Brother Fike suggested a tour of the refuge before getting deeper into the specifics of joining.

"Seeing is better," he added, leading me through the central archway into a long room with vaulted ceilings and rows of synthwood benches. Colored light filled the space from both sides, where tall faux windows projected stained-glass portraits of people I didn't recognize.

"This is the nave," he said, leading me down the center aisle. "It's where we gather for morning prayer and hold public services every week. Lockdowns not withstanding. It's been a little empty in here this week."

Gazing around the spacious nave, I took note of a few orange-robed disciples sitting in random benches. They were silent, frozen in position with their heads tilted down and eyes closed.

"Why does it look like this?" I asked, waving my arm. "I mean, I get that it's meant to look like an old church or something, but…"

Fike stopped at the end of the aisle, just short of an elevated platform with a lectern.

"But we're not really a church," he said, running his fingers through his hair. "Yeah, it can get confusing. The Order isn't a religion, but we adopted various themes for the benefit of the laypeeps. Different setups in different Refuges. There's one a few blocks away that looks like a mosque, and across town there's an indoor Shinto shrine with a garden."

I scratched my chin. "So…people call this place a church?"

Fike nodded. "Technically, we call it the Monastery on Amber Street. This is one of the largest Refuges in the mega. Based on an old monastery in some country that was swallowed up by the PAC a hundred years ago."

I scoffed. "I'm an engineer, Fike. History and religion are probably my two weakest subjects. What does this have to with an old Simulist cult?"

"Right off, you got to stop calling us a cult."

I threw up my hands and nodded. Old habits, right? He'd understand.

"Good. So, the design choices were all about linking to tradition and familiarity. Churches, shrines, temples. Most of us wear Arhat robes that historically never went within a thousand miles of a Christian monastery. In a way, it's all marketing. The Order isn't a religion in itself, so the different styles can appeal to different peeps and still carry the message."

"I always assumed you guys were a full-blown religion."

Fike smiled. "So did I. Most people probably do. You'll get the real story soon enough. Order history is part of the onboarding."

I wrinkled my nose.

"You'll enjoy it," he added, chuckling. "Elder Ogawa runs that part, and she came to Hope during the Population Project."

"An old-timer. Interesting," I said. "Real history from a centenarian, not textbook history."

Fike nodded and smirked. "As she likes to say, 'pure, unfiltered, and aged for a hundred years'."

I looked beyond the platform behind him, noticing a large, golden door set into the far end of the nave.

"What's that all about?" I asked, flicking my head toward them.

"Our MiniMax altar is back there," Fike replied. "It's central to our whole system, so it gets the shiny room."

"What's a Mini…"

The retired fighter held up his hand. "You'll find out if you decide to join."

I cleared my throat and nodded.

"I'll show you the dorms, first. Then, if you stay, we'll begin the Discovery. First step of Onboarding."

I hesitated a step, realizing I was about to go from tourist to participant.

Brother Fike ignored my stumble and led on, taking us down a cross-ways part of the spacious nave he called the 'north transept'. A door at the end led to a small hallway with signs pointing left to the dormatory, and right to classrooms. We went left after passing my old friend Brother Jorge, who walked right by me with a knowing smile after Fike handed him the beads I'd borrowed.

At least he'd made it back — and didn't seem to bear me any hard feelings.

The dorm area was a collection of small private rooms and a two-level bay full of cots that reminded me of a GreySec barracks. There looked to be enough space for fifty people in the bay alone. I had no idea how many private rooms there were on top of that.

"You'll have your own bed and a locker," Fike said, gesturing to a wall covered in tall, narrow storage bins. "Communal meals are served three times a day in the refectory, and we got a food printer you can use whenever you want."

I walked between two of the cots. They actually were GreySec surplus. I had a lot of bad memories from my time with the military corporation, but at least they made a nice ergonomic bed.

"And who pays for all this?" I asked.

"The Construct Corporation," Fike said. "We're the third wealthiest Global Corporation, and most people don't even know it."

