Fire-and-brimstone preacher Greg Talbot The New World of SwapTech chapter 4 by deleted_user

Reverend Gregory Talbott did not believe in progress.

Not the kind they preached out West, anyway. Not the kind that came wrapped in silicone and sin. When he looked out across the pews of his First Rock Baptist Church in Palo Alto’s fading south end, he saw a world in retreat. Empty rows where families once sat. Crosses replaced with questions. And beneath the surface—always, always—the slow creep of moral collapse.

Even in California, you could still find a few stubborn old things. Like him. Greg had been preaching from the same pulpit for 31 years, his voice an unshakable baritone that had once drawn headlines for how unafraid he was to call damnation by its name. And he hadn’t changed. Not when his kids left the state. Not when his wife left the marriage. Not when the megachurches swallowed everything in glitter and laser shows and called it God.

Every Sunday morning, Greg still rose at 4:45 a.m. sharp, ironed his one good navy suit, and walked the half-mile from his modest bungalow to the chapel. In his briefcase, he carried a well-worn Bible, a spiral notebook, and a backup of his notes on a USB drive he didn’t really trust. His only concession to technology was a flip phone he used to check the time and, reluctantly, answer texts from his daughter Rachel.

“Dad, please don’t go off on the Swaptyx stuff again today.”
“It’s not helping attendance.”
“I love you. But you’re scaring people.”

Scaring people? Greg had once saved people. Baptized over six hundred souls in his lifetime. Married couples. Buried saints. He wasn’t the one who’d changed.

It was the world.

Swaptyx. He practically spat the name every time it came up. As far as Greg was concerned, it wasn’t just a company — it was the serpent in the Valley. Offering the same old lie in shinier packaging: Ye shall be as gods.

People talked about it like a miracle. Like salvation had arrived not through faith, but through patented, cloud-linked flesh. Men waking up in women’s bodies. Teens skipping puberty. Executives swapping into athletic, virile clones for the weekend and coming back to their boardrooms glowing.

No wonder his congregation had thinned. How could he compete with a company that let people be reborn every Saturday for $499.99?

Greg’s house was humble, mostly clean, and full of rules. No television. No internet. A landline with an answering machine, mostly full of robocalls. A half-empty fridge. A kitchen radio tuned to the only gospel station still broadcasting live sermons.

The one indulgence he allowed himself was gardening. Roses, specifically. Deep red, thorny ones. He spent long hours on his knees in the backyard, pruning and whispering Scripture under his breath.

He believed the soul was like a rose. Beautiful, but in need of constant correction.

At the church, his only remaining deacon was Albert, a kind-eyed widower in his 80s who nodded supportively at even Greg’s most damning sermons. And there was Louise, the church secretary — a hard woman, long divorced, who did the books and handled email correspondence from the handful of stubborn congregants who still tithed digitally.

Rachel — his daughter — visited once a month. She worked in biotech. She’d refused to say where for a long time. Eventually, he’d guessed.

“You know I work at Swaptyx, Dad.”
“I pretend you don’t.”
“That’s not how anything works.”

They argued every time. Over theology, over transhumanism, over the soul. She’d once called his sermons “cruel,” and he’d accused her of “trying to play God in a pantsuit.”

But she still came. And she still cried when he prayed for her.

On May 12, Greg stood before his meager flock and delivered one of his most pointed sermons yet. He thundered through Leviticus and leaned into Romans. He described Swaptyx as “a digital Tower of Babel” and warned of a time when man would no longer know himself in the mirror.

“If you trade your body like currency,” he growled, “don’t be surprised when it becomes worthless!”

He was red in the face. Sweating. Pounding the pulpit with a closed fist. Louise winced with every shout, and Deacon Albert looked like he might faint.

But Greg didn’t care. Truth was a narrow road, and if he walked it alone, then so be it.

Later that day, he returned to his garden. There was an odd stillness in the air — a pressure. Like the sky itself was holding its breath.

He, like the rest of the people affected, didn’t see the cloudburst of invisible data. Didn’t notice the flicker across the sky as the Swaptyx servers overloaded and energy flooded the area. He didn’t feel his atoms stir in the holy soil.

But change was coming. And when it hit, it hit everyone within 20 miles of Swaptyx HQ. Even fire-and-brimstone Greg. Who did Greg become?