Ch 14: Giving in to Her Prophet

~
(Tori)

The eviction notice is still sitting there on the kitchen counter. I haven’t heard anything from the Holy Living Residential Council. I’m freaking out. I’m sure they’re looking at everything that’s going wrong in my life, and concluding I’m infested with demons or something.

Why the fuck is all this happening to me? Why does everyone hate me? I must have done something to piss off someone who has enough reach to spread a rumour about me. Stupidly, I really do feel guilty, like I must have done something wrong. But why can’t I remember it? Fuck, someone please help me.

But I realize that I did do something “wrong”. It’s the only thing I can think of, and it fits. It’s Ickle. When I met with him 8 months ago and he disgustingly came on to me, I reacted without thinking. I recoiled when he put my hand on his leg, and I walked out. I can’t remember if I said anything to him. I don’t think so, I think I just walked out. Fuck, I can’t think straight, I’m so tired. I never would have thought a Prophet would take revenge on someone like this. A rumour campaign that wrecks your life. All just because I wouldn’t go meet him at his secret love den or whatever. I understand what he’s about now. He has like this harem of girls who hang around him. They try to one-up each other by humble-bragging about how much he helps them with his private Prophetic Words. I used to listen with awe, but now I realize what they’re really “bragging” to each other about. He’s brainwashed them into thinking that the time they spend on their knees with him is prayer. It’s fucking vomitous, I’m literally getting ready to puke just thinking about it. He’s disgusting and he literally stinks. How can they do that to themselves?

Ok, so I know what’s happening here. I figured it out. He’s afraid I’ll expose his elderly pervert ass as a fucking predator, and he’s making sure that when I do, I’ll have no credibility. That’s it. It makes total sense. So…I am so fucked. Please God, just give me someone I can talk to about this. Sorry, I should pray correctly. I decree and declare that you, God, will give me someone to talk to and I believe with my Power of Faith, I guess.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I’m panicking. The Holy Living Residential Council is going to put me in some noisy dump of an apartment with cardboard walls and no privacy, neighbours fighting, the whole thing, worse than when I was a student. And it’ll be in a shitty area. How can you make new friends when you live in a disgusting slum? Everyone will hate me even more.

There’s only one thing I can do that might help me get out of this clusterfuck. No choice. I have to go see Ickle and get in good with him. I have to apologize for not seeing him for so long, and let him take it from there and just let it happen. It’s disgusting to think what that means.

I pull up my comms.

Tori: Hi Prophet Ickle, I hope you’re having a blessed day. May I ask you about something?

Prophet_Ickle: Hello Tori! Hope is not the right word – I KNOW today is blessed! I declared it and God obeyed! Of course you can ask me anything, I’m always here for you.

Tori: First I must apologize for not being in touch for so long. Work has been stressful and I’m dealing with some other issues.

Prophet_Ickle: I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling stressed, Tori. You should be doing better than that. Let’s agree and declare those feelings gone!

Tori: Yes! Maybe you don’t remember, you generously offered to meet with me privately. Would it be ok if I take you up on that? :-)

Prophet_Ickle: Of course I remember! How about tomorrow at 2000 at my private prayer room?

Tori: Yes! Thank you Prophet Ickle. I’m looking forward to it. :-)

Prophet_Ickle: See you then! :-)

Harrington

At home, in my library on the 84th floor, sipping my favourite whisky. Playing in the background is Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1. Many decades ago there was a brief initiative spearheaded by a Leader who happened to be in charge of designing new methods of interrogation of political dissidents, to adopt this piece as official state music to accompany promotion of young Leaders to full initiation. At that time the governing authority was still searching for a kind of overall aesthetic identity. The primitive surveillance algos of the time detected massive discomfort with this choice among the most gifted of our Infotechs in the Art Division, so the idea was scrapped and now is never mentioned.

But Satie’s Gnossiennes are so…something. I pretend to feel what I imagine the creatives feel in these moments.

