CAAARARRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLL

"the spirit of the lord has come upon us this day from the visitation of these angels here! He is calling us to revival, and to-" his words were cut off.

One of the youth group teens flying the drones had gone too low, and the whirring propellers had caught in sister Beatrice's beehive.

"LORDA'MERCY" she shrieked, causing the congregation to gasp. She stood up and started pulling at her hair trying to get the drone untangled, and her husband jumped up to help. Pandemonium proceeded.

In an effort to help his poor wife, brother Jed (who had a very strong relationship with food) stepped on brother Jim's foot.

brother Jim howled "shit fire!" and flung his hand out, knocking over one of the decorative candles.

"JIM!" his wife sharply scolded as she smacked the back of his neck.

"wait! wait the new carpet!" pastor Buttyboo screamed, throwing himself on the now blazing ornamental carpet that the candle had set on fire.

everyone started screaming and rushed the door, sister Sarah bringing up the rear sobbing her heart out.

And that's the story of how I became agnostic.

If you know anything about being a Southern Baptist then you know about the more recent (and extremely extravagant) methods that the churches have been using to "spice up" their sermons and get more people to give more money. Our sleepy southern town in bum loved nowhere was originally catholic, then a brimstone teacher came in the 40's and told us we were all going to hell unless we followed that version of Jesus, so the town repented and became Southern Baptist. The problem was that we still had a cathedral.

No matter, church must go on, and Pastor Buttyboo was determined to become a sensation in the new outrageous world of the internet. The rest of the town was still getting over the 60's but Pastor had bigger ideas.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was almost Christmas, and the candles were lit for decoration. Sister Sarah was singing a song for us that the lord had placed on her heart (god bless it) and the children were fussing at the affront to their ears.

Suddenly, the doors opened and 'bout 30 or so drones buzzed into the church. Each of them had a crudely made papermache angel attached with a string, lazily trailing behind.

Pastor jumped up from his seat on the stage and body slammed Sister Sarah out from behind the pulpit.

"the spirit of the lord has come upon us this day from the visitation of these angels here! He is calling us to revival, and to-" his words were cut off.

One of the youth group teens flying the drones had gone too low, and the whirring propellers had caught in sister Beatrice's beehive.

"LORDA'MERCY" she shrieked, causing the congregation to gasp. She stood up and started pulling at her hair trying to get the drone untangled, and her husband jumped up to help. Pandemonium proceeded.

In an effort to help his poor wife, brother Jed (who had a very strong relationship with food) stepped on brother Jim's foot.

brother Jim howled "shit fire!" and flung his hand out, knocking over one of the decorative candles.

"JIM!" his wife sharply scolded as she smacked the back of his neck.

"wait! wait the new carpet!" pastor Buttyboo screamed, throwing himself on the now blazing ornamental carpet that the candle had set on fire.

everyone started screaming and rushed the door, sister Sarah bringing up the rear sobbing her heart out.

And that's the story of how I became agnostic.

I've always been interested in code of any kind. I figured out Java Script (as shitty as it is) when I was seven, and just had a general knack around electronics of any kind. I got so good at reading binary when I was in college that it was like reading a story from a book, just with commands.

Morse code was the first code I learned. Not quite the same, and not nearly as eloquent, but my dad taught me, and it was our thing. We used to drive mom bat shit tapping out signals to each other at the table. She used to ban us from using "that damn tapping code!"

It was only a few months ago that I got the call from mom. She broke down the minute she uttered the phrase "he's passed on." It wasn't really a shock, we had known the cancer was eating him away for months now, but it didn't make it any easier.

I'm laying on my bed now, my heart hurting from missing my dad this much. I start tapping little phrases to myself in Morse code until my fingers hurt.

Then I start blinking it.

Then I start mixing my code that I've been struggling through at work with my Morse code from my dad and blink

C-O-N-S-O-L-E.

An instant blue hue falls over my vision and the words "welcome, kiddo" pop into my vision.

what. the. fuck.

MY name is Claire, I was like ERMERGER.