Worship is everything. It is an uncontrollable urge, and no matter what happened before, Worship will always take priority. The priests say the Worship is for Him, and He is to be revered, his temples to be hallowed, and his word held in the utmost regard. He speaks to the priests and tells them dark tales of a time before Him when humanity was in anarchy, always threatening each other with war and other heinous crimes. It came to a tipping point that He had to step in. He annihilated the warmongers and made a better place for us, His people, everyone who was left.

I loved Him, but I didn’t know Him. I wasn’t allowed to know His name, the name only the priests knew. They were the only ones allowed to. The priests were the only ones who knew what was happening in the buildings. The buildings were massive, touching the clouds and parting them. There was a perimeter, and there were guards, and the priests walked in with no issue, and I got shot through the leg. I tried to explain to them that Worship had taken over me, that the form of worship my body takes on is walking. It doesn’t matter where there is no danger anymore. I can’t control my walk. I walk, and I walk until I collapse and my muscles are spasming. It was all for Him. They only seemed to take that as justification for shooting me. I didn’t understand. I blamed Him for the guards shooting me. He took action on me, and I had to walk again.

My leg was burning. The wound had opened and closed. I had been walking for so long. I had walked so far that I was in the next town. I had never been to the next town. I didn’t know anyone who had been to the next town. Our priest might have. 

I walked into the town's temple. There was another person there. They were tracing woodgrains, it seemed, their eyes going round and round, never stopping. I went to the altar. I laid down on it. It felt like He wanted me as a sacrifice. My entire life is devoted to Him.

My parents used to tell me that I only walked as a baby because He wanted me to. It seemed that was the only reason I was walking anymore. I dreamed about that on the altar. I dreamed about many things. I dreamed of the altar I was on opening up and dropping me down. I dreamed of a painful experience, like my cells were burning, and their structure changed. I dreamed of being in one of the buildings, the tall ones that touched the clouds, and playing with them. I woke up on the altar. I had been healed. My faith in Him was stronger than ever. I would do whatever He wanted, whatever the priests wanted, as long as it was in His name. The man who was tracing woodgrains had stopped moving. I walked out of the temple, and back to my town on my own accord. It didn’t feel right.
“The entire thing just felt real, like it wasn’t a dream,” I said, trying to explain to anyone who would listen.
“Don’t listen to this heretic. He would not do this for someone who wasn’t a priest,” the speaker fell to the ground, and he started counting the blades of grass. There was jealousy in people's eyes.

Weeks had gone by, and other people had described what had happened to me had happened to them, I was no longer the special one, just the first one. The jealousy remained. It was much less prevalent. Everyone seemed to be waiting for their turn. Their turn came quickly.  A week later, everyone had had my experience. The man who called me a heretic was taken into the building, the one that caressed the sky. He was never seen again.

It was time for daily worship. The priest started as he always did, “ Hallowed be His place and hallowed be His name, for we are His people and shall not think His name in vain,” we repeated. The priest had a wild look in his eyes.
“Stop worshiping Him,” the priest shouted, and the thought repulsed us.
“You are just experiments. He is not a person but a system, and our urges make us do whatever they want.” We rushed to the altar where the priest was speaking, and he died. We had a new priest today. Worship was normal. We started with our greeting. We swore to do whatever He asked of us.

Something was different, and He didn’t feel as close to me today. I did not like it. I tried to erase what the priest had said to us. It only made it stick to my retinas more, playing like the video the priest played for us at worship. To try and affirm our faith, which didn’t stick as well as the words the old priest said. We weren’t supposed to think about the priest or talk about the priest, the priest was supposed to be forgotten, erased, like He did to the warmongers.

I was confused, I felt something I had not felt before today. I started walking. I started walking in the opposite direction of the other town I had been to, it felt like I shouldn’t have been seen there again. I kept on walking. I passed a thing I had never seen before, it had four round things touching the ground, going over and over, around and around. It seemed like they were moving the bulky upper part of it. It was moving fast. I did not let it see me. I caught a glimpse of words on the side of the machine reading “He is everything” like a mantra. I tried to agree. I could not.

I saw another building, like the one that I thought, when I was a child, that the earth would try and pull back to it, for being higher than His temples, it never seemed right to me. I made it to that building on the second day of my journey, and I found the temple. I made my way to its altar. I fell asleep.

