You know nothing if you don't believe.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 1, Verse 21

"Smooth!" Amy said.

I stared at the writing on the panel—Shrine V 2.0. My suspicions had turned out to be true. We had found the Shrine. The sacred place where only the bishop was allowed to go.

"I think we should leave," I whispered. If they caught us, we'd get punished.

She grunted. "Fat chance. Now that we've found a proper machine, we won't just run." She grinned. "Machines are so much better than all this junk and the church." She gestured at the ancient artifacts surrounding us. "This machine is even talking. And it wants to help us. We can't leave now."

"How's a machine going to help us? And we're not allowed to be here. The Shrine is for the bishop only."

"Ye see?" She extended her arms, palms facing upwards. "This is what yer church does with you. It keeps secrets. And anyone keeping secrets has something to hide."

I hesitated—there had to be a good reason why only the bishop was allowed to come here. "Maybe, the truth is too bad to know. The bishop carries the burden of knowledge and rulership." The Manuals said so, after all.

"How can I help you?" The smooth voice repeated its words, making both Amy and me jump.

"Do you think we can talk to it?" Amy whispered, pointing at the panel with a thumb.

"I don't think we should—"

"Hey, machine!" she said in a loud voice. "Tell us the truth about yer chickenshit church."

"The truth about the church," the voice said. "Retrieving."

She crossed her arms and winked at me. "Prepare for a surprise, good boy," she whispered.

An image replaced the writing on the panel. It took me a moment to recognize it for what it was. Trees, thousands of them, seen from above.

The image moved, with us still looking down on the trees as if we were giants striding through them.

"S'moving," Amy said. "How does it do that?"

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like this."

Soft music played, its tune sweet, of a kind I had never heard before.

"Before the downfall, Earth was thriving," the voice began. "Nature was abundant, the water pure, the air was clean."

A small channel, its waters gurgling.

"The surface," Amy said.

I shook my head. This could not be real.

"Animals roamed the lands, free and unfettered."

Again, a view as if from a giant. This time, we saw a green field, with hundreds or thousands of animals moving across it as if ruled by a single mind. I had never seen creatures such as these—stouter and broader than sheep, but with horns, too. Brown fur covered their muscled bodies.

Moving pictures of other animals followed. I recognized the fish, even though the ones in our ponds were smaller, and the mice, but most of the creatures in the moving images resembled nothing I knew. Some were outright bizarre. And a few seemed to fly.

Like the birds the craner had talked about.

"Pious people thrived in their holy creed and multiplied."

A village of straw huts, almost like my home. Peasants worked the fields. Houses of wood and stone.

"As their numbers grew, they built vast cities, populated by millions at a time." The music became faster, and the image showed tall buildings, each with a dozen floors or more and countless windows. The ceiling above them was gray and smoky. "Man's life grew restless. Love became strife. Creed turned into greed."

A view of a street full of people scurrying like ants when you prodded their hill.

"Belief wasn't enough anymore. People sought forbidden knowledge." A man in a white robe stood before a table of glass jars filled with liquids of all colors. He wore something on his nose, like a small scaffold holding two small glass windows. "The Engineers probed and prodded. They wanted to rule the world with machines."

A drum played, its sound palpable enough to tighten my stomach.

"But what they forged was destruction."

Another view of a city. This time, something flew across it, fast and winged. I knew what it was before the voice named it.

"The Engineers created the birds of doom and their lethal loads."

Small, black objects dropped from the birds. Where they hit the ground, fire bloomed.

The music thundered now. I felt its wrath and took a step back.

Another view of a street. People were running and screaming. Behind them, a mushroom of smoke rose towards the blue ceiling.

"But the Church knew that this was coming, so it built the bunker where people would be safe and find cleansing. It bound the Engineers to its will and ordered them to make it perfect.

An image of the upper cavern filled the panel now. Green fields thrived under the tender light of the lamps. A single flute played a familiar tune. One of the songs that the priests taught at school.

My muscles unclenched, and I looked at Amy. She was staring at the moving images, chewing her lower lip.

"And thus, as strife destroyed the surface, we left it behind and entered the caverns. The reign of the Church and its mastery of the Engineers achieved true peace."

The sweet music continued.

"The surface is gone now, barren and destroyed. But the bunker is eternal. It will shelter humanity as long as people believe and follow the rules of the Manuals.

The music stopped, and the panel went black again. The writing, Shrine V 2.0, reappeared.

Amy still chewed her lip, her eyes glazed over as if in deep thought.

I felt sorry for her. She had doubted the Church and the Manuals. Questioned them.

And now she had seen the truth. How did she feel? Her arms weren't crossed anymore. Instead, she hugged herself. I felt an urge to hold her as she stood there, but I doubted she'd welcome that.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

She nodded, her eyes still on the writing. "Sure. What does it say now, on the image?"

"Shrine V 2.0."

She nodded. Then she frowned. "Wee two point zero? What's it mean?"

"I don't know."

She still held the sword and moved its tip across the carpet, making a scratching sound.

"Let's leave," I said.

"I don't like this moving image. Do ye think it's telling the truth?"

It had told what the Manuals said, so it was true. I nodded. "Yes. This is the Shrine, after all."

"Do ye think we could ask it something else? About... the engineers and the control room?"

"I... I don't think we should." I wanted to repeat that we should leave, but her sad face stopped me. "Okay, we can ask one more question. What would you like to know?"

Her gaze lit up. "Smooth. Let's ask it where—"

The noise of footfalls from the entrance stopped her.

We both turned to see a figure stepping into the room. Short, stout, and clad in a yellow robe.

The bishop.

"Who are you? And what are you doing here?" Without waiting for our reply, he advanced towards us. I had never seen his face so flushed.

He stopped as he stepped onto the shards of the jar. "What..." He picked up one of them and inspected it. "That was the Portland Vase! It was invaluable."

His eyes were slits as he looked at us.

"How dare you?"