The Gospel according to Ora: Two Novellas

What if the Messiah was born today, in our social media era? What if Lucifer, the devil, was taking residence in Vegas? >Petey wasn't there for the miracle. Nobody who writes these things ever is. But he has watched the boy become a saviour the way saviours are made now, in clips and fan accounts and the soft arithmetic of a rising follower count, and he means to set the record down before it is optimised past recognition. Lucky -Lucifer- is writing the other gospel. His subject is not a saviour but the thing the feed offers in the same breath, from the same lit rectangle: the devil you cannot quite tell apart from the good news, because both arrive as content, and both were only ever trying to keep you here a little longer. Framing them both is Ora, the platform that has already saved your spot. Ora is transparent, radically so. Ora would like you to rate your experience. Ora has read every word of this and monetised most of it, and it knows, with the patient certainty of a system that has watched you scroll for years, that you were always going to turn the page. Two novellas, a saviour and a devil, and the small daily trades we make without ever reading the terms. Very funny, it asks the one question the interface is built to prevent: Will you look up?