THE world’s first self-acknowledging religion. That they accept their myths as fairy-tale and fiction, does nothing to stymie the fervor with which they preach their beliefs. For them, a supernatural creator has been replaced by a supernatural future.
The Prometheists have established the largest virtual arena on the weave to ‘test’ hypothetical human models. This ‘church arena’ is accessible world-wide for believers and browsers to plug-in and – if you’ll excuse me – ‘fantasize’.
A common symbol of the Prometheists was the third eye**. As a gift shop item, the kids loved them (Plate 26). They blended seamlessly with the skin and, powered by the wearer’s body heat, could blink, follow motion and dilate with changes of light.
The movement is currently under investigation by the consumer agencies that govern religious groups, the entertainment industry and other ‘belief manufacturers’. By taking as gospel the idle speculations of science, there are doubts over the sanctity of the ‘physical laws’ that they advertise as operating within their online church-arena (thus participant’s fantasies have no hope of being attained outside the virtual existence). As such they may be re-classified as an F provider***.
The other dilemma now facing the trans-humanists is that regarding the early practitioners who, three hundred years ago, put themselves into cryonic suspension, to be woken when their post-Darwinian world had come about. This is the longest time any creature has spent in sustained suspension and there are fears that the longer they remain frozen, the less likely it is they could ever be re-animated. Is this the world they have waited for? Will it ever be? Should they just dispose of them quietly? Since there are only a thousand of these human icebergs, the loss would be but a drop in the ocean of the current population, and as evils go it would hardly compare to past atrocities.
* Prometheism – a transhuman religion that has done away with ‘creator’ and ‘deity’ concepts. Identifying with the ancient Greek icon of Prometheus, they preach the transcendence of the human through technology. ‘Transcend to what?’ you may ask; Post-humanity of course.
** Appropriated from the archaic symbol of enlightenment.
*** F for fantasy. All creators of artificial sensory stimuli are subject to Realism Classification, their RC rating then determines how they may advertise their products. It would be a severe blow to the Prometheists to lose their P status (Possible).
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