“And it is not JUST that they ask us to take a knee, and say that science is salvation, but that they force us to embrace it with open arms! Should we embrace the ATOM BOMB?! Should we embrace CLONES?! Should we embrace drugs that create ARTIFICIAL HAPPINESS?! We fund this research but give no money to those suffering on the street! We fund scientists who say they want to reduce humankind to biology!”

Kierk straightens up and looks over the crowd. He moves to the front concrete steps where there is clear line of sight. The street preacher is around Kierk’s age and is wearing a red bowtie despite the heat. Sweat stains are clearly visible under his arms against his white dress shirt. A poster stands next to him with the words in blocky yellow letters: THE LIE OF EVOLUTION.

When the street preacher shouts the words he spits them out like he’s been masticating them for a while, waiting for this. Kierk imagines in his personal life he would be shy and avoid eye contact, a bent head with a clean haircut, but once he’s on his little footstool he spits and seethes. While examining him head to toe Kierk is also realizing what has struck him, a thing making its escape, a dark association—words identical to those on dozens of purple pamphlets spilled out over the subway floor.

Kierk sets his grocery bags by a tourist couple and moves through the crowd to the front. The street preacher is yelling out the running prose of himself—excising bile like the draining of a medieval humor; he’s all spleen, lip spittle, and theological tax returns.

“—too long have our children been taught the undignified lie that we evolved from apes. But there are IN PRINCIPLE reasons to deny evolution! Yet this is not taught. The corruption prevents the return to the fold. The fight against modern science is done with the sword of faith. The rule of Christ is at stake, and unless these deceits are cast down—”

A few of the more downtrodden have separated themselves from the cosmopolitan passerby who are clearly taking this as entertainment. Three men in the front are ragged, unhealthy, moving in an offbeat tempo to the preacher’s speech.

“—and it is only through coming to THE LORD that you can defy such forces, that we can become human once again, not animal, but human, without the—”