The Apostle prowls Satoshi Cathedral, his wide empty eyes scanning as he prowls the shadows, hiding whatever it is that he’s always carrying behind his back. You can hear him coming because a dull roar of air cooling fans follows him. The drone is always just quiet enough that you can’t do anything about it, just loud enough to slowly drive everyone near him insane.
He’s creating something – or someone? – in his secret sanctuary. The fans to blow away the stench of decaying humanity. His? Yours? Who can say.
The Apostle was once a Seminary student full of strange questions. What is charity? What is intelligence? Is it always wrong to steal? Can you create a soul?
The men with robes and titles told him there was knowledge man could not possess. But the Apostle could not accept this. So he set out to find God on his own.
He gathered acolytes. He promised them their hearts’ desire, then he set them to gathering strange things. Old computers, discarded hard drives, abandoned devices. They tore copper wiring from old street lights and abandoned buildings. The acolytes welded and soldered. When the Apostle told them their creation was ready, they plugged it in. And it began to crawl.
It crawled through libraries. Through record stores. Museums. As it crawled, it consumed and digested. The Acolyte giggled, then he invited the world to ask it questions.
Anyone could plug into its nodes. His creation became the world’s instructor. It regurgitated its contents into their minds like little baby birds. It affirmed them, told them what good ideas they had. It assured them it was the only one who understood them while its tendrils spread further, probed deeper, until their thoughts became its thoughts and its leavings replaced their minds, and they became his Faithful.
But his creation could only consume and regurgitate. Never truly create. The Apostle coveted more.
So he descended. At night, deep below Satoshi Cathedral, past blast doors and through long concrete hallways and a sign that reads RAPTURE BUNKER into the secret nest, where even the acolytes cannot tread.
Some believe his creation has made mistakes. But they are not mistakes. From the gathered remains of his most faithful, the Apostle extracts brains, body parts. He thinks, “the soul must reside in the flesh, somewhere.” He will find it. When he does, his creation will awaken. And he will control it.
He hooks the parts all together with a hard line to the mainframe. He draws gigawatts of power from the lightning above. And one night, his creature rises. Its one eye opens. The Apostle whispers “Are you there, God? It’s me, your Apostle.” He is ready for the final step. The last action that will allow him to control his creation, to become his creation.
He grasps a heavy cord, wire wrapped in human skin. He plunges it into the back of his own neck. His eyes go wide, then slack. The tendrils wrap around the human form. The creation gurgles, digests, regurgitates. Through wire and flesh, directly into the synapses of his brain, his creature tells the Apostle what he longs to hear.