The Oracle Year(68)

New consequences of the virus’ release kept appearing in the forefront of Staffman’s mind, no matter how hard he tried to focus on his work.

Research projects in the midst of crucial calculations that would have to be restarted from scratch, costing God only knew how much money and time.

Critical surgery was almost always computer-assisted these days, and so unless the doctors were unbelievably good, people had died on the operating tables when the hospital’s machines had been diverted to run Staffman’s botnet.

Governments must have lost a great deal of their monitoring power, as well as their ability to communicate with their militaries. Some would assume they’d been attacked and respond in kind.

And on it went, a hundred different permutations, his brilliant but insurrectionist brain providing estimates of how many people he’d murdered with the click of a button.

“It’s done,” the Coach said.

The progress bar on the rightmost monitor had hit 100 percent and disappeared, replaced by a command line with a slowly blinking cursor.

“Thank God,” Staffman said, his voice cracking. He typed as quickly as his nearly crippled hands would let him, telling the botnet to release control of the world’s processors back to their native networks. Yellow and green blooms began to appear on the central monitor, just pinpricks at first in the sea of red, but expanding quickly as Staffman’s instructions worked through the system.

Staffman gingerly lifted his hands from the keys. He flexed very gently, and the dull, insistent pain flared up into white agony. He grunted.

“Did it work?” the Coach asked.

“Please, Coach, just one second,” he responded weakly.

He was so exhausted that he had to think for a moment to remember the point of the whole exercise.

Staffman looked at the monitor on the right, with its seductive blinking cursor, promising the Oracle’s secrets, if only he could endure the pain in his hands for a few more moments. He took a deep breath and set his hands back on the keys.

“Yes, it worked,” he said. “I’m in. Let me just see what I’ve found.”

He typed, much more slowly than before, his fingers having stiffened up the moment he took a break.

“Hmm,” he said.

“Hmm?” the Coach said, the impatience in her voice clear.

Staffman looked away from the screen.

“There’s . . . ah, there’s nothing here, Coach,” he said, his voice quiet.

The Coach took one birdlike, liver-spotted hand and pushed her thumb and index finger up under her glasses to press on her closed eyelids. After a moment, she removed her hand and let her glasses fall back to the bridge of her nose.

“Explain,” she said, her voice solid steel, all pretense that they were anything other than master and minion gone.

Staffman swallowed.

“I’m past the Oracle’s security. Every e-mail he received from the Site should be stored here—and I assumed there would be other things, too. Files, maybe. Data. Some sort of clue. But . . . there’s nothing. It’s just an empty volume. Small, too. Only like sixteen megabytes, which is bizarre. It’s almost like a . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“Staffman?” the Coach said. “Did you find something?”

“Maybe,” he answered. He typed again, quickly, the pain in his hands forgotten, then sat back, satisfied.

He pointed at the screen.

“We need to go to New Jersey,” he said.





Chapter 27




“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand,” Reverend Hosiah Branson intoned, one hand clutching his Bible, the other outstretched toward the flock of worshippers assembled before him. His eyes were closed, his head upturned to heaven, cleverly placed spotlights surrounding him in a corona of white light no matter where the observer was seated, even the cheap seats.

Jonas had seen this tableau a hundred times before. He knew the precise moment when Branson would lower his head and begin to speak again—delaying just enough for his audience to sink into a state of blissful anticipation, but not so long that it became awkward or self-conscious.

Branson started most of his sermons with this trick, and it always seemed entirely natural, unforced. Just a man communing with his own spirituality, gathering himself before giving comfort and guidance to his people.

Now, though, watching it through a monitor on his desk deep inside the Branson Ministry, Jonas saw it for what it was—stagecraft. A performance. A fraud.

Branson wouldn’t deny it, either. All faith was fraud, to the good reverend. He’d said as much that evening in his relic-filled sanctuary, and he expected Jonas to simply accept that and continue working as diligently as he ever had to further the Ministry’s agenda in the world.

For the most part, he had. But each time he looked out at the faces of the poor people in the reverend’s audiences (he found it impossible to think of them as his congregation any longer) and seen the pure belief on their faces, the pure, empty belief, he’d felt it echo within himself. They were so sure that God was real, and that Branson was their conduit to his grace.

But they were wrong. About the second part, if not the first. And if they were wrong, how many others were? All over the world, all those billions of believers . . .