The Oracle Year(63)
She wished she’d been able to go out on her own terms—quit in a blaze of glory, maybe. She’d never actually been fired before.
Five minutes before, Leigh had been in the conference room with the rest of the office, watching coverage of the ongoing American military efforts to liberate Niger from the insidious grasp of Prophet Idriss Yusuf. Actually, that had supposedly already happened—the president claimed that the Prophet had been killed in a precision drone strike a few weeks before—but no one had told the Prophet’s soldiers. They had continued fighting, even ramping up their efforts, and had taken control of a place she hadn’t even known existed until the news started to cover it—Niamey, the capital.
U.S. forces had expanded their bombing campaign, but there was only so much an aerial campaign could accomplish. The Prophet’s forces had entwined themselves with the local populations, forcing them to remain in the cities and villages to act as human shields. It was becoming increasingly clear that either ground troops would need to go in to clear out the capital, or the United States would have to cut its losses, declare victory, and leave the people of Niger to figure out their future for themselves.
Watching the footage, Leigh was horrified to realize that she was almost bored watching the familiar sight of U.S. warplanes pulverizing a desert country’s infrastructure into sand.
Then Reimer’s assistant had appeared and dragged her out of the conference room, telling her she needed to be up in Johannes’ office immediately. None of her colleagues—even Eddie—would meet her eyes as she got up to leave. She was finally done—she’d pushed too hard. That’s all it could be, and honestly, she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t seen it coming.
Reimer was furious when she’d skipped out on her scheduled interview to film the Oracle riot. She’d gotten an extremely expensive camera damaged, the company had to cover Eddie’s medical bills, and while she’d managed to retrieve the footage he’d shot, none of it was particularly newsworthy . . . all in all, a nightmare of wasted time and money for Urbanity.com.
Leigh hadn’t stepped out of line since, but evidently Reimer had just been letting her twist in the wind. Time was up.
The elevator doors opened. Leigh stepped out and made her way across the executive floor to Reimer’s office.
The door was open. She knocked on it anyway. Her boss looked up.
“Ms. Shore,” he said. “Come in, and please close the door behind you.”
Leigh closed the door and stood in front of Reimer’s desk. He gestured for her to sit. As she did, she noticed that his tie was a bit loose, and the top button of his dress shirt was undone. For Johannes Reimer, that was on the same level as anyone else running through Central Park wearing a glitter-studded thong.
He was fiddling with a sheet of paper on his desk—a printed e-mail, maybe.
Leigh frantically thought back over every piece of communication that had left her computer since she’d started work at Urbanity.com, trying to remember if she’d ever written anything inappropriate, resulting in a flood of correspondence she would rather die than see on her boss’ desk washing through her mind.
“Ms. Shore,” Reimer began, not looking at her, then stopped. He picked up a pencil on his desk and tapped it against the paper a few times. “Will you read this and tell me what it means to you?”
With the eraser end of the pencil, he pushed the paper toward Leigh, rotating it so that it faced her. She reluctantly picked it up. It was, in fact, an e-mail, but she hadn’t written it.
YOUR PROPOSAL IS ACCEPTED. THE ORACLE WILL MEET WITH AN INTERVIEWER FROM URBANITY. HOWEVER, THERE IS ONE CONDITION. THE PERSON TO CONDUCT THE INTERVIEW MUST BE LEIGH SHORE. IF THIS IS SATISFACTORY, INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW AND DEPOSITING THE NONREFUNDABLE FEE WILL BE SENT TO YOU. RESPOND WITHIN 24 HOURS.
Her heart began to pound. She read the e-mail three more times.
“I . . . I don’t understand,” she managed.
“You don’t know why you are mentioned specifically?”
“No, I don’t. Honestly. What’s going on?”
Reimer sighed heavily.
“You know about the e-mail address on the Site? For questions to the Oracle?”
Leigh nodded.
“I think everyone does, Mr. Reimer,” she said.
“I sent in a question.”
In the little corner of Leigh’s mind not consumed by whatever the hell the e-mail might mean, she wondered what Johannes Reimer could possibly want to know about his future, and more importantly, if he was actually about to share that with her. Poking around in other people’s Oracle questions had become a sort of taboo subject in polite society, like talking money or politics. You told your closest friends, maybe, but that was about it.
“I asked him if he would do an interview for our site.”
Leigh’s heart, already revving pretty hard, jumped up a few gears.
Reimer frowned heavily.
“I never thought he would answer. I mean, he doesn’t answer anyone, right? We’d have heard about it. So asking for an interview . . . it was a lark, I guess. Just part of feeling connected.”
Leigh had never seen Reimer with an expression anywhere near the one he was currently wearing. He looked lost. Afraid, even.
“I got the Oracle’s e-mail yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I spent last night considering what the hell I was going to do. I didn’t sleep.”