Virtual Thought

When I was about 12 or so a friend of my brother let me borrow this book. I no longer remember the title nor the author but the plot has stuck with me for the last sixteen years. Every once in a while I crack open Google or Amazon and search around for this book to no avail. So, I’m hoping that someone will eventually come along and help a brother out.

This radio DJ is working the morning show with his partner and they decide to do one of those annoying, wacky morning radio DJ shows where one will be a faith healer and remove the other’s cold. It turns out not be a joke, however… the partner’s cold is instantly cured. There are some more scenes illustrating the faith-healing radio DJ’s unrequited love for one of the female jockeys at the station and then he has a confrontation with his jerk boss. They have a long argument about something at the end of which our hero the DJ snarls, “I hope you fucking choke.” A couple of chapters later is a grisly scene where the reader realizes that the man has lost his ability to metabolize water and drowns. Somewhere in there is another scene in which the DJ is acosted by some other person and, through his increasingly disturbing power, breaks every bone in the other person’s body.

So it turns out Our Hero is one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Pestilence. He can’t just go around healing everyone without also letting some hurt out too… Right around here my memory gets hazy… There’s something about a self-flagellating warrior monk type who works for a secret society that has been trying to track and control the Horsemen but lost Pestilence due to some mishap or other (it comes out later in the book). At one point he reveals that there are certain rules regarding the Horsemen… the only one I remember of which is “do not let Pestilence come in contact with a barren woman”... guess what? The unrequited love female DJ is barren! There’s something about Sumeria in there also (the Horsemen have been around for a while)... the book ends with this terrible, awesome (old sense) revival scene in which the DJ lets loose with his power and deforms everyone or something… anyway, eventually he makes his way to Unrequited Love DJ’s apartment and heals her of her inability to have children, something she’s always always wanted… this causes him to expire on her bathroom floor. The last scene in the book is this DJ, as a baby, when he was touched by this old man and apparently given Pestilence while the old man was being chased by this Order. Then, later, the baby gives his dad cancer.

Please, has anyone else read this book? What is the title? Who is the author? It sounds like a Kathe Koja book but I think I would’ve remembered her name. Argh.

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