MONASTERY

Heavy wooden doors swung half open and a man stepped through, brown hessian robes moving silently through the cloister.

The skin of his hands chapped against leather binding as he carried an old heavy book, uneven footsteps reverberating in the expanse of the open room.

Struggling up the stone steps of the altar he heaved the unwieldy book to a plinth and leafed through yellowing pages, hurriedly searching for a passage long forgotten.

Smoke swirled in the cross space between the plinth and altar from an unseen censer below the floor. Thin threads of white of rose and writhed in the air before the priest, mixing in the golden half light projected through stained glass.

Soon enough the priest found the passage he'd been looking for, double underlined with red scrolled lines. The priest following the words with his index finger as he spoke the scripture aloud...

"Terminal, sudo shutdown -r -t 60"

Above, the chapel bell tolled with a single strike, smoke twisted and spun as it formed words suspended in the very air.

57...
56...
55...

The priest ran for the door, his simple sandals clacking against the masonry. Just as he reached the doors all fell into darkness. A small point of light blinked nearby, the only semblance of hope the priest had left.

He reached for the light and tapped a button just below, a door slid open in front of him and he stepped out into the corridor, no longer clad in robes but a stained blue jumpsuit.

"Well?" asked a man in the corridor, a perplexed look washing across his face.

"Fucking archaic VR sims. I rebooted the unit, next time sort out your own system issues."