Goog entered the room with a waltz in his step. Seeing Humming bathed in the light of twelve – no thirteen – monitors simply made that waltz pick up time. Humming had not heard Goog come in, and so Goog took the opportunity to be a shadow against the nearest wall. The flicker and fuzz of the many blue and green screens danced across Goog’s face as observed.

Humming sat, shoulders hunched, shrouded in his long dark robes. On the chair they fell down and hid his legs, giving the impression he was suspended on the desk chair. By way of communication, it appeared, Humming had both his hands in the shape of prayer but placed on either side of a device flat like a sponge. Humming’s left shoulder kept blocking it as he swayed, Goog strained to make out the device.

In their displays the screens held patterns. It was immediately obvious to Goog these were of fractal nature, but what their colours or intentions portrayed, this he could not figure out without a pen and paper. He tapped both his pockets before realizing he had left in his room. Goog shrugged and went back to studying the digital designs. At the top right of the stack of screens, he followed a yellow splash that made an announcement through a collection of green sinusoids. They did not live long, before being eaten from the inside out by a five-sided flower that unfolded from the green wiggles.

“Welcome, Goog,” said Humming. Goog was only a little surprised that Humming knew he was there – he had failed to hold back a little grunt of disappointment on discovering his lack of writing implements. Goog took this opportunity to expand his curiosity by stepping forward and introducing himself to the various patterns.

“Do they speak?” asked Goog, as he saddled up to Humming by his seat and put a keen eye up to each screen, one at a time.

“No, but they hymn. Listen.” For the first minute, Goog heard nothing at all. Intrigued, he considered that perhaps the inputs to his eyes were distracting him from hearing the more subtle frequencies in his ears. He closed his eyelids. Yes, something sweet, laconic, came in. It was a far off radio, a song, but it was very familiar. Goog opened his eyes again.

“Bandis’s Third Prayer,” said Goog quietly to himself. Humming nodded slowly. It was a hymn of both theological and psychological components and was said to be hummed by surgeons during operation to hallucinate the affects of a full-body anaesthetic. Now Goog could make out what Humming had squeezed between his palms. It was not a prayer trainer, as Goog had guessed, for those carved blocks of wood do not have wires dribbling from their bases. This object was a deluge of insulated copper hair, growing from the bottom like roots of a stunted but eager shrub. Goog manoeuvred his eye from the screen to Humming’s palm, put it up real close and gentle. With his eyes closed, Humming utilized the hairs on his hands to communicate to him Goog’s intention.

“Ah, the interhand,” said Humming, not moving, except for very tiny twitches of his knuckles.

“Some sort of interface to this machine before you?” inquired Goog, still baring his eye upon the block of wood with the hundred electronic tails that was Humming hands and machine.

“Some sort of interhand to this machine before you,” correct Humming. As if on cue, a great gong declared itself from nowhere and everywhere around them. Goog only now saw the sixteen strips of tin on the walls, which vibrated with the great noise. One by one, the patterns of the twelve screens melted into a steady, blank yellow. Various lights that had been on around the interhand, on the bevels of the monitors, under the desk, these blinked off. Humming opened his eyes to a room that was coloured like a field of bioluminescent corn was growing on the floor.

In the desk chair Humming had been upright. He allowed himself to sit back now, his weight leaning the chair at a slight angle. Goog also stepped back a little, to take in the display, and Humming, and see it all in one go. He looked at it as if for the first time. Where Humming had removed his hands from the interhand there were two inlets on either side of the block, of perfect size and shape for five fingers and a palm.

“What is this wonderful contraption you have built?” said Goog. He was rare to be the one not to know, but when something was beyond him, he was possessed with an insistence to learn about.

“This,” Humming said, standing up and walking towards the far side of the desk, “is a Compounding Preyer-12.” He pushed a small button on the desk and the monitors blinked off. A second later, they came back on, with text running along one of the screens right to left. Goog read it as fast as he could, eager:

Welcome, oh predestined User. It is not by coincidence that the photons from my screens are now scrawling across your retinas, it is of course, by pure Kois.

The text stopped there and then reappeared on one of the other screens:

Octane Orvis once said while she suspended between the Fifty-One Moons of Mug: “Life consists of two goals: The first, to pray, often and every day. The second, to remind yourself, often and every day, to pray, often and every day.”

On display three, the text became green, which was a little hard to read against the yellow background. It stayed green for the next three screens:

The human form has always been a limited vessel for prayer. Always, we have been keenly aware of these limitations. The sanga, therefore, has been of great value to the devoted, for it functions to amplify prayer.

Dr. Jand-3 was the first to prove, by way of highly accurate brain wave measurements, that two humans in prayer together produces twice as much prayer as the sum of prayer produced by those same humans but praying in isolation.

Therefore, what was once ancient intuition was now scientific assurance: sangas exponentiate the power, the quality, and the likelihood of prayer.

After screen five, no more text emerged. Goog frowned and turned to Humming, who was looking at his watch.

“Recently, it has slowed a bit. I suspect a shorted fuse somewhere, but, I know nothing about theotechnotronics.” Humming pointed at one of the monitors at the bottom right of the stack. “This lag is about fifteen seconds – it should be appearing soon.”

And almost instantly, the text appeared – blue this time – where Humming had pointed:

But the great tragedy of humanity has always been that, through our technical maturity we have sacrificed our connectivity. Rarely does one human meet more than five others in their entire lifetime. Sangas have been lost.

Some tried to revive the sanga by way of electric communication. This was always destined to fail, though, for Jand-3’s First Law states: ‘prayer diffuses inversely proportional to its cubed distance.’

On Earth these distances were still small and this diffusion was untraceable. Great planetary sangas could play out. But once humanity became a species of the stars, the forecasted prayer-doubling per unit year began to plateau.

Goog thought he had it all clear now. There was a long delay before any more text came, and still longer, Goog took the chance to elaborate to Humming his understanding.

“Ah, I see now. This device – it’s a sanga simulator. Rather than rely on human interconnectivity, we can simulate the prayers of a hundred humans at once. One person can be a part of a thousand-fold sanga, all – “ Goog interrupted himself for the next text had appeared. Humming remained silent.

Rather than grow, the solution was to shrink, and to simulate. This line of thought brought about the sanga simulator, which was a fantastic leap forward in theotechnology. A clear decade-long spike is present on the plot of prayer output of humanity over its last ten-thousand years.

Goog nodded his way through this text as he read it, and then frowned. He turned to Humming who was patiently moving his way to the next screen. By the time Goog looked at the next screen, he had almost missed the first word, which was halfway off the right side of the screen.

– he Compounding Preyer-12 is now the second great invention of the theological universe. It expands beyond a simple sanga simulator by asking a simple question:

The simple question it asked was on the eleventh screen, and it was asked in pink text on a blue background. A bold weight to the font made it far more readable than those colours should have allowed it to be:

Can we simulate a sanga simulator?

And the twelfth screen concluded:

Once this question is asked, it is only natural to ask the question again, one layer deeper, until we have a sanga simulator to the nth power. Such simulated exponentiation gives us…

All twelve screens seemed to turn off the moment the trailing dots went off the side of screen twelve, but Goog looked closer and saw it was not off, but just displaying black. The four pupils in the room contracted in angst as a sudden bleached white filled the room. Every screen blinked a shared message: The Compounding Preyer-12. When the words disappeared, they always returned in a new colour randomly pipetted from a rainbow pool.

“Fascinating,” said Goog, as the screens adopted their idle yellow and a list of six words appeared orderly on the screen. “So this is a sanga simulator of the twelth order?”

“Correct. Have a seat,” said Humming, gesturing to the chair. Goog settled himself as if it was his first time he had ever tried sitting. He allowed Humming to instruct him on optimal hand placement on the interhand. After a few attempts, Goog finally found a comfortable position that felt natural.

“Humming, I feel like I am enshrouded in the walls of the Temple of Badni-G-6.” Humming did not try to hide his delight. His eyebrows raised, his mouth turned up a little at the edges.

“What next,” said Goog. On the screen Humming indicated the six options Goog could move through, by way of subtle knuckle gestures. Goog became a natural quickly and he was raced through the calibration sequence swift as a mouth whistle.

“Are the devices for my ears? My noses? My tongues?”

Humming shook his head, “No need. Over two-hundred thousand neurons attached to the surface of the hand alone. It is the perfect, low-bandwidth two-way communication system. A little bit of neural rewiring is required to warm you up to it, but it does not take long.” Humming pointed to one of the screens and Goog tried to twitch himself to that point. He was moving not a cursor, but a field. The screens were still flushed yellow, but a blue blob that faded near the edges, this is what Goog moved around the screens. It seemed to ebb and swell, like jelly, depending on how Goog squeezed or twitched his fingers. He struggled at first to get the blob to move anywhere but in circles, but eventually, shakily, the blue blob wriggled to where Humming pointed.

“There are various pathways, called prayways, which you can take, based on various factors such as your level of devotion, your personal experience with theotechnology, and your general belief in Kois. As Goog, you are made of more Kois than matter. We can likely begin at a level three prayway. If it proves too challenging, we will move you down one.”

“I feel like a mandolin with my string reversed and,” said Goog.

“Close your eyes,” said Humming.

Goog removed his eyes from the world by closing them softly. His mouth he sealed, and his ears he let pick up on sounds but gave them so much attention that they dissolved into the atomic ohm of the universe. Quite ready, Goog applied a light pressure to the interhand, this starting the level three prayway that Humming had him choose.

Goog considered for a moment whether the twenty-seven arms reaching for him were real. All of them except one was a light blue, the skin perfectly unblemished, soft. Their strength surprised him, for they held Goog down on a bed of gold linen, and if he tried to lift himself it was like he was under stone. He looked around him, his head the only part of him not clamped down, and saw the arches of a temple, with paintings of various recognisable intergalactic saints. Melgus-V, always depicted as a silicon processor with eight cores and a holy gold aura behind it. Bo-Bo Magenta, undeniably blue, due to her diffusive form. Her saintly journey led her down the path of the transmaterial and she exchanged the solid for the gaseous, one-by-one, until she was adrift as a nebula. And there, just where the top of the arch flattened out, Great G. They were a finger, from nail to knuckle, and that was all. How sentience could be maintained inside a single end-effector, was, well, an example of the power of a life of devotion. Great G held entire retreats, articulating and chanting all through the way they bend their two joints.

Goog was not alarmed, surrounded by such saintly figures, entombed in such a holy place. But what place? He looked to the far corners of the temple but they were immaterial, going on forever into a foggy black. He settled his breathing, opened his mind.

The green arm came up toward his face and in its palm was an eye and the pupil of the eye was not black but a window, a world. It blinked once and then came closer until it was upon Goog’s nose.

Goog opened his eyes and looked about him. He was sat in a garden on a wooden bench. Around him were cherry blossoms in their first day of bloom. Their pink pedals softened the mangling cuts of their grey bark. Something tweeted, which importantly raised the whole volume of the world. The grass came to Goog’s knees and did not bend under its own weight as it should. Realizing this, Goog took from his pocket a marble and held it out in his palm. It slowly floated out of it, up and away, betrayed by its own spin. Goog nodded.

He had missed it before, but on the other side of the garden sat a machine. Sat, because it was a machine with legs and a torso, therefore capable of the verb itself. Good walked over the machine, clinging to the grass as he went so as not to float away. Encouraging him to join, the machine shuffled over to one side of the bench. Goog took a seat. Goog did not ask, “Are you the second layer, dear machine?”, for he discovered in this world he could not speak. Instead, the machine seemed to just know what Goog wished to say, and answered the questions of his mind:

“I am the third,” came its voice. It was about sixty-percent female, forty-percent male, and zero percent metal.

“I must have missed the second,” said Goog to himself, in his mind.

“Sometimes, the sanga can be so convincing, we do not realize it is a simulation.” The machine turned towards Goog and offered various wires with soft balls on the end. It had pulled these from a door in its chest that it had opened with a hand. Goog took them in his hands, considered them like a he was inspecting the quality of a spaghetti purchase. He placed two on his knees, two on his temples, and the fifth on his tongue.

The machine’s