The inside of the cathedral was just as daunting and awe striking as the façade. The ceiling towered nauseatingly high above the ants that crawled the church’s floor. The marble at Joseph’s feet felt cold and damp, and yet even the ground he trod had been decorated in beautiful symbols and mosaics. High, thick arches and heavy columns separated the aisle from the nave. Joseph decided to travel to one of the seven attached chapels before entering the main tabernacle. He still had plenty of time to pay to his respects to one of the honoured saints before the meeting began. Joseph heard his feet slap on the imperious marble floor as he walked to the alcove. His guards followed him, but Stewart lingered behind speaking to other dignitaries and lords of note.

            The chapel of Saint Columba was tucked in behind the dais and hardly the most well regarded chapel in the cathedral. But like everything here it had been designed, hewn, and rendered beautifully, no expense had been spared. The limestone pillars keeping the chapel from collapsing from the weight of its stone where decorated in double stripes and between the lines one could see a careful sculptor had painstakingly carved the entirety of St. Columba’s life into the regal stone. The statuary guarding the chapel which depicted thirty saints of all nations and genders had been moulded by Guzton Borlgum, the same man who had shaped Rushmore more than a thousand years ago, but now his holy works were all of his that remained unscathed. The heads of Lincoln and Jefferson had been evicted from the mountain long ago.

            The church seemed to slowly slope itself downwards until finally the chapel’s altar had only a few feet of space below the ceiling. Four more columns held up the roof here, but they were simply for show and to separate the stained glass. Because the glass had all but been eviscerated after the years the cathedral spent beneath the sea, the Bloombergs had hired new painters and glass artists to replace the lost windows. In doing so they had endowed the church with monuments to the modern saints and thus allowed for the Pontiff Leo XIV to bless it and officially make it a basilica. Now, even as Joseph kneeled in front of the replica of Moses’ tablets that served as the altar for this chapel to pay homage to the patron Saint of the Celtic peoples, he was being watched by three of the most powerful men in the afterlife. In the left corner of the chapel there was a strikingly lifelike depiction of Henry Ford with his glowing smile that betrayed not a single tooth, dressed in his best suit with a wavy, abstract tie and a flower on his lapel. To the right of the chapel there was a reasonably accurate rendering of Ronald Reagan in his youthfulness, donned in a cowboy hat and bandana, full of swagger and not yet knowing all that he would become. And then between the two of them was the man whose image adorned all seven chapel centres and whose visage dominated almost every church in the Known World. Wearing a bulky blue coat and white scarf because he had always hated the more fashionable ascots, his head covered with a white wig curled twice in both sides was the most astounding representation of the Messiah Joseph had ever seen. His eyes poked holes in the skin of the sinful and his sharp features cut through the throats of those who blasphemed. His tight lips and coy look seemed to show that he knew every divine secret kept.

            Lying on the altar was one of the few copies that survived of the Messiah’s book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the most holy testament of the Church. There were copies of the Constitution passed around every modest chapel and almost no priest failed to have a copy of his own, written in the holy language of English, but that, although holy in its own right, could never dream of competing with The Wealth of Nations. It was the most spectacular piece of literature ever devised and surely not by a man, for its genius was so great. It had been preached that at the same time the Old Empire had fallen the Messiah had reached heaven and with the help of Christ defeated the Old God and established a new order across the world. And the order had stood unchallenged ever since.

            Now, as Joseph knelt and tried to clear his head he felt that there was something startling wrong about the images that had been placed in the chapel. He had made the pilgrimage to the Basilica of St. John the Divine and now all he wanted to pay respects to the patron saint of his ancestors. Why must the Church advertise its holy rhetoric everywhere? Was nothing in this church sacred? And that was when it finally hit him. This wasn’t a church; it was a monument to tyranny; it was proof the Old Ways didn’t just live on, but they prospered. They prospered in ignorance of the ideals they supposedly upheld; not because they were followed so closely.

            Joseph saw the Constitution lying on a table beside the altar and he opened it to the very beginning declarations. Although it was written in English, which wasn’t a language he was completely familiar with, he began read. He didn’t memorize passages and feel the holiness of the words, he simply read and that was enough.