I knock on the unmarked door, my arm trembling. Whether it trembles from trepidation or excitement, I can’t quite tell. The door remains closed for so long that I wonder if I have gotten the address wrong. However, after a nerve-wracking wait, the door opens a sliver and a pair of eyes peeks out. “Password?” asks the greeter.
“Carmelo was jealous,” I answer, having determined the passphrase through surreptitious hacking of the group’s website on the darkweb.
The door opens fully, allowing my entry into the club’s hall. As I enter, I am struck by the decor: not an inch of wall is exposed, so covered as it is by Jeremy Lin memorabilia. From signed jerseys, to posters, to used bandaids, to magazine articles, the entire place is a tribute to the Asian-American basketball player. The rumors are true. There is an entire group of people operating an underground cult devoted to the worship of this man who has become so much more than a man to them.
“Come, this way,” says the greeter, taking my awe at the overabundance of Lin miscellany as proper and expected reverence towards him. I follow behind the man until I enter the main room, and here I am left even more speechless than before. The term “shrine” does not encompass the sheer magnitude of it. On the back wall, a lifelike figure of Lin hangs on the wall, twice the size of an average human. Worshipers are gathered at the ornate gilded altar which is directly below this Christlike figure, prostrated before him and praising him with utterances of thanksgiving.
Knowing that I must maintain appearances if I wish to remain in the sacred Jeremy Lin temple, I pretend to enter a religious frenzy, falling to my knees and moaning his name as I see others doing. I squeeze my eyes shut and force a few false tears out of them to complete the act, but they don’t stay shut for long; I need to observe these people and understand them, so that I may better understand their motivations for deifying this man.
I crawl on my hands and knees to the altar, then withdraw from my pocket a golden emblem of a rose and place it next to the other offerings that have been brought. Taking quick note of the expected behavior, I begin to mumble prayers under my breath, interspersed with flailing paroxysms of Lin-inspired passion.
But something is wrong. Have I failed to perfectly match the customs of these cultists? I am drawing sidelong glances from my fellow worshipers. When I look back up at the Jeremy Lin statue, I notice that it seems to have been turned towards me in a way that it wasn’t before. An optical illusion, surely, or a failure of my own memory. Then, the statue’s eyes seem to glow with an inner fire, and I am sure that I am imagining things. All the burning candles have made me too hot, of course. I am overheating and not in my right mind, but everything will be fine as long as I continue to show the proper reverence.
“HE IS AN IMPOSTOR!” booms the man who led me to the altar-room. “SEIZE HIM!” Immediately, there are hands grabbing at me. I leap to my feet and bolt for the exit, however, there are too many Lin adherents around, and my progress is halted quickly. They take me and bodily drag me back to the altar, but instead of dropping me in front of it, they lay me on top of it.
In my panic, I somehow notice that the Lin figure seems to have detached itself from the wall. It stands above me now, and by some trick of the light, its arms are moving as if made from flesh and not stone. Someone has produced a blade from somewhere, and it is handed to the statue of Lin, whose staid expression of martyrdom is now a twisted visage of fury. As I am held prone by what feels like hundreds of hands, the bloodlust is almost palpable in the air, and the knife comes swinging down…