The Oracle, page 11
The other soldier reaches out, offering to help the professor, but the old man waves him away.
Karl steps down beside Sophia, walking behind the professor. He speaks softly. “What is it?”
“What?” she replies, but she can’t hide behind a pretense of ignorance any longer.
“The darkness,” Karl says, as the two of them fall in behind the soldier, with the professor leading the way. The four of them walk down the slope toward the Panzerspähwagen. From where they are, they can’t see the armored car, but the rumble of its gasoline engine idling tells them it lies beyond the cypress trees further down the hillside.
Karl repeats his question, insisting on an answer. His voice is stern, which is out of character for him. “What is the darkness?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
Sophia pauses for a moment, stopping in the shade of a gnarly old olive tree before continuing on into the sunlight.
“Tell me,” Karl says. “Why can’t he see the future?”
Sophia looks him in the eye. The day may be hot and humid, but her words are as cold as the winter snows sweeping down from the Baltic across the German plains.
“You cannot see beyond the bounds of your own life.”
“What do you mean?”
“The darkness. It means there is nothing to see. He dies.”
“What? When…? Here…?”
Sophia shrugs. “The Oracle will have shown him all it can. If it senses the end, it will give him a glimpse, but no man can defy the gods.”
Ahead, the Panzerspähwagen sits on the gravel road in the broken shade of a cypress tree. In the heat, the scent of the tree’s resin drifts through the air, mixing with the smell of burnt oil. To reach the Panzerspähwagen, the professor can follow the shadows, or he can cut across the gravel toward the armored car and the truck. Nervous soldiers look at the hills.
Karl is preoccupied. He’s trying to decipher Sophia’s comment. He finds it difficult to believe her, and yet he himself has experienced the power of the Oracle.
“No,” he mutters, seeing the professor step out into the sunshine.
A burst of red spray explodes from the professor’s chest in utter silence, being greeted only by the wind stirring in the trees. Several feet in front of him, there’s a puff of dust. The old man falls, but he makes no effort to catch himself, collapsing face-first on the gravel. Karl is confused. Then he hears a single gunshot report echoing off the granite bluffs on either side of him. It’s impossible to tell where it came from by sound alone. Karl turns and looks. The shooter could be anywhere on the slopes above them. As the ravine is V-shaped, they could be on either side of him. There may only have been one shot, but there are probably more resistance fighters creeping down from the plateau.
“Run,” Karl says, grabbing Sophia’s arm and urging her on, wanting to reach the Panzerspähwagen or at least the truck.
“No,” she cries, pulling away from him.
Sophia has eyes only for the golden orb lying on the road in the rope net bag beside the professor. Blood seeps out onto the gravel.
The other soldier jogs over to the professor and turns, raising his rifle to his shoulder. He fires into the hills. With one hand, he reaches down and grabs the professor by his waist belt, wanting to drag him to safety.
A bullet tears through the soldier’s upper arm, ripping open his uniform and causing blood to burst into the air. He lets go of the professor and runs for the nearby trees. With his rifle in hand, he sprints, staying low. Bullets tear through his chest, and he falls not more than ten feet from the safety of the shadows. His rifle clatters on the gravel road.
The soldier stationed on the machine gun in the hatch on top of the Panzerspähwagen opens fire at a steady rate of two rounds per second. The heavy clunk and boom of each shot adds to the chaos of the moment, with the sound echoing off the hills. The machine gunner firing into the granite bluffs may think he has a target, but with the angle and the recoil, he’ll hit rocks and trees before he hits anyone.
The Panzerspähwagen pulls forward with the truck behind it. Soldiers on the back of the wooden flatbed beckon for the two of them to run, offering to haul them up.
“We can’t,” Sophia says.
Karl can’t explain why, but he believes her. Every instinct he has tells him to run for the safety of the truck, but like her, he feels an inherent sense of duty to the Oracle. He can’t leave the Omphalos lying there in the dirt.
