The Oracle Year(56)

“What did he say?” Miko asked.

“He told me that prophets usually get killed. People don’t like what God has to tell them, so they kill the messenger. Either that, or the prophet has to remove himself from society because he’s scared he’s gonna get killed, or because he just goes nuts from pressure. If you’re a prophet, your choices are either to get your head served up to some king on a platter, or you can become a hermit for the rest of your life. Sometimes both.”

“I didn’t know you were religious,” Miko said. “Do you really think the Oracle predictions were sent by God?”

Will turned back to her.

“Not really, but that’s the thing. I don’t know. I mean, I’m a prophet by every definition I can think of. And when I hear about the way people talk about the Oracle, out in the world, decapitation seems very damn possible, you know?”

“Right. That’s why you almost outed yourself to the whole damn bar?”

“No. It’s because . . . this whole thing’s just too heavy. I guess I . . . just wanted to get out from under it. We’ve decided it’s our job to figure out what the Site’s doing, maybe stop it—I don’t see how we can. It’s not that you and Hamza aren’t really smart—you are, much smarter than I am—but this is all just on another level. The picture’s too big for us to see.”

“You don’t think that thing with the . . . what was it . . . the Aberdeen will help us? I think that sounds pretty promising.”

Will nodded.

“Sure, it might. Maybe. But even if it helps us understand, it’s hard to think that one little thing will break the whole puzzle open.”

“So . . . what do you want to do? Give up?”

Will took a deep breath.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think we have to do this all by ourselves. I want to get help.”

Miko’s face turned puzzled.

“Can you . . . explain that?”

Will pulled out his phone and turned it on.

“You know all those e-mails Hamza and I got in the beginning? The ones we used to find clients to buy predictions?”

“Yeah,” Miko said. “Hamza explained that whole thing. What about them?”

“I’ve been going through them in my spare time, answering one or two a day. Just saying something vague and reassuring. I didn’t want people to think they were being ignored. I wanted to do something, you know?

“I’ve been giving money away, too—anonymous donations to charities. A lot of money. Don’t tell Hamza. I’m sure he’d call it a waste or something.”

Miko’s mouth twitched up at one corner.

“You’re a good man, Will Dando.”

“Sometimes.”

Will held up his phone to Miko. It was displaying an image—a photograph of a sheet of paper.

“I found something in one of the e-mails that gave me an idea. I took a picture of it—I’ve been staring at it all day, just thinking about whether I should actually do it.”

Miko took the phone and zoomed in on the image. She looked up at Will, her eyes wide.

“Wow. You don’t mean . . .”

“Yeah. It could be a way to sort of crowdsource the Site puzzle. We’d have to be safe about it, but we could figure that out.”

Miko looked at Will’s phone again, shaking her head in disbelief.

“You know, this could help with your other problem, too. It could humanize the Oracle to the world. Make it less likely your head will end up on that platter. But my God, Will . . .”

She glanced back toward the stage, where Hamza was visible, arms folded, silently watching them.

“. . . Hamza will hate this.”





Chapter 22




Dr. Jonathan Staffman, former professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania and self-labeled expert in illicit technological infiltration, stared intently at three glowing monitors set side by side on his desk. The middle screen displayed a Mercator projection map of the globe, the countries overlaid with an ever-shifting skein of yellow, green, and black, with pinpoints of red here and there. Most of the eastern seaboard of the United States was covered by various colors, while more sparsely populated areas like northern Africa were almost completely black. The monitor to the left of the map contained scrolling text readouts, changing rapidly as the colors on the map flickered and pulsed. The last screen, to the right, was a simple status bar, with a percentage readout. The bar read 0.008 percent complete.

“Too much in Des Moines!” Staffman shouted. “Dial it back, goddammit!”

Iowa’s capital was bright red. Over a period of about ten seconds, it faded back to yellow and then to green.

“Pay attention, Hernandez, you clown,” Staffman said. “You should have caught that.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Staffman,” came Hernandez’s reply. “Won’t happen again.”

Staffman scowled and dipped his left index finger into an open jar of peanut butter on the desk—Jif Chunky. He pulled out a hefty gob and plopped it into his mouth, sucking on it as he examined the map. It looked suitably green, at least for the moment.

The status bar ticked over another thousandth of a percent—0.009 percent. Staffman grunted in satisfaction around his finger. He looked up from the monitors at the control room beyond. His desk was at one end of a large room with white walls, floor, and ceilings. It was arranged in a classroom configuration, with Staffman in the teacher’s spot. Twenty desks for “students,” each holding a computer setup similar to Staffman’s, but with only two screens, not three.