They opened the first Electrochurch six months ago. "We call them something else in the future, of course, but it sounds good." You're expected to take off your shoes and wear silk slippers inside. They have a gift shop. You can buy the slippers there. "Silence is golden," they say right before they turn on their Ecstasy Machines. In the future it is very loud. That's the first thing anybody says.
Construction began one week after the first recorded appearance of Futuroptera—the time-butterfly. I saw one unfold itself like a napkin while in line at a Serious Coffee, waiting for my hot chocolate with whipped cream. Unfolding with a small thunderclap. More like thunder unclapping. Its wings were iridescent red from one angle and blue from another.
Nobody has charted what exactly happens to a time-butterfly after it collapses (back) into a coccoon. There was a documentary about them on the Discovery Channel last week.
Nobody has remarked on the connection between the time-butterflies and the Electrochurch.
Prayer sessions are painful at first. "This is different," they say, tugging at the edges of their saffron. Occasionally you can make out tiny little logos threaded into the very fabric, endlessly, of their robes. "This will be different for you, because your heads are clean." And I don't think I've ever thought my head was clean before. They extract the cellphone and iPod from my pockets without even asking. Everyone in the future is a pickpocket. They look at the devices and then set them down in a plastic tray to be picked up afterward.
I've never been a church person. Or even, really, much of a god person. But their new toys are shiny...
I swear, once, while I was under—while the Ecstasy Machines were running, pointed at my head—I swear I watched a time-butterfly appear in the right direction, wings last. Egg to a pupa, into a coccoon and then out with wings. It was wonderful, but I lost track of it. There's too much going on.
I saw one of them interviewed on TV by a woman with lacquered hair talking about Revelations, and the Rapture, and he didn't understand. "I'm sorry," the man said. "Prophecies?" Accusations were made and he smiled, like somebody had said something awkward at a family gathering.
They say more and more time-butterflies bloom every day.
© 2008 Ben Rawluk