Like A Prayer

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t,” is scrawled in greasy red lipstick across a large whiteboard. The dining room, gutted of decor, has been transformed into a modern mad scientist lair of computers and displays. Beneath the smeared crimson letters, the board was a chaotic riddle of technical data and formulas that made sense only to the author.

Dr. Harper Cambrich, a figure of cold, analytical precision, stands before it. She’s adding another line of observations with a black dry-erase marker, her hand steady. The marker’s tip passes directly through the Bard’s illusory words, its ink adhering only to the smooth white enamel, oblivious to the phantom script that bleeds over her clean data.

“The signal is stable,” Dr. Chen reports, his voice calm and precise. His make-shift workstation is a converted dining room table. A dozen machines record telemetry data from wires that flow off the table, curling down to the floor, then run towards a hole in the wall where a cable jack once was. On the other end are audio/visual equipment—cameras, microphones, speakers—and a dozen sensors recording everything from barometric pressure to electromagnetic field fluctuations.

Chen’s hands fly across a keyboard, fingers dancing across the characters with controlled precision. His posture was ramrod-straight. His eyes never look down. They were locked on the flat panel in front of him. The glow paints his square-framed glasses in blues and greens. Wavelength patterns scroll across the spectral analyzer reflected in his lenses.

The suite at Aman Chicago is a lovely, sterile box. A beige cage built for people who mistake minimalism for peace. Ha-ha. The lines are so clean, the colors so muted—whites and creams and woods the color of after paper—that it feels like sitting inside a very expensive skull. The open space flows from this living area, with its low-slung furniture and uselessly beautiful fireplace, to the dining table where Our little scientists play. All of it is framed by the great, unblinking eye of the window, Chicago sprawling below like a circuit board someone forgot to turn off. It’s all so… tidy. So breakable. We can feel the silence in the room, the heavy, expensive quiet that money buys. It’s a silence that wants to be filled. With a giggle, or a whisper, or a scream. Yes. A scream would look very pretty in here.

Look over there, at the central display. On the wall. That one. That’s our test subject. Look at him, all tucked in for the night, wearing a complimentary sleep mask that just so happens to be filled with sensors tracking the electrical signals in his brain.

Seems at peace. Seems.

Ahem. So that’s Adam Gabriel. Some low level camera operator for Millennial Wrestling Alliance. Right now Chen and Cambrich are pumping a signal into the room as he sleeps. You can’t hear it. No one can. The frequency is too low for the human ear to detect. Even if it could, it’s not hitting the top of the charts.

It’s less sound and more data transmission.

The file? maraeth.exe.

Lucky Adam. He’s our first human trial after… messy results during the animal phase. Necessary for Chen to perfect his method, but We always knew the procedure required sentience.

A lottery was held for the MWA office. Winner receives a free weekend stay in a suite at the most exclusive and luxurious hotel in Chi-Town.

Our hotel. The sale went through the morning before the previous owner was outed for sex trafficking. See! We told you he wasn’t going to get away with it. You think We’re so vile. So evil. You keep thinking that, bucko. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Emilia, Our Left Hand, exhales a stream of black-veined smoke. It coils toward the high ceiling, twisting into shapes that flicker at the edge of meaning—fractal echoes of creation, of collapse. We see it all. Her voice, when she speaks, clings to a broken Moldovan accent, a familiar edge caught somewhere between Russian and Romanian.

“Signal is stable?” she asks. Her gaze shifts from the monitors to Chen. “You will speak simple words now. Explain to Emilia. She did not take… high school chemistry.”

Chen stops typing. The data reflected on his glasses goes still as he turns his head toward Emilia.

“I am sorry—what?”

Emilia scoops a handful of cheese-flavored square crackers from a bowl on the dining table. “You use many words,” she says, her tone flat. “Big science words. Now you use small ones. Explain what happens.” She pops a cracker into her mouth, the crunch loud in the quiet room.

It is a delight, watching her work. This little performance of hers—playing the simple-minded muscle to Chen’s precise, arrogant brain. He sees a blunt instrument, a necessary but unsophisticated component in Our grand design. Heh. He has no idea. Emilia’s mind is a fortress built behind a ruin; what he mistakes for ignorance is simply a landscape he is not permitted to enter. She lacks his vocabulary, his formal education—her father had made certain of that. A monster who hated the beautiful, sharp-edged girl unfolding in the “son” he tried so hard to break. He denied her school, but he could not deny her the wicked, intricate wiring of her mind.

She learned in other ways. In shadows. In whispers. She learned to read patterns in violence, to find the flaws in systems, to see the levers that move people. What Chen builds with blueprints and data, Emilia can take apart with a look and a well-placed question. She is toying with him now. And he thinks he’s the one in control. Adorable.

