"The first step in creating an Abeyic Gateway is establishing a connection with an Eternal Engine. In this endeavor, we use the pinnacle of the technology which we have at hand. Technology constructed for the purpose of divine communion. What a strange and beautiful age this is."
- Father Isiah Jameson, Church of the One and Many

"It's a religious experience. There's no other way to describe it. You put on that helmet, and you just... cross this boundary. You become... surrounded by the feeling, this sort of... embrace. It felt like something so much larger than me was holding me, lifting me up. I couldn't shake this feeling that it considered me important. You'd think something like that would make you feel small, y'know? Like, insignificant. I felt like a giant. Like I mattered, like my existence was so... so... [the speaker pauses, holding back tears] ...meaningful. I don't know. I can't... You can't understand it unless you've done it. It gives you perspective. Real perspective."
- Anonymous Connector Interview

"Can you even imagine what it must be like to shake hands with an infinite eldritch being? To connect in even the smallest way with something so far disconnected from what we know life as, that we literal liken it more to a machine than anything else? Every Connector I've ever met came out of that experience with a entirely new perspective on what it means to be alive. Most of them find religion. We have come full circle in our progressive evolution, and re-entered an age of mysticism. The word is taboo in most places, but we all know what it feels like. Magic. It's magic."
- Grayline Administrator Jack Layne Fletcher

"Connection/Communion. Establishment/Creation. Heartbeart. This is a Heartbeart. Life/Living. This is Life. Life. Life. This is beautiful."
- Attempted Translation of Analog Captured Dialogue from Eternal Engine Pyre.

- - -

Another romanticized glimpse into the techno-mysticism of Alter. There are many rituals like this that allow Grayline to do what it does. A strange and hypnotic marriage between faith and science, technology and arcane ritual. The line between the physical and metaphysical was blurred long ago. In this age, the fact that every living being has a soul is no longer the domain of religion, it is a quantifiable reality, as undeniable as time and gravity.

The great question of Alter is, and will always be: How will science evolve to integrate the soul? How does one code faith into a computer, or build a machine to quantify the power of the human spirit? Can you create an equation for belief? These are the key questions from which the survival of organic life now depends.

As always, feedback is welcome, and appreciated.~