Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

turned around to me and said, "You know, dear, in the future, just think of an angel."
From then on, I could never look at a girl without wondering if she had been the target of my prayer,
and the bellies of pregnant women counted, too. When I first saw Cheryl, in ninth grade, it was obvious
that she was the antenna who'd been receiving my prayers. You just know these things. And when she
became religious, that was my confirmation.
Sitting here on my log, I can feel women looking at me with the soul-seeking radar I once employed
looking for my future wife. It's younger soccer-mom types mostly, married, here on the beach on a
workday, frazzled from handling over-sugared toddlers cranky from too much sun. There are some
teenage girls, too, but being on the far side of my twenties, I'm pretty much invisible to them. A blessing
and a curse.
When I say I can feel women looking at me, I mean it in the sense of feeling hungry - you know you're
hungry, but when you try to explain it, you can't. And it's as if I feel the thought rays of these women
passing through me. But that sounds wrong. Maybe it's just lust. Maybe that's all it is.
The concession stand is down the beach, not far from where I'm sitting: Popsicles, fish & chips and
onion burgers. Cheryl worked there in her last summer. She really loved it because there were no Alive!
people there. I can see her point.
* * *
If you'd met me before the massacre, you'd think you'd just met a walking storage room full of my
father's wingding theories and beliefs. That's assuming I even spoke to you, which I probably wouldn't
have done, because I don't speak much. Until they put a chip in my brain to force me to speak, I plan to
remain quiet.
If you'd met me just before the massacre, you'd have assumed I was statistically average, which I was.
The only thing that made me different from most other people my age is that I was married. That's it.
I suppose that, given my father and my older brother, it was inevitable that I be plunked into Youth
Alive! Individually its members could be okay, but with a group agenda, they could be goons. They,
more than anything, are the reason I remained mute.
Dad was thrilled Kent was the local Alive! grand pooh-bah, and at dinner he liked nothing more than
hearing Kent reel out statistics about conversions, witnessings and money-raisers. If they ever argued, it
was over trivialities: Should a swimming pool used in rituals be the temperature of blood, or should it be
as cold as possible, to add a dimension of discomfort? The answer: cold. Why miss an opportunity for
joylessness?
Cheryl stayed for supper a few times at our house, and the meals were surprisingly uneventful. I kept on
waiting for Dad to pull back a curtain to reveal a witch-dunking device, but he and Cheryl got on well, I
suspect because she was a good listener and knew better than to interrupt my father. I wonder if Dad
saw in Cheryl the kind of girl he thinks he ought to have married - someone who'd already been
converted rather than someone he'd have to mold, and then psychologically torture, like my mother.
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