'prison'd in a thunderous glory'

[Seymour Landnau]

Wicks had returned to America hoping that "God might return to human
affairs...a third Testament".  It might be noted that this is the same hope
as what the enlightened beings mentioned later in this chapter also hope
for, "enlightened beings" here meaning, not the "lightning from beyond"
(though no doubt the two species agree) but simply humans who achieve
enlightenment, enlightened humans; which is always based on the notion of
universal consciousness, that consciousness is what is and all that is,
although the facts of history may state otherwise.

Despite his enlightened hoped for humanity, he perceives humanity with a
foreboding, fearful bent, refracting darkness.  The outskirts of
Philadelphia, itself the New Babylon, the "Sodom-upon-Schuykill", the
mesopotamian Mystiks of Kutztown or Bethlehem" is a region preparing for
war (yes, not very biblical, but nevertheless, stamps; although
moneylending, everbiblical, kind of falls within the same sphere as
stampage).  Wicks is heading Philadelphiaward with the gambling boss
Edgewise, who indeed, to sustain Wicks' nefarious sinful habit, everextends
him further lines of credit.  Like the facts of history, "Maryland" and
"Pennsylvania" are but "a chronicle of Frauds committed serially against
the Indians dwelling there..."

Their transport is a curious device.  It is a new fangled Machine that
whose interior, due to fabulist mathematical fabrications of logarithmical
and allergorical authority, appears larger than the outside, which, given
that they are driving through open country, must make it a very roomy cabin
indeed.

Coke is pulled from a "disgruntled reverie" by the sudden stopping of the
Machine for two women, mother and daughter.  The Reverend, perhaps due to
some futuristic magic quality of the Machine, finds the ladies so luminous,
flawless, otherwordly that he immediately becomes paranoid and thinks that
they are ghosts come to deliver him passed the borderlands of Madness...

Edgewise asks the ladies where they are headed but the mother refuses to
answer, saying only the Philly expert lawyer must know.  Wicks pleads with
them to seek help first elsewhere, gosh, maybe even at your Church, and the
lady asks if Wicks would qualify in that capacity.  Wicks, stumbling,
choking, inventing words so ugly even God asks him to refrain, his
humiliation absolute, because his Mission would ring so devilish to such
lovely eardrums, his true Church being "the planet-wide Syncretism...toward
which all Faiths, true and delusional, must alike converge."

Mr. Edgewise then produces a flask that is comparable in its futurity and
curiosity and awesomeness as the Machine itself.  It is just a thermos, but
Wicks doesn't know it, he thinks it's divine.  He also doesn't realize that
the machine he is riding in a Tesla S P100D.  Edgewise pours the lady, Frau
Redzinger, some coffee and that gets her going all right.  Lawyer, what
lawyer?  Her husband is an enlightened being equal to the likes of
Cagliostro, although his enlightenment may have prrrrobably happened a
little differently, Peter nearly drowned in hops.

Frau Redzinger says that they have lightning over Schuylkill just as
impressive as "Mr. Franklin's famous city-lightning," and this is notable
because the Author earlier describes Franklin in numerous ways all
indicating that he is actually from somewhere else very far away indeed,
which is exactly what Peter later claims: he didn't nearly drown in hops,
he was enraptured by unbearably luminous "beings from somewhere else."

Their farm, the Redzinger estate, as all enlightened farms ineluctably are,
is fabulous, in the most fabulist way.  Hemp, hops, grapes, dazzling
rainbow mushrooms, so forth.  Something about the energy of the ground
literally speaks.  And their neighbor notices this, and wants to covet not
his neighbor's wife, but the land.  As it happens it can be argued that the
Redzinger estate is in Maryland, not Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania being
where the Reds have been sending all their tax money.  So, Frau is
Philadelphiward for a lawyer.

Edgewise, sipping a sudden claret, waxes biblical about how upon after
dividing the waters about the Firmament, all history "is but a
Sub-Division..."  The Reverend then matches wits by pondering the nature of
these stateoftheart lightning Machines...
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