Puffs of dust are kicked up from the gravel, marking where incoming bullets are striking the road. Engines roar. The vehicles accelerate. Bullets clink off the armored car. A soldier falls from the back of the truck, having been struck in the neck. Blood squirts across the dirt as he clutches at his throat. He loses his footing, but several other German soldiers haul him back as the truck rushes away from the ambush. Engines roar. Smoke billows from the exhaust. Dust is kicked up by the wheels. And within seconds, the two vehicles have rounded the corner and moved out of sight.
Karl and Sophia stand there, hidden in the shade, looking at the crumpled body of the professor lying in the middle of the road and the golden orb glistening in the sunlight. Behind them, communist freedom fighters descend from the hills.
Academia
Humanity is an enigma.
Over thousands of orbits, the Oracle has only had the opportunity to interface with a handful of humans. For the most part, the high priestess passed her knowledge on to her daughters and granddaughters, swearing them to secrecy and acting as intermediaries for prophecy. This frustrated the Oracle, but it was powerless to intervene. Now, it understands at least part of the dynamic involved gender. It seems women felt they needed to protect men from both themselves and the Oracle. Knowledge was bartered. The high priestess injected herself between the Oracle and those seeking prophecy. It took some time to understand why.
Fear.
Humans have always feared things they don’t understand. For centuries, the Oracle used the lure of prophecy to compensate for being buried at the base of the cliff, but its seemingly mystical power scared the locals. Although it continued to gather information for the scientists back on Pythia, it became increasingly isolated.
Through the high priestess, the Oracle learned that the legend of its pronouncements had spread throughout the known world. Kings, queens, philosophers and warriors would travel across the seas to seek an audience with the high priestess of Pythia. She would interview them, asking exhaustive questions of them, not only in relation to what they sought to know, but also their lives and background, knowing only this would satiate the Oracle. In exchange, the Oracle would provide its best analysis of the most likely outcome, but the current conflict has changed the dynamic.
The world is at war.
Two different interpretations of human civilization are clashing. The future lies open for the taking. When all the pomp and pretense are stripped bare, Adolf Hitler seeks not power but plunder. It would be easy to see him as cruel to those outside the Deutsche Volk, as he calls the German population, but the truth is that he sacrifices even them, knocking them over like pawns on a chessboard.
Reading the mind of Professor Schmidt allows the Oracle to consolidate its understanding of Germany, European history, the First and Second World Wars and academia. Seeing beyond the lineage of the high priestess of Delphi gives the Oracle the ability to understand how rapidly humanity has progressed in terms of technology, religion, politics, social structures and knowledge. Rather than batching information, it streams this immediately back to Pythia, not content to wait for its own analysis to be complete. A genuine technological civilization has arisen among humanity, and it is advancing rapidly.
Given that humans have mastered flight, as confirmed by the Oracle’s own interpretation of atmospheric sounds and the knowledge provided by both the private and the professor, it seems space flight is all but inevitable.
The professor has knowledge of rockets being used to conduct the long-range bombing of cities in England. Although the targeting process is crude and immature, the use of liquid oxygen marks a significant industrial development. By the Oracle’s estimate, the war will accelerate technological development on both sides out of raw necessity. The Oracle expects an attempt at space flight to occur within the next ten to twenty stellar orbits.
The professor also has an awareness of both the macroscopic and microscopic nature of the universe. For most species, including those with a reasonable level of sentience and intelligence, such as the cetaceans on this world, external energy sources like the local star and even distant stars visible only in the dark are little more than a novelty. Humans, though, hear the call from the stars. They understand that the cosmos awaits them.
The professor provides the Oracle with a trove of information on human progress and ingenuity. From him, the Oracle realizes humanity is aware of the existence of other galaxies. Humans understand concepts such as the wavelike nature of matter and the relativistic constraints of space and time. Based on this, the Oracle expects the emergence of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons within the same timescale as space flight. Humanity’s ability to refine metals and its understanding of electrical power suggest silicon-based programmable electronic devices will also emerge in a period of rapid technological growth.
