He stops and studies a green parrot, sitting on the branch of an elm tree.
“At first I asked myself—why would God talk to me? I’m not special. But then I thought—why not me? Maybe that’s the point. What is history if not a mass grave filled with the bodies of followers of Special Men? Maybe averageness and blandness is what we need right now. Anonymity. Follow the words, not the person.”
Simon keeps his eyes on the parrot, but his focus is on the Prophet. He wants the boy to get to the part of the story that contains his Simon-related vision, but he is too afraid to ask.
“Is your name really Paul?” he finally asks, a question he hadn’t planned and one that immediately caused an anxiety spike.
Claire has always been a disappointment.
But the Prophet merely shrugs.
“I’m not important enough to name. You can call me boy if you like, or old what’s his name. A redneck outside a Dairy Queen called me a fucking faggot once, but I don’t think it was a form of identification, as much as an expression of contempt. Lastly, I didn’t ask you to walk with me to talk about myself. We’re here to talk about you.”
“Me.”
“Yes. God spoke of you to me.”
“God did.”
“Yes. He told me about Claire.”
Simon feels a low unease rise in his gut. There are no last names used at the facility. How does the Prophet know who Simon is?
“You carry a heavy burden. We all do. But God wants you to know that her death was not in vain. She was the first, but she will not be the last.”
“The first what?”
“Martyr.”
Simon blinks.
“What else did he say—God?”
“He said you were there, at the museum, when the pill bottles fell from the sky.”
Simon turns and looks at the Prophet. He is a tall kid, underweight. There is a sadness in his eyes. How could he know that? Does he know about the red paint they threw in Simon’s mother’s face outside the Waldorf Astoria? Simon’s heart is racing.
“What’s your damage?” he asks. “All this holy man bullshit. What are you covering?”
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” says the Prophet. “Many things that God says to me are upsetting. Extinction. This is what we talk of most. What happens to a species when you destroy its natural habitat, when you corrupt its essential nature and purpose—when you take its biological instincts and mandates and use them for a different purpose? You confuse our higher and lower functions, harnessing our drives and motivating us down an unnatural path, one in which human beings are reprogrammed to covet products and ignore reality.”
Simon feels his face flush. Despite his best efforts to resist, the words stir something in him. The prophet licks his palm and smooths a cowlick.
“There is evidence corroborated in multiple countries that suggests if a man or woman has not had intercourse by age twenty-five, there is a reasonable chance he or she will remain a virgin at least until age forty-five. My point is, look around, you have a population of adolescents, who in any other decade would be fucking their brains out, but instead, we’re on TikTok.”
“You said God spoke to you about me,” says Simon. “What did he say?”
“He said the sins of the father must be made right by the son. He told me to tell you that it’s hard to be useful and sad. Also, remember the red eyes. Does this mean something to you?”
Simon feels something in his hand and looks down. Without realizing, he has taken the paper bag out of his pocket.
“No one here has a phone,” he says, “so I think—TikTok—your theory kind of falls apart. We’re in recovery.”
“Have you ever heard of a dry drunk?” the Prophet replies. “The identity remains, even though the behavior has stopped. In the case of our screens, we’re not to blame. They designed these addiction machines in cheerful spaces with napping rooms and personalized yoga mats. At first they were just another way to get human beings to spend money, to buy commodities. But then the shift happened.”
“What shift?”
“We became the commodity. Our data. This is the secret of modern life. We went from being citizens to consumers, and now to commodities. Our personality profiles, our social and financial history, our likes and dislikes, all used to accurately predict future behavior. How will we vote? Will we take to the streets or roll over? The data knows all, which is why today our data is more valuable than our bodies. How does it make you feel to know that, Simon Oliver? That your value to the world resides in your thumbs? The buttons they push. God is unhappy. You should know that. He created us to love each other, to be the miracle, not to swipe right. And it forces one to ask—at what point does the human animal move so far from its biological mandate that it begins to fail?”