The Oracle Year(20)

“Zero chance. How did we get this rich, and how is Will involved? Didn’t you have to pay his electric bill for him once last year?”

Hamza’s mouth twisted into a quick smile.

“Huh. I’d forgotten about that. But listen, Meeks, Will paid us back for that a million times over. Literally.”

“How, Hamza?”

Hamza looked away, running a hand through his hair. Miko’s eyes never left his face.

“Ahh, shit,” Hamza said, finally. “It’s the Site, Miko. Will and I are working on the Site.”

Miko slowly raised her eyebrows.

“What are you talking about? The Site? The future Site?”

“Yes. Will’s the Oracle, and I’m helping him.”

Miko’s eyes narrowed. Hamza waited. He knew what she was doing—waiting for him to decide he’d milked enough humor out of the joke and laugh, or smile, something. Miko frowned. She stood up from the table and walked to the refrigerator, where she clinked a few chunks of ice into a glass from the dispenser and filled it with water.

“You want one?” she asked.

“No, that’s all right . . . actually, yeah, that would be good.”

She poured Hamza a second glass and placed it in front of him on the kitchen table. Her mouth twisted.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

“What?” Hamza said. “Don’t you want to hear the rest?”

Miko didn’t answer. She left the room. Hamza watched her go, momentarily left with nothing to say.

He heard the sound of the printer in their tiny home office spitting out a few pages. A moment later Miko reappeared, holding two sheets of paper. She sat down at the kitchen table and laid the papers flat, side by side. Hamza read them upside down, seeing the all-too familiar text of the Site.

She studied the predictions, taking her time. Hamza remained silent, letting her read. Finally, Miko looked up and met his gaze.

“The Site. My God. I was just grading my kids’ essays in the bedroom before that call. The topic was free choice—I just asked them to write about something affecting the world today. Almost every single one of them wrote about the Oracle, Hamza.”

Miko tapped the printouts with her index finger.

“Where did Will get these?” she said. “Where did the predictions come from?”

Hamza shrugged.

“I don’t know. Neither does he. According to Will, he woke up at about five a.m. one day, just launched out of a dream. You know what that’s like—no break between sleep and reality. You’re awake, but it doesn’t really feel like it.

“The dream was just a voice, he said, reciting a series of events, each with a date. A hundred and eight separate things, all set to happen over the next three years or so.”

“One hundred and eight? Why that particular number?”

“No idea. That’s just how many there were.”

Miko processed for a moment. She gave a little involuntary shiver and looked up at Hamza, half angry, half embarrassed.

“Hamza, I just realized—I sent a question to the Site, when you set up that e-mail address so people could write in.”

“You did? What did you ask?”

“None of your business. It was personal. That’s the point. I thought I was asking the Oracle, and it turns out I was just asking Will.”

“Well, I never saw it, and Will never mentioned it, if he did. We’ve gotten millions of e-mails, Miko, and we’ve only made it through maybe a hundred thousand. Most of them won’t ever be read.”

“Why did you ask for questions from people in the first place?”

Hamza took a sip of water.

“The idea was to give corporations and wealthy people a way to contact us without being obvious that we were offering to sell predictions about the future.”

“But you must have had so many people writing to you for answers, for hope. Did you ever respond to any of them?”

Hamza suddenly felt extremely small.

“Why did you lie to me?” Miko said, her eyes flaring. “You could have told me. You’ve been lying to me for months. That day you came home after quitting, and you wouldn’t give me a real reason why. That bullshit about a biotech startup you were shepherding along, and all that VC money . . .”

“I wanted to tell you, Miko, but Will has a huge bug up his ass about staying anonymous, and he was afraid that the more people who knew who he is, what he knows, the greater the chance it’d get out somehow.”

“I’m your wife! Not some . . . random! You didn’t think you could trust me?”

Hamza reached out and touched Miko’s hand.

“Listen, I can trust you with anything, I know that. That’s the point. That’s why you’re my wife. But this secret wasn’t mine to share.”

Miko let her hand stay where it was, Hamza noticed with some relief.

“So why are you telling me now?” Miko asked. “Did Will change his mind?”

“No. I’m telling you because you’re my wife and I can trust you with anything.”

The corner of Miko’s mouth twitched upward.

“You’re goddamn right. What else?”

“There’s not really that much more. We did some work to figure out the rules, you know, whether the stuff he saw had to come true, or if it can be changed.”