"Human spirituality must be unshackled from stagnant doctrine and reclaimed from the clutches of religion." -- Atticus Finn   Atticus Finn, a highly polarizing spiritual activist, is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. He is revered by many as a visionary and herald of a new era of human faith, and some even going so far as to name him a saint and divine sign of things to come. Others revile him and everything that he stands for, labeling him as a radical at best and the antichrist at worst. Many prominent figures like the Pope have been speaking out against his teachings, calling them a dangerous distraction from the light and truth of God. Many congregations have seen a steady decline in attendance from the youth in recent times, and Finn's alarming surge in popularity has often been used as a convenient scapegoat in traditional media outlets.   "They would have you believe that salvation may only be found within their sacred texts, and that they are the sole authority when it comes to deciphering the word and will of God. This is simply not true...We all have a piece of the Divine within us, and when we learn to nurture this spark none may hold power over us. We become the masters of our own sacred destiny,.."   This is an excerpt from his latest speech in London to a crowd of over 5,000, and was broadcasted live to millions worldwide. How did he become such a prominent figure? Will his teachings herald in a new era of human faith? Or will he be discredited, silenced or snuffed out like so many have been before him?

The broadcast from London was impossible to ignore. Within hours, Atticus Finn's message was trending across nearly every major platform—lauded, dissected, condemned, and re-shared in equal measure. Clips circulated under a dozen hashtags. Debates erupted on morning shows, in university lecture halls, and on back-alley feeds in slums from Rio to Luna City.   The Vatican responded within the day, issuing a strongly worded denunciation broadcast worldwide. The statement, signed personally by the Pope, condemned Finn’s movement as “a dangerous heresy disguised as liberation, eroding the moral bedrock of civilization with vanity and self-idolatry.” The message went further, warning that such teachings had the potential to “fracture the soul of humanity at the very moment it faces the void together.” The Church formally requested international scrutiny of Finn’s platform, citing concerns over mass influence and potential destabilization of faith-based communities.   But not everyone was alarmed.   For millions across the globe—particularly among the young, the secularized, the spiritually curious, and those long pushed to the margins of traditional institutions—Finn’s words struck like lightning through cloud cover. In rural communities where churches had grown silent, in queer enclaves once exiled from pulpits, in nations where Christianity had arrived bearing empire instead of grace, his message landed as reclamation. Forums lit up with first-person testimonials: “I cried watching it.” “He said the thing I didn’t know I was waiting to hear.” “This is the first time I’ve felt like there’s a place for me in something spiritual.”   In Tehran, the Assembly of Faithful Scribes accused Finn of promoting "spiritual anarchism." And in an encrypted channel traced to a commune outside Mumbai, an anonymous AI-generated voice simply said: “He speaks what the old systems cannot.”   Tensions are rising. Some governments have placed his appearances under review, citing “potential public unrest.” A few world leaders are rumored to be considering travel bans. Others, silently or not, are watching his growing movement with interest — wondering whether Finn represents a dangerous disruption or a chance to reshape their own cultural narratives.

"come what may\ it shall be what it be\ and that's really all that I can guarantee" -delphinus bells, "Collection of Assorted Poetical Work for being Upon The Road", 2027   The seed for the idea came to her at a carnival, back when she was still her old self. Morning name, GPA memorized, bachelor’s degree from a mentionable school in business & computer science, defined by work and not works. Her sister had to call in for a double-shift as a nurse, her brother-in-law was on a workaday shift, and her nephew needed babysitting.   The fair had come to town, a bunch of slapdash games of chance, a few rides for the kids, a spinning UFO that had centrifugal force enough that she almost lost her car keys, and one called “The Launch” that her nephew was too scared to even get in line for. All of this cost more in the dollar-to-ticket exchange rate than it should, of course. They had a fun day, her nephew won a little fishing game that awarded him a shark plushie, and they were heading back to the parking lot. Adjacent to the lot stood the trailers and vans of the carnies, and leaning against one of these vans was a couple. You know what, in spite of their open door and laid out mattress and the burning joint in their mouths, she had mused, they sure looked a lot less stressed than she did. For the first time in years, she opened her notebook, and began to write.   Monday morning, back to the office, a ten hour shift, the stress of the news headlines on the right-hand screen, the stress of bureaucrat deliverables front and centre, the ever-present meeting call from the left-hand screen, the glowing eye of the webcam. Locked in. Boxed in.   A chance encounter with an old friend from high school led to a mid-life crisis of sorts, who when she was asked what she was doing for work merely laughed and said she was “Funemployed, what else is there to be?” The world was ending due to the Mayan calendar, she had a bunch of vacation time, why not? A long weekend, two weekends that turned into long weekends, and a handful of mushrooms that bruised blue later, she had lost her job. The first poetry collection release was awkward, at an open-mic night in a coffee shop.   A half decade later, the career was a bad memory, an orange felon was in office, and she was spending her summers squatting in national parks attired in all the colours of the rainbow, her winters in a hacktivist den outside of Portland. She was throwing dance parties all the time, unsanctioned, no permits, gloriously free, mixing with the flow of jam band followers and desperate derelicts. She’d been teargassed for the first time, the Peppa Pig theme song blasting from the twelve-thousand watt speakers as the police shut a party down. She’d free-range adopted a couple of the older runaways and became a defacto step-parent to a few bastard love children. The polycule had settled, she’d let her hair grow out, and she spent her working hours embroidering nature scenes in blue-thread bottles, selling ‘em on an online craft market, taking payment solely in $craft coin. She’d started going by Delphinus, after the constellation glowed for her one magical evening in the sky. The first poetry collection under the new name was released to a small crowd in a beautiful meadow in May, sold out its first run of a thousand and inspired reverent fans, hawked at everything she went to, reprinted on work printers and pirated from Scandinavian servers and found stapled at bus stops.   Another half decade down, an orange felon was somehow still in office, the Cosmos festival was a monthly event somewhere in North America, the itinerary stretching down to the mountains of San Mateos baking under the sun to the lakesides of the Pacific Northwest under looming rainclouds. It was free, in an abstract yet very real sense of mutual aid, trying to be a bit of Burning Man, a bit of pay-it-all-forward, a bit of $craft-iness, as Delph was fond of saying. It was a lifestyle, a music festival, a carnival, a home. The rides were built from scratch & 3D-printed, and they travelled in pieces strapped to van tops, stuffed in the trunks of sedans, shipped via parcel & crate with day job authorizations signed, and pulled together on each site. It was a family-friendly weirdo scene that had become self-sustaining. Her second poetry collection, ‘Upon the Road’, was released to a silent crowd stretching back to the dragon carousel, and it became almost a metaphorical holy text among a certain crowd. Running away to join the circus had a certain appeal, after all, and rejecting Babylon had a long historical precedence.   A couple years further than that, and the monthly nomadic carnival was a constellation of moving small towns unto itself, with the composting toilet semi-truck, the kitchen adorned with a mural of the feeding of the five-thousand, and a spike in the crypto value leading to unexpected wealth. Following a conservative southern state governor cracking down, harshly, upon an illegal carnival festival ground, the images of beaten ravers and hippies amidst fleeing families in tear gas clouds searing into Delph’s mind, a bad trip indeed, one had to start giving thought as to where there wasn’t going to be a bylaw officer, a state marshal, a tax agency drooling for crypto, and the obvious answer seemed to be right above her. Crypto and grit and crowdfunding and open-source had gotten them this far…