// CELESTIAL OPERATIONS CENTER //
// TRANSCRIPT: OPERATION SECOND DRAFT - DAY 3 //
A new screen glowed: MIRACLE ADJACENT EVENTS (MAE) - TIER 1. A pie chart showed 73% were categorized as "Unintentionally Profound Conversation."
Azrael, Angel of Statistical Probability & Gloomy Outcomes, tapped the chart with a bony pointer. "The Subject is not performing miracles. He is, however, generating a statistically impossible ripple effect of… emotional clarity. It's a softer failure mode, but a failure mode. It's spreading."
On the main viewer, clips played:
· J. in the hallway, telling a crying freshman her lost hamster was "not lost, just exploring" and would return from the ventilation shaft. It did.
· J. in the library, showing a student aide a more efficient shelving method to reduce wrist strain.
· J. in the Garcia backyard, repairing a dog run while explaining "bearing one another's burdens" to Mr. Garcia, who teared up and offered extra guacamole.
"He's not healing leprosy; he's healing… minor inefficiencies and low-grade despair," Azrael droned. "The 'ordinary' dataset is being contaminated with anomalous positivity."
Miguel scrolled reports. "The Observer is documenting it. Classifying it as 'Behavioral Anomalies: Empathetic Optimization.' She's maintaining detachment."
Raziel snorted from his meme station. "She posted last night. 'Subject J. and the Taxonomy of Kindness: Is Efficient Compassion a Social Glitch?' The humans are debating if her messiah is a robot."
Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. "The mission was to document ordinary life. Not to launch a philosophical movement."
"He's trying," Miguel said. "This is how the divine leaks out in a 16-year-old vessel. It doesn't part seas; it gives perfectly timed advice about hamster habitats."
Azrael consulted a hovering equation. "The 'Efficient Kindness' meme has a 38% chance of going school-wide. That pattern shift will be detected. Probability of doctrinal inquiry: sixty-five percent and climbing."
---
On Earth, the contagion was spreading.
Isabella saw it. A kid in chemistry voluntarily shared notes, then looked confused about why. The phrase "What would J. do?" wasn't coined, but a similar, unspoken sentiment was in the air—a strange new practicality of decency.
She tracked it from her new, permanent seat next to J. in World Lit.
Today, Mrs. Henderson tackled iambic pentameter. "Da-DUM, da-DUM. The heartbeat of Shakespeare."
J. stared at the poem, brow furrowed in deep concentration. He looked genuinely stumped.
"Problem?" she whispered.
"It's… the enforced rhythm," he gestured. "Beautiful, but restrictive. Like making everyone breathe the same pattern. What about the gasps? The sighs?"
Mrs. Henderson zeroed in. "Are you suggesting Shakespeare is too rigid, Joshua?"
The class turned, expecting wisdom.
J. looked up, flustered. "No! It's a masterful pattern. I'm just… struggling to fit the words I think into the pattern required." He gave a small, self-deprecating smile. "I'm more used to… parables. The rhythm of a story. This is like… algebra with words."
The class laughed, not unkindly.
Observation #4:Subject exhibits creative constraint. Divine verbal output (parables) conflicts with academic poetic structures. Finds iambic pentameter harder than forgiving sins.
After class, walking into the hall, J. let out a long breath. "That was harder than calming a storm," he muttered.
Isabella stopped dead. "What?"
He froze. A complicated series of emotions flashed over his face: surprise, chagrin, wry honesty. "A… metaphor," he said, but his eyes held hers, acknowledging the truth behind it. "Some things you feel in your hands." He flexed his fingers. "Like wood. Or a fishing net. Words… words are different here. They have rules I didn't write."
It was the closest he'd come to acknowledging what he was. Her pen hovered.
Private Journal, Entry #2:
He compared Shakespeare to a storm. He said he didn't write the rules for words. He's not just playing a part. He's… translating. And it's hard work.
Her phone buzzed.
Miguel:Poetry analysis deemed 'safe.' Storm metaphor was risky but sufficiently vague. Note: His algebra comment was apt. Both are systems for finding unknown variables. -M
Another notification popped up. A comment on her blog from @ShepherdWatcher. It was long, grammatically flawless, and icy.
"An intriguing, if secular, analysis. However, your 'Subject J' espouses a works-based righteousness devoid of doctrinal foundation. True compassion is sacrificial, flowing from grace, not social optimization. This skirts dangerously close to Pelagianism. Deeper study of established authorities is recommended."
It was signed: "A Concerned Educator."
Her blood ran cold. She showed J.
"Pelagianism," he said, tasting the word. "The belief that humans can achieve salvation through their own will. An old argument." He handed the phone back. "He's scared."
"Who is?"
"Whoever wrote it.He sees a system he doesn't control. He's building a fence around an idea, calling the fence 'doctrine.'" J. looked down the crowded hall. "They always do that when the wind starts to blow from a new direction."
Observation #5: Subject identifies Dogmatist counter-move. Displays strategic understanding of ideological conflict. Not scared. Resigned.
The bell rang. As they parted, her phone buzzed again—a Google Alert for her blog.
A link to a theological forum. A thread titled: "Modernist Heresy in the Arizona Desert? A High School Blog's Take on 'Efficient Grace.'"
The creator's username: DominusVobiscum87.
The outside world had found the trail.
---
// SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA PARISH OFFICE //
Father Dominic's world was one of quiet, ordered certainty. The blog post on his screen was a tear in the fence.
Mrs. Henderson, his worried catechism teacher, had sent it: "Father, something about this unsettles me. It feels like a new sacrament: the sacrament of social efficiency."
He read The Human Codex entry again. It was clever. Dangerous. It spoke of grace as a "renewable resource to be managed." The comment section was a swamp of juvenile philosophy.
His first response was the forum post. A measured, scholarly correction. The response was disheartening. "Boomer theology lol."
The fence was not holding. The wild was creeping in, dressed as a school project.
He needed to see the infection. He wrote an email to Mesa Verde High, proposing himself as a guest speaker for Comparative Religion. A talk on "The Enduring Language of Symbol." It was legitimate. It was reconnaissance.
The approval came within the hour.
As he prepared, his housekeeper Ana peered in. "You have that look, Father. The 'someone is rearranging the furniture of Heaven without permission' look."
"It is a pastoral matter, Ana. A potential misunderstanding."
"Ah.So you're going to high school. Don't scare them. They smell fear, and also old person sweat."
Father Dominic allowed himself the faintest smile. "I shall endeavor to be neither."
He closed the laptop. Subject J. A mystery. A potential "social glitch." A seed of a very modern, attractive weed.
He was not an angry man. He was a guardian. And tomorrow, he would go to see what required guarding.