The Oracle Year, page 23
Leigh stared at the door, trying to calm herself. Trying to focus. It wasn’t working, and so, what? Leave?
No. Absolutely not.
She reached up and knocked.
A shadow moved behind the peephole in the door, blocking the light momentarily. The impulse to run gripped Leigh, so strongly that she half turned before she gathered herself. A click from the door handle, and then the door opened.
A man, white, on the youngish side by complexion, although these days that could mean anything from twenties to forties. Jeans—nice ones—a button-down shirt, tucked in, good shoes, all of which broadcast a picture of casual wealth. Sunglasses, and a mop of light, blond hair.
That’s a wig, she thought. He’s wearing a disguise.
“Ms. Shore,” the man said.
“The . . . Oracle?” Leigh said, hesitating a bit.
“That’s right,” the man said.
“Very pleased to meet you,” Leigh said. She extended her hand and received a brief, firm shake in return.
“Come in,” the Oracle said. “Have a seat over there—couch or chair, doesn’t matter.”
Leigh moved inside, seeing a large, well-appointed room with a separate sitting area—a suite. A tray with snacks and drinks sat on a wooden coffee table between a couch and two armchairs. Leigh sat on the couch, placing the laptop and notepad on the cushion beside her.
“Can I offer you anything?” the Oracle said. “There’s soda, water . . . uh, anything you want from the minibar.”
She realized that he was nervous, too, and felt herself starting to relax. The Oracle, whatever else he might be, was clearly a human being.
Leigh smiled at him, a big, fifty-thousand-kilowatt smile, one of the most potent weapons in her arsenal.
“Just water, thanks.”
The Oracle clinked a few cubes of ice into a glass from the silver bucket on the tray, then filled the glass with water. He handed it to Leigh and sat in one of the armchairs.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Leigh said. “I’m glad we were able to put this together.”
“It’s my pleasure,” the Oracle said.
Leigh smiled again and took a sip of water. An awkward silence descended.
“Well, good,” the Oracle said. “Would you like to, uh, get started?”
“Absolutely,” Leigh answered, putting her glass on the table and picking up the laptop. She flipped it open. “How much time do we have?”
“As much as we need,” the Oracle said.
Leigh’s eyebrows raised, but she nodded. A short burst of typing on the laptop, and then she gave the man sitting opposite her a look she hoped was direct and businesslike.
“First question,” she said, “what do I call you? Are you comfortable with Oracle?”
The man gave an embarrassed shrug.
He’s such a . . . person, she marveled. Almost ordinary.
“That’s probably easiest for now, I guess. It’s a little goofy, I know.”
“But it’s accurate, right? It’s like calling a man who puts out fires a fireman. You are an oracle, after all. You see the future, and you tell us about it.”
The Oracle nodded.
“Fair enough.”
“Next—and this is off the record, just something I’d like to know. That business in the other room. Everything I brought with me is back there, and—”
“Oh, of course,” the Oracle said. He pulled a plastic card from his pocket and held it out. “This is the key to 1952. You can get your things when we’re done here. And I am sorry about the security stuff, too, but . . . you understand.”
Leigh took the keycard and slipped it into the breast pocket of her suit.
“I do. I get it. Not even an audio recorder, though? That’s pretty standard equipment for an interview like this.”
The Oracle reached out and grabbed a pretzel from the tray. He chewed slowly, swallowed.
“I don’t want my voice on tape. That’s why we gave you the laptop, Ms. Shore. You can take all the notes you want. We’ll review them once we’re done here to make sure the quotes are accurate, then you get them back on a thumb drive.”
Leigh nodded. She extended her hands over the keyboard, then pulled them back.
“Last question before we start. What makes you think people will believe me about any of this?” she said. “I won’t have any evidence that we met, other than my word. For a lot of people, that won’t be enough. After all,” Leigh continued, “I’m not exactly Barbara Walters. I’m not even TMZ.”
The Oracle leaned forward.
“I’ve read your work. You’re selling yourself short,” he said. “But I’ll do two things. I’ll put something up on the Site about this interview so that people know it’s legitimate. And, second, I’ll give you a prediction tonight that you can put in your story to prove that you met me.”
Leigh felt her face go slack. The Oracle just watched from behind his sunglasses, and, no, he was definitely not ordinary.
“That . . . that would work, I think,” Leigh said.
The Oracle smiled and leaned back in his chair.
“I think so. But you must have a lot of questions for me. Go ahead.”
“All right, Oracle,” Leigh began.
He winced, his forehead wrinkling.
“That’s terrible,” he interrupted. “I didn’t realize how awful that would sound. Just call me J— Just call me Jim, all right? That will work as well as anything.”
“Jim it is,” Leigh said.
“So. The first question, the first real question,” she continued, “is pretty simple. How do you predict the future?”
The Oracle hesitated. To Leigh, it seemed as if he was thinking about how to respond, which seemed strange. He had to have known this would be something she would ask.
He looked off to one side, smiling a little, as if sharing a private joke with himself. He sighed, then looked back to Leigh.