I dreamed again in this sleep, and I dreamed of men, and they dressed in gray, and they had the same mantra as the car printed on their shirts “He is everything”. I still couldn’t agree. 

“It seems this one's genetic recording didn’t go well,” one of the men said.

“Yeah, he lost the urges.” the other one said.

“Thank Him,” the man said sarcastically, “we could have lost our freedom.”

“Yeah, what is this one’s number, we can’t have an undocumented anomaly,”

“I don’t know, I will have to check his tag proteins for his number.”

“Probably, make sure that he still has the coding chip on his cells.”

“I will, I will. You know I don’t think I have seen this one before, on camera.”

“Don’t think I have seen him either.”

“He isn’t from this town,” another man said,” He is from the town just south of here his tag shows it.”

“Ah, that’s why, let’s just try and keep our freedom.”

“Good point.” I felt a prick in the side of my neck. I saw a fourth man on a chair with a board and a miniature display like the one used to show videos of worship in front of the man. The dream stopped.

I woke up on the altar and something was wrong. I felt more expressive than usual, like everything could have a meaning and the meaning had nothing to do with Him. I started walking back to my town, there was a pretty sound coming from the trees that I passed, a little rodent-like animal with a gray bushy tail ran across the ground and ran up into the trees towards the pretty sounds. I had never noticed these things before.

I don’t think I should tell the people in town about this, this awakening I suppose I chuckled at my word choice. The thought of not telling people made my stomach uneasy withholding something this important was something that the priests had told us not to do.

I kept walking and I noticed something, I was making noises. I stopped patting myself down to see if there was anything on me making a noise but there wasn’t, it sounded like it was coming from inside my stomach. That can’t be, I thought. We aren't supposed to make noises unintentionally. At least I had never heard anyone do that before. I felt very exhausted all of a sudden. I took it as a sign that I needed food, something we weren’t supposed to need when we weren’t doing something for Him. He didn’t seem connected to me anymore. For some reason, it felt as if my body was relieved but my mind went against it. It was getting dark outside, and the sun was making a cascade of color in its final moments for the day. I made a mattress of leaves for comfort, that was not something that I had worried about before.

It was a restless sleep like my body and brain were trying to resolve their conflict. I could feel one of them win, my body presumably when my brain exploded in pain for a second and then it felt connected to the rest of me. The connection felt more natural than when my body was united before, not even 24 hours before when I had started walking to the town I had just left. I felt more alive, more in control than I had been previously.

I tried to act the same as I had before. I noticed more things that I had glossed over before or never looked at. One of the main things was the large, eyeball-looking things that seemed to follow me specifically around. Another thing I noticed was how monotone everything was, all of the buildings were the same gray color that the men in my dream had worn. Everyone’s clothing was the same color as well. I tried to talk to my Mother about these things but she shut me down. I could tell that she wanted to report me to the priest but my family ties to her stopped her.

I started to get curious as time went by, and my self-imposed restrictions started to fade away. After snooping around inside of the temple, finding evidence of the old priest, who wasn’t supposed to have anything about him exist anymore, and many other successful reconnaissance missions. I got more reckless, forgetting that not everyone could see what I could see. Not everyone would have the same idea that what I was doing was important, even needed in my eyes. I tried to go into the building that scraped the sky. I didn’t see anything wrong with what I was doing. I had forgotten that the guards, the ones with guns would. 

“Why are you here?” The guards asked me.

“My Worship is taking me here,” I lied. They looked at me, and then they looked at each other. There was an understanding that passed through their eyes like they could detect my lie.

“We can’t let you go in.” They told me, noticing where I was walking to. They put their hands on one of their sides. Just because they didn’t let me in. Didn’t mean that they would let me go out.

 My son has died today. The mother thought My son was shot trying to enter the building. My son did not believe in Him anymore. I think the men who killed him were righteous. 

“Is that the guy that’s genetic coding got reverted to the original?” A man in a gray shirt asked someone dressed just like him.

“Thankfully,” the other man responded,” can’t help but pity the guys who reverted it, am I right? Number 593746 has been an issue for a while now though.”

“Yeah, he has, but as long as it wasn’t us that messed up the code I don’t mind. It is pretty disturbing seeing them walk around like the rest of the brainless bunch.”

“Yeah, really, don’t want to end up like that, do we?” the men chuckled.