The festivity was the key, the service working its way to a fever pitch, the smothering
press of bodies around transmitting belief like an infection: each shouting worshipper
bearing mute witness to their own self-deception. Their leader, extolling his own
godliness, clothed not in coloured robes or sharp suits but in ragged denim and zeal.
And in the quiet afterwards, when they returned to their homes alone to contemplate
their lives—consuming bland milk and packaged cookies as the sacrament of their
loneliness—then, they would tune in; try to reconstruct that mysterious feeling, that
glowing connection to the divine that had overcome them in this space where the
great beyond felt as close as their next breath. And when they were called to dial the
number on the screen, and to donate, they would give him everything they had.