THE PAGAN EXPERIMENT

  Book One

  Dedication

  This story began as a small, stubborn puzzle—one I didn’t know I’d been carrying until my

  daughter came home with it.

  When Kalista went to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Sundays came with a

  choice. As an atheist, she could either attend a service or stay behind and clean the

  barracks—scrub toilets, mop floors, do the kind of work you do when everyone else is

  somewhere else. She didn’t want her only quiet day to be spent with a bleach bottle, so she

  decided she’d use those hours to learn. One week a Catholic Mass. Another week a

  Buddhist service. And then she tried the pagan service.

  The first time she called me afterward, she said—almost laughing at how strange it

  sounded—“Dad, I met a pagan Christian.”

  At the time, I thought I knew what the words meant. In my head, “pagan” was simply “many

  gods,” and “Christian” was “one God.” I didn’t take her seriously—not because I wanted to

  dismiss her, but because I assumed she had run into the kind of honest misunderstanding

  that happens when you’re brand new to a big world with a thousand labels. I figured she’d

  sort it out.

  A couple of Sundays later, she called again.

  “Dad,” she said, “I met a pagan atheist.”

  That one landed differently. Not as a disagreement, but as a question that wouldn’t let go. If I

  was so sure I understood the words, why did the world keep handing her people who didn’t

  fit my definitions? I didn’t argue with her. I didn’t think she was trying to be clever. I just

  realized I might be missing context—and that if I was going to have an opinion, I owed her

  the respect of doing the homework.

  So I went looking.

  Somewhere in that search, I found Polk County Pagan Market—and it changed the way I

  understood the entire conversation. Not as a contradiction, but as a different way of carrying

  meaning. Not as a fight over certainty, but as a practice: how people build community, how

  they use ritual as meditation, how they make room for each other without demanding that

  everyone agree on the same story of the universe.

  That’s where The Pagan Experiment truly started: not as an argument for any belief, but as a

  thought experiment about cooperation. What if we treated worldview less like a weapon and

  more like a language for centering ourselves? What if we designed a civilization around the

  principle that people can walk their path—openly, respectfully, and without fear?

  The other foundation stone of this series has been science—specifically, the kind of science

  that makes you feel small in the best possible way. Years ago, I heard Dr. Neil deGrasse

  Tyson describe the scale of what we achieve with so little: that NASA’s budget sits around a

  penny on the tax dollar, and that single penny has still carried us to rovers on Mars, to

  deep-space telescopes, to discoveries that make the universe feel both stranger and more

  intimate. He suggested something that felt almost embarrassingly simple: double it. Make

  space exploration a shared project big enough to unite people again. Not because it’s

  glamorous, but because it’s practical—because a goal that big creates work for everyone:

  engineers and teachers, custodians and librarians, technicians and groundskeepers,

  builders and students. A common direction. A reason to cooperate.

  This book is the collision of those two inspirations: my daughter’s Sunday phone calls from

  basic training, and the idea that humanity is at its best when we aim outward together—and

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  carry each other while we do it.

  And finally, it is for my wife, Sarah. Her warmth, steadiness, and compassion are daily

  reminders of what it means to hold the line—not with force, but with care.

  —Neely Steven

  CH. 1 - The Concord Grounds

  Morning in the Great Rift Valley always began the same way: light climbing the escarpments, birds stitching

  invisible lines between acacia trees, and the Concord Grounds waking with the soft patience of something

  built to last.

  At the center of the triangular courtyard stood the Tomb of the First Protected One—an old dome of stone

  and glass, quiet as a held breath. Around it, like guardians in three directions, rose the buildings that

  mattered: the Senate Hall with its wide steps and open colonnade; the Space Exploration Agency complex

  with its security gates, launch-planning towers, and the heavy pride of purpose; and the Constitutional

  Guardian building, austere and clean, its attached Guardian Council Hall shaped like a promise.

  Picnic benches dotted the lawned triangle. A small stage waited near the Tomb for speeches, music, and the

  occasional public oath. People crossed the Grounds the way they crossed a park in any city—some in pants

  and a short-sleeve uniform shirt, some in sleeveless summer dresses, some in skirted uniforms with modest

  sleeves. Nobody looked twice. Boys and girls and those who didn’t claim either wore whatever felt right,

  and the cloth meant the same thing on every body: service, study, or civic duty, not identity.

  Tala Kade (Investigator, Indigenous Region) walked the Grounds with a folder tucked under her arm and the

  quiet alertness of someone trained to notice what other people stopped noticing. Her uniform was scuffed at

  one knee from yesterday’s fieldwork; her home patch—Cherokee Tribe—sat clean on her right chest, a

  small rectangle of story.

  She paused, as she always did, at the plaque outside the Space Exploration Agency entrance.

  Black granite. White engraving. A quote so long it forced you to slow down and breathe with it.

  She read the last line with her lips barely moving:

  We are all connected to each other biologically, the Earth chemically, and the universe atomically, Dr. Neil

  deGrasse Tyson.

  A group of cadets flowed past her—teenagers in pre-ascension uniforms headed toward the Academy

  annex across the street. One boy in a sleeveless dress bounced on his heels, excited about something his

  friend was saying. A girl in trousers rolled her eyes in affectionate disbelief. Their laughter carried for a

  second, then faded into the day.

  Tala turned away from the plaque and headed for Senate Hall.

  Inside, the air smelled like paper, polished wood, and the faint ozone of projection systems. Senators moved

  through the corridors in clusters—some arguing quietly, some greeting each other with gentle warmth, some

  already tired.

  “Did you hear the Amazonian report?” someone murmured as Tala passed. “Another camp, deeper this

  time.”

  “And three landslides in the Andes,” another replied. “Emergency petition. Again.”

  Tala kept walking. In her world, disasters were background weather. The line held anyway.

  At the door to Committee Room Four, she met Micah Quinn (Medic, Christian District Hospital Liaison),

  who was balancing a tray of ration bars and tea like he’d done it his whole life.

  “You look like you slept in a vent,” she said.

  Micah grinned. “Aric would take that as a compliment.”

  “Aric Halden (Engineer, Hermit Region) would take anything as a compliment if it meant he didn’t have to

  attend a meeting,” Tala said, and pushed the door open.

  Inside, the first conversation of the day was already waiting.