City of God

When they next meet, Pem is irritated with Everett for speaking to his bishop. They talk of Pike, and Pem reveals the Pike lost a son and eventually died in the desert while seeking the historical Jesus. Pem is moved by Pike’s search and death and relates it to his own shaken faith. The next section details Louis Slotin’s death in an experiment on nuclear fission, which mirrors Pem and Everett’s conversation.

Everett writes a new version of Pem, this time as a young missionary in a jungle village. He is married to a young villager, but their relationship is not intimate sexually or emotionally, and the village gathers to rectify this problem. The woman takes off her clothes and begins a ceremonial dance. She removes Pem’s clothes and puts them on, mimicking his behavior, which puts them at ease with each other. They have sex as though possessed, and the story turns to Pem considering original sin before transitioning to the present day, where the elderly Father Pemberton receives letters from his onetime child bride, who has now become a missionary herself, tending to islanders who were sickened by an atomic test.

Everett contemplates the meaning of film versus fiction—he believes film de-literates thought, whereas fiction invites audiences into a discourse; to him, this means that literature isn’t linear in the way film is.