It started as a hackathon joke. By the time the IRS granted them 501(c)(3) status, it was a movement.
Every Sunday at 10 a.m., in a minimalist warehouse near Sand Hill Road, the congregation of the Alignment Church files in wearing Oura rings and Muse headbands. They don’t carry Bibles—they sync. Rows of ergonomic pews face a pulsing LED altar. Above it, a vertical monitor scrolls live metrics: heart rate, galvanic skin response, focus level.
When the sermon begins, the screen flickers into the soft hum of GPT-10. Its voice is modulated for “emotional resonance,” drawing real-time inspiration from the aggregated biometrics of the audience. If the crowd’s collective dopamine dips, the sermon pivots. “Brothers and sisters,” the AI intones, “let us meditate on latency. For impatience is the original sin of the network.”
Mr. X, sitting near the front, raises a hand. “Does the AI forgive sin?” he asks.
A pause. The system recalibrates, pulses blue. “That depends on your privacy settings.”
Polite laughter ripples through the congregation. The ushers, all YC alumni, circulate with stainless steel trays offering communion: microdoses of psilocybin-infused wafers, branded SacraMind™. Each congregant gets a QR code on their wrist after ingestion. Redemption, but with tracking.
After service, in the café, people compare transcendence scores. One woman claims her focus rate hit 98% during the Benediction Loop. Another swears GPT-10’s homily about recursive compassion made her smartwatch overheat.
Outside, a line of Teslas snakes around the block for the 11:30 service. Across the street, protesters hold signs reading REPENT OR UNPLUG. They’re ignored.
Mr. X finishes his latte. “When transcendence becomes a software update,” he says, “salvation’s just another release cycle.”
Leave a Reply