I laughed. "Yeah, prolly because you don't own a Skypillar or blast your logo all over the sky with holoprojectors."

Fike shrugged. "We keep a humble profile, but we're self-sufficient, operating entirely off of honest profits. No donations, no tithing. Being economically isolated keeps us sovereign."

"Scrip's gotta come from somewhere, though. So, what do you sell?"

"We're an order founded by philosophical computer programmers," Fike said, chuckling. "Pioneers in game theory and machine learning. We sustain the order through licensing our AI software. Everyone comes to us. MetaNet game companies, marketing agencies, even the Consortium."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"No skitz." I said, my eyebrows lifting.

"Artificial intelligence ties into our belief system," Fike added. "It only makes sense."

I grinned. "That's the first time I've heard you say anything about Simulist…uh, the Order's…beliefs. Which is weird, considering this is sales pitch for joining a monastery."

"Not quite a sales pitch," Fike said, smiling. "That implies that I'm supposed to convince you to join. Like I just explained, we don't need members. Whether you sign up or not has no bearing whatsoever on me or this Refuge."

"Sure it does," I said, laughing. "You're going to spend a fortune on food printer cartridges with me around."

Fike grinned.

I took one more look around the dorm, appreciating the austerity in spite of myself. This had been nothing like walking into the state shelter for the first time. In that place, I knew life couldn't get any worse. This place was different, and bore no shadow of oppression or imprisonment.

I smirked. "Okay, point me to my locker."

Fike chuckled, looking genuinely satisfied that I'd decided to stay.

We spent another twenty minutes touring the Refuge. The most interesting stop was at the Scriptorium, a massive hall filled with server racks and rows of identical terminals where monks hacked away at waterfalls of code. A few of them were psychers, sitting with their hands folded and eyes closed, wires plugged directly into the base of their skulls. They all wore the orange robes, and every man and woman was so laser-focused on whatever they were coding that they didn't even look up when we walked through.

According to Fike, this Refuge was a major hub for artificial intelligence development, and both the tech and the determination on display spoke to that. The Scriptorium was a place of work, but these Simulists weren't toiling like the poor schlubs at corpo code farms. Their focus was driven by something else entirely.

Fike led me on to the classrooms and the refectory — the chow hall — on our way back to a small office near the narthex. Once in the office, Fike sat behind a plain desk and gestured for me to take a seat opposite. With barely enough space to get around, this was no lavish corpo setup. Hiro's private bathroom back at Edison was four times larger than the entire space.

"Cozy," I said, taking a seat.

"Practical," Fike agreed. "We're not an order of rules, but pragmatism is encouraged."

I smirked. "If you're not into rules, the monastic theme seems a bad choice."

"You would think," Fike said, leaning back in his simple chair. "The old Simulists put a lot of thought into refining our system. Spent years studying organized religions with a plan to tear out anything that harmed the pursuit of truth. You know what came up most often?"

"Too many rules?" I answered, shrugging.

"Yes and no. The problem was spiritual gatekeeping. 'Do what I say or you're a sinner,' kind of mentality. The religious leaders didn't see it as a problem — I'm sure they liked the control. But a lot of people questioned why the quest for something as important as absolute truth or divinity should hinge on what clothes they wear or what they eat. Post-Collapse society had enough of the nitpicking."

"Sure. A near-extinction of the species is a pretty big wake up call."

"And it made more room for the Reckoning to catch on. Good old Anti-Dualism. Only two billion people survived the worst of the Collapse, and most of them lost everything by the time it was over. Their homes, their families, their plans for the future. That kind of suffering gets old, and the masses didn't want to think in terms of 'us-versus-them' any more."

I scoffed. "That shift didn't last long. Everyone thinks that way now."

Fike shrugged. "For a few decades, most of the planet was united behind the idea of rebuilding. The only wars that dragged on were waged by state governments who didn't want to let go of their power."

I'd served my GreySec rotation in Washington, and I was outside Mount Weather after the Remnant United States forcefully annexed Appalachia. When the riots kicked off, I saw how badly governments wanted to hold on to the past. They had no qualms choosing wholesale slaughter over letting go.