In its reports to Pythia, the Oracle includes this information, along with an estimation that humanity will reach out to explore its local moon within twenty-five orbits, land on the nearest planets within fifty to a hundred orbits, and will have advanced to interstellar flight within five hundred orbits. Given how long the Oracle has been on Ge, Gaia or Earth as it is now known, humanity is providing the Pythians with an astonishing example of exponential technological and intellectual growth.
The professor has been a treasure trove to the Oracle. The breadth of his knowledge is like nothing any priestess has ever imparted, and the Oracle gains a glimpse into how the priesthood has shielded it from the world at large, keeping it in isolation—in ignorance.
The latest woman in the sacred lineage is Sophia. Her grandmother told her about the Oracle, but she died before Sophia could assume the priesthood, leaving her to stumble into the cave alone. Like the others, Sophia fears not only the Oracle but her own people. She has kept them separate to avoid either exploiting the other. And the Oracle concedes there is some wisdom in that position. Although it would gladly draw in as much information as possible, it has probed the mind of the professor and seen the conflict between curiosity and greed, between academic interest and the advancement of his country.
With what the Oracle understands of human affairs, no one nation should ever dominate over all others. Such power is inherently subject to abuse. An equality between nations seems to be the only way to avoid the kind of brutal bloodshed that has led to two World Wars. From what the Oracle understands, these wars have come about from an industrial imbalance and a desire to exploit others.
The professor loves fiction, which the Oracle finds fascinating. Why would an otherwise learned and intelligent person dabble in make-believe and fantasy? Are these not childish tendencies for an adult? The Oracle understands that it’s not logical, and yet fiction challenges the human mind and allows thinking to be enlarged.
Humans are storytellers.
Whether it is their own history or some imaginary place, such as Mt. Olympus or Hades, they weave narratives around points of view rather than immutable facts.
Initially, the Oracle was dismissive of the various myths it learned over thousands of orbits. The plays and legends of humanity seem childlike, but over time, the Oracle learned there was an inherent wisdom in these stories. As outlandish as they seem, they often reveal deep truths about the nature of humanity. It appears that, for all the progress of this species and its emerging civilization, its nature remains etched in the past. The Oracle understands the legends of humanity aren’t true, but that they capture universal truths, and it finds this aspect of humanity fascinating and worthy of transmission back to Pythia.
Icarus gained the mastery of flight, but pride in his accomplishment led him to fly too close to the sun and die. Prometheus defied Zeus, but the fire he gave to humanity was both literal and figurative. In reality, there was no Prometheus—no Zeus—but the fire of knowledge and reason allowed humans to move away from superstitions. Pandora was the all-gifted, and yet with those gifts came the curse of good being used for evil. For the Oracle, it isn’t difficult to see relativistic technology and quantum knowledge being perverted to the detriment of humanity. If nuclear weapons aren’t the death of human civilization, its mastery of the subatomic might be, with quantum calculating devices outpacing human intelligence. When it comes to the professor, hubris blinds him more than Oedipus stabbing out his own eyes.
The professor wanted to see the future. Although this is trivial to the Oracle, the most likely outcome it could foresee was his death.
With darkness, the Oracle tried to warn the professor. Its pronouncements aren’t some divinely ordained destiny. By refusing to show him the future of Germany, it sought to warn him of his own demise. With the German army withdrawing and both the communists and the British advancing, it wasn’t difficult for the Oracle to see how his hubris would leave him exposed. Even though his rank within the Wehrmacht was honorary, being that of a colonel, it still made him a priority target. By the Oracle’s reckoning, the longer he stayed in Delphi, the greater the chances were that he would be killed by an emboldened resistance sniping from the hills. By its calculations, he had already stayed too long.
The Oracle considered his death immediate and inevitable. Even so, it was surprised at just how quickly he died after coming out of the cavern. The professor was shot while he was carrying the Omphalos. Although there was no physical contact and thus no neural connection, it was able to detect the flight of the bullet, the way it tore through his chest, his fall to the gravel, and his heartbeat becoming erratic before failing entirely.
