$ OpenH264 initialized. Grace enabled.

Sister Mary Clare crossed herself, then clicked “Start Stream.”

A soft chime echoed through the room.

She turned to Sister Mary Clare, who had just entered, face pale as candle wax. "Well done, child."

The monastery of St. Silica clung to a cliffside in the Italian Apennines, its internet connection a frayed prayer of copper wire and divine intervention. For decades, the sisters had managed. Their livestream of Compline was a pixelated, stuttering affair—a holy mystery rendered in blocks of color and lagging audio. But the pilgrims loved it anyway.

She knelt before the monastery’s sole server, a wheezing machine blessed by three different bishops. The open-source library, OpenH264, was supposed to be the answer—a gift from a tech giant to the world, a codec that just worked. But the monastery’s ancient Linux kernel refused to play along.

Then came the letter from the Vatican. A new digital initiative. All monastic livestreams must henceforth be High Definition. H.264, to be precise. "The Lord works in mysterious ways," the monsignor had written, "but His streaming should not buffer."

Sister Mary Clare, a former software engineer who had fled San Jose for silence, was their only hope.