The Oracle Year(3)
The Site emerged into the public consciousness so quickly it was like a UFO appearing over Washington. From one day to the next—one hour, it seemed, as she remembered it—it became the only thing anyone could talk about.
Twenty events, all accompanied by dates. The first two had already happened by the time the Site went viral, but the rest all were slated to occur in the future. Since then four more of those dates had passed, and on each, the event on the Site occurred, exactly as it described. Or more accurately, predicted—by an unknown person, presence, supercomputer, or alien that had become known as the Oracle, in the same way that the Site had become the Site.
Leigh continued scanning the text of her article, doing one last check for sense and typos. She had chosen to write about the Oracle precisely because the subject had already been so exhaustively covered. A strategic thing. If she could bring some new angles, new interpretations, then it was almost more impressive than writing about something less familiar.
She thought she might have pulled it off—she’d tried to get into the Oracle’s head in a way that most articles didn’t seem to attempt, ignoring any discussion of the effect of the Site’s prophecies on the world and focusing more on how they might affect the prophet. That was the idea, at least. She’d read the piece too many times to be sure what it was actually about anymore—but her intentions were good.
Leigh’s current beat at Urbanity.com was “city culture”—shorthand for list-based clickbait about New York’s clubs and shows and celebrity squabbles and the best bagels in Brooklyn. Urbanity did produce some actual reportage—not much, but a little, in some of the other sections—and her Oracle article was something like an audition to get over to that side of things.
Leigh flipped back to her e-mail account—still nothing. She frowned, frustrated, then tapped her phone a few times and her article went live, now freely available to every one of the site’s millions of readers. The die was cast.
She stood up and emptied her tray into the trash bin, reflexively twinging a bit at the waste. She walked the two blocks back to the office, her stomach churning.
Urbanity had a few floors of a nondescript building at Fiftieth and Third. Just a cubicle farm with conference rooms along the sides on six, and the executive offices up on eleven.
Leigh sat down at her desk, glancing at the small mirror hanging on one wall of her cube. Her relationship with her reflection was evolving in a frustrating way as she neared thirty. Every look was accompanied by a little held breath. She didn’t know what she expected to see—maybe some echo of her mother’s face—streaks of white in her hair or lines fanning out into the dark skin around her eyes.
Why did you do that? she asked herself.
She had a job in New York City, writing for a living, actually using her journalism degree. More or less. She could pay her bills with a minimum of month-to-month shuffling and humbling calls home. Fully half her friends couldn’t come close to any of that.
So why did you just do that? she repeated to herself.
A head appeared over Leigh’s cubicle wall—Eddie, one of the company’s photographers. Approaching middle age, not fighting it all that hard, and very good at what he did. Eddie had taken some of the photos for her article about the Site and helped her lay it out.
He was smiling.
“Just saw your article went live, Leigh. Good for you. I told you it was solid. Did they say anything about moving you over to News, or was this a onetime thing? Either way, they almost never take work from people on other desks, long as I’ve been here. You should be proud you got the green light.”
Leigh looked back at him, saying nothing. Eddie’s eyes narrowed a little.
“You didn’t,” he said.
The fundamental truth to Leigh Shore was this—something she’d realized years back but could not seem to change, no matter the opportunities, long-term relationships, and overall happiness it denied her—nothing was less interesting to her than something she already had. And nothing was more interesting to her than something someone told her she could not have.
“I was tired of waiting, Eddie. I e-mailed them the article over a week ago—and they didn’t even respond. You know what I’m capable of, right? You just said so. I needed to show them something. I’ve been asking for a change of assignment for coming up on two years, and they just keep sending me out to bullshit club openings or whatever. When the verticals come back on this article, it’ll speak for itself. Sure, maybe it’s a little bit of a gamble, but—”
Eddie exhaled loudly, more of a grunt than a sigh.
“You know this site is owned by a multinational entertainment conglomerate, right? You can’t just . . . post things. It’s not your Tumblr. People get sued over this sort of thing, Leigh, and they most definitely get fired.”
Eddie turned away.
“I’m going to go check your goddamn article and pray you didn’t credit me on it.”
Leigh opened her mouth, about to say she’d pull the post off Urbanity’s site. But what would that do, really? It was already out there.
The first prediction to happen while people were paying attention was a claim that fourteen babies would be born at Northside General Hospital in Houston on October 8, six male, eight female. Exactly correct, even though the last infant was born at two minutes to midnight, and the mother was a woman who showed up at the hospital about half an hour earlier. She wasn’t even from the area—she was driving through with her husband.