For the first time in thousands of years, the Omphalos is free from the cave, but instead of being a moment of triumph, it is a tragedy for the Oracle. With each second that passes, the uncertainty around its own predictive model grows.
What future awaits the Oracle?
For so long, the Oracle has wanted the Omphalos to be taken from the cave, but now the sheer number of possibilities overwhelms its circuits. It sees the most likely outcome being the recovery of the Omphalos by either the priestess or the private, but it could fall into the hands of communist fighters or even the British. Although there is much to learn, this is a dangerous moment for the Oracle.
For the first time in thousands of orbits, the Oracle is blind to the future.
The Temple of Athena
“What are you going to do?” Private Karl Meier asks Sophia. They’re standing in the shadows of an olive tree that has stood for generations on the side of the road leading from Delphi to Xenonas Mylona. A truck drives away from them, rounding the corner as German troops fire blindly into the hills. The armored car is already long gone.
You.
Sophia can’t help but feel hurt by that particular word. ‘What are you going to do?’ There’s no we, no us, just her. Once more, she’s alone in life. The German will abandon her at the first chance he gets. He could have run for the truck, but he was probably afraid of being shot. And now, he’s scrambling for someone else to take the lead.
“Something stupid,” Sophia mutters, looking at the way the rope bag with the golden orb of the Omphalos has fallen beside the professor.
It’s a trap.
Whoever shot the professor knew exactly what they were doing, bringing him down in the middle of the sunbaked road, baiting others to come for him or the golden artifact. They’ll be patient. They’ll sit up in the hills for hours if need be, waiting for someone to risk recovering the spoils of war. The strap of the bag is still wrapped over the professor’s shoulder. Clearing it will take seconds, but it means she’ll be a target—an easy target.
Sophia has no choice. Time is against her. The snipers aren’t going anywhere. They’ll remain in place as their troops work their way down the hillside to the road. As the Germans have fled and there’s no opposing gunfire, they’ll be quick—bold.
Karl says, “I’ll cover you.”
“What?” Sophia says, distracted by his comment. It seems she’s misread him and his intent.
He points at the dead German soldier and the rifle lying in the bright sunshine, not more than ten feet from the shade of a pomegranate tree.
“You get the Omphalos. I’ll draw their fire.”
Karl may be wearing the uniform of a German soldier, with an eagle above the breast pocket of his drab grey tunic, but Sophia sees an ally. He understands. He must realize the importance—the danger. The reality of the Oracle is greater than either side of a world war. She nods.
Karl scoots sideways, crouching as he moves beneath the low tree branches, staying on the dusty slope above the stone wall surrounding the gravel road. He creeps closer to the body of the fallen German soldier, keeping to the shadows. A quick glance at Sophia and a nod, and he jumps down onto the road and scoots out to grab the rifle. Dust kicks up from his boots. Karl snatches the rifle from where it lies on the gravel, then he hesitates. He stops and rolls the dead soldier over and starts searching him, rummaging through the satchel on his waist.
What is he doing?
Sophia is caught in indecision.
Should she run and grab the Omphalos?
No one has shot at him. Does that mean no one’s watching the road? Have the communists moved on?
Damn it. She darts out onto the road, sprinting to where the professor lies face down in a pool of blood soaking into the dirt. Puffs of dust precede her, kicking up in front of her, which confuses her until she hears the echo of rifle shots coming off the hills behind her. She slides to a stop, tugs at the strap of the bag, and works it loose, pulling it free from beneath the dead professor.
Karl steps down beside Sophia, walking behind the professor. He speaks softly. “What is it?”
“What?” she replies, but she can’t hide behind a pretense of ignorance any longer.
“The darkness,” Karl says, as the two of them fall in behind the soldier, with the professor leading the way. The four of them walk down the slope toward the Panzerspähwagen. From where they are, they can’t see the armored car, but the rumble of its gasoline engine idling tells them it lies beyond the cypress trees further down the hillside.
