The last prophet (Part 1)

“Ok, so how do you want to do this?” she asked, lips quirking into that cheeky grin I was starting to hate.

“Just start from the beginning,” I said, though we both knew she’d never make it that simple.

“Gotcha. So, it all started with heat, then darkness swallowed everything, quick as a blink ya know. Light? Light is slow. Darkness? Now that’s faster than you can imagine.”

As she said it, the fluorescents above us dimmed for a split second, and though I knew it was probably a coincidence, my stomach knotted anyway.

“Not that far back,” I interrupted, dragging both hands down my face. “I don’t need the entire history of the universe. I know what the Big Bang is, we’ve been over this before. What I need are answers. Yours. Let’s start with your name.”

Her smile widened, feeding off my irritation like a cat batting at a trapped mouse. For weeks now, she’d given us nothing useful, just riddles and smirks. We weren’t even sure what she was. All the tests said human, female, late 30s to early 40s, but the results shifted with her moods. One day she had cancer markers, the next they were gone. The same sample would change depending on what she wanted us to see. When we tried genetic test to determine her ethnicity? She’d ask what we wanted her to be, and the lab would spit back the answer.

If I had to guess from appearance alone, she was European or Irish maybe, with freckles dusting her pale skin. Five-five, brown hair, blue eyes. The kind of woman you’d pass in a grocery aisle and forget as soon as you turned the corner. That was what made her so wrong. She was too forgettable, like she’d sculpted herself out of every unremarkable trait and blended them into a mask of perfect anonymity. The longer you looked at her, the more you knew she wasn’t average at all.

We knew better anyway. She hadn’t come through the front door, past security, or even down the hall. She’d just appeared, sitting in Chief Carter’s office like she belonged there. When he called security, they dragged her down the corridor. He turned back to his desk, and there she was again, perched in his chair, whispering to someone who wasn’t there. Security swore they still had her in custody at the front door. Then they called back in a panic, she had just, vanished.

That was the day we stopped laughing. Our agency doesn’t exist, at least not officially. Unofficially, we’re the ones you call when reality frays. When the monster under the bed bites, or the ghost won’t stay dead. Ninety percent of the time it’s swamp gas or bad wiring. The other ten percent? That’s where we earn our keep.

She wasn’t a swamp-gas case. She could move from room to room without taking a step, recite a stranger’s dying words months before they happened, and knew what I was thinking before I thought it. She’d talk to people no one else could see and laugh at jokes only she heard. At first, we thought she was a lunatic. Maybe she still was. But she was a lunatic who was always right. And then, for reasons she refused to explain, she decided she’d only talk to me.

“Look, Ben, I get you don’t want to talk about the Big Bang,” she said now, her voice singsong and whimsical. “But we kind of need to if you want to know who I am.”

“Fine,” I said, exhaling hard. “But spare me the physics lecture. Just get to the point. Like where you fit in all of this. Why the hell do we need to go back to the birth of the universe to know who or what you are?”

At that, she brightened. Her smirk sharpened into something predatory. “There it is,” she whispered. “I think we may actually get somewhere today, Benny boy.”

“Ok, then answer me. No more circles.”

“No games,” she agreed. Then she tilted her head. “But I have a question for you. Did you ever wonder what came before the beginning? They say it was nothing. But nothing doesn’t exist, does it? Even an empty box is full of particles you can’t see. So, what was the nothing that existed before all this?”

“I don’t know. energy, maybe,” I muttered. “But I’m not a physicist. I’m a psychologist. I deal with people, not the birth of the cosmos. I suppose you know the answer, though. So, what was it?”

She laughed, clutching her stomach, as if I’d just told the funniest joke in existence. “Energy. Decent guess. But it was more than that, Ben. Do you remember the study in a few years back? About the structure of the universe, the way galaxies are connected by filaments of dark matter, woven together like a web? Do you remember what it looked like?”

My stomach turned. I did remember.

“The brain,” I said quietly trying to keep my composure. “The universe looked like a human brain.”

Her grin deepened. “Exactly. So, when you ask who I am—well. You’ve already said it.”

“Are you saying you’re the universe? Its mind?” I felt her in my head, nudging me forward, coaxing me to say the word I was trying to avoid. “Are you… god?”