I was so tired from work today that my massage with Emily had to be cut short. I sent her away happy even though it wasn’t exactly what she was hoping for. There’s no shame in it. She’s no Tania but she’s quite good.

Wait, what’s this? A cryptic “eyes only” alert advising me to look at the WRAITH viewing platform. I go down to my office which has privacy measures sufficient for such material. Another alert advises me to view live 3D playback of a human subject starting 5 minutes ago including the subject’s visual POV.

In addition to WRAITH’s general visual surveillance capability, the system can intercept and link with an individual target’s neurotech emissions, interpreting certain signals that correspond to the target’s visual cortex and using that as its visual surveillance feed. Effectively the WRAITH system can see through the eyes of the target. The visual feed in that case is not as clear and reliable as the third-person perspective but can be useful when it is important to see exactly what the target is looking at.

I whisper to my console, “ok please display WRAITH feed now”. I know from experience that this will be a live feed of a Disruption Protocol target.

I pause playback to get up to speed on the situation, and I see a familiar story playing out.

I see. Yes. Without looking at any details, I know just from experience that the building manager was discreetly informed by plain clothes agents or field operatives that this young woman is under investigation for criminal activity, strongly hinted to be morally repugnant offences the details of which could not yet be discussed. The manager was solemnly advised that there was still time to evict the tenant, before things blew up and the graphic details were made public. Of course, he was given the option of simply allowing the situation to play out, with an arrest, and there would be some questioning of him and the other tenants about their knowledge of the ongoing offences, the reasons they didn’t report to authorities, but after those questions were all cleared up, it would probably not reflect poorly on his reputation with the Holy Living Residential Council, and the Supreme Council.

This invariably results in increasingly frantic attempts to evict the tenant through legal means or outright harassment.

So here is the lovely young…pilot! Right, she’s a HiAlt pilot. Wow. Very capable with high potential as a hub of influence.

Reviewing her recent texts, I see that she has decided to try to help her own cause. Poor girl.

They almost always do this. They quickly realize they are being harassed, but they make the mistake of latching on to the first plausible explanation for it. That, then, becomes their reality. In almost every case their assumptions are wrong, and this mistake only compounds their difficulties. The methods are designed to cause this kind of attribution error, but it usually happens only after the physical measures have begun. This one has veered off course early in the process.

My console is suggesting that I set a live feed alert in time for the meeting between young Teri here and Prophet Ickle. Obviously, I agree.

Oh, Tori, right, it’s Tori.

Ickle is such a fucking dolt, pardon my French. Why would he dabble in affairs with Infotech girls who he has to trick and intimidate, when there are plenty of physically superior and very willing BuilderHelpers? Well, I know why, actually. The BuilderHelpers are just for us, physically I mean. He could get himself in real trouble with a BuilderHelper. Trouble not only with the Secur-Intel boys, but trouble with the Manifested Gods.

Ickle. This is who we recruit for these local Prophet positions. Narcissists who are just smart enough to think they’re smarter than most people, but stupid enough not to realize that there are a lot of people who see right through them. Just smart enough to think they can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, but stupid enough that it’s obvious what they are – fakers, liars, predators – to anyone with only slightly above average intelligence. Ninety-five per cent of these “Prophets” are waist-deep in kompromat material within one month of their appointment. Many of them knowingly and willingly so. They’re the very worst people. If they weren’t so useful to us they would not be allowed to exist.

I pause to listen as Gnossienne 3 becomes Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor No. 20. I know it’s supposed to make me feel something.

How did we achieve a system that controls the lower masses through personal submission to traumatizing control by these ridiculous, moronic narcissists? It’s not the kind of situation you can suddenly impose on people. They’d reject it.

Approximately 200 years before our most important world improvements began, our elite forebears had engineered a gradual infiltration of the spiritual worldview of the masses, steering them so that when the most drastic world improvements came, they would accept it and celebrate it as something consistent with religious prophecy.

