Walnut Creek, California, February, 2078, Thursday…

Paula Cranston told the computer her credit card information, checked all the rest of the information listed on the screen, and said yes when both the screen and a computerized voice asked her if she wanted to submit the order. She was excited.

Being a shy person, the twenty-three-year-old accountant had taken a bold step in her life when she joined the Pentecostals at nineteen. Partly convinced by her equally shy high school friend Judy Lorenzo, Paula left the Baptist Church and Judy left the Catholic Church, both in search of meaning in their hum-drum lives.

Paula was a frustrated Pentecostal. While Judy had claimed to see the face of Christ and others claimed to speak in tongues, Paula had never been touched by the spirit of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The software she was downloading promised that it would teach her to speak in tongues. She wanted that badly. She didn't do snakes but speaking in tongues seemed like something she should be able to do.

The program was a virtual reality program. After downloading it, she took the IR interface unit to her computer and plugged it into the standard port on the left side of her head. The real world disappeared. She was in a rather desolate virtual landscape. Her first reaction to the arid land and the hot sun there by the Sea of Galilee was a strange feeling of thirst. The dryness seemed real.

A man strode towards her. He had shoulder length hair, a ragged beard, and penetrating brown eyes. His swarthy skin seemed reasonably dry even though the heat was nearly oppressive. She smiled. He reminded her of web articles about the hippy movement of more than one hundred years earlier.

He started to speak to her in Aramaic. She was amazed that she could understand it.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked her.

"Yes," she replied, her eyes moist with emotion.

"Then let us begin." He cupped his two hands, palms up, and there appeared a shimmering vision. A stone tower began to grow. "The tower of Babel. We will visit the languages that were created. Many of these are lost to your time, but if you mix them all together, taking some words from each, you will be speaking in tongues. But the words you will speak are blessed. They are words from my Father in Heaven. Lesson one: basic holy words. Let us begin."

There were fifty lessons. Five days later, they found her dead. She had stopped eating and drinking. Her dehydration and lack of electrolytes had killed her.

Her relatives took the software company to court and lost.