Savior with Expiration Date

The choir was playing "Ode to Joy" with a code-sweeping gun when the friar's laser-engraving knife pierced the boy's foreskin.

"This is the sacred moment of code assignment!" He held aloft the bloody scrap of skin with its fresh barcode glinting under the ultraviolet light, "Today's special offer! Converts get 20% off their second finger!"

Rule #110: All emerging sects are required to pay a "faith canning tax" Luna's pupils constricted behind her night-vision devices as she watched the conversion data pulsating on the monitor screen - 3.7 circumcisions per second, the chapel's floor drains clogged with clots of blood, overflowing to form a natural promotional poster on the stone tiles: Today's Circumcision Package! Send Hellfire Insurance.

The boy's screams suddenly change pitch. Fluorescent green nematodes burrowed out of his wounds, each with a convenience store price tag pattern. The friar masterfully collects the worms into a communion box, "It's heavenly protein, and the family spells out the gift..."

Luna switches to thermal imaging mode and sees the implanted chip in the boy's inner thigh. It was the water purification plant worker who had disappeared last week, and at the moment his kidney code was being laser-tampered with into a Friar's Order-exclusive barcode - the opening digits corresponding to the convenience store president's birthday.

"Article 111 addendum." She inserted a virus flash drive into the automated sermon machine, "Each sermon requires a three-minute canned advertisement."

The altar suddenly exploded.

Instead of shrapnel, the splatter was frozen expired yogurt. As the abbot thrashes around in the goo, Luna sees the truth under his black robes - a spinal column connected to a cash register sweeper that invisibly scans the anal temperatures of believers with each swing of the laser blade. Even more ironic was the ring scar on top of his head, which was actually a miniature dot-matrix of convenience store membership codes.

"You pseudo-believers!" He ripped the bionic skin from his chest to reveal a beating mechanical heart, "The real communion is here..."

As the believers swarmed to partake of his board, Luna activated the emergency plan. A swarm of drones rained down canned goods, each can of beans emblazoned with the Friars' scandal: the young girl who had been sacrificed last week was at this very moment working as a human cash register at the convenience store headquarters.

The riot escalated during the hymn.

One woman devotee suddenly ripped open her friar's robe to reveal the bar-coded stretch marks writhing on her belly: "I'm pregnant with the holy code!" She cut open her belly to pull out the fetus, and the surface of the bloody mass actually came with its own security QR code. The scanning result showed:

"Congratulations on obtaining a post-apocalyptic gift pack! Please proceed to the nearest crematorium to redeem it"

Luna's taser whip wrapped around the Friar's mechanical carotid artery: "How did you get your hands on a convenience store gene pool?"

"Hahahahaha!" His oil-spewing maniacal laughter shook the colored windowpanes, "Your deadbeat old man himself..."

A laser beam pierced his CPU, and the dying data stream revealed that footage of every ceremony of the Order was being transmitted in real time to the "Faith Analysis Department" at the convenience store headquarters. The oldest archive recorded Luna's birth video - footage of her encapsulated in a can of green beans being used as a creation myth for end-time religions.

"Rule #112." She made the head of the head monk into an automated scripture speaker, "All gods must be clearly labeled."

As the remaining believers knelt at the canned goods shelves, there was a noise from deep in the cellar.Luna kicked open the dark door to see hundreds of corpses in the process of coding themselves-their skin was laser-engraved with promotional messages, their tongues were perforated to wear price-tag rings, and the oldest of the corpses was tapping a keyboard with its knuckle bones as the screen pulsed:

"Faith KPI completion rate of 127% for the day, applying for extra soul allowance."

Moonlight pierces through the colored windows as Luna writes the new rules on the remnants of a Bible page. Suddenly, all the corpses look up in synchronization, their eyes projecting a holographic ultimatum from the convenience store headquarters:

"Daughter, it's time to come and put a shelf life on the can of faith."

In the distance, the oath of membership is taken by new believers, and the sound of a laser knife carving a membership code into a baby's forehead resembles the "tick" of a successful cash register scan.