Chasing the Prophet Page 7

  “Do we have the prophet on the line?” asked the host, but the voice of the prophet could not be heard.

  The host tried again, “Sir, are you with us?”

  The whole world was amazed to see the president shifting in his chair, uncomfortably at first, then with visible anger.

  The host looked as if he wanted to bury himself. “It seems as though we are experiencing some technical difficulties,” he apologized and returned the broadcast back to the studio.

  It wasn’t a malfunction. That interview with the president never happened. Commentators all over the world tried to guess the reason the prophet had decided to cancel the interview.

  David was tortured with remorse, even though it wasn’t his fault. He’d had the worst case of diarrhea.

  His parents’ loud protest could clearly be heard from the living room. “The nerve! Standing up the president on live television!”

  All while David was sitting helplessly on the toilet with his stomach in turmoil, muttering, “I’m sorry. I really wanted to do this interview.”

  Ten days later, the president was defeated in the elections. Political analysts were convinced that the prophet’s absence from that famous interview wasn’t coincidental and served as the last nail in the coffin of the president’s political career.

  David felt very uncomfortable about it and tried not to think too much about the possibility that something bad he had eaten at lunch had brought about a change of government, but such cases were the rare exception.

  Normally, the prophet’s enormous power served David well. A year ago, for instance, when his father had lost his job, the prophet had immediately turned to his people. Less than a month later, Benjamin happily broke the news to David and his mother about his new job with the Green Pines municipality.

  When David heard them cheerfully saying that they could finally start saving now—and in ten years would even be able to take a mortgage and buy a new house—he was deeply disturbed by it.

  Ten years seemed like forever in his eyes and he immediately decided to intervene. Out of all the methods of action suggested to him by the prophet’s people, he liked the idea of an inheritance coming from a mysterious uncle. He tried his best to look surprised when his parents excitedly told him of Emily’s rich family in France, and about the fact they would be moving to a luxurious building on the better side of town.

  Now he was sitting in his room, watching the park from his fifteenth floor window. Through the pouring rain, illuminated by flashes of lightning, he could see the bench where he had met Jackie and the two others.

  He shivered as he recalled how Jackie had almost managed to lay his hands on his cell phone. That was close.

  The letters on the screen continued to flicker: “Enter Password.”

  He typed the password and the next stage was, as always, an integrated visual-audio identification process. He coughed in the camera’s direction. It was the perfect personal identification, and indeed, the software immediately logged him in.

  On the screen appeared a summary of all the new inquiries the prophet’s website had received since yesterday. Three thousand twenty-five new requests, the majority of which revolved around issues of health and personal welfare. Of course, there were also many requests sent by fanatics who had decided the prophet was some sort of god.

  Six months ago he had been forced to create a special filter for the software, defining a folder titled, “The Cult.” This was where various mails containing keywords such as “The Wrath of God” or “The Blaze of the Almighty” were automatically transferred.

  Some of those who wrote to the prophet accused him of their personal problems, and even went so far as threatening to harm him if he refused their requests. The prophet collected enemies at a frightening pace, and David, who had long realized that his personal safety depended on his ability to disguise his genuine personal details, invested many resourced in cyber protections, such as connecting through anonymous proxy servers and concealing the IP addresses he worked from.

  Now he set to work and went over the status of the software’s replies to the most burning issues.

  The answer regarding concerns about a nuclear confrontation was vague, which was unusual. He ran the query again, knowing the answer to such a complex question could be received only in a few hours. A delay in providing an answer to such a crucial question would probably bring the prophet much public criticism, but there was nothing he could do other than patiently wait for the software’s exact reply.

  David went through the list of answers provided by the software for that day. Having found nothing exciting, he dragged the weather box into the “main headline” area and approved the title suggested by the software: “Steady weather until the end of the week. Mass outdoor public events can safely be held.”

  His mother’s cry of protest was immediately heard from the living room downstairs, “Jesus, who cares about the weather now!”

  Now he switched the software to “Personal” mode. He smiled as he clicked the “Unique Tasks” button and gave his people an instruction to open a special scholarship at the Veterinary Medicine School for a girl named Rachel Reece. He hesitated before clicking the “send” button, then added one final instruction: “Please relay the following message to her: ‘Someone out there is thinking about you.’”

  That’s enough for today. He logged out of the software, yawned, and left the room.

  “Mom. I’m hitting the shower, is the water heater on?”

  Prophet Website Registered Request No. 370995

  Dear Prophet,

  My name is Anne Stewart and I have been living in Liverpool for the past 40 years.

  I am sitting alone at home while writing you these lines. My husband is at the pub. Had he known I am writing to you, he would have laughed at me. He does not even think you are real.

  Mr. Prophet, I am writing you because I am very much afraid.