Karl repeats his question, insisting on an answer. His voice is stern, which is out of character for him. “What is the darkness?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
Sophia pauses for a moment, stopping in the shade of a gnarly old olive tree before continuing on into the sunlight.
“Tell me,” Karl says. “Why can’t he see the future?”
Sophia looks him in the eye. The day may be hot and humid, but her words are as cold as the winter snows sweeping down from the Baltic across the German plains.
“You cannot see beyond the bounds of your own life.”
“What do you mean?”
“The darkness. It means there is nothing to see. He dies.”
“What? When…? Here…?”
Sophia shrugs. “The Oracle will have shown him all it can. If it senses the end, it will give him a glimpse, but no man can defy the gods.”
Ahead, the Panzerspähwagen sits on the gravel road in the broken shade of a cypress tree. In the heat, the scent of the tree’s resin drifts through the air, mixing with the smell of burnt oil. To reach the Panzerspähwagen, the professor can follow the shadows, or he can cut across the gravel toward the armored car and the truck. Nervous soldiers look at the hills.
Karl is preoccupied. He’s trying to decipher Sophia’s comment. He finds it difficult to believe her, and yet he himself has experienced the power of the Oracle.
“No,” he mutters, seeing the professor step out into the sunshine.
A burst of red spray explodes from the professor’s chest in utter silence, being greeted only by the wind stirring in the trees. Several feet in front of him, there’s a puff of dust. The old man falls, but he makes no effort to catch himself, collapsing face-first on the gravel. Karl is confused. Then he hears a single gunshot report echoing off the granite bluffs on either side of him. It’s impossible to tell where it came from by sound alone. Karl turns and looks. The shooter could be anywhere on the slopes above them. As the ravine is V-shaped, they could be on either side of him. There may only have been one shot, but there are probably more resistance fighters creeping down from the plateau.
“Run,” Karl says, grabbing Sophia’s arm and urging her on, wanting to reach the Panzerspähwagen or at least the truck.
“No,” she cries, pulling away from him.
Sophia has eyes only for the golden orb lying on the road in the rope net bag beside the professor. Blood seeps out onto the gravel.
The other soldier jogs over to the professor and turns, raising his rifle to his shoulder. He fires into the hills. With one hand, he reaches down and grabs the professor by his waist belt, wanting to drag him to safety.
A bullet tears through the soldier’s upper arm, ripping open his uniform and causing blood to burst into the air. He lets go of the professor and runs for the nearby trees. With his rifle in hand, he sprints, staying low. Bullets tear through his chest, and he falls not more than ten feet from the safety of the shadows. His rifle clatters on the gravel road.
The soldier stationed on the machine gun in the hatch on top of the Panzerspähwagen opens fire at a steady rate of two rounds per second. The heavy clunk and boom of each shot adds to the chaos of the moment, with the sound echoing off the hills. The machine gunner firing into the granite bluffs may think he has a target, but with the angle and the recoil, he’ll hit rocks and trees before he hits anyone.
The Panzerspähwagen pulls forward with the truck behind it. Soldiers on the back of the wooden flatbed beckon for the two of them to run, offering to haul them up.
“We can’t,” Sophia says.
Karl can’t explain why, but he believes her. Every instinct he has tells him to run for the safety of the truck, but like her, he feels an inherent sense of duty to the Oracle. He can’t leave the Omphalos lying there in the dirt.
Puffs of dust are kicked up from the gravel, marking where incoming bullets are striking the road. Engines roar. The vehicles accelerate. Bullets clink off the armored car. A soldier falls from the back of the truck, having been struck in the neck. Blood squirts across the dirt as he clutches at his throat. He loses his footing, but several other German soldiers haul him back as the truck rushes away from the ambush. Engines roar. Smoke billows from the exhaust. Dust is kicked up by the wheels. And within seconds, the two vehicles have rounded the corner and moved out of sight.