Dr. Cambrich turns from the whiteboard, her expression unchanged, as if Emilia’s request was merely another variable to process. She places her marker in the tray with a quiet, definitive click. “A conscious mind is a cell,” she says, her voice devoid of inflection. “It has a membrane that regulates what comes in. Chen’s signal doesn’t break down the door. It’s a key. It makes that membrane permeable. It opens the cell without destroying it. Once open, a new core instruction can be introduced. When the signal ceases, the membrane re-hardens, with our instruction sealed inside.” She gestures with her chin toward the monitors. “That is what is happening to him now. We are teaching his cells a new name for ‘God.’”

She’s talking about Yours Truly.

Emilia swallows another cracker, the sound sharp in the quiet. “This was simple version?” Her eyes roll with theatrical disapproval, the look finding Us across the room. A playful smirk traces her lips before she pushes her chair back from the dining table with a soft huff.

“No. My turn,” she says, rising from her chair. She is statuesque perfection in a white Gucci pencil minidress. Her heels click against the rosewood floor as she approaches the whiteboard. Cambrich takes a half-step back, a silent, analytical concession. Chen remains focused on his readouts, only vaguely aware as Emilia plucks a red marker from the tray.

She ignores the complex formulas already on the board, finding a clean space. “Is not cell,” she says, her back to them. She draws a simple, harsh square. “Is computer. Your brain.” She taps the square with the marker. “Has firewall. Very strong. Keeps out… noise. Keeps you you.” Her gaze flicks to the monitors displaying the audio frequency. “Chen’s music… is not key. Is virus.” She looks back at them, her expression a mask of deadpan seriousness. “Not loud virus. Very quiet. It does not break firewall.” She draws a wavy line that stops just outside the box. “It sings password. Sings it over and over, very soft. So firewall thinks virus is… friend. Opens door. Lets it inside.”

She draws the wavy line penetrating the square. A cocky, dangerous little smile touches her lips. “Then, They walk in. And changes desktop background. To picture of Their face.” She turns, capping the marker with a sharp snap. “See? Is not so hard.”

A single, sharp clap echoes from the darkened half of the room. Then another. The sound cuts through the clinical quiet, each impact deliberate and final. All three of them turn as We emerge from the shadows around the sofa, still clapping, a wide, scintillating smile stretched across Our face. A predator revealing itself in the sudden floodlights.

“Now that is more like it!” We say, the applause stopping as We glide into the main living space. “So much better—but even Our dear Emilia is missing the beat.”

Our fingers rat-a-tat-tat on the table’s sanded surface as We circle it, Our smile never wavering. “You’re right, of course. The big brain is just a computer. Squishy. Yes. Delicate. Absolutely. But powerful. Every sensation felt, every thought considered, processed as information 24/7, from birth to death. And still a little after death, but that’s another—moving on.”

To Emilia, We say, “And data is math. One’s and Zero’s. Algorithms. Programming. That’s all the human mind is. A biological computer and a Master Control programmed to exist. Bravo, Emilia. You have earned a gold clap of approval.”

We began quickly clapping one hand into the other rapidly, but with difference. Our head tips with a smug little smile.

Our eyes dart to Chen. Then Cambrich. Both quickly begin to clap in kind.

Emilia crosses her legs and curtseyes while waving her hand in a bow.

“Mulțumesc. Thank you.”

We stop clapping. Chen and Cambrich immediately return to their work. Emilia smiles, tucks hair behind her ear, and sits down.

“But while Emilia’s beautifully logical mind is accurate in a cold, rational sense, are we not speaking about something more than science?”

Arms cross. One hand raises to tap a finger on Our chin.

“Our Whisper may be infectious, but We are not trying to destroy. We are merely… conducting.”

Emilia gives Us that look. That one that says Tell me you are not doing music metaphor again.

“You see, children,” We say, Our gaze drifting to the two doctors. “It’s not cells and membranes.” Then back to Emilia. “And it’s not malware.”

Emilia’s face scrunches.

And We grin like a hyena.

“It’s music.”

Emilia looks away. Under her breath, she says, “I knew it.”

Our voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper as Our fingers curl, one by one like spider legs, over the back of the doctor’s chair. We want him to feel Us bearing down on his neck. The smile twists, becoming something sharper, hungrier. “And you missed the most important part.”

Our hand drifts from the back of Chen’s chair to the central console, fingers hovering over the glowing surface. “You have built a beautiful, silent instrument,” We begin, the sound a silken thread in the quiet room. “You’ve tuned the strings and polished the wood. But an instrument is nothing without a composer. It cannot write its own song.” Our gaze lifts from the sleeping man on the screen to meet Chen’s, then Cambrich’s, a terrible glee in Our eyes. “It can only be taught a new one. Note by agonizing note. We are teaching him a hymn that will rewrite his soul. The last prayer he will ever need.”