“God?” She giggled, rolling the word on her tongue like it tasted strange. “Not exactly. I’m… the conscience of the universe. The nervous system that binds it together. This body?” She gestured at herself. “Just a disguise. No one notices a middle-aged woman unless she makes them. That’s why I chose this. I like being invisible. Easier to move. Easier to listen.”

She leaned in, freckles shifting faintly on her skin as though they weren’t really hers. “But I didn’t come here to amuse you, Ben. As cliché as it sounds, the end is near. Not trumpets-and-horsemen near. Not Revelation near. But if nothing is done, humanity ends. Soon.”

I swallowed. “If you’re the universe, or its conscience, why tell us? Why not stop it yourself?”

Her smile faded for the first time. “Because I can’t. There are rules older than me, rules I’ve broken before. That’s what you call plagues, prophecy, miracles. But every time I interfered, the cost was worse than the problem. I won’t risk that again.”

“So, you’re saying you’re God, but you’ve got rules. And you’ve made mistakes.”

“I’m saying I’m not perfect. I’m more like a parent. I made you in my image, yes. I love you, yes. But you piss me off. A lot.” Her eyes glinted, almost amused again. “That’s the problem. A part of me is sick of it. The wars, the hunger, the noise of your fear it’s all gone on too long. A lot don’t even believe in anything anymore and too many that do that do terrible things all in the name of god. It builds up after awhile and that rage has taken on a life of its own. It’s loose now. And if I can’t find it, it will destroy everything.”

I pressed my palms onto the table. “So, you want us to… help you find yourself? How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

“Ben,” she said softly, “don’t humans spend their whole lives trying to find themselves? You make it sound simple. But maybe, if we can remind me, all of me, there’s still good in humanity, that piece of me will quiet down. Maybe I’ll remember why I loved you in the first place.” Her eyes flicked past me then, focusing on some invisible point in the corner. She smiled faintly, almost tenderly.

“Besides,” she whispered. “One of my pieces is out there alive today. Walking the earth right now. And you’ve already met.”

My pulse spiked. “We’ve met? Then you should know who is right. What is it you think we can do?” I asked, though deep down I already knew, this wasn’t about the agency. This was about me.

“Oh, Benny boy,” she cooed, her tone suddenly sweet and mocking at the same time, “I can feel the gears grinding. You’re right though, I don’t need an agency to ‘find myself,’ as you put it. I need you. Or any good therapist, really. But you? You already know how weird this world can get. That’s why I picked you. Or rather…” She leaned closer, her voice softening. “…that’s why I set you on the path to become you. So, you’d be here, now.”

My chest tightened. “What do you mean you put me on the path?” I could feel the answer before she spoke, like her voice was inside my skull, speaking in tandem with my own.

“Look, Ben,” she said, gentler now, the way a parent explains death to a child, “sometimes I have to… adjust things. Move the pieces in the right direction, for the greater good. Lauren’s accident was, well, yes, an accident. The shooter didn’t mean to fire the gun. But the bullet was always going to leave the chamber. It had to. Her death pushed you to study psychology. To wonder why someone could be so angry over something so small. To ask why a man would bring a gun over a few dollars, wave it around like a trophy… until it slipped.”

Lauren. The name tore through me like shrapnel. I hadn’t let myself think of her in years. My high school sweetheart. My future wife. We were shopping for clothes for senior year, walking home laughing about nothing. Two men fought on the corner. We crossed the street, heads down, trying to avoid trouble. A flash of metal. Shouting. The clatter of a gun hitting pavement.

Then the crack.

The next thing I remembered was Lauren’s blood on my hands. Her eyes wide with fear, then empty. Gone in an instant.

I swallowed hard, the air burning in my throat. “So you killed her?” The words came out harsher than I meant, but I didn’t stop.

“And you think that’s going to make me want to help you? I’ve moved on. I’ve grown up. What did you expect? That you take the love of my life and I’ll just, what, thank you? Help you put yourself back together?”

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. “Well, yeah, Ben,” she said lightly, as if it were obvious. “And you will. Right now you’re angry, but in a day or two? You’ll come around. You always do. I can wait. I have all the time in the world. Humanity, not so much”