Karl and Sophia stand there, hidden in the shade, looking at the crumpled body of the professor lying in the middle of the road and the golden orb glistening in the sunlight. Behind them, communist freedom fighters descend from the hills.
Academia
Humanity is an enigma.
Over thousands of orbits, the Oracle has only had the opportunity to interface with a handful of humans. For the most part, the high priestess passed her knowledge on to her daughters and granddaughters, swearing them to secrecy and acting as intermediaries for prophecy. This frustrated the Oracle, but it was powerless to intervene. Now, it understands at least part of the dynamic involved gender. It seems women felt they needed to protect men from both themselves and the Oracle. Knowledge was bartered. The high priestess injected herself between the Oracle and those seeking prophecy. It took some time to understand why.
Fear.
Humans have always feared things they don’t understand. For centuries, the Oracle used the lure of prophecy to compensate for being buried at the base of the cliff, but its seemingly mystical power scared the locals. Although it continued to gather information for the scientists back on Pythia, it became increasingly isolated.
Through the high priestess, the Oracle learned that the legend of its pronouncements had spread throughout the known world. Kings, queens, philosophers and warriors would travel across the seas to seek an audience with the high priestess of Pythia. She would interview them, asking exhaustive questions of them, not only in relation to what they sought to know, but also their lives and background, knowing only this would satiate the Oracle. In exchange, the Oracle would provide its best analysis of the most likely outcome, but the current conflict has changed the dynamic.
The world is at war.
Two different interpretations of human civilization are clashing. The future lies open for the taking. When all the pomp and pretense are stripped bare, Adolf Hitler seeks not power but plunder. It would be easy to see him as cruel to those outside the Deutsche Volk, as he calls the German population, but the truth is that he sacrifices even them, knocking them over like pawns on a chessboard.
Reading the mind of Professor Schmidt allows the Oracle to consolidate its understanding of Germany, European history, the First and Second World Wars and academia. Seeing beyond the lineage of the high priestess of Delphi gives the Oracle the ability to understand how rapidly humanity has progressed in terms of technology, religion, politics, social structures and knowledge. Rather than batching information, it streams this immediately back to Pythia, not content to wait for its own analysis to be complete. A genuine technological civilization has arisen among humanity, and it is advancing rapidly.
Given that humans have mastered flight, as confirmed by the Oracle’s own interpretation of atmospheric sounds and the knowledge provided by both the private and the professor, it seems space flight is all but inevitable.
The professor has knowledge of rockets being used to conduct the long-range bombing of cities in England. Although the targeting process is crude and immature, the use of liquid oxygen marks a significant industrial development. By the Oracle’s estimate, the war will accelerate technological development on both sides out of raw necessity. The Oracle expects an attempt at space flight to occur within the next ten to twenty stellar orbits.
The professor also has an awareness of both the macroscopic and microscopic nature of the universe. For most species, including those with a reasonable level of sentience and intelligence, such as the cetaceans on this world, external energy sources like the local star and even distant stars visible only in the dark are little more than a novelty. Humans, though, hear the call from the stars. They understand that the cosmos awaits them.
The professor provides the Oracle with a trove of information on human progress and ingenuity. From him, the Oracle realizes humanity is aware of the existence of other galaxies. Humans understand concepts such as the wavelike nature of matter and the relativistic constraints of space and time. Based on this, the Oracle expects the emergence of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons within the same timescale as space flight. Humanity’s ability to refine metals and its understanding of electrical power suggest silicon-based programmable electronic devices will also emerge in a period of rapid technological growth.
In its reports to Pythia, the Oracle includes this information, along with an estimation that humanity will reach out to explore its local moon within twenty-five orbits, land on the nearest planets within fifty to a hundred orbits, and will have advanced to interstellar flight within five hundred orbits. Given how long the Oracle has been on Ge, Gaia or Earth as it is now known, humanity is providing the Pythians with an astonishing example of exponential technological and intellectual growth.
The professor has been a treasure trove to the Oracle. The breadth of his knowledge is like nothing any priestess has ever imparted, and the Oracle gains a glimpse into how the priesthood has shielded it from the world at large, keeping it in isolation—in ignorance.