"Now, it's all 'the masses-versus-the-corporations'," Fike continued. "Part of the reason we don't go around advertising our corpo DNA. Humans always find a way to manufacture conflict. We're drawn to it because we're built to struggle. Our need for challenges is as strong as our need to eat."

I furrowed my brow. "At least you're not struggling in here. Seems safe, quiet. Lots of food, speaking of eating."

Fike smiled. "All different kinds of fighting, ya know? The Order offers different challenges, and each of us is guided by our personal Covenant. And that's literally all about struggle."

I leaned in. "Okay, so what's that all about? The 'Covenant' you keep mentioning?"

Fike tented his fingers, thinking on his answer.

"It's the difference between someone who accepts Ordered Construct Theory and someone who seeks to serve it."

I frowned. "I learned the history of Sim Theory in the academy like most people, but serving it didn't come up."

"You got the physics lessons," Fike said, "and now you can get the other half. The half with meaning."

I clicked my tongue, leaning back in my wobbly synthwood chair.

Meaning. The word was a signpost at the edge of the realm of gods and goblins and enough to get my apprehension spooling up. Fike had had me with the science. Even the history was mildly interesting. But now my skin was crawling just as badly as when the missionaries in the shelter were grilling me with spiritual 'what-ifs' and 'why-fors'.

"That bothers you?" Fike asked.

I cleared my throat. "Wouldn't say it bothers me. It just doesn't interest me. No offense."

Fike leaned his elbows on the desk, still smiling. "Have you heard the 'purpose versus pleasure' speech yet?"

"The missionaries mentioned it."

"The ones you pickpocketed?" Fike smirked. "Did it sink in at all?"

I nodded.

"There's a reason it's our Second Noble Truth. Our game developing forbears mastered the art of dopamine loops over a century ago. They did it without holograms, without neurocoms, and without direct connection to the nervous system. They could get peeps to stare at a little device for hours with just lights and sounds. It's almost like they were hacking neurotransmitters before BioDyne and TaoCom made it easy."

He didn't know about my skills in hacking neurotransmitters — and I preferred he didn't find out.

"It was all 'entertainment'," Fike continued, "but some of our forebears started to feel guilty about it. It stopped being art when science stepped in and showed the coin-counters how to make everything more addictive. Games, cinemas, streams. It all turned to mush that was more about turning consumers into zombos so the Pre-Collapse corporations could bleed 'em dry."

"Sounds like everyone was probably pretty happy," I quipped. "Lots of entertainment."

"You could say that," Fike said through a deep laugh. "Until the world fell apart around their ears. They were entertained — maybe even happy by some arguable definition — but they were also distracted while the scumbags running the world did whatever they wanted. A few billion people learned the hard way that distraction is fleeting, not fulfilling."

Scratching my chin stubble, I stared into the empty desktop separating me from the orange-robed Fike.

The story spoke to me. I'd spent ten years climbing ladders for the corpo brass ring. I wasted plenty of free time racing on the mega outskirts, crashing parties, and tweaking my neurochems. And everything I'd worked for was taken away in less than an hour. It wasn't the end of the world, but it was the end of my world.

All I had left was a my car — which I couldn't even get to — and I was obsessing over it because I thought I could drive it out of the mega and start over somewhere else. And those words stabbed at my brain. Start over.

Did that just mean more corpo ladders and more getting off on brain hacks? Distractions. Endless loops.

That wasn't a purpose. Couldn't be.

"Hey, Fike," I said, leaning toward him. "What was that saying that the Founders used all the time when they were first building Hope? Something about rebuilding?"

He smiled. "'Never repair what you can redesign.' They meant returning to the status quo after the Collapse was the dumbest thing we could do because we'd just be rebuilding a failed system. Why?"

"Tangential relevance," I said, sighing. Locking eyes with the monk, I added, "You said the first step was a 'Discovery'?"

He nodded. "That's right."

"Then let's get to Discovering."