They say they’re here to save the world. Politicians say it. Pastors say it. The United Nations say it. The Institute sings it like a hymn. But step back and ask the question you’re not supposed to ask: what kind of thing volunteers to save a world that looks like this? Not a saint. Not a hero. Not a peace keeper. Something that needs the world broken to justify its tools.
Scripture warned you about the shopfronts of wonder—fortune-tellers, psychics, the ones who sell visions and call it healing. “Unclean,” it says. Open doors invite a draft, and drafts invite whatever wants inside. Once a lie gets a body—like “the soul can’t die,” or “fate is a machine you can read”—it walks around and shakes hands.
None of this is new. Back in the days of Moses, the court magicians made water run red and tossed rods that writhed into snakes—sleight of hand, sure, but also a message: we can counterfeit the pattern. Remote viewing? That’s just a modern label stitched onto the same old cloak.
We learn the Institute isn’t a building—it’s a network. A hundred faceless campuses stitched across maps and air corridors, each with its own anthem, each humming the same note through the walls. And behind that hum you catch the breath of something older—a council in marble rooms, a ring of rings. Maybe it’s the Church. Maybe it’s the UN. Maybe it’s a secret sinister multinational coalition. Maybe it’s all at once, two hands on one throat. They know about the “viewers.” They know about the kill teams that clean up “exceptions.” They know about the children that vanish and reappear on inventory sheets as “assets.”
The missions never stop. While the city sleeps, vans glide. Corridors open. Doors seal. Someone in a collar or a flag pin signs a paper with a pen that cost as much as a small car, and a light turns green two continents away. “Saving the world,” they call it, as if the phrase were holy enough to wash the blood off tile.
Upstairs, the Director drafts a final protocol. He calls it a reset, but the old word fits better—final solution. There’s a diagram of the ductwork, a calculation about cubic meters and how long it takes to make a scream sound like a yawn. He doesn’t hate the kids. He hates variables. He hates doors that open without a badge.
Ben tells Sigsby the only truth that matters: “Do you know how much evil gets done in the name of saving the world?” Sigsby doesn’t answer. You don’t argue with a mirror.
The plan for the kids has a pretty label: precognition. Give the future a face, chain it to a chair, and ask it questions until free will taps out. Minority Report wasn’t fiction—it was a blueprint left on a coffee table. If crimes can be seen before they happen, then choice is theater and the stage manager is a god with a clipboard. And if choice is theater, the rest follows: evolution as doctrine, class as destiny, a neat little base with a neat little superstructure, and everything you ever do already signed off somewhere you’ll never be invited.
They promise the precogs will be worshiped. “Treated like kings,” the pamphlet says. “Like gods.” Baths and crowns and soft voices. But the Book has a word for that kind of god: false. A god that needs your wrists tied to work. A god that’s deaf unless the machine is turned on. A god that lives in a lab and starves without your fear.
Listen: the vents are whispering. Doors blink and lock. The room smells like antiseptic and old coins. Somewhere a voice on a secure line says “for the greater good,” and the floor seems to tilt. You can save a world by strangling it, if you call the hands “policy” and the rope “science.” You can name a cage “sanctuary” and fill it with believers. You can even build a church out of cameras and call it peace.
But the truth keeps pacing under the fluorescents: they don’t want a saved world. They want a compliant one. And to get that, they’ll gas a room, crown a child, build an altar to the future, and swear it’s mercy while the lights go out.