The playful energy evaporates, replaced by a sudden, chilling stillness. The air thickens. “Enough tuning, children. It’s time to raise the curtain.” We lean in close to Chen, our lips almost brushing his ear, the command a velvet touch with a blade hidden inside. “Push him under. Now.”

For a moment, he is frozen—a statue of scientific pride and primal fear. Then, his training, his ambition, his utter lack of a soul takes over. He is, after all, a man who believes in his creations. With a barely perceptible nod, his fingers move across the keyboard, the clicks sharp and final. On the main monitor, the subject’s brainwave patterns violently shift. The overture is over.

The performance has begun.

A gospel choir swells, the sound spilling from the technology itself, rich and full of promise. You—Our little tag-along—move, your perspective pushing forward, into the central display, a canvas of jagged, electric-green lines charting a human soul. The glass dissolves into circuitry, and for a heartbeat you are inside the data stream, following synaptic fire down spiraling numbers. Until the code collapses into the cool, dark reality of drywall, insulation, and wiring. You pass through it all as a phantom, as if you don’t exist at all.

And you are in the next room, where the music is clean, pure, heavenly. You drift toward the king-sized bed where Subject Adam lies, a picture of untroubled sleep. The music, now impossibly loud, washes over the serene space, a sound of ecstatic surrender giving way to an angelic voice.

Like a child

You whisper softly to me

You’re in control, just like a child

The voice swells, promising a terrible, beautiful truth.

Now I’m dancing

On that final word, the drift stops. You lunge forward, a rapid push straight for his face, for the closed, dreaming eyes.

The music distorts for a microsecond. A low moan, like an ancient warhorn made from skull and bone. Welcome to Dreamspace—a churning fog of potential. Here, stray thoughts ignite into distant suns. And the voice is everywhere.

It’s like a dream

Her voice enters in a hush—fragile, intimate—

No end and no beginning

—then gains steadiness with every line.

You’re here with me

Harmonies slide in behind her, each one a breath closer to revelation.

It’s like a dream

The voice holds the note, building to a crescendo, and gives its final command.

Let the choir sing!

On command, the nebula collapses. In a heartbeat reality is torn open. A blinding explosion of glorious music and holy light shatters the dreaming.

The choir dances on a riser. Black robes flowing. Their bodies moving in unison. To Adam, they are featureless shapes, little more than silhouettes before the vast, circular stained-glass window. At the center: the eye of a singularity—a living vortex of a collapsed universe. Eternally hungry, it’s feeding on bands of fractured rainbow light that spiralled inward as elongated glass panes.

He’s on his knees at the altar rail. His hands clenching the wood. A rosary laced around his left. Eyes, wet and staring at the choice. The musical is a storm of sound hammering at his soul. The glimmering shards rotate, casting beams that pulse with every sharp, joyful clap of the singers’ hands on the down beat, swaying in time.

When you call my name

It’s like a little prayer

I’m down on my knees

I want to take you there

“Please,” he says, the only plea that escapes the raw, confused noise of Our whisper being fed into his subconscious mind.

The circular window answers. That black hole at its center isn’t glass. It’s a gateway, and it’s opening. The fractured shards of spectral light spiral. Faster. And faster. A manic howl of prophecy. And from the starless black core, a shape detaches.

Our shape.

We do not descend. Not like an angel bathed in gentle light.

We fall.

Chaotic, end-over-end tumble. Limbs flailing with terrible, joyous abandon. Laughing. High pitched and sharp, like a guillotine cutting right through the music. A meteor of black robe and rainbow-striped collar aimed straight at the high altar.

Us.

Adam’s reverent eyes rise as Our form unfolds into divinity draped in silk and awe. A prismatic halo burns above Us, showering sacred light that infects everything it touches with Our blessing. Crawling across wood, staining candle wax, wicks rising above as pigments of coiling threads, climbing the walls toward the dome depicting Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam which is remade in Our image. Our godhood realized. Our hand outstretched. Angels at Our back mutating into monstrous aliens with multiple eyes and writhing tentacles. Biblical Adam’s visage now settles into a depiction of the test subject, his arm reaching for Us.

Then the signal sours.

The music bends, stretching like heated glass, and the entire hymn melts around it. Time grinds into a nightmarish sludge. The choir now shifts with the grace of drowning victims, moving with liquid panic as faces distort into terrifying imagery. Their voices, once angelic, begin to drag. Harmony frays into a sound that is not music at all. It is the sound of a gap, a question mark made of noise that digs into his mind and lances through him.

Our arms stretch outward, preying on his deep-rooted religious upbringing. Maraeth on the Cross, salvation in Our eyes gleaming like stars in the void.

