The hand on his shoulder pushes, and Cris obediently follows.

The machine they lead him to fills nearly the whole room, full of cables and rough metal casing like the early computers in his textbooks, it lounges. People dart around its sprawling body, bugs gathering around the roots of a great tree. It pulses, breathes, incomprehensibly complex.

It's magnificent.

The first time he sees it, he thinks it's a god.

It's only later that he realizes: it's a body, yes. But a body, be it flesh or metal, is just a tool. He understands now that holiness is inherently inhuman, inherently unnatural. He understands now that the only god in this room is him.