust had a phalanx of friends. They were sturdy-looking men, perhaps fishermen; gently but firmly they were keeping the crushing crowds away. But still — David could see as he approached, wraith-like — some of the people were coming near, reaching out a tentative hand to touch a robe, even stroke a lock of hair.

I do not think His death — humiliated, broken — need remain the centre of our obsession with Jesus, as it has been for two thousand years. For me the zenith of His life as I have witnessed it is the moment when Pilate produces Him, already tortured and bloody, to be mocked by the soldiers, sacrificed by His own people. With everything He had intended apparently in ruins, perhaps already feeling abandoned by God, Jesus should have been crushed. And yet He stood straight. A man immersed in His time, defeated and yet unbeaten. He is Gandhi, He is Saint Francis, He is Wilberforce, He is Elizabeth Fry, He is Father Damien among the lepers. He is His own people, and the dreadful suffering they would endure in the name of the religion founded in His name. The major religions have all faced crises as their origins and tangled pasts had become open to scrutiny. None of them have emerged unscathed; some have collapsed altogether. But religion is not simply about morality, or the personalities of founders and practitioners. It is about the numinous, a higher dimension of our nature. And there are still those who hunger for the transcendent, the meaning of it all. Already — cleansed, reformed, refounded — the Church is beginning to offer consolation to many people left bewildered by the demolition of privacy and historic certainty. Perhaps we have lost Christ. But we have found Jesus. And His example can still lead us into an unknown future — even if that future holds only the Wormwood, and our religions’ only remaining role is to comfort us. And yet history still holds surprises for us: for one of the most peculiar yet stubborn legends about the life of Jesus has, against all expectation, been born out…

The man in the dust was thin. His hair severely pulled back, prematurely greying at the temples. His robe was stained with dust and trailed in the dirt. His nose was prominent, proud and Roman, His eyes black, fierce, intelligent. He seemed angry, and was drawing in the dust with one finger.

This silent, brooding man had the measure of the Pharisees, without even the need to speak.

David stepped forward. Beneath his feet he could feel the dust of this Capernaum marketplace. He reached forward to the hem of that robe.

…But, of course, his fingers slid through the cloth; and, though the sun dimmed, David felt nothing.

The man in the dust looked up and gazed directly into David’s eyes.

David cried out. The Galilean light dissipated, and the concerned face of Bobby hovered before him.

As a young man, following a well-established trade route with His uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus visited the tin mine area of Cornwall with companions. He travelled further inland, as far as Glastonbury — at the time a significant port — where He studied with the Druids, and helped design and build a small house, on the future site of Glastonbury Abbey. This visit is remembered, after a fashion, in scraps of local folklore. We have lost so much. The harsh glare of the WormCam has revealed so many of our fables to be things of shadows and whispers: Atlantis has evaporated like dew; King Arthur has stepped back into the shadows from which he never truly emerged. And yet it is after all true, as Blake sang, that those feet in ancient time did walk upon England’s mountains green.

In Christmas week, 2037, Kate’s trial concluded. The courtroom was small, panelled in oak, and the Stars and Stripes hung limply at the back of the room. The judge, the attorneys and the court officers sat in grave splendour before rows of benches containing a few scattered spectators: Bobby, officials from OurWorld, reporters tapping notes into SoftScreens.

The jury was an array of random-looking citizenry, though some of them were sporting the highly coloured masks and SmartShroud clothes that had become fashionable in the last few months. If Bobby didn’t look too carefully he could lose sight of a juror until she moved — and then a face or lock of hair or fluttering hand would appear as if from nowhere, and the rest of the juror’s body would become dimly visible, outlined by a patchy, imperfect distortion of the background.

It was a sweet irony, he thought, that SmartShrouds were another bright idea of Hiram’s: one new OurWorld product sold at high profit to counteract the intrusive effects of another.

…And there, sitting alone in the dock, was Kate. She was dressed in simple black, her hair tied back, her mouth set, eyes empty.

Cameras had been banned from the courtroom itself, and there had been little of the usual media scrum at the courthouse entrance. But everybody knew that restraining orders meant nothing now. Bobby imagined the air around him speckled with hovering WormCam viewpoints, no doubt great swarms of them clustered on Kate’s face and his own.

Bobby knew that Kate had conditioned herself never to forget the scrutiny of the WormCam, not for a second; she couldn’t stop the invisible voyeurs gazing at her, she said, but she could deny them the satisfaction of seeing how she hurt. To Bobby, her frail, lone figure represented more strength than the mighty legal process to which she was subject, and the great, rich corporation which had prosecuted her.

But even Kate could not conceal her despair when her sentence was at last handed down.

“Dump her, Bobby,” Hiram said. He was pacing around his big conference desk. Storm rain lashed against the picture window, filling the room with noise. “She’s done you nothing but harm. And now she’s a convicted felon. What more proof do you want? Come on, Bobby. Cut yourself loose. You don’t need her.”

“She believes you framed her.”

“Well, I don’t care about that. What do you believe? That’s what counts for me. Do you really think I’m so devious that I’d frame the lover of my son — no matter what I thought about her?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Bobby said evenly. He felt calm, controlled; Hiram’s bluster, obviously manipulative, was unable to reach him. “I don’t know what I believe any more.”

“Why discuss it? Why don’t you use the WormCam to go check up on me?”

“I don’t intend to spy on you.”

Hiram stared at his son. “If you’re trying to find my conscience, you’re going to have to dig deeper than that. Anyhow it’s only reprogramming. Hell, they should lock her up and wipe the key. Reprogramming is nothing.”