She opened the link that Iris had sent. Thirty-three songs... Her mind went back to the vision of the pickup truck. Yeah, it made sense that he would compile long playlists. He had spent more time on the road in a month than most people did in a year. She began playing the titles.
"1. 666--DeGarmo and Key"
This one included a video. It opened with a young man playing a computer game on a floppy disk. She laughed. Such old technology... Then the singing began.
I was feeling kind of restless / So I went out for a walk / Then I ran into a stranger / And for hours we just talked / He said I'd waited for this moment all my life / This is it / And when I asked him to explain it / He just smiled and told me, "666"
He said that things will get much better / That tonight is New Age Eve / "I can even change the weather / And do things you won't believe" / (I've got signs and wonders / In my bag of tricks) / Ooh, tricks / When I asked him to explain it / He just smiled and told me, "666"
I said, "Jesus, won't You save me / From this evil man of sin? / I have read about his future / I don't want to go with him." / When I looked up, he had gone / But he had left a note that said / "I'm on my way."
He said, "My number / (My number) / (...) /
My number is '666'"
When morning came I laughed at / What I thought was just a dream / And I went to call my neighbor / And to tell him all I'd seen / When I reached for my address book / I felt sick / (Ooh, sick) / 'Cause written 'cross the pages / Every number, there was "666"
As the music began to fade out, the video concluded with a prepubescent boy retrieving the floppy disk, which the young man had discarded after narrowly escaping the sale of his soul and later execution. At that moment, a foreign thought flashed through her head.
The young man is Russia. The boy is the United States.
She shivered. Where had that thought come from? It may have agreed with the vision from earlier, but it wasn't a thought she would naturally have and she wasn't reading any weird text this time. Was the "dunamis" that Lazarus had seemingly channeled into the book still working? Through YouTube? Given how many wildly illogical things had already happened, she supposed it was possible, but this particular thought felt different.
In the visions, she had effectively been Lazarus, seeing through his eyes, thinking his thoughts, and feeling his emotions as if they were her own, with almost no need for words. Now she felt like she was being talked to in the normal sense, albeit telepathically. That being the case, she thought it prudent to record these two sentences as well.