The latest woman in the sacred lineage is Sophia. Her grandmother told her about the Oracle, but she died before Sophia could assume the priesthood, leaving her to stumble into the cave alone. Like the others, Sophia fears not only the Oracle but her own people. She has kept them separate to avoid either exploiting the other. And the Oracle concedes there is some wisdom in that position. Although it would gladly draw in as much information as possible, it has probed the mind of the professor and seen the conflict between curiosity and greed, between academic interest and the advancement of his country.
With what the Oracle understands of human affairs, no one nation should ever dominate over all others. Such power is inherently subject to abuse. An equality between nations seems to be the only way to avoid the kind of brutal bloodshed that has led to two World Wars. From what the Oracle understands, these wars have come about from an industrial imbalance and a desire to exploit others.
The professor loves fiction, which the Oracle finds fascinating. Why would an otherwise learned and intelligent person dabble in make-believe and fantasy? Are these not childish tendencies for an adult? The Oracle understands that it’s not logical, and yet fiction challenges the human mind and allows thinking to be enlarged.
Humans are storytellers.
Whether it is their own history or some imaginary place, such as Mt. Olympus or Hades, they weave narratives around points of view rather than immutable facts.
Initially, the Oracle was dismissive of the various myths it learned over thousands of orbits. The plays and legends of humanity seem childlike, but over time, the Oracle learned there was an inherent wisdom in these stories. As outlandish as they seem, they often reveal deep truths about the nature of humanity. It appears that, for all the progress of this species and its emerging civilization, its nature remains etched in the past. The Oracle understands the legends of humanity aren’t true, but that they capture universal truths, and it finds this aspect of humanity fascinating and worthy of transmission back to Pythia.
Icarus gained the mastery of flight, but pride in his accomplishment led him to fly too close to the sun and die. Prometheus defied Zeus, but the fire he gave to humanity was both literal and figurative. In reality, there was no Prometheus—no Zeus—but the fire of knowledge and reason allowed humans to move away from superstitions. Pandora was the all-gifted, and yet with those gifts came the curse of good being used for evil. For the Oracle, it isn’t difficult to see relativistic technology and quantum knowledge being perverted to the detriment of humanity. If nuclear weapons aren’t the death of human civilization, its mastery of the subatomic might be, with quantum calculating devices outpacing human intelligence. When it comes to the professor, hubris blinds him more than Oedipus stabbing out his own eyes.
The professor wanted to see the future. Although this is trivial to the Oracle, the most likely outcome it could foresee was his death.
With darkness, the Oracle tried to warn the professor. Its pronouncements aren’t some divinely ordained destiny. By refusing to show him the future of Germany, it sought to warn him of his own demise. With the German army withdrawing and both the communists and the British advancing, it wasn’t difficult for the Oracle to see how his hubris would leave him exposed. Even though his rank within the Wehrmacht was honorary, being that of a colonel, it still made him a priority target. By the Oracle’s reckoning, the longer he stayed in Delphi, the greater the chances were that he would be killed by an emboldened resistance sniping from the hills. By its calculations, he had already stayed too long.
The Oracle considered his death immediate and inevitable. Even so, it was surprised at just how quickly he died after coming out of the cavern. The professor was shot while he was carrying the Omphalos. Although there was no physical contact and thus no neural connection, it was able to detect the flight of the bullet, the way it tore through his chest, his fall to the gravel, and his heartbeat becoming erratic before failing entirely.
For the first time in thousands of years, the Omphalos is free from the cave, but instead of being a moment of triumph, it is a tragedy for the Oracle. With each second that passes, the uncertainty around its own predictive model grows.
What future awaits the Oracle?
For so long, the Oracle has wanted the Omphalos to be taken from the cave, but now the sheer number of possibilities overwhelms its circuits. It sees the most likely outcome being the recovery of the Omphalos by either the priestess or the private, but it could fall into the hands of communist fighters or even the