“I don’t know,” the Oracle answered. “I dreamed all of this.”
Leigh looked up from the laptop.
“You . . . dreamed it?” she said, very focused.
“Yes. About eight months ago. Voices spoke to me in my head while I was asleep. A little later, I noticed that the things I dreamed were starting to come true.” His mouth twitched. “And here we are.”
Leigh almost felt drunk. These were the answers. What everyone—everyone—wanted to know. But . . . a dream? A dream?
For the first time, she wondered whether the answers she would get might not be the answers she—or anyone else—would want.
“Have there been any other dreams since then?”
“No, just that one set of predictions, but they go out for a long while from now—hundreds of them.”
“Why not release all of them at once? Why parcel them out like you have?”
“The predictions came to me. I’m using my best judgment about what to do with them.”
“So you came up with the Site on your own?”
“I have had some help from some people close to me. I couldn’t do what I’m doing without them.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me who any of them are?”
The Oracle nodded.
“Sure, want their cell numbers? Hold on, I’ll read them off slowly.”
A pause. Leigh looked up from her keys.
“Nah,” he said, his tone light.
“Right,” Leigh said. She smiled as she said it, but she could hear a snappish tone in her voice. She flexed her fingers.
“Do you want to stop for a little while?” The Oracle asked.
“No, that’s all right. Just a bunch of quick typing. I’m fine, Jim,” she said.
Leigh leaned forward.
“Three things,” Leigh said.
The Oracle nodded.
“First, why do you think you were sent this information? Second, do you know who sent it, and if so, who is it?” Leigh said. “And finally, what are you actually doing with the predictions? You mentioned a moment ago that you’re relying on your judgment—what exactly does that mean? For months, rumors have persisted that you’re selling information about the future to wealthy individuals. That doesn’t seem particularly altruistic.”
The Oracle crossed his legs, resting his ankle on his knee. He looked out the window, and Leigh followed his gaze, out across the roofs of the west side of Midtown.
The Oracle looked back at Leigh. His face was solemn, and he contorted it into what looked a little bit like a smile.
“I’ll answer your second question first,” he said. “I have no idea who sent me the predictions. Maybe there’s some code or pattern in them that would give me the answer, but if there is, I’m too stupid to see it.
“There are only a few possibilities,” he continued. “Number one, someone out there in the future sent all this information back to me. Or maybe someone in the present sent me a list of things they were planning to do, and they’re making all the predictions come true, one after the other. Or no one’s behind it at all, and it’s all just some accident of physics.”
“Surely you have some guess, though?” Leigh said. “You’ve been living with these predictions for more than half a year. If you had to gamble on one of your three theories, which would it be?”
He smiled.
“I’m the Oracle. There’s no such thing as gambling when you know the future. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. How I got the information, and even why I got it, isn’t important. It’s about what I do with it.
“Let’s say I read a book that, oh, teaches me how to weave a rug. Does it matter if I bought that book, or checked it out from the library, or, hell, stole it? No. What makes a difference is whether I go out and weave a rug, or if I just let the information sit in my brain. Taken to the next level, it’s how I use the rug once I’ve woven it. Do I sell it, do I keep it, do I give it away?”
Leigh took that down and read over her last few paragraphs.
“Okay. So what are you actually doing with the predictions? Why did you create the Site?”
Again, the Oracle paused before responding.
It felt to Leigh like he was going off script, moving away from whatever answer he’d originally planned to give. Which raised the question: Had he shifted toward the truth, or lies?
“The Site was part of a bigger plan to attract buyers for the predictions. It was a way to ease the world into the idea that someone out there could see the future.”
“Did that work?” she said, typing.
“Yes,” he answered. “The Oracle has made over fourteen billion dollars.”
Leigh’s hands froze.
“So that’s really all this is about? Just . . . money?” she said, not looking up from her screen.
She could hear disappointment in her voice—no, something more profound. Disillusionment.
“That’s where it started.”
“And now?”
“It’s more than that,” the Oracle said. “I’ve used the money to do things that haven’t been made public. I’ve given away over a third of that cash. To charities, anonymous donations, things like that.”
Leigh raised an eyebrow.
“That has to make you the largest charitable donor in history. Why?”
The Oracle smiled.
“What the fuck am I going to do with fourteen billion dollars that I can’t do with nine? It didn’t seem right to take all that good fortune and not do something for other people.”
The Oracle reached up under his sunglasses, careful not to knock them off, and rubbed at his eyes.
“Also,” he said, “I’m trying to make up for killing twelve people when this whole thing started.”
Leigh’s reporter’s instincts lit up, even as her disappointment in what the Oracle was turning out to be deepened.
“. . . what?” she managed.
“You remember the Lucky Corner Massacre?”
“Of course,” Leigh said cautiously. “It was huge news. Last year. Like eight months ago.”
“I did that.”
Leigh thought for a moment, trying to remember the details.
“But wasn’t it just a bodega robbery that went bad over on Ninth? A couple of patrol cops walked into the store while it was happening. I don’t remember exactly how it played out, but . . .”
“The bad guys saw the cops and started shooting,” the Oracle said, his voice dull.
