[ WP ] Virtual Reality Escapism as Religion

* ( So I worked out a concept based on the idea, taking it into a little more extreme direction. I found the concept really interesting, especially taking it to its logical conclusions of brain enhancement. I may have took the'Religion' part a little too literally, but if you're interested in more or more detail about the world I was thinking of, let me know. ) * 
 
 Even for the trusted, it's a hassle getting down here. Three biometric scanners get me into the Ecclasiarchy's data center. Bodyscan, DNA, mental key. I stand in the final chamber, listening to the low-volume hymns in soft white light, and think of the well-worn pages of the bible on the lectern, the first day I gave a sermon. The light flicks on, a golden-white, and the door hisses and opens. It's pointless really, the thing could have verified who I was without me having to do anything, but we've always held ourselves to tradition. 
 
 The hum of cooling systems is all I can hear; the man-sized blocks of alabaster computing substrate are n't hot enough to glow on their own, but they do radiate heat if you get close enough. 
 
 I'm tech support now, well, I'm still a priest. But there's an ever-increasing personnel shortage and we all end up doing double duty somewhere. The facility's Seraphim dispatched little more than a shade of a angel saying some piece of equipment down here needed maintenance, so I'm here, in my robes, and a toolbox. I know if the Seraphim was n't able to fix it remotely it's going to be a pain in the posterior. 
 
 Walking past those alabaster pillars you ca n't help but think about what they represent. One hundred forty five million and counting. Looking directly at one, I could almost hear a choir of angels in my head. My metabrain said it was a synesthetic thing, that I was doing it to myself, but I would n't put it past the Seraphim to add a little trickery to it all. They're all devious bastards in some ways, God forgive me. 
 
 My own modest neural circuitry pointed me in the right direction, down hundreds of rows of radiant white substrate like gigantic tombstones laid out in a perfect grid. Rounding the final corner, the ground was covered in hundreds of coppery, metal swirls, spread out like someone dropped a jar of them. Copper shavings. Looking at the scatter, they all seemed to have come from what looked like a dead camera. 
 
 What could have happened here? The camera dome had a blackened hole where the ultrahard material had fractured outward. Some kind of overload? I unfolded a step ladder, and took the panel off the ceiling with a crowbar, reaching up to the conduit. These things are quadruply redundant, built to last out of nanospecced material, internal power supply, wireless, conduit backed up. I grabbed my headlamp and looked around in the ceiling space. 
 
 The conduit was severed, pinched on two ends with something strong enough to bend the metal until the interior links were cut. More copper shavings everywhere. The area around the camera had been sawn open, cleanly. I shook my head. It looked like sabotage, but how? And what use was sabotaging one camera? 
 
 Exiting the ceiling I looked from the hole in the camera's dome forward. On the substrate pillar around 4 meters away, there was a black dot. I rushed over to it, triggering a gentle haptic feedback from my brain as I approached the personnel restricted boundary and could go no closer. But from there I could see the black dot; A little spike embedded in the substrate. Invaders in heaven. I instantly called for help, and found my sensorium elevated through the choirs almost instantly to the Seraphim's level. Could n't even look at the thing directly of course, but it did n't waste time asking any questions, just rifled through my brain for the appropriate information. I'm guessing. 
 
 In the church you sign away your own private key for that stuff to the Administration. A matter of trust. An insane thing to do anywhere else in the world, but if I did n't buy into the whole righteous-servants-of-God-on-earth thing I would n't even be here. Of course men are fallible, even the most righteous man is, but the Angels are not. If they fail in anything, it was because it was impossible, not because it was an oversight. And it solved the problem of those lip-service priests with ulterior motives, no force on Earth could lie so thoroughly to itself that these things could n't see their true colors. 
 
 My sensorium returned to the real world as quickly as it was snatched away, my body steadfastly holding itself up until I resumed control. There were no lights on the attacked substrate in front of me, but I could tell something had been done. It just did n't seem to glow the same. 

