A Visitor to a Museum

Plot

After a global environmental disaster, humanity's survivors live out their final century without trying to stop the world's collapse. Among them exists a group called 'degenerates'—people with severe intellectual disabilities. The main character travels to a sea that repeatedly floods and then dries up, hoping to see an ancient sunken city that will emerge when the waters recede. While waiting, he speaks with locals.

The ordinary people, who run the inn, have lost all spirituality and fill their emptiness with entertainment. They warn him not to go to the city, saying others died trying, and urge him to stay, enjoy music, watch television, feast, and dance. During a party, a guest seduces him and they have sex. In contrast, the degenerates have kept their religion and a spark of spirituality.

One degenerate, the inn's maid, believes the Visitor is a savior sent by God and pleads with him not to abandon his mission. He attends a nightly degenerate service where the crowd begs God to take them to heaven, triggering a spiritual epiphany in him—which is also a psychosis. Ordinary people grow afraid, thinking he might be a mutant in disguise. When the sea finally parts, the degenerates kidnap him, drug him, dress him in ceremonial clothes, and send him to the sunken city.

There, he sobs to God, begging atonement for humanity's sins. In the end, the housewife—who previously rejected religion and mutants—also has an epiphany because of the Visitor's influence. The Visitor himself falls into a religious frenzy, able only to thrash and scream for God.