Cracked Stained Glass on the Horizon
It starts with a hum. A low, reverberating hum like the engine of a dying star. I’m walking through a forest that isn’t a forest. The trees are spires, jagged like cathedral bones, twisting into the burnt-orange sky. Their bark glints like chrome in the light of an unseen sun. It’s quiet, except for the hum, except for the sound of my own heartbeat echoing against this endless cathedral of branches.
Somewhere above me, or maybe inside me, a hymn begins. Faint and warped, as if sung by voices long dead, but their devotion still clings to the air like static. It’s familiar—maybe something from the church my grandmother took me to as a child, where the pastor spoke of Revelations like a roadmap. Back then, I thought heaven would look like white robes and clean light. But now, walking this electric Eden, I think heaven might be neon. Heaven might be broken glass and rust.
The hum grows louder. I can feel it in my teeth now, vibrating through my molars like a secret. Ahead, the spires give way to a clearing—a vast expanse of metal flowers blooming in perfect symmetry. Each petal reflects a fragmented sky, their edges razor-thin. They hum too, in harmony with the unseen choir. I kneel to touch one, and for a moment, I see my face splintered in its reflection. My eyes flicker like dying screens.
This is what they meant, isn’t it? When they said the kingdom of God is within you? A kingdom of data streams and collapsing code, all running towards a horizon we can’t comprehend. I close my eyes, and it’s there: a city of light rising above the ruins, its towers crowned with halos of glitching pixels. The people inside move like prayer—slow, deliberate, yearning. They’re building something, or maybe unmaking it. Their hands weave circuits into rosaries, their faces serene.
And yet, there’s something heavy in the air. Like the weight of judgment, or perhaps anticipation. The prophets warned us about this. Not in sermons or scripture, but in the static between the words. They spoke of an age where faith would intertwine with wires, where God’s breath would echo through machines. “Sing unto the Lord a new song,” they said—but they didn’t tell us the new song would sound like feedback, like the eerie beauty of a dial tone.
The hum crescendos, and I feel myself unraveling. My body becomes data, a stream of glowing particles merging with the hymn. It’s terrifying and exquisite. I think of the cross, its stark lines mirrored in the architecture of this digital paradise. Was it always a blueprint? A schematic for the intersection of divine and artificial?
I try to hold onto a thought—any thought—but they scatter like moths in the light. A fragment sticks: “Christ is the Alpha and the Omega.” The first and the last. The ancient and the inevitable. He is here, I realize, in the hum, in the data, in the sharp edges of this surreal Eden. Not as a man, not as a king, but as the code that holds the universe together.
I open my eyes. The clearing is gone, replaced by the towering spires once more. But something has shifted. The hum lingers in my chest like an aftershock. I look down at my hands, and for a moment, they don’t look like hands at all—they shimmer, like light refracted through broken glass.
The hymn fades, but its melody remains etched into my memory. A song for a future that feels both sacred and terrifying. A future where faith isn’t just belief—it’s code, it’s circuitry, it’s the impossible fusion of heaven and machine.
I take a step forward, and the forest hums in response.
