You gotta have faith

[Project_Sardonicus]

Our captors had been forcing us to march for three nights now without rest, they looked a little different to most of the barbarians we had encountered. They were wearing the normal ragged animal skins and body paints in crude designs, but each also wore a tie. I know a tie blood red in a traditional Windsor knot, and they seemed tireless. Chanting their relentless song,
"5% down 36 payments loan guaranteed!"
Was it a battle cry? I lost count of the numbers of them we'd mowed down when they overran our base camp. Whatever Gods dark orders they followed they valued it more than life.

"Time to make a break for it?"
Whispered Jonesy fondling the pistol he'd somehow concealed.

I wasn't sure then we crested the hill and saw there, I guess you'd call it a civilisation. Rusty junkers in every direction, thousands of them each painted more garishly than the last. Every shattered windscreen had a banner upon it,
"Good runner" or "Air con and climate control" Dotted amongst them flames burned and the barbarians hundreds of them danced in crazed passion.
Rising out of the centre of this scene from Dante's car showroom rose a 100 foot tall rusty, metal behemoth. It was Godzilla, breathing flame, the kinda particularly tacky and fruitful used car salesperson would feature on his local TV ads.

We halted, and it's geared screaming in protest it dropped it's head down to the ground. And we saw the barbarians around it pushing hapless hostages from some earlier raids into its jaws.

The metal monster was their dark God, and it would be fed. Judging by the bones, I saw scattered the ground around us and decorated the cars. The God of honest car deals was going to share his feast with his loyal followers.

Of all the remnants of civilisation, why was it used car salespeople who had to survive? I looked at Jonesy and felt my unsecured bonds; I had a bayonet in my boot. Our captors were as sloppy with their hostages as their ancestors had no doubt been with their paperwork. It was time to act, our captors were lost in their Godless, mindless jingle they were calling out to the heavens.
"Jones Truck and auto, if you can't trust Jones you can't trust no one!"


I was thinking the Morrow project is set a very grim century into the future. When nearly all certainty has been lost , the lights no longer come on and food is no certainty.

So what would beliefs be like in this grim new world? In some cases it could be a very positive thing, tying people to their basic decency. We don't eat people or rob our enemies because our God forbids it and we have to answer to him in the world to come.

Conversly is it going to be used to justify abysmal and evil behaviour? We practise slavery and raid our neighbours because that is the way of our people?

Will religion be based on precollapse faiths? Or will the worship of everything from popstars to scifi shows take over. How will our team members deal with a tribe of StarTrek worshipping fanatics forcing all before them to follow the Prime Directive?