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“I walked as you once did, in sandals and cloth through my dominion of Purgatory. For am I not flesh and spirit? Am I not the strength of man as well as the fangs of beasts?”
– Book of Divination, chapter six, verses three and four
“I have led the first of my people to Enclave; the stronghold of my faith. And I shall grant my Church dominion over Enclave and her peoples, for as long as My Promise remains true.”
– Book of Rite, chapter one, verses one and two
Holy Our God: The Headless Wonder
The Church of Humanity — mostly referred to as ‘the Church’ by the common folk — is a headless wonder. Picture a chicken with its head cut off; not running around, not flinging blood everywhere like they usually do when decapitated, but still running mad. The body moves of its own accord. Synaptic muscle and neural impulses fire, the fading charge of divine essence draining from the body, drive it to run, jump, even flap its wings and fly sometimes. But there’s no head. There’s no brain to give the body these commands.
This is where I believe the Church is right now.
You see, in the grand theological pecking order of the universe at large, we have Priests at the bottom, Bishops above them, there’s Arch-Bishops, and finally, Cardinals. It does not end with Cardinals.
Sitting between man and the divine is the Oracle; the headless wonder in question.
The Oracle decides covenant and matters of law. It decides — I suppose in a grandiose sense — the grand matters that go into running a place like Enclave. When there’s a confusing re-ordering of logistics, infrastructure, expansion, and matters of war, usually the Oracle has spoken. Oh yes. The Oracle decides where we deploy our forces next against the heretics without — to my knowledge — having ever left its palace in Enclaves’s Central Nexus. It decides tithing structures for that year, crop yields that season, and as far as I can tell, whether the sun will rise in the east or the west the next day.
The Oracle is everything to our ruling structure — a vital lynch pin in the Church — and yet nobody, save for a few Cardinals, has ever seen the Oracle in person. Nobody is allowed the privilege to speak to them. For deep, deep within the Inner Sanctum of Vigil’s Central Nexus — the beating heart of Enclave itself — the Oracle lives in splendor and secrecy, allowed to commune with only a select few Cardinals, and to God Himself.
And it is my understanding that revelation from the Oracle is filtered down through the Cardinals, distilled into prophecy or writ by their wisdom, and then disseminated to the masses via Scribes as covenant, which is then enforced by Foxers, Lightbringers, and Zealots respectively.
Our laws, orders, and the way we live our lives represent a black box of the unknown.
To the average citizen, the Oracle is as large as God Himself, a figure of immense spiritual eminence and authority. But the oracle is not God, and mythical speculation exchanged during drinking, is the extent of average citizens’ knowledge of the oracle. We cloak the Oracle in secrecy for reasons known only to high-ranking Church officials.
Why?
Why should we not know who speaks to our fearless God? Whose voice is the voice of man, the scream in our throat, the whisper of our compassion?
We follow the Oracle like lambs, knowing so little of our shepherd. The Church instructs us to defend our faith against all evil, and yet they know nothing of the evil within the walls of Enclave. Evils that I have already written of in my publications.
Where then does this Oracle sleep? In a bed fit a Cardinal? On the hard stone floors of the inner recesses of the Central Nexus, penitent like a priest? What do they eat? Read? For whom do they pray? And who do they love?
Are they not man?
– C.
Oliver Hart
Author of Foxing, Leaves of Fall, Liquid Courage, Beating the Heat, A Red Winter, Weber’s Gambit, and many other stories. He primarily writes hmofa, but dabbles in most genres. Interests include, writing, reading, technology, and music.
Stories: Foxing, The Leaves of Fall