The Science Prophet (Complete)

Chapter 6: Unmasking the Prophet

Darwin sent her message to Lucy and set her phone down on her desk. She heard a door opening and closing. Activity inside the lab building was not unusual at such a late hour. She wondered whether a grad student was working late, or whether it was just the cleaning crew.

The computer was almost done reassembling the files she was looking for, the files she hoped could help her stop Rob’s meteoric rise to international influence.

For weeks, she had done nothing further to stop Rob after that phone call. Even as his Solarian movement grew, she told herself it was nothing more than a passing a fad. She focused on her research, convening seminars with scientists from across many fields to try to understand what the anomaly was and what it might mean. Outside of these meetings, she craved anonymity, dressing in sunglasses and broad-brimmed hats. She especially avoided the media, feeling that it was inappropriate to speak to interviewers hungry for easy answers when she could provide none.

Because Darwin was hesitant to make any grand claims about what her discovery meant, she slowly lost control of the narrative. But Rob was providing a clear narrative, easy to understand, rewarding to believe in. Gradually, imperceptibly at first, Rob’s religion displaced the scientific discovery itself as the great story of the day.

In hindsight, Darwin understood that Rob’s message was powerful because it mixed the admonitions of a religion with evidence that seemed to come from science. And he proselytized via the internet, where he could reach a potential congregation of two billion souls without needing to build a single church.

And the converts came, at first a few at a time, but within six months of Darwin’s discovery being published, thousands of new Solarians were joining Rob’s Solar Psyche Church every day in America alone.

Darwin found her identity dragged further and further into the shadow of the Solarian movement. When she was recognized, she was usually mistaken to be one of Rob’s religious disciples rather than the scientist that she was. An endless stream of reporters tried to interview her about Rob and the religion. Converts contacted her seeking wisdom. She even found herself castigated by leaders of other religions threatened by Solarianism’s growth.

Darwin began to avoid going out during the daytime, and wore even larger hats and sunglasses. Not to avoid the sun, she told herself. That would be silly, almost like the superstitions she disdained. She kept late hours and hid her face and eyes to avoid the public attention she had come to dread.

A year after Darwin’s article’s publication, Rob’s church added its 1 millionth active member.  It then grew to 10 million members in another six months, and then to 100 million.

Rob now controlled one of the largest united churches in the world. The Catholic Church, with is billion members, was still ten times larger, but Rob’s church was doubling in size every few weeks. The white and orange colors of the Solarian movement seemed to be inescapable to Darwin.

But Darwin knew this was all wrong. There was something wrong with Rob. It had been obvious that something was wrong with him, even before he had founded his godforsaken religion. She’d even felt uneasy in his presence the first time she’d met him.

Adrian also saw into Rob’s inner darkness. “He’s a psychopath,” he had explained to Darwin when she’d told him about her phone call to Rob. “And I’m not using the term loosely.  I may not be a shrink but I’ve done enough work in behavioral neurology to spot such an obvious profile of psychosis.”

Adrian pointed to several outward signs of Rob’s dangerous psychology. His shallow charm, so useful in seducing a series of girlfriends and converting millions of believers. The undeserved sense of personal grandiosity that led him to claim responsibility for the anomaly’s discovery, and to name himself a prophet of the sun god. His habitual lack of responsibility, shame or respect for social conventions, manifested in his brazenness.