Tears run down his face. His hands clutch together, fingers interlocked, rosary dangling from in between, and he speaks.

“When I call your name—”

“It’s like a little prayer,” We answer.

“I’m down on my knees.”

“We will take you there.”

The more the signal slows, the more the dream decays faster. The wooden pews warp. The plaster saints on the walls weep tears of black dust.

Adam is frozen, a cry trapped in his throat.

Our bare feet leave the altar, rising above and forward, before descending to the soft-carpeted floor. His eyes reflect the offering. Our hand. Palm up. An invitation. We can see the conflict in his mind. His father, a pastor, is seeded deep in his consciousness. His voice is a warning carried to Adam’s heart.

But We are undeniable.

The father’s influence is drowned in the void, leaving only Our whisper. What part of Adam told him to deny Us is lost in the echo as the sound tears his mind apart, leaving him with only one thing that feels real.

His hand, trembling, reaches out and takes Ours.

The world explodes. The music winds back into a slamming, ecstatic pop beat. The choir, half-mutated creatures from beyond human understanding, belts out the chorus, voices filled with desperate, joyful fervor.

Adam stands as the church is engulfed in a fire of pure revelation. Organ pipes burst with iridescent plasma. The choir, robes shimmering, eyes black, chants the church-laced gospel. Adam speaks the words underneath.

“Just like a prayer,” he says.

“We’ll take you there,” We answer.

The searing warmth of Our halo races up his legs and over his body. As the molten rainbow devours him entirely, his mouth opens, welcoming the colors to spill down his gullet. His eyes are swallowed in oblivion and his lips, glimmering like polished metal, forms the final line.

“It’s like a dream… to me…”

He looks at Us, eyes wide with terror and awe and a pleasure so intense it feels like dying.

We help him to his feet as the church collapses around us. Pews ripped from the floor. The walls breaking into splintered pieces. The dome collapsing. All of it twisting through the air, rushing past us to be eaten by the stained glass singularity. Not even the choir survived. From baritone to soprano, one by one they flew into the black hole, shattered into pieces and crushed down to the last atom.

We lean in close, breath a warm whisper against his ear, Our voice a melody beneath the music destruction.

“You thought all these years you were praying to Jesus?” We ask, a very Spiral-like smile breaking apart like torn stitches to reveal something sharp and glittering within. “Silly boy. You were just practicing Our name.”

The whisper hangs in the collapsing void, a final, perfect note of possession. Then, silence.

Not the silence of the dream, but the cold, expensive quiet of the Aman suite, broken only by the low, electronic hum of Chen’s equipment. We are standing behind him, exactly as We were.

Chen is staring, transfixed, at the spectral analyzer. Missing are the chaotic, jagged human lines of Adam’s brainwaves. The signals have converged into a single, harmonious sine wave—clean, repeating, pure.

We slide down next to him, crouched over the monitor, one hand on the table.

“What do you see, doc?”

His eyes break with lines of tears. “It’s flawless,” he says, hardly more than a whisper. “The resonance is… one hundred percent.”

All that arrogance collapses under the weight of his awe.

“He’s not just receiving the hymn, Motherdream. He is the hymn.”

Dr. Cambrich is not looking at the data. Her gaze is locked on the infrared monitor, on the man in the next room. “Vitals are erratic,” she reports, her own voice methodical. “Consistent with a profound religious experience.” She pauses. “He’s still weeping. But… he is smiling.”

Emilia looks from the smiling, weeping man on the screen, to Chen’s perfect waveform, then to Us. She’s already calculating logistics. “So. Is good test,” she states, her voice flat. “Antenna works.”

In the background, Chen continues, “It doesn’t just work. See these calculations? Only a 2% chance of rejection.”

Cambrich interjects, “And look at these polysomnographic readings. Phenomenal.”

Our face reflected in the monitor is a mask of seren, sated pleasure. “Every room of every hotel,” We say before standing. “We want them all wired for delivery.”

Chen turns to look up before scurrying to his feet. “But Motherdream,” he stammers, “That will take… months to manufacture this many devices. Possibly longer. Even if Huli ramps up production.”

Huli, Johnny Wu’s company. We’ll tell you about that later.

We stand slowly, smoothly, then address the room.

“Concentrate on the suites, and follow the MWA schedule. Prioritize every city on the list that has an Aman resort. How many devices do We have on hand?”

Emilia raises a finger and stands. “First, I do not wish to be only one still sitting. Second, at last count, thirty devices total. In storage. Downstairs.”

A soft, delighted giggle escapes Our lips. Hee-hee.

“Thirty muses. Thirty dreams.”

Lips warp into a grin worthy of a cat in Wonderland.

“Thirty prayers.”