"Pong," went the machine again.

"Shit," said a voice from behind the cabinet.

"Reverend Powell is here, O Blissful Master," chanted Joleen in a squeaky sing-song.

"What?" came the voice from behind the cabinet.

"Pong," went the machine.

"Reverend Powell is here as you predicted, O Perfection, O Enlightment."

"Who?"

"The one whom you perceived would come. The Christian. The Baptist whom we will show as a convert to our true enlightenment."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Remember the letter, O Perfect One?"

"Oh, yeah. The nigger. Bring him in."

Joleen squeezed Powell's hand and with a beaming grin nodded to him to come along with her.

"I don't like that word. The last time it was used on me, young lady, was by rowdies in your father's pharmacy."

"You don't understand. 'Nigger' in the mouth of the Blissful Master takes the sting and prejudice from the word. What is the word but two insignificant sounds anyway? Nig and er. Nothing."

"It is not for you to decide. Nor for your master."

When Reverend Powell saw the Blissful Master, he nodded curtly and said, "uh huh," as if in confirmation. He was beyond shocks in this building. The Blissful Master wore a pair of too-tight white shorts and nothing else on a pudgy light brown body.

He looked like a knockwurst with a tight white Band-Aid around the middle. A youthful mustache struggled over precisely outlined lips. A lock of greasy black hair hung over his face. He stood before a television-type screen, watching a bouncing white blip and manipulating levers on both sides.

"Pong," went the machine, and the blip batted crazily from one side of the machine to the other.

"Just one second," said the youth, whom Powell judged to be fifteen or sixteen. The lad's lips twitched nervously. His English had only a trace of an accent, sort of English, like the white kids who had come down south in the summer to work for civil rights so long ago.