A Prophet Should’ve Needed ID

After a vaguely embarrassing incident with the bartender grumbling about my choice of payment method being an E-watch, and a lot of fumbling around with a suspicious and extremely dusty old scanning device, I was able to get a drink. Of course, I then discovered that “Weiser Light” was a beer. Considering my track record, I should’ve realised that that would happen. Notwithstanding my pride forcing me to drink it, several hours had passed, and… I had learned very little.

My presence seemed to be quieting discussion. While I could listen in to whispers without too much difficulty, they seemed to be filtering important things out of conversation regardless. To make matters worse, patrons were slowly leaving, and I was getting a death stare from the bartender. I had to suppress some anger at that. I’ve already downed several litres of this mortal’s piss water; his disrespect is getting out of hand.

To be clear: I wasn’t simply sitting there and waiting for people to give me key quest information like in some third-rate fantasy novel (which my father had me read several of). I had tried to converse with people. Here is how that usually went down:

“Hello. My name is-”

“Go away.”

“I was just-”

“Not interested.”

Perhaps a socialite like Lily might have better luck, but for my part I still struggled to manipulate my expression even when I was genuinely feeling the emotion of that expression. However, I did find it notably suspicious that there were no people who were willing to converse with me. I suppose they wouldn’t want to talk to me if they knew the full truth of what I was either, considering what ‘I’ did to the entire East Coast…. On the other hand, the bartender seemed to be fed up with my customer-repellent properties.

“Are you going to leave any time soon?”

“That’s fine, I get it. By the way, do you know if there are any information centres nearby? The online maps around these parts are unclear.”

“….”

I exhaled in exhaustion.

“… Good talk. Have a nice day.”

I’m getting sick of putting on this Lily act. It really isn’t winning me any points. But, internal frustration aside, I left to go and find something I could work with elsewhere. My first thought was to head to the beach, since that would likely have at least some people. Before I did that, I quickly bought a hat and bundled my hair up into it. Combined with Lillia’s sunglasses, I had at least somewhat of a disguise to prevent people from immediately clocking me as genetically engineered.

This town seemed to have an unnaturally adverse reaction to suspected genetic engineering. Most people normally tended to – at least openly – see ‘Mods’ as victims rather than actively suspicious in themselves. On top of their suspicion of genetic modification, it was obvious that fear of outsiders was playing a role here. While I was considering the oddities of Drewville, I was stopped by a woman with a blue patch.

“You need to leave this town.”

At least she’s being direct, I guess.

“My apologies, but I am afraid that I can’t leave just yet.”

“Why?”

“… I could ask you the same question. Why do I need to leave?”

The woman grimaced, while I started to think more in-depth about the blue patch. Considering that those wearing it have approached me twice so far… I have a suspicion of what this might be. As if to confirm my thoughts, the woman grunted out a response.

“Mods like you are even more trouble.”

Seeing Lily at work has given me more of a taste for cold reading. Let’s try this….

“I’ve already told that other lackey that I’m not genetically engineered.”

The woman’s eyes widened in anger at the word “lackey”, which all but confirmed my suspicion that these blue patches formed some kind of organisation. The woman, for her part, pulled out her phone and typed out a message, before returning her gaze firmly to me.

“I’ll warn you one more time. You need to leave, Mod.”

Her voice was fairly low, but the threat was meaningless to me. I’m dying if I leave here anyway, why would I care about a mortal threatening me if I stay?

“Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I really can’t afford to leave. I have business here.”

“What is this ‘business’?”

“It’s my business, not your business.”

Well, I suppose I could use a miracle now that the Father’s resources are freed up, but I would prefer to use that kind of thing with a crowd to witness it. I need to be efficient with how I use them. Regardless of my thoughts, the woman glared at me.

“Well, if you can’t tell me then why should we let you be here?”

“Why do I need your permission to be here? This specific street is a public space, and as for the general notion of me leaving the town: I’m paying for accommodation. It only benefits you people for me to be in Drewville.”

The woman’s glare intensified.

“We are the residents, you’re just some westie outsider.”

“Westie”? As in “western”? I guess it refers to those living to the west of the East Coast. I assume it’s supposed to be an epithet.

“Westie or not, you can’t make me leave. Now, if you would excuse me.”

The terms for the hotel room didn’t give the owner – Jude – much leeway to kick me out for no reason. Further, I had booked it for a month-long term, so I was fairly confident that there wouldn’t be an issue on that front. Accordingly, I left the patched woman behind to go to the beach.

===

“Hey, babe. How you doin’?”

Oh… that’s cringe. A shirtless man was seemingly trying to flirt with me, but he didn’t seem to have any interesting pick-up lines prepared. If I empathised with him more than I did, then I would’ve definitely felt plenty of second-hand embarrassment. At the very least, this shows my ‘disguise’ is working. He’s also the first person to ever actively try to woo me, so I suppose he can take pride in that… maybe? … No, he’s just annoying.

“Go away.”

… Perhaps those people at the bar were right to ignore the stranger approaching them with an overly familiar attitude. But my revelations about interacting with strangers aside, the man continued to yammer on about something or another. After humouring him for a few more seconds, I just walked away.

It occurred to me that this kind of public approach tended to be something quite frowned upon in Strait. These things further reinforced the cultural divide, with Drewville having more regressive social attitudes. However, it was probably largely a consequence of Strait being much more urban.

Putting aside the man’s upset ranting to my back, I looked around the beach. As I expected, it was fairly well populated. However, I couldn’t help but take note of the lack of modern lifeguard measures.

On the West Coast of Meryka, beaches tended to have lifeguard automatons monitoring swimmers, yet here there was only one clearly aging man up on a tower to manage swimmers. Worse, a lot of people didn’t even seem to be swimming between the flags. I could only slowly shake my head in disbelief at the hubris of these humans. Deciding that there was nothing more to learn for now, I turned to head back to my hotel room for the afternoon.

“Hey! You!”

Before I could leave the beach, though, I was interrupted by a shout from behind me. Not particularly interested in entertaining another pick-up attempt, I continued, unbothered. However, all at once, I had an unpleasant premonition. I immediately side-stepped and was rewarded with the sight of the man with a hooded jacket and blue patch from the previous day trying to grab my shoulder and missing. The man, having lost his balance, quickly righted himself. I felt my eyebrows furrow in distaste. How did he find me again?

“What do you want?”

“I was coming to say that you have two days to leave.”

“I’ve already told-”

“You have two days to leave. I’m not going to argue this further, Mod.”

“… My name is Elysia, not ‘Mod’.”

“I only bother to learn the names of humans.”

With that, the man left. I would have been offended, but I wasn’t even a ‘Mod’ in the first place. I forced down a sigh trying to escape as memories of my previous life’s execution bubbled up. Steady there, Elysia. You’re you, not him.

I returned to the hotel even more exhausted than my lack of sleep would normally dictate.