Dreamless Prophet

My first task was to get to my accommodation. I had booked a room at a hotel called Iscari Inn. Unfortunately, after I had walked half of the distance to the hotel, I ran into trouble. A man in a hooded jacket with a blue patch approached me.

“What’re you doing ‘round these parts?”

“I’m going to my hotel.”

The man examined my face for a moment.

“Aren’t you one of those Mods? We don’t need your type out here.”

… Nobody has ever been that blunt about the issue before.

“No, I am not genetically modified. Now, if you would excuse me….”

I tried to pass him, only to have him grab my shoulder.

“Little miss, you-”

I was desperately trying to suppress the furious feelings that had boiled up on him making contact with me, and I unintentionally let my expression slip. The man, for his part, had his expression contort slightly. I can’t do anything that would tarnish my reputation badly here. After another moment passed, I decided to try to negotiate once more.

“Look, could you just-”

Before I could finish, the man had let go and walked off. I sighed. I had some notion that the town would be hostile to me, but it was an unexpected variable that they too were aware of my superficially genetically modified appearance. Regardless, it was getting rather late, and I would need to get to the hotel soon if I didn’t want to be out at night. To be fair, if I didn’t want to meet check-in, then that might not be the end of the world…. I began to walk once more.

The town around me was reminiscent of 21st century suburban design, with varying house designs, sporadic and poorly conceived city planning, and a lack of Common Dividend housing. Granted, the latter is the cause of the former two, as market driven city planning tends to result in long-term liveability issues. Further, the old-school suburbanite flavour added a generally unsettling impression to the town. I could only hope that I would get used to it. … But ‘I’ did this to them, didn’t I?

===

Entering Iscari Inn, I greeted the woman in front of me.

“Hi, I’m Elysia. I have a booking for…”

“Yes, yes. Here is your key. Your room is up there.”

The woman immediately cut me off and shooed me off to the room. That was rather terse of her. She seemed to be checking that antique smartphone on her… interesting. On the other hand, I had no real opposition to going straight to bed, since I had been sleeping rather poorly recently.

The room seemed reminiscent of a normal apartment, albeit with fairly outdated technology for electronics. It was clean and most things in the room seemed unused, despite being significantly smaller than a Common Dividend apartment. That either meant that the lady running this inn was extremely diligent, or she suffered from a lack of guests. It seemed likely to be a combination of both.

I flopped onto the bed, deciding to sleep early. Unfortunately, as I tried to drift off, I began to hear noise from downstairs. I knew that there were other guests, though presumably they used less well-equipped rooms (outsiders like me were only allowed rooms like this). Regardless, the voice didn’t seem to be that of an adult, so it was possible that they were the child of the owner or something to that effect. The scolding voice of the woman who had welcomed me to the hotel earlier deepened that suspicion. But, as I wasn’t especially interested, I dragged my attention away from it. Finally, after almost a week without any sleep, I began to drift off.

… Do I even have free will?

My eyes bolted open as I realised that my thoughts had drifted in a direction that I very much did not want to pursue again, I rapidly shook my head and took a deep breath. I closed my eyes.

If my actions were being controlled towards killing God the Father by using miracles that would drain his power, then aren’t most of my relationships built from that manipulation?

I was fully awake at this point, and I was frowning. It seemed that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep any time soon. Even so, not being able to dream wasn’t stopping me from revisiting my memories. I recalled the experience at the party with Lily when I had used that final miracle….

===

I felt an overwhelming sense of wanting to simply use the largest miracle I could. My thoughts were foggy, and all thoughts on the matter of helping Lily seemed to come to that conclusion. At the time, I assumed that it was some sense of me giving up, considering the likelihood of Ella voiding our contract, but that in itself isn’t a particularly logical conclusion.

I just walked outside of the kitchen and transformed the black ice nearby into the chemical compound of that vomit pill I had seen earlier. I suppose that was a bit of subconscious irony on my part, being the opposite of ‘my’ Sermon on the Mount, with me having someone else make a speech while the masses listening were ‘unfed’ by the power of miracle.

… So, was my reconciliation with Lily even real? Did I choose to do that out of my own will? My feelings haven’t changed now, but weren’t they pressed towards a foregone conclusion by the… angels. … No, I don’t want to think about the angels. Father had his own reasons for lying to me… but I don’t want to forgive him.

How am I supposed to “be kind” when you didn’t act in accordance with that yourself, Father?

===

I looked outside, it was already morning, and I hadn’t had a single second of sleep. Even I will start to struggle if I keep up without sleep for too much longer…. All the same, I got out of bed and prepared to go about my day.

After getting ready and going downstairs, I met eyes with the same woman from the previous day. I opened my mouth to greet her, but she immediately looked away, as if to reject my very existence. Still, taking notes from Lily, I greeted her.

“Good morning.”

“… Morning.”

“By the way, what was your name?”

“… Jude.”

“Nice to meet you, Jude. My name is Elysia.”

“….”

Her laconic treatment of me didn’t seem like it would be ending any time soon. Not that that particularly mattered to me… well, it might have hurt a bit. In any case, I left and headed out into the town. Unfortunately, information from the internet on coastal towns like Drewville was not easily accessible. As such, my first priority was to gather information on things I could possibly use miracles to address – and yes, miracles would work for faith here, thanks to the rather Luddite attitude of the town. Taking heed from one of my earlier missions from the Father, I set course for a bar. This time I’ll be able to do something productive there for sure! … Yeah, I don’t have particularly high hopes here.

Finally, I found a pub called “Royal Fish Pub”, which once again dropped my faith in the naming sense of humans. A point in the pub’s favour, however, was that it didn’t seem to have particularly stringent ID checks. Well, that’s not a point in its favour from a minor protection perspective, but I digress. I walked in, and immediately was met with the stares of several dozen patrons. Should I have dyed my hair to stand out less? … No, I’m not even sure if the composition of my hair would actually allow dye to stay in it.

“What brings you here?”

The bartender cautiously spoke to me when I approached him.

“I would just like a drink please.”

“… Of what?”

At the question, I immediately froze up. It belatedly occurred to me that I had never actually ordered something before. My eyes moved to the menu and my brain immediately overclocked to scan the menu. Upon hitting the drinks part of the menu, I looked from top to bottom, before, with me not knowing what any of the drink titles meant, finally deciding to pick the option right in the middle of the menu.

“Just your Weiser Light, please.”

I internally breathed a sigh of relief that I had been able to execute that within a conversationally acceptable pause… until I noticed the intensified stares. What, is the drink that bad?