The Oracle Year(35)

All around him, lit phone screens bobbed in the dark theater, people speaking to each other—excited, at full volume, the film forgotten.

Hamza walked into the lobby. Almost everyone in sight had their phone out. He walked past the concession stand, toward a quiet corner next to an external window. Everything outside looked gray—from the buildings to the city-tainted piles of slush to the people trudging through them. He leaned forward, closing his eyes, touching his forehead to the window, feeling the cold leaching through the glass.

A hand on his arm. Hamza opened his eyes and saw Miko, her head tilted slightly, her mouth turned down.

“You didn’t know he was going to put new predictions on the Site?” she asked.

“No,” Hamza said. “We haven’t talked—really talked—in a little while. Just some housekeeping stuff, about the money. He took the riots really hard. It seemed like he just wanted some distance from all of this.”

Miko’s face twisted, her mouth turning up and one eye scrunching a bit—her version of a shrug.

“Apparently he’s over it,” she said. “Okay. Take a step back. Tell me what this means.”

“What it means? I’ll show you what it means.”

He held up his phone, pointing at one of the red lines of text.

“This could be worth a hundred million,” he said. He moved his finger down slightly. “This one, maybe a billion. These predictions are literally the most valuable things in the world, and he’s just . . . giving them away!”

“Relax,” Miko said, putting her hand on Hamza’s forearm, pulling his hand down. “If they’re that important, why did he do it? He must have had a reason.”

“I have no idea, Miko!” Hamza said, his voice rising. “I don’t even know where he is. I call him all the time, text, whatever—he won’t get back to me.”

Miko frowned. She plucked the phone from Hamza’s hand and stared at the screen.

“You know,” she said. “These new predictions. They’re different from the first set.”

“I know,” Hamza said, his voice flat. “The first group was supposed to be worthless, or as near as we could get. The lottery ticket in Colorado, the chocolate milk thing, that crappy actor in Uruguay. They wouldn’t even make the news, if they hadn’t been on the Site. Why give it away for free, you know?”

“Right. But that’s not what I mean,” Miko said. “I don’t think Will was thinking about money here.”

She read from the screen.

“A bridge is going to collapse in Milwaukee. A car factory will catch fire in Pusan. A ship’s going to run aground near Rotterdam.”

She looked up at him.

“Hamza, these are warnings. These are all awful things—people could die. But none of the new predictions talk about that. Will doesn’t say how many people will die. Because maybe now no one will.”

Hamza took his phone back and read through the list again.

“The predictions can’t be changed. None of these things can be stopped.”

“They don’t have to be,” Miko said. “If people know what’s coming, they can, you know, just get out of the way.”

“Okay, even if that’s what this is—and I’ll grant that could be a good thing, even a great thing—Will promised me he wouldn’t put up more predictions without talking to me first. He’s not alone in this, Miko.”

Miko raised an eyebrow.

“He thinks he is, Hamza, or he would have talked to you first.”

Hamza glanced down, at the slight curve that had only recently become visible above Miko’s waist.

“This is about the riots,” Miko said. “And every other bad thing that’s happened because the Oracle showed up. He feels guilty, or responsible.”

“He’s not,” Hamza said. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve gone over it with him a hundred times. What other people do isn’t his—”

Miko put her hand over his mouth, gently.

“He’s obviously not convinced,” she said. “I know you’re frustrated, sweetheart. You’re a control freak. This is your worst nightmare. But the Site, the Oracle . . . they aren’t yours. They belong to Will. They always did, even though he brought you into it. The weight of it . . . the weight of what he knows—we can’t even imagine. If this is how he wants to deal with it, well, it’s his call. And are you really saying he shouldn’t try to save lives? Honestly, I can’t believe you guys didn’t post these in the first place.”

Hamza looked at his wife’s face, her good, earnest expression, a few wisps of dark hair spilling down over her cheek. He breathed in the scent of her skin from her hand covering his mouth.

People try to break into the Site constantly, he thought. Every day. The Florida Ladies send us reports. And this isn’t teenagers in their basements. Japan, Israel, corporations—they’re relentless. The Ladies tell us we can’t be hacked, and that there’s nothing to find even if someone broke through the security . . . but yeah. Sure.

Every time Will does something outside the plan, he gives those hackers more data to crunch—more ways to get a foothold. I don’t know what’s going to sink us—maybe the Ladies are right, and nothing can or will—but why is he taking chances with it?