A Prophet had ID

Five days had passed since the incident with Adam, and I was presently about to sleep. The Lord lay before me, coughing violently. Even while unconscious, he had begun to have fits like this on a semi-regular basis. To be frank, any estimates I had of how long we had left from this point would be not much more than conjecture. At the very least, I could operate without having to worry about constant criticism.

Ultimately, I decided that the best move for me was to go all in on a trip to the coast. Logistically speaking, it was going to be difficult, as most of the more isolated communities – the ones who were likely to be more receptive to me – were quite restrictive in terms of temporary accommodation access. On top of that, a lot of them outright refused to publish much information on the internet. Consequently, I was either going to have to find a less isolated location which published appropriate material, or I was going to have to just improvise after arriving. Even worse, from what I could find, it seemed like prices at temporary accommodations on the coast tended to be absurd. In short, I was going to need to not mess up with Lillia. Exhaling and putting all thought on that topic aside, I got into my bed and drifted off.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Ugh, is someone knocking on the door? Why not just use the doorbell? Tiredly getting up, I walked to the door and opened it. Fortunately, Everywhere was not visible to anyone but me, so there wouldn’t be an issue in allowing them to see inside. Opening the door, I saw a familiar face.

“Oh my god! Elysia, that’s adorable!”

Adorable…? What is she- But disregarding my clear confusion, Sarah began to look my pyjamas up and down excitedly.

“I didn’t think you’d have those cute bird pictures all over your pyjamas!”

“… It’s not like I like them or anything… they were the cheapest avai-”

Suddenly clapping her hands to cut off my excuse. Sarah grinned.

“Anyway, Elysia. I wanted to check if you were okay.”

“I’m fine…?”

“I haven’t heard you leave your apartment in the past five days.”

Connor and Sarah really need to fix their soundproofing….

“Doesn’t that mean you haven’t left either?”
“I was busy working from home!”

… Wait, she worked from home? I just thought she was skipping work all the time. In any case, I didn’t really have a good answer for her. A large part of why I hadn’t been leaving was indeed that, despite the fact that this was obviously a matter of life and death, I just wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to preach to random people on the street given my current abysmal success rate. On top of that, I didn’t feel like I was achieving much by visiting the library daily, and I still couldn’t try anything more aggressive lest I get in trouble with Lillia. Well, I suppose I do appreciate Sarah coming to check on my mental health. As I’m not a human, it isn’t really a concern for me though. I should just tell her I’m fine.

“So, Elysia, what I’ve gathered from this is…”

“Don’t worry about it, Sar-”

“You fell out with the Bellon siblings!”

“…”

“Let’s go to the bar tonight and talk about it!”

Honestly, I didn’t think that it’d be worth correcting her misunderstanding at this point. Well, I have valid ID this time.

“I’d enjoy that, Sarah.”

===

That night, I finally managed to enter Greg’s Bar with Sarah. I hope they put more effort into the food and drink than they did into the name. I began to scan the area. The classic design really did look quite out-of-place when you consider the more modern architecture literally right outside. While I was musing about that, Sarah suddenly grabbed my shirt and dragged me to a recently vacated seat. Finally, we sat down.

“What do you want to get to drink, Elysia?”

“I’ll get whatever you’re having.”

Sarah then left to order for us, while I subtly glanced at the menu to ensure I wasn’t going to go too far overbudget by copying her orders. Money aside, I wasn’t particularly interested in the specifics of drinking so much as I was in the scenes playing out around me. In particular, a group of young men, similarly aged to me, were yelling loudly from the table next to me about something. While I wasn’t extremely experienced with it, I had seen enough human media while in Everywhere to be aware that this was likely a highly salacious and inappropriate conversation. I listened intently.

“I firmly believe that, regardless of intention, Wylde inherently generated meaning in the text by framing aestheticism as.”

“Indeed. If you take it from the framework of the death of the author, then….”

I stopped listening, thoroughly disheartened. Glancing around some more, also nearby, I saw a group of people all discussing something. Ah, this will probably be gossip.

“I just can’t agree with the People’s Front of Meryka’s policy for managing the tritium crisis. Fusion generators are going to run dry, and power prices will skyrocket. It won’t be feasible to cover electricity costs under the Common Dividend anymore.”

“Well, the Merykan People’s Front’s alternate proposals would only exacerbate the issue. Deregulating the tritium manufacturing market would only lead to another…”

What kind of bar did Sarah take me to?! As if to respond to my thoughts, Sarah came back with two large jugs of beer.

“Sarah, why is everyone around us talking as if….”

“Ah, you haven’t been to a bar before, I forgot. Most people who come to these kinds of 21st century-style bars are unemployed hipsters.”

“… That explains it.”

I filled my glass and took a large swig, before immediately remembering that I don’t like beer.

===

After several hours of forcing beer down to keep pace with Sarah, dodging questions about the Bellons, and a noticeably lighter wallet, I returned home. As she absolutely drank too much, I was essentially carrying her into her apartment, where I let Connor handle the rest. Sighing, I walked back into my own and checked my messages. There was a missed call from Lillia just fifteen minutes earlier. I called her back.

Despite what certain science fiction stories would lead one to believe, video calling was still not the standard for regular conversation over a distance. Practically speaking, audio calls were simply just generally more convenient for all parties. Regarding the transition to watches being the standard instead of smartphones, there wasn’t an issue there either. Microphones were more than strong enough to pick up one’s voice at an arm’s distance, and artificial intelligence filtering out noise other than that is a trivial matter. That said, this did necessitate a fairly complicated directional audio system in order to not simply project the output of a call on speaker audio at all times.

In any case, Lillia picked up quite quickly.

“Ellie, you’re going out with me tomorrow to shop for an outfit, right?”

“… When did you tell me about this?”

“Oh, I’m sure I did at some point! Did you forget?”

I have a perfect memory – I can’t even forget things that I want to forget. At no point did she tell me that. Nonetheless….

“What time did you want to meet, and where….?”

“Oh, I’ll come pick you up at 10. I have to go check on Mark, since he just got back from his internship. Later, Ellie!”

She then promptly hung up. And so, I was roped into yet another activity.

===

Elsewhere, a few hours before that, a blonde hair, amber eyed man was hard at work in his civil service internship.

“Drop and give me fifty, recruit!”

A hulking bald man was glaring at Mark, who was currently lined up in his civil service uniform with twenty other interns. Suppressing a groan, Mark dropped down and began to do his ordered push-ups.

Indeed, this was all a part of civil service training. One might ask why the civil service would do something that was straight out of a mediocre 20th century military movie. This question would be answered by considering the actual role of the civil service. In broad terms, the lower ranks of the civil service were more or less entirely composed of people forced to work in inaccessible regions to modern infrastructure, as naturally most tasks within those areas can be automated. As a profession, a low-level civil service role is less bureaucratic as it was in previous centuries and more a role suited those who want to explore still-undeveloped parts of the world.

Of course, no thought about the adventures he was going to have in the great outdoors was of comfort to Mark, who had just been saddled with chores for his entire intern unit. To make matters worse, of course, the civil service didn’t use automation for most of these tasks.

“Come on pretty boy, get your ass over to the bathroom! It better be sparkling when you’re done!”

And so, another day passed for Mark Bellon, nepo baby turned errand boy.