  With everything that has been going on with Russia and the missiles, people do not realize just how dangerous the situation is! It looks like the world is losing its sanity and no one comes along to say—hold on, chaps, let’s all try and settle down together.

  I’m so worried all the time that I can hardly sleep. My Jewish sister-in-law tells me that the Jews have this wall in Jerusalem, where you can directly communicate with God. She says they put notes in it with their wishes. So maybe this email I am addressing to you now is actually my personal note…

  Mr. Prophet, if you can somehow influence all the terrible things that have been going on—please, please, I’m begging you to act and stop this insane battle of egos that could bring a calamity on all our heads!

  I’ve done my part by writing you.

  Sincerely, and with the hope of a saner future,

  Anne Stewart

  Liverpool, UK

  13

  Keep Your Eyes Peeled

  “How are the birds today, interesting?”

  The waitress stood beside Paul and smiled. She must have noticed the way he had been gazing outside, at the third floor of the school building.

  He had a perfect vantage point at that coffee shop from which to survey David. The boy was sitting by the window, occasionally looking outside like someone craving an escape. This must have been a particularly boring lesson.

  Paul knew there was no chance David would notice him through the coffee shop windows. The contrast between the shadowy interior and the bright day outside guaranteed it. He looked at the grinning waitress and felt angry with himself for acting so unprofessionally.

  He smiled and answered, “The birds are fine, and so’s that building,” he declared enthusiastically. He motioned in the school’s general direction. “Do you know I actually studied there?”

  The waitress nodded, obviously not taking any particular interest in his childhood. She took out a pen. “What are you h
aving?”

  “Just coffee…” he started to answer, but then changed his mind. “You know what, I’ll take a full breakfast.” He took the menu. “Let’s start with some carrot juice.” Why not? He was going to pay for it with the company credit card anyway.

  The waitress quickly took down his order and cleared off. Paul turned his head discreetly and examined the place: a small neighborhood coffee shop that’s been around for years, its walls adorned with black and white pictures of historical Green Pines sites. Pleasant music played in the background.

  Two additional tables were taken, the first by an elderly lady and a young girl, the other by a man of about thirty. Something about that man drew his attention. What was it? He looked fairly ordinary—the stubble of a fresh beard on his face. He wore blue tracksuit pants and a bright t-shirt. A short fedora hat rested on his head; the type Paul himself once used to wear. Kate loved that hat.

  The waitress returned. “Here’s your carrot juice, food’s coming out soon.” She placed the glass on the table and motioned outside. “I studied at that school too.”

  Paul followed her eyes. “Really? I wonder if some of my old teachers are still there,” he said, then noticed something and drew silent.

  Three teenagers sat smoking on a bench under David’s classroom. It was a motion of the taller one’s head that had drawn Paul’s attention: he could have sworn the kid looked up, toward David’s window.

  The waitress turned to serve another table when Paul recalled the report he had received about the three boys who had confronted David yesterday at the park: one noticeably taller than his friends. This was definitely worth looking into.

  Paul made sure no one was watching him, took out his phone and snapped a picture of the three. He sent it to Gabriel and added: “Check these guys for me. Thanks.”

  The breakfast came and Paul began to devour it. The new job gave him back his appetite and returned him to his days as a police detective. True, in his former days of glory he used to follow adults, but the general situation and the methods were the same.

  He recalled the instructions he had received yesterday from Matthew, his former commander and present operator: “You may be following a young teenager, but there are lots of things we don’t know about him. Keep your eyes peeled. I chose you because you’re good at it.”

  Paul’s phone buzzed. It was Gabriel.

  “Talk to me.”

  “I hear that you’re eating. Bon appetit, my friend,” the giant cop replied. “Listen, even though you’re a rotten photographer, I’m sure those are the same boys from yesterday.” He paused for a moment. “And the tall one isn’t just anyone.”

  Paul stopped chewing, increased the volume level of his phone, and pressed it closer to his ear. “What do you mean?”

  “Ever heard about Clive Richmond, owner of the Richmond Group?”

  That name told Paul a lot: money laundering, extortion, conspiracy to commit crimes. Although Paul’s friends had been on Richmond’s heels for a long time, they had never been able to come up with any incriminating evidence, and the investigation had come to a halt.

  “I know him more than you think.”

  “So the leader of this little gang is Jackie, his youngest son,” said Gabriel. “Do you have any idea what is it that they want from your boy?”

  “Exactly what I’m trying to find out,” answered Paul. “Thanks, I owe you one.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” The giant cop asked him to say hi to Kate and ended the call.

  The skies had darkened with black clouds and the sunlight vanished in seconds. It looked like a downpour was about to start.

  The three teenagers at the schoolyard had noticed that as well and hurried to leave.

  Above them, by the third floor window, David yawned.

  14

  A Militant Fly

  The history teacher, wearing a bright-colored flowered dress, waved her hands enthusiastically while detailing the circumstances leading to World War I. David wasn’t listening. Instead, he gazed out the window toward the coffee shop across the street.

  He thought about the precarious security situation.

  He had been able to prevent disasters in the past, but it was never easy. There were times when the information provided by the software had brought more harm than good. Once, the software had warned of the impending sinking of a passenger ship. David knew the exact day this would happen, which area, and even which company the ship belonged to, but the prediction was always statistical and inaccurate.

  He had learned that no commercial company would stop a fleet of fifty giant ships unless it knew which one would drown. His repeated appeals were of no use. He activated the prophet’s people in the highest levels, but to his dread, all ships had sailed as planned. That was one of the few times that he hoped there was a bug in the prediction algorithm. He actually prayed that his software was wrong.

  But the software wasn’t wrong. The giant vessel Oceana II sank into the depths that day and the news channels showed dozens of bodies fished out of the dark water. David watched the horrible images and wanted to cry, go crazy, scream, “I told you so, you idiots!” But instead, he said nothing and withdrew into himself.

  His parents realized he was in distress, and after an urgent meeting with the school counselor, decided to take him to a therapist.

  “To talk to someone,” that was how the school counselor had called it. David relented and agreed, and actually, Dr. Harrison wasn’t so bad.

  David had to remind himself not to be tempted to reveal his secret to the little man with the pleasant voice. Even though his sessions with Mr. Harrison were mostly comprised of him sitting silently on the psychologist’s couch, they did have a positive influence on David. Either way, the relative improvement in his mood did not help him in preventing disasters, although he had actually improved over time and had once even succeeded in grounding about a hundred airplanes when the software had indicated a crash on a precise date.

  There were executives at the airline that had actually taken his warnings seriously and grounded all flights for that particular date. The company engineers carefully examined the vital systems in the accident-prone model, but no critical malfunctions were found. The cancelled flights had harmed the company’s public image and its finances, but that was nothing compared with what happened on the following day, when the flights were resumed: one of the airplanes actually crashed, and two-hundred and seventy passengers and crew members had lost their lives.

  Serious allegations were hurled against the company. It was claimed that its managers had known in advance about the coming disaster, but greed had motivated them to turn a blind eye to it. A federal inquiry began, and company stocks crashed. It ultimately went bankrupt and thousands ended up losing their jobs.

  It appeared as if the prophet software suffered from an inherent problem: it knew how to provide an exact statistical prediction—just like predetermining a flock of birds’ exact course of flight—but without being able to determine the behavior of any single particular bird, or the identity of a single plane that would end up falling from the sky.

  And that wasn’t the only problem David had discovered. When the software provided a warning about an impending terrorist attack in one of Europe’s capitals, he had passed on the information to the proper security agencies. They treated his warning seriously and sent police forces to the club targeted by the terrorists. But on the day of the attack, the terrorists had noticed the forces waiting for them, and simply chose to blow themselves up in the nearby street.

  David shuddered when he realized sharing his predictions had actually influenced the events themselves. That was why he integrated a feedback and tracking algorithm into the software, which updated predictions closer to their fulfillment date.

  Unfortunately, in most cases the security forces in the field were not able to react in real time to
the updates coming from the software, and the disasters had ended up happening anyway.

  This was how David had learned, in a hard and frustrating way, that reality was much like a rigid, yet curved, rubber surface. Every time he tried to flatten it in one place—the surface would simply bend in another. He realized a predetermined destiny cannot be altered, merely distorted a little.

  It was rare for the software to provide a precise warning that allowed him to act, like yesterday, for example. The algorithm had taken into account the routes of the trucks in the city, the accumulated information about the condition of the tires in a particular vehicle model, the topographic structure of each route, and the rainy weather that would cause a puddle to be collected close to the street corner. Everything indicated an accident involving an upturned truck would take place at about noon.

  As always, the warning did not include an exact hour, or information about the specific truck. The already experienced David knew that there wasn’t any point in contacting the moving company. Even if they shut down all truck traffic and blocked the road, a truck was bound to eventually overturn in Green Pines. The rubber surface rule always worked.

  Even though the Green Pines city map showed the street corner to be uninhabited, he decided to pay a visit and see for himself. When he saw that a street vagrant was living there—he immediately sent one of the prophet’s people to remove her. They had done that at the very last moment. Such cases encouraged him, gave him the strength to go on.

  His thoughts drifted to Rachel, what would she have said about that particular case. He had seen her in the schoolyard just before the lesson. He wanted to go to her, but he didn’t know what to say, and he was afraid of her reaction. Would she be happy to see him, or… regrettably, the prophet software could not assist him with such personal questions. Then he’d shuddered when he suddenly saw Jackie going to Rachel and talking to her. She smiled and answered him. She seemed pleased to be getting the attention of the leader of the pack.