The Censored Soul Sensor
Summary: Why does the Soul Sensor break down every once in a while?
"What happened tonight?" Matthew said, as close to frustrated as he could allow himself to become.
"I dunno. The Soul Sensor just went crazy-it makes no sense." Luke said as he removed his hat and scratched his head.
"Yeah," Mark nodded vigorously, "Why'd the number not change and then why did the screen blank out?"
Juan gulped, "It was horrible. Maybe something went wrong?"
Abraham looked at the other on-edge boys. In the end, they always looked to him for Soul- lutions. Inwardly chuckling at his own joke, he turned his thoughts to the problem. "Well did the Soul Sensor get knocked around in the van or dropped when we moved it?"
The others shook their heads. The Soul Sensor was a new gift from SONY Electronics, and everybody treated it like it was the Holy Sacrament. Mark always made sure that the SS-DX12 was cushioned by it's velvet wrapping before they moved it anywhere and Matthew always supervised Juan and Luke's hauling of the machine. And the van hadn't been in any scrapes since they'd received the metaphysical temperature measuring device.
"Has it been cleaned? You know dust might get caught in th sensors and mess things up…"Abe continued.
"Yeah, that girl who does all our technical work is supposed to clean it before every show." Matthew said.
"Can trust her?"
"Whaddya mean, Abe?" said Mark his eyes filled with confusion. "She helping us do what God called us to do."
" I mean she's got a lot of things to do- what with the fog and all-maybe she's too busy."
"Well, I could do it," volunteered Luke, "I mean, I'm good with mechanical stuff- I drive the van."
Everyone looked to their leader for his decision,Matthew was always good at spinning Luke's idea in a good way. Matthew considered since Luke's record with the van wasn't crystal clear…
"I think that driving the van is a lot of responsibility, we wouldn't want you to be overburdened…"
"Why don't we take turns?" said Juan.
"Sounds like a good idea" said Matthew.
The boys cleaned the Soul Sensor religiously and for a few weeks the one-time mishap seemed behind them. But then during a performance in Boston the machine refused to even display a number until the Boyz had prayed six times. After the show, the Boyz had another conference.
"Yo. What went wrong?" Luke said.
"I have no idea. What do 'jew' think, Abe?" Jaun asked.
Abe sighed, " Well cleaning isn't helping so…What was similar about today's performance to the other time the Sensor stopped working?"
"We saved every soul in the audience," Mark said proudly.
"But we do that every time," Matthew responded. "It's gotta be something else."
"Okay let's start with the basics." Luke said, "How's a soul sensor work?"
Matthew sighed, "I explain it at every performance."
"No 'jew' don't," said Juan, "Jew always skip the technical explanation."
"That's because we don't know what is, "Abraham explained. " Sony never explained it to us."
"It works because of the power of prayer!" Mark said enthusiastically.
"That seems kind of correct," Abraham considered, "but we always pray- just sometimes it doesn't work."
"Well what is prayer anyways…" Luke said with his eyes wide, "It's an expression of faith. So the soul sensor works on faith, on belief."
"So what you're trying to say is.." Matthew tried to piece Luke's thought together, "the sensor doesn't work because we don't believe? But we do."
"Well, maybe we do. But what about the audience?" said Juan.
And then it clicked. There was the similarity-at the Boston performance and the Las Vegas one. The people had been skeptical. There were mutters and sighs and "yeah right"s and rolling of eyes. So, it had taken time for the Boyz to build up enough faith to counteract the audience's disbelief.
After that, there were some times the Soul Sensor didn't work but these mishaps were always early on in the performance because by the end the audience believed. And Luke finally knew how the Soul Sensor worked because of faith, not because of some logical technical explanation.