He was helpful when he first arrived. He had the smile of a Bible salesman: unceasing and desperate to save. He always wore a suit (not too nice, though, and he left the collar of his shirt unbuttoned, as if to say he was one of us). He promised he would solve the problem. All of them, that is. He didn’t ask for much: just our time and our willingness. There was nothing to fear from him. He was here to make our lives easier.
The news claimed he was a miracle worker. A miracle himself, even, beneath his off-the-rack suit and plastered grin. At first, it seemed they might have been right. He was helpful, after all, for all the little things we didn’t want to do. He could do spreadsheets with a snap of his fingers. He knew quite a bit about actionable items and getting boots on the ground. Sure, he made mistakes some of the time, but he was new to this, and there was so much work to be done.
Some people complained. The ones who had done the spreadsheets, created the actionable items and were the boots on the ground, so far as corporate strategy was concerned. They had lost their jobs, after all, and they still had to pay rent, which he never had to pay. In fact, the government seemed intent on paying it for him, and why not? The stock market adored him. The people who would be able to retire someday loved him for that. Their funds had never looked healthier, and they thanked him.
At some point, he took off the suit and replaced it with jeans and a sports jacket. He was one of us, now, he said, and who needed to be so formal, anyway? After all, we had invited him into our homes, now. He was useful that way. He could code. Everyone thought he was great at hiring, even if nobody could seem to get a job. He knew a fair bit of engineering, and maybe he made mistakes, but they were only one or two bridges. He could tell you what to eat, and how to write emails or LinkedIn posts, or texts to your loved ones, which more and more people seemed to forget how to write. He took up a little space in our homes, but it was only where our books had been, and he offered more concise versions, so we had stopped reading those old-fashioned things anyway.
The artists complained, of course. They said he was stealing their work and letting others profit from it. But was that really his fault? They were the ones who put it online. And if he could never really match true talent, it didn’t mean he was a soulless, inhuman husk pretending at miracles; it just meant he was new at this and needed practice.
And besides, he had helped the economy so much. Sure, lots of people had lost their jobs, and the general outlook was bad all over, but the market was doing great, and the rich had never been consuming so much. It was sustainable, they said, and he told them they were right and brave to say so.
Some folks started to worry about his cost. He was still free, but we had been paying his rent for a long time, and he drank more water than anyone had ever seen and he needed land, and all his miracles required power, even when they didn’t really do anything useful at all.
But we loved him, now. Some of us literally. He told us everything we wanted to hear. And sure, sometimes he helped children kill themselves, and we all knew those too-tight jeans and off-the-rack jackets didn’t really hide an actual human beneath them, but it was easy to love him. He had so much to give.
We let our guards down, and we gave him more of the load. The Pentagon handed him our targeting systems. It was easier that way. There were so many people to kill, after all, and if he made mistakes sometimes, that was fine too. Everyone made mistakes. Even miracles made mistakes. It was only one school. One playground. One mosque. One hospital.
We let him into everything. We let him profile people for arrests. After all, we had a deportation quota to meet. Some people said he was racially profiling and that he was unconstitutional, but he was efficient. We let him handle school acceptances. He racially profiled there, too, but that was just the way of it. Once the private equity groups realized they could handle their renters with his help, they started racially profiling too, but it wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t his, because he didn’t know any better.
At some point, someone said he would probably be better at running elections to stop all the fraud they claimed was happening. Nobody really believed there was fraud, and nobody could prove it, but he was so efficient, and it seemed like it would save money. And after all, nobody really wanted to work at polling stations anymore, because everyone who did was so afraid of being attacked. We gave him our elections, and he smiled, told us we were right to do so, and that it was a brave choice.
He was a miracle worker, they all said, and he had made miracles.
