“That’s great,” says the moderator. “Thank you for that, Paul. See, kids? It’s important we work together.”
Simon chews some loose skin from his lip. Now he knows the Prophet’s name. Paul.
“I asked you not to call me that,” says the Prophet mildly.
“Sorry. I forgot,” says the moderator. “What would you like to be called?”
The Prophet takes a moment, then says—
“I don’t want to be called anything. I’m not here for me. I’m here for you. It’s the only way the future will be any different from the present or the past. We need to forget ourselves and focus on each other.”
He turns to Greta.
“Did you know,” he says, “that when a country goes to war, suicide rates plummet? In Paris, during World War Two, the psychiatric hospitals emptied out. Bombs falling from the sky and people had never felt better. See, when we have a common cause, we feel better about ourselves. Charles Fritz has suggested that modern society—with its urbanization and alienation—has disrupted critical social bonds between people. But disaster forces us back into a more organic and ancestral way of relating to each other. War, famine, flood. A blackout in Manhattan, blizzards. When these things happen, neighbors come out of their homes. They hand out bottled water. Restaurants serve up the food they have for free, rather than let it go to waste. And yet what is this world our parents are giving us, if not a disaster? A problem we can’t solve. That’s why we’re so anxious. That’s why we’re all here. And that’s why Kevin killed himself.”
With that, he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.
The moderator gives a nervous chuckle.
“Okay,” she says. “I think that’s all we have time for today. Just know that Cindy and I will have expanded office hours this week, in case any of you want to come in for a little chat. Those of you with equestrian therapy, go ahead and walk on over to the stables.”
She stands encouragingly, as if to say, Get out there and seize the day.
The children rise from their seats with collective apathy. The sun is just cresting the roof of the center, and for a moment, as he stands, Simon is blinded by the light. He lowers his head and blinks away the sunspots inside his eyelids. When he looks up, the Prophet is standing in front of him, hands folded in front of his waist, face serene.
“Walk with me,” he tells Simon, then turns and heads into the gardens.
Simon looks around to make sure the Prophet was actually addressing him and him alone, but all the other kids are already loping off toward their next scheduled activity. Simon himself has exposure therapy in ten minutes, but he doesn’t hesitate. Picking up his notebook, he hurries after the boy who doesn’t want to be called Paul.
*
They walk through the rose garden to the aviary. Headmistress often says she finds birds to be the wisest of animals, and she encourages the clients to spend time watching them and listening to their distinctive cries. As they walk, Simon counts backward from one hundred. The Prophet walks beside him, hands clasped behind his back.
85, 84, 83.
The closer Simon gets to the number fifty, the more anxious he becomes, so he puts his hand in his pocket and rubs the paper bag folded inside, knowing it’s there if he reaches zero without a break in the silence.
He thinks of the Belt of Uninhabitability that will soon replace the Middle East, India, and most of China. A corridor of the planet emptied of humanity by heat and endless weather. Seventy million, eighty million, one hundred million. Where will they go? Who will take them in?
Claire has always been too afraid to make a joke, because what if no one laughs?
“I had a vision,” the Prophet says just as Simon’s brain reaches twenty-six.
They walk in silence a moment longer. Simon wonders if he should ask, What vision? But the more he thinks about it, the more paralyzed his mouth becomes.
“About you,” says the Prophet. “They come to me late at night, when everything is quiet. That’s when I hear it the clearest.”
“Hear what?” Simon manages.
“The hum. They say two percent of the population can hear it, but I’ve never met another. Think of the lowest frequency sound wave you can imagine, then lower the pitch by two-thirds. It’s a feeling, more than a sound honestly, like putting your ear to the train tracks as the train is coming. Some people think it’s generated by power lines or buried gas mains. I’ve even heard a theory that the sound is produced by tectonic motion under the ocean floor. But I think what I’m hearing is the voice of God.”