New Religions, Old Beliefs

[Part 3 of the Future Perfect series]

In the year 3562, a group of archaeologists uncovered a tablet, believed to be a holy artifact, buried underneath the Avida Condominium Towers in Makatiland, a known place of religious worship in the Philippine Islands during the ancient times. The tablet has a Titanium casing and Gorilla glass screen explaining why it survived this long. They have dated the tablet to be about 1000 years old. 

When the archaeologists booted the device, they found data still intact. There are prayers to various ancient Gods, scriptures depicting ancient beliefs, gospels and other scriptures. The scriptures match with the ancient Religions during that time (circa 2500) like Technoism, Asian Cathalicism, and Microsoftism. The following are excerpts translated from its original English.

------------------------------- start data dump-------------------------------------------

Data snip #45

Clip title: A Prayer of Providence

Blessed be the God of the Internet
Blessed be the Goddess of Real Estate
Blessed be the God of Politics
Blessed be the God of Malls

Listen, O God of Technosingularity.

In the Handle of the Inventor and of the Spliced and of the Divine Programming, /end.

Our Inventor, whose consciousness is uploaded in the cloud, Your handle be unused, Your password be unhacked, Your interface be rendered in our meatspace, Your logic be replicated, 3D printed from the exact source code.

Provide sufficient bandwidth for the day and delete our faulty codes... [next lines incomprehensible]


Data snip #08
Clip title: The 19,872 commandments 

Commandment 98: Remember to keep the 59th line empty, for it is the Inventor's line and only his.
Commandment 155: You will not use Inventor's handle in pure lowercase.
Commandment 156: You will not use the Inventor's handle unbolded.
Commandment 412: Remember to create an open circuit on the 59th mesh, for it is the Inventor's mesh and only his.
 Commandment 1,659: You shall wear and use only the accessories blessed and sanctioned by the Inventor.
Commandment 5,977: You shall listen only to divine music downloaded from His Divine Store.
Commandment 8,516: You shall not desecrate His Divine Devices with illegal software.


Data snip #99
Clip title: The Gospel according to Bill Jates

Bill Chapter 8, Verse 2:
I look at my blinking screen in awe. It alternated from white to blue in dizzying speeds. Then He spoke to me, "The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."


Data snip #109
Clip title: The First Emails of Zukerberd to the Haitians

1 Zukerberd Chapter 2, Verse 5

You made another application knowing that at some point the One Networking site would probably want to do something with jobs. This was pretty surprising to us, because you basically made something on the side that will end up competing with the One Networking site and that's pretty bad by itself. But putting ads up on the One Networking site to advertise it, especially for free, is just mean.

-------------------------- end data dump ---------------------------------

The archaeologists have concluded that the tablet's contents might be apocryphal. These are the scriptures that were not accepted as 'canonical' and hence not included in the current teachings of modern religions.

Along with the tablet other divine artifacts were unearthed. An Apple watch, an iRosary and a rare Google Glass. Archaeologists are still excavating the site as of writing.

- With reports from the Philippine Commission for Archeological, Historical and Hipster Studies

Chronicles of a Future Archeologist

[Part 2 of the Future Perfect series]

From the journals of Pedro S. Palanca, PhD in Archeology and Ancient Antiquities.

I arrived at the coordinates 14°33'24"N 121°1'26"E with the sun already setting at the horizon. This might have been a religious ritual place or an astrological site. The positioning of the structures prove it so. As the sun sets, it shines along a long, wide clearing, bordered on its side by tall, slabs of stone and metal ruins.

The year is 3231.

I marvel at the gigantic structures all around and wonder how the ancients are able to build these massive feats of architecture. Each structure might have stood two thousand meters up or even higher. Their width might have been half a kilometer on all sides. The corners are all perfect angles. The sides are perfect lines. On all sides, there are perfect patterns of repeating square holes, about 2 meters by 2 meters wide. Each with perfect lines and angles.

On some structures, these holes are covered by a thin clear material almost crystalline in form. For some, the holes are decorated by complex ornate patterns-- flowing, zigzaging, crisscrosssing each other.

From my ancient guidebook, I learn that they call these 'Skyscrapers'. It has been theorized that the ancients used them to clean the skies of the sins of the humans hence the name. During their ceremonial rituals, the guidebook says, the monks dressed in their finest, would fall in line in front of offertory cages on the onset of the sunrise. At anytime, about 20 monks can fit on these cages. They would get in these cages and the structure would bring them to the heavenly spaces or 'cubicles' to be purified of their sins and to contribute in the scraping of  the skies. At sun's fall, the monk would return purified and duty accomplished. They would do this every single day as a form of religious devotion.

This structure on my right is the tallest skyscraper. They call it the Pibikom Tower, most probably in honor of Pibikom, the ancient god of banking and finance.

In front of me lies an endless stretch of flat, black surface. It is about 20 meters wide and stretches beyond the horizon. I stand in awe at the perfect flatness made of hard and seemingly indestructible stone like volcanic glass. It is an amazing work of technology by such primitive people. It is on these endless fields where the ancients parade their monks on their way to their ceremonies.

According to the guidebook, monks alight on metallic carriages or 'buses' all link to each other via a ritual called 'traffic'. The carriages move ceremoniously to an orrery of sound, from low pitched hums to high pitched screams. The carriage move slowly in those rituals until they reach the corresponding skyscraper. They call these surfaces 'Highways', since they are the pathways that lead to the skies or the 'Highs'.

The long highway stretching across my coordinate is called the Aiala Highway, named from Aiala, the goddess of lands, dwellings and real estate.

It's already dark and I need to get out of this place. The guidebook says the place is teeming with the spirits of the monks who died on their cubicles in the act of skyscraping.

On my next visits, I'm planning on exploring the secrets of the underground passages, the 'Underpass' and take a look at another technological masterpiece, the Emarti and how it met its horrific and disastrous death.

This is Pedro Palanca, PhD signing off for now.