The New Religion

by Paolo Antro      

 The gods I follow are really strange. Every morning I have to wake up early, at around 10:00a.m, to pray to my religious idols. On my shelf I have all the newest religious idols I could get my hands on. On the right I have a square object made of a shiny and robust material. This idol is supposed to represent the god of nature and fertility, as shown by the apple on the back. Once in a while the idol starts to shine brightly and I have to get under my bed sheets to not go blind. They tell me that when it lights up it means that I have done some crime against nature. The punishment for littering and polluting the wild is death, so I never tell anybody about the bright, blinding light.

      On the left of my shelf I have another idol, this one is smaller, but it has the same shape. It is a black box with an incision on it. It is nearly impossible to read, however after months of praying and consulting with my Lord I believe it says something like "siri". The priest said that the strange box represents the goddess of knowledge. It can answer any question it is asked using her power of "internet". It has saved us many times, when times were dark and food was scarce, Siri was able to give us advice on how to survive. Without her we wouldn't be able to survive. However, this doesn't make her less scary. Every time I approach her to ask her a question, she is somehow able to predict that and answers before me. After I ask the question she takes a few moments as if she was judging my soul. After a pause she replies if I want her to use her internet powers. I always chicken out at that moment, because I'm scared of what the answer could be and the consequences of such knowledge.

     In the middle of the shelf I got the biggest and greatest idol of them all. A huge square three times bigger than than any other idol of the two previous gods. Yet, this huge object is sustained by a small stick made by a material the priest call "aluminum".  This magical material is made out of flexible elements that are made out of small things my priest call "atums". In addition to being flexible these atums must be very strong to sustain the huge idol. Similar to the idol of the god of nature, it too has an apple on the front, but unlike the other idols it does nothing at all. It just stays silent and immobile all day, as if judging your entire being. In theology "machintosh" is the father of the god of nature and the goddess of knowledge, and based on your respect of nature and knowledge he decides where you will go after you die. If you are an evil-doer you go to heaven, while if you have been good all your life you will go to hell. I really hope that everybody I know and I will be able to transcend in hell.