The Oracle Year(12)

“Uh-huh. But if there’s no higher purpose to all this, then I’m just some asshole musician who got really lucky. If the predictions don’t mean anything, then neither do I.”

“Fuck that,” Hamza said. “If you’re rich, you matter. That’s the world we live in. And we are both very rich, no matter what happens. Don’t . . . don’t self-sabotage.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” Will said.

“I don’t know,” Hamza said. “I hope not. I did notice that you put three new predictions up on the Site, though.”

Will looked up.

“Yeah. Innocuous stuff.”

“But the third one . . . about Hosiah Branson,” Hamza said.

“Yeah,” Will said. “You’ve heard the things he says about me. And I had a prediction about him—seemed too perfect not to use.”

Will ate another bite of steak, chewing very deliberately. Defensively.

“Branson doesn’t say things about you, Will,” Hamza said. “He says them about the Oracle. We don’t want to let things get personal. Ever. We just sold a prediction for half a billion dollars. I’m not sure it makes sense to just give them away anymore. The Site’s served its purpose. It’s not Facebook. We don’t have to keep updating it.”

Will frowned. Hamza’s worst quality was his tendency to explain.

“I know I’m just a stupid bass player, Hamza, but give me a little credit, all right? I think I can tell when a prediction’s worth something,” he said. “And besides, how much money do we actually need? When are we going to stop?”

“When we have enough that it literally does not matter how we got it. Even if we eventually get exposed as the people behind the Site, we’ll have enough so that we’re totally bulletproof.”

“How much is that?”

“More than we have right now. I’m making plans, though,” Hamza said. “It’s keeping me busy. Money means work. Shell corporations, multiple accounts, the whole bit. It’s one thing to have a few billion in offshore accounts, but making it accessible at your local ATM is complicated. The couple hundred thousand I got you might be it, at least for a little while.”

Will considered this.

“Did you talk to the Florida Ladies?” he said. “They might be able to help. That’s what we pay them for, right?”

Hamza frowned.

“I’m not going to involve them any more than we already have. I’m sure they’re wonderful, and worth every penny of the excessive fees they charge us, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather they didn’t know our bank account numbers. I’m on it, Will. I’m taking care of it.”

An uncomfortable pause.

“Anyway,” Will said.

“Anyway,” Hamza agreed. “It’s not all bad. I paid off the credit cards I’ve been running up since I quit the bank, and my student loans. Miko’s, too. Not that sexy, but, goddamn, it felt good.”

Will finished his glass of wine. He stared fixedly at the bottom of the glass.

“How did you explain the money? Is she still asking questions?”

“No, Will. She’s just accepting that Providence has blessed her brilliant husband with millions of dollars. Of course she’s asking questions.”

“What are you telling her?”

“I’m telling her that you and I are getting a lot of VC money in, which is more or less true. She doesn’t believe it, but we’ve got sort of an unspoken pact. She loves me, right? And she knows I love her. If I don’t want to tell her what I’m doing, then she trusts me enough to know that there’s a good reason, and that I’ll tell her the truth when I can.

“But,” he added, “that won’t last forever. And I don’t want it to. It’s this growing thing between us.”

Will looked at his friend.

“I get it, Hamza. But the more people that know . . .” He lowered his voice. “I’m the Oracle, right? I take the hit if people find out who I am. I know you’ll have to tell Miko eventually, but we’re almost out. We’ll sell a few more predictions, get bulletproof, like you said, and then the Oracle disappears. Then you can tell her. Yeah?”

Hamza hesitated briefly, then nodded. He refilled Will’s wineglass and topped off his own. He raised it in a toast.

“Enough with the recriminations and all that bullshit. This is a celebration, man. To the weirdest business idea anyone’s ever had, and to the fact that we actually made it work,” he said. “And to one hell of a business partner.”

“Absolutely. On all counts,” Will said, and clinked glasses with Hamza.

They ate in silence for a while, working through the steak. It had cooled a little, but that made it no less effective.

“Hey,” Hamza said, his tone casual, verging on forced. “The next time you want to change something on the Site, maybe talk it over with me first? The one thing that could sink us is someone finding out who you are before we’re ready. You put up those new predictions the way the Florida Ladies told us, right?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “But I thought you didn’t like the Ladies?”

“I know why we need them. I just wish our operation was a little more self-contained, that’s all. Anyway, I’m sure it’s fine. If it weren’t, we’d probably be sitting in some FBI holding cell right now.”