"Reed, Robert - OurPrayers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

one place? In real time, I mean. As events happen. I mean, if there is some
magic -- call it magic -- then isn't this the time when we'd see it? The world
is wired together, cameras everywhere. Maybe there's some way, some innate
wish-fulfilling trick, that allows us to make the atmosphere move just so,
bringing us this..."

I pause, all at once doubtful.

And I confess, "I'm nuts. I know."

But someone responds, "No, wait. What about last night's wind? It had to be a
perfect wind. Isn't that what the Colonel said? And wasn't it just minutes later
when it started blowing -- ?"

"Yeah," someone shouts. "That's how it was. It was."

I feel ashamed, my companions infected with my insanity. We're in the Dark Ages.
We have fallen so far that we'll believe every unlikely and horrible set of
half-ideas.

"They want us to drown," says someone.

"Who does?" whispers a skeptic.

But before names are mentioned, someone else offers, "They don't know they're
doing it. How could they know?"

"So how do we protect ourselves?" asks someone in back. An enraged, crimson
voice. "Suppose it's true. How can we stop people from doing this to us,
intentionally or not?"

Except for the patter of rain on the roof, the silence is perfect.

I pray for reason, regretting my mouth. But what's one prayer against the will
of multitudes?

An Irish journalist is found shot to death in a flooded sorghum field.

Two Nigerian cameramen are hung with their own coaxial cable, the incident
interpreted as being racially motivated.

In one day, three different news vehicles are peppered with small arms fire.

And while I'm busy wondering about these terrible deeds, and am I in some way to
blame, a bizarre new terrorist group bombs radar towers over a wide region,
leaving the soggy heart of the nation blank, no way to determine the course and
intensity of the latest storms.

Which aren't so bad, as it happens.