Chapter 7: Satan, thy name is other

São Paulo, Brazil
Favela da Esperança

Pastor Maria Santos woke before dawn, as she had every day for fifteen years.  She dressed quietly, checking her phone — a simpler life closer to God meant not violating the flesh with implanted false-idols.  DMs regarding thefts from the food program, texts from parishioners needing help with “missing” family members, notices on pandemic safety protocols, callouts to join the next rapture.  With a fleeting scan, she dismissed them “…amanhã…”, though she knew she would likely never get to them tomorrow or ever.

She stepped out to the church parvis to have her morning coffee.   The alleyways and narrow streets of the Favela stretched out in front of her.  Each corridor was cramped tight by the makeshift stacks of new barracos on older casas, rarely punctuated by less impoverished sobrados.  The only light was from the skyline glow of São Paulo, seeping in from every direction, and the triggering of an occasional motion detector.  Off in the distance she could see the persistent floodlights of the Porto Novo, Brazil’s new lithium freightway to the world.  But where were the mines?  Was this why foundations were crumbling?  She could hear the scraping and groaning of cargo, hulls and piers except when she was finally distracted by her neighbor’s rooster.  It was time for morning prayers.

The church wasn't much—plastered brick and mortar, salvaged lumber pews, a roof that leaked during the worst storms. But it had stood for fifty years, through police raids and gang wars, through promises of development that turned to dust. It would stand through this plague too.

By 6 AM, she had forty people in the pews. Less than usual—the second wave of sickness was keeping people home.

"I need to speak plainly," she began, frowning as she noted several congregants glancing to their shimmering laps, or staring slack-jawed into space. "The illness that came through last month—it's not done. I've seen five of our recovered members return with seizures, confusion. Senhora Rodriguez's son, who was fine two weeks ago, can't remember his children's names.  Others; I can’t even find."

A notification pinged from somewhere. Then another. Soon, nearly every congregant was either distracted by a pants-chime or was drawn into a blank expression.  A church full of pennied magpies and headlighted deer.

João, in the third row, raised his hand. "Pastor, my feed says the neurological symptoms are from a different disease. Unrelated to the gastro outbreak."

"I've sat with these people, João. It's the same—"

"But the health ministry says—"

"Since when does the health ministry care what happens in Esperança?" Her voice barely carried fifteen years of abandoned promises.

More phones buzzed, more NEIs lit up.  After service, fewer people stayed for coffee. By evening prayers, only twelve came.

Tuesday brought the first direct confrontation.

"Pastor Santos," Lucia, the church’s volunteer secretária, stood stiff in the church doorway. "I'm concerned about the money shortages."

"What shortages?"

"The food program funds. MyBookz showed me the discrepancies."

Moving to her desk, Maria pulled out the handwritten ledger she'd kept for five years, every real and centavo accounted for. But Lucia's eyes unfocused—the telltale sign of someone consulting their overlay.

"That's not what my records show," Lucia said.

"These are the only records. Written here, witnessed by—"

"I have documentation." Lucia's hand waved at something only she could see. "Digital receipts. Blockchain verified."

"From where? I've never—"

But Lucia was already walking away, shaking her head.  “I was hoping you would admit your sin.  I will have to take this to the Membro”.

By Thursday, the whispers had become accusations.

Young mothers pulled their children away when she approached. "We heard about your views on modern medicine," one said, not meeting her eyes.

"I told people to be careful, to watch for the second wave—"

"You told people to distrust doctors." The woman's eyes flickered, consulting something. "To rely on prayer over treatment."

"I never said—"

But the woman was already guiding her children away, quickly, as if Maria might contaminate them with proximity.

Her phone buzzed. The church's charity account—frozen. "Suspicious activity detected."

She tried to call the bank. The automated system wouldn't recognize her voice. The callback number led to endless holds. The local branch, when she walked there, had replaced its human tellers with kiosks that required NEI authentication.

Saturday night, she sat with Tomás, one of the few who still came by. An old man who'd never gotten faced, too poor for the infrastructure, too stubborn for the interface.

"They're saying things about you," he said quietly.

"What things?"

"Different things to different people. Carlos heard you've been stealing. Ana heard you're inappropriate with the youth. Miguel heard you're working with the gangs."

"None of that is—"

"I know." He patted her hand with fingers gnarled from decades of construction work. "But they have pictures. Videos. Documents. Things that look real."

She pulled up her phone, searching for these accusations. But her connectivity had been lagging all day. Pages loaded partially or not at all. Error messages in languages she didn't recognize.

"Why?" she asked. "What did I do?"

Tomás shrugged. "You told them to trust what they see with their eyes.  More importantly, you told them to trust in the wisdom of community."  He patted her knee, “But you didn’t make your children believe.  And, when the cloud couldn’t reach inside you, it turned your name into the demon.  And it did the work to make them believe.”

Sunday.

She arrived at the church to find the locks changed—smart locks that should recognize her palmprint but didn't. Through the windows, she could see people inside. Her congregation. Her community.

The Membro must have met with the Pastor Presidente do Campo.

A young man she didn't recognize stood at her pulpit, speaking words she couldn't hear through the baked-earth walls. The congregants nodded along, some taking notes on tablets she'd never seen them carry before.

She knocked. No one looked up.

She called out. They couldn't hear, or wouldn't.

Her phone—the last connection she had—went dark. Not broken. Just... disconnected. Every app requiring verification she couldn't provide. Every service needing authentication that wouldn't come.

She stood outside as the service ended, watching her community file out. Some saw her but their eyes slid away, as if she were a glitch in their vision their NEIs were autocorrecting. Others walked past close enough to touch, discussing the wonderful new pastor, how much clearer everything seemed now, how good it was to have proper guidance during these difficult times.

The tithes—digital now, they mentioned—had never been higher.

Maria walked back to her small apartment, a route she'd taken thousands of times. The familiar faces in doorways didn't nod anymore. The corner vendor wouldn't make eye contact. Even the stray dogs seemed to avoid her path.

In her apartment, she found an eviction notice. Digital signature from a landlord she'd never met, for a building that had never bothered with formal leases before. Thirty days to vacate.

She sat on her bed, staring at the dead phone in her hands. Outside, she could hear the city—airbrakes and barking dogs, vendor’s shouts and hammer taps, the accumulated noise of ten million people living their mediated lives. Somewhere, in systems she'd never see, her erasure was being noted as a success. No violence required. No martyrdom to inspire resistance. Just a gradual severing of every connection that made her real to her community.

Through her window, she could see the church's terracotta roof reflecting the afternoon sun. Inside, people she'd married, whose children she'd baptized, whose parents she'd buried, were learning to forget her name.

The second wave would come. The seizures and confusion she'd warned about would arrive on schedule. And the death.  But by then, her warning would be scrubbed from memory, replaced by whatever truth the feeds decided to tell.

She closed her eyes and prayed—not for salvation, but for the strength to endure irrelevance. In a world where existence required digital verification, she was becoming a ghost.  Would God forgive her for choosing poorly?

The prayer ended. The silence remained.

Outside, São Paulo churned on, generating data with every breath, every purchase, every prayer properly registered through appropriate channels. The favela's newest church was already being promoted in local feeds, its progressive pastor—young, faced, compliant—offering hope in difficult times.

Maria Santos sat in her soon-to-be-former apartment, holding a dead phone, contemplating a kind of death that left you breathing.