“First, the owner of the deli—his name was Han-Woo Park,” the Oracle went on. “Then one of the patrolmen. Officer Leonard Esposito. His partner made it out of the store and called for backup, and it turned into a hostage situation. SWAT had to go in, eventually. The kids who were robbing the store weren’t interested in negotiating. They’d already made their minds up to go out as street legends, have songs written about them.”
“How can you know that? Did you know them?”
“I bought transcripts of the negotiator’s conversations with them.”
“Is that legal?”
The Oracle shrugged.
“Anyway,” he continued, “the cops went in after a few hours, and it all went to shit. Twelve people. The thieves—they were just kids, only sixteen. Robert Washington and Adewale Deluta. Customers—Andy Singer, Maria Lucia Sanchez, Barry Anderson, Chantal L’Green, Amanda Sumner, Jim Roundsman, and Peter Roundsman. He was eight. And another officer, Jerry Shaugnessy.”
Leigh thought this over.
“You weren’t there,” she said, finally. “Were you?”
“I was standing outside the Lucky Corner with the rest of the crowd, behind the police cordon, waiting.”
“Then how . . . ?”
“Why do you think those cops went into that store in the first place, Leigh? I told them to. One of the first predictions I dreamed was about the Lucky Corner. Back then, I didn’t understand the rules. I was trying to figure out whether the predictions had to happen, or if they could be changed.”
“Can they?” Leigh broke in.
“No,” the Oracle said, one short word, like a vault door closing.
They were both silent for a moment.
“I wanted to stop it,” he went on. “I thought, you know, why would I have been given these predictions if I couldn’t do something about them? It just . . . made sense. I called 911 and said I’d overheard the two thieves planning to rob the deli. That’s why the cops went in the store, and that’s how the whole thing started.”
“You can’t hold yourself responsible,” Leigh said.
“You sure? If I hadn’t called the cops, those kids would just have taken their money and left. Because of my action, what I did, trying to be a goddamn superhero, all those people are dead.”
Leigh hadn’t typed anything for a few minutes. She watched the Oracle. He was emotional, upset. He wasn’t lying—and honestly, about causing the death of twelve people—why would he?
The Oracle stood up and walked over to the window. He stared out in silence. She was getting such a sense of weight from him, of a burden he could never set down. It radiated out from behind the sunglasses and the stupid wig, a haze of sad dignity.
He turned away from the window, returning to his seat.
“Look. I didn’t just ask you here to tell you about myself,” the Oracle said. “I wasn’t originally planning to talk about this, but there’s something else—something I think the world needs to know. Get ready to take this down. It’s important to get the details right.”
Leigh put her hands on the keyboard. She leaned forward on the couch, watching the Oracle’s face, feeling the gigantic change her life was about to undergo looming over her like a tsunami.
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
The door to the room burst open with a gigantic crash, the locks shattering as the screws pulled out of the doorframe. A large circular dent could be seen in the center of the outside of the door as it smashed open and bounced off the inner wall of the room. A man dressed in black coveralls, holding a metal tube with handles attached to either side of it, stepped back from the destroyed door.
The Oracle bounded up from his chair. His knees jolted the coffee table, and the pitcher of water spilled, along with the ice bucket and the pot of coffee. Liquid soaked the tray and dripped over the sides of the table.
Leigh inadvertently slapped the laptop closed, clutching it to her chest like some sort of wholly inadequate combination of shield and prized possession.
Someone appeared in the doorway—an older woman, something like a sharp suburban grandmother.
“Will Dando?” she asked, eyes cast in the Oracle’s direction.
“Yes?” he said, and then he cringed with his whole body, as if realizing that he had just made some sort of a gigantic, unfixable mistake.
Will Dando? Leigh thought, trying to process.
“Pleased to meet you,” the woman said.
The woman lifted her hand. She held a little black object, a bit larger than a deck of cards. Her hand clenched, and two darts shot out into the Oracle’s chest, attached to the object by long, curling wires.
The Oracle—Will Dando—fell to the ground, his limbs convulsing. Leigh leapt to her feet, looking desperately to either side for somewhere to run.
A moment of sharp, invasive pain in her stomach, dwarfed a moment later by agony in an entirely different category, juddering through her muscles.
She fell to the floor and landed facedown in the thick carpet, narrowly missing cracking her head open on the coffee table. She felt water dripping down from the table onto the center of her back. Her vision dimmed.
“Bring them both,” she heard the woman say.
Chapter 31
Will opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on something soft. Fading in above him was a rapidly moving hallway; dark-green-on-gray-striped wallpaper and a beige ceiling rushing past on either side, illuminated by brass light fixtures on the walls.
He tried to sit up and found that he couldn’t. He could lift his head, although something was pressing down on his forehead, keeping it from moving more than an inch or so. He peered down his body, seeing straps across his chest, his waist, and over his wrists and ankles.
Men in light blue, short-sleeved shirts hovered above him. He decided to ask them about the straps, but found something in his mouth. A little exploration by a very dry tongue suggested that it was a thick piece of cloth.
