The Oracle Year(113)

It was inedible. All of it. You just had to season the hell out of it and hope for the best.

Branson reached for his government-issued spork, made of a bendable nylon/plastic mix that could under no circumstances ever be used as a weapon.

It was August 23. It was Sunday. And so, it was Salisbury Steak Day.

He looked up again at the other prisoners. Now, many of them were looking at him, nudging each other.

They knew what day it was, too. They were Oracle tourists, in their way.

All around, men started to stand from their seats. The guards moved in from the edges of the room, unlimbering weapons from their belts, but they didn’t stop the prisoners as they moved into a loose circle around Branson, sitting alone at his table.

The guards glanced at each other, then stepped forward, joining the prisoners.

Branson stared at them all, watching silently, their faces still and expectant.

Well, look at this, he thought. The Oracle gave me back my audience.

He looked back up at the television, which was continuing to discuss the Oracle Effect in all its many world-altering forms. Goddamn Will Dando, still running the world, even though he hadn’t appeared in public since that stunt in Denver and hadn’t communicated at all beyond his last, one-word update to the Site. One word, and it changed everything.

Everything.

The Oracle Effect. Goddamn Will Dando, still running the world.

Branson moved his eyes back to the lump of meat on his tray.

I still have a choice, he thought. No one’s making me do this. I have free will.

He reached for the pepper shaker placed conveniently close to his plate and heard a rustle of movement among the assembled watchers.

What if I just . . . don’t? he asked himself. Word would get out. I could still do exactly what I was planning all along. The Oracle’s just a man. I know it.

He looked up at the men standing around him, not meeting anyone’s eyes, just taking their emotional temperature. Excitement. The beginnings of impatience. Certainty.

They know what I’m going to do. The Oracle said it, and they believe it, and that’s that.

But I can show them they’re wrong. I still have free will, he thought again. I have a choice.

He stared at the pepper shaker in his hand. He did have a choice. But he knew what would happen to him if he disobeyed the Oracle in front of these men who were so deeply invested in their prophet’s infallibility. He would be made to season his steak as specified, and there would be pain then and pain to follow. Punishment for his defiance.

These people believed, certainly more strongly than anyone Branson had ever touched with his ministry. They wanted to see the Oracle’s enemy brought low with their own eyes. The prediction would come true, one way or the other. They would see to it.

The easy way, or the hard, cripplingly painful way. That was his actual choice, his only choice. It didn’t matter what he believed, and it didn’t matter what the Oracle was, god or man.

The things he said came true.

Reverend Hosiah Branson put pepper on his steak. He replaced the shaker on the table, lifted his spork, and carved himself a bite.





Epilogue: Tomorrow




Leigh shaded her eyes and peered out across the water, looking for three curved palm trees, partially uprooted by some long-past storm so that they hung low over the beach, nearly horizontal, like permanent, natural limbo sticks. The few channels into the shore weren’t visible above the waterline—the sovereign nation of the Coral Republic was, in fact, ringed by a large coral reef, and the only safe way through was marked by the limbo palms.

A concrete pier jutted roughly a hundred yards into the sea from the beach, with mooring slips jutting out from the main pier at right angles. Once she was through the gate in the coral, Leigh spun her boat’s wheel to angle toward the nearest slip. She could see a figure walking along the beach to the pier to meet her. She smiled, but turned her attention back to bringing the boat in safely.

Several vessels were already docked at the pier—a motorboat that was too small for Leigh to feel comfortable using alone in the open ocean, and a palatial, screw-you-I’m-rich yacht that was too large for her to pilot by herself. Leigh thought Hamza had acquired the yacht just for the sheer satisfaction of owning a boat that big.

She was driving the Florida Lady, a thirty-foot fishing boat. Leigh thought of it as hers, although technically she supposed it belonged to the Oracle organization. Will rarely took it out to any of the nearby islands. Too many people would recognize him, even down here.

Hamza had arranged the Republic as its own country—she wasn’t clear on the details—but the upshot was that it had its own set of laws, and it very pointedly had no extradition treaties. As long as the Oracle remained on the sandy ground of the Coral Republic, he was—in theory—legally untouchable.

As Leigh pulled the throttle back to idling speed and inched the Lady forward into the mooring slip, she glanced to her right, where a short way back into the jungle off the beach, the orange tile roofs of what she and Will had both come to call the Capitol Building poked through the treetops.

It was really just a large, comfortable house built on stilts in a cleared area of the jungle, although it did house the entire population of the Republic. A flag flew out front—a stylized branch of yellow coral against a turquoise background.

The boat bumped gently against the rubber tires placed at regular intervals along the side of the mooring slip. Leigh turned off the motor and slipped quickly down from the cabin. Will had made it to the end of the pier and stood waiting, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing shorts, sandals, and sunglasses, looking very appealingly sun-touched.