As I recall, it was the Prophet Of Old Bailey who most clearly expressed the idea of working behind the scenes, decades before her esoteric followers (after waiting for the period of time she specified) publicly revealed her supernaturally channelled “Plan”, already well underway, to merge seemingly incompatible religious beliefs into one belief system, by infiltrating and changing religious, fraternal and educational organizations from within.

Enthusiasts of theological and religious history, of which I am not one, should observe a mix of ancient belief systems that were known as Hypercharismania or Apostolicism (sometimes still incorrectly referred to as Christianity), New Age (as Bailey and Blavatsky defined it), which I think had some roots in, I’m not sure, maybe Western Esotericism, Buddism and Eastern philosophy, and Valentinian Gnosticism. All of these spiritual movements were merged by gradually changing the religious doctrines within each movement while simultaneously teaching within each movement that any critical examination of the doctrinal teachings of the leaders was, ironically, heretical. After less than 200 years, followers of all of these movements unknowingly shared a common set of beliefs and practices. As and when followers realized they were all following a single set of religious, political and social beliefs, they received this as confirmation that their beliefs were universal spiritual truths. After that they didn’t care too much about what it was called. The term “Manifested Gods on Earth” describes the main doctrine most accurately. “Returned Ascended Masters” might have been better, especially from the Bailean perspective, but the former reflects the low religion. Better in a practical sense.

But the most important doctrine of the syncretic lower religion in its developing years was not actually the Manifested Gods doctrine – it was the “Law of Attraction” or “Word of Faith” doctrine, now essentially the Power of Faith doctrine, which keeps followers blaming themselves for all of their difficulties, imposed on them, in many cases, by the elites. Promoting the modern version of this one aspect of the religion is the most important function of the near-imbecilic perverts we appoint as “Apostles” and “Prophets”.

Tori

I’m so tired. I barely even slept at all. I planned to spend the day packing but ended up looking through old photographs and crying. There’s no one to talk to.

I have to take a shower and get ready now.

So now I’m standing in front of the bathroom sink. I pull my hair back with a headband and splash water on my face, as cold as possible to try to reduce my eye bags. Then I go to work on my makeup. I’m aiming for cute and slightly sexy. Extra eyeliner, red lipstick. No, red is too much, let’s go with natural but glossy. I normally just dab a little concealer, powder, blush and go, but now I’m blending multiple colours of eyeshadow. I’m going a bit too colourful, maybe a bit amateurish. And big eyelashes. Dab of bright on the tip of the nose for an upturned effect. I forgot I could look this good actually, which makes me angry about what a fucking waste of effort this is. I brush my hair, pull it back smooth into a medium-high ponytail.

The thought of seeing his smug face is prematurely activating my gag reflex.

What to wear…it doesn’t matter, it just has to be tight, slightly too-tight pants, very form fitting, the nicest things underneath, camisole top, light cardigan, the desert boots with the heels, easy to slip off, done.

Don’t do this Tori. Please don’t do it. No one should ever have to do this. It’s too sad and it will just make you feel worse. I never knew I could feel so sad.

Just go now Tori. Don’t be late. Do not stand here thinking about it because you will cry, and your makeup will be ruined. Off you go, out the door and go and get this done and everything will get better. Not your fault, there’s no choice. Stop thinking. One more look in the mirror. You are fucking unstoppable. Let’s go.

I grab my coat, tablet, bag. The apartment door locks behind me.

Harrington

Ah, there’s my WRAITH alert, right on time. I’m already in my office of course. Honestly, I hope she doesn’t go through with it. Ickle – what did they used to call these types? Douchebag! Don’t do it, Teri! You’re wrong about the whole situation, this won’t help you! In my mind I’m yelling at the display like it’s a movie. The suspense is killing me. And…and… oh my… she certainly is going through with it… wow… I turn off the subject’s POV and just half-watch from a polite vantage point, just inside the door of the “prayer room”. I don’t want to see his… Ok, enough of that. I turn off the WRAITH feed.

Well, she’s a strong one. Good for her.