A World Without Religion

This was a story I wrote a while back for a competition. The topic was a world without religion.

It was a cold November morning. Angelica pulled her jacket in closer to stop the breeze. It was Sunday, and she was walking down a relatively deserted sidewalk. She stopped abruptly as she came to a run-down building. She could almost hear the ghost of the bells that should be ringing. With a pang of nostalgia she remembered the Sunday mornings she spent there as a kid with her parents. A cool breeze blew, and she snapped out of her memory and walked on.

She came to a crossing and turned left and entered “Little India”. She missed the smell of incense sticks and the sound of religious hymns that usually adorned this part of the city. She was about to continue walking, when she realized that there was a torn poster of a Hindu deity lying on the road. With a sad smile she picked it up and tucked it in her pocket. Some of the shops were beginning to open now. She caught her reflection in one of them “Happy 25^th birthday Angie”, she said to herself. It was the 6^th year that she was 25.

The joint international government project discovered the Elixir of Life 15 years ago. People could now stop aging at the age they chose. This sparked off a chain of events all over the world. Religious institutions everywhere were attacked. “There is no need for God”, they said. “Man is now God.”

Now 15 years later, Angelica couldn’t find a single temple or church in the city. No place to bow down her head in reverence on her birthday. Religion was dead.

Disappointed, she began heading back home. She couldn’t help looking up at the sky and wonder, if somebody really was looking down on the world, what would they be thinking? “I’m sorry”, she muttered and walked on.