The First Circle work continues to be inordinately brain-scrambling. Have shifted the day so I do what thinking and reading I can beforehand, and afterwards is dinner and taped talks.
Have already drafted a short-story in my mind, sort of along the lines of the Red-Headed League, and with all the paranoia of late 90s Russian fiction about a secretive agency of some sort or other who hires all the academic outcasts of the moment and proceeds to use some sort of hypnotic writing to get into their minds. Fiction, of course. Current tasks are the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful work I could imagine.
Chatter around the successor of Peter is a bit macabre, and given all the internal politics at issue, a bit tone-deaf. Hopefully, the next time is many years off, but the last time a reigning pope died, I was in St. Pat's, and the MC came out in choir (I think) and announced it from the ambo a rather long time before the media said anything. I think a second announcement might have dialed it back a bit, but I don't recall it being retracted. Might be wise to be reticent about such things. The more worthwhile people seem to have obituary notices in the paper a fortnight after the fact. In early America, the soul-bell would be rung when news arrived, so that everyone could pray at that moment, but it might be a different matter if few intend to offer an Ave or two. On the other hand, perhaps the simultaneous thought of millions of minds might be helpful. Hard to tell.