Scientology is the only religion that makes any sense whatsoever at this point in time.

The Bible is too dangerous a bugger of a thing for it suggests that the poor and the exiled and the disenfranchised are pissed the fuck off and are two cross-nails shy of wrenching the power back from the vicious bastards who built their empires ‘pon their shoulders. To Hell with the perversions the Churches are peddling - Christianity is a philosophy of rebellion and revolution.

For this reason, the West has grown ever more uncomfortable with it. Its preachers will divert attention to the two lines in the Bible that mention rim-jobs or tea bagging, they’ll pontificate endlessly on the texture of the Whore of Babylon’s hoo-hah, on the notes that maybe came from out those trumpets, anything at all that keeps folks from stumbling upon the message of those texts, that keeps them from questioning those IMAX screens at the end of every pew, those blood diamond crucifixes, those Aryan saviours, those chariots of friendly-fire.

What the rise of Evangelical Christianity represents is not a strengthening of belief in The Bible but a fear of it. Keep folks thinking about abortion and homosexuality and you’re keeping them from thinking about what Christ got up to in that temple.

For these reasons, aye, Scientology makes perfect sense. It’s a religion for the Pharaohs, not the fuckers who clean the Pharaohs’ stables or cook their haddock of an evening.

It’s about personal gain, it’s about money, it’s about power.

By cloaking itself in the colours of science, it appeals to a culture fed up with superstition, yet it retains enough of the reek of the mystical to play on nostalgia for those very same beliefs, and its own beliefs it has the good sense to hide till such times as folks are financially and mentally invested enough to approach without erupting in a thousand chards of delirious laugh-laugh.

It is genius.

“Maybe we should see what’s in there?” Sir Fleming suggests, startling me some, gesturing to the door up ahead.

I cough in the affirmative, saying then about I hope to fuck it’s a toilet. “The wild need for to dangle o’er the porcelain a time, I have. At the very least I hope there’s some machine that’ll rid me of the desire to shit by fixing what the aliens did or freeing me from stuff I heard one time before my ears had developed.”

Sir Fleming considers this. Then - “Dear God, maybe the Knowledge Machine is in there.”

A glance over the shoulder - shadows on the lower floor… footfalls. Sir Fleming tries the handle. It’s locked. “We best go back down,” I say, panicked some. “If they find us up here who knows what they’ll do.”

“Kill us, maybe.”

“Stone dead. To within an inch of our very lives…” Grimacing some then. “Christ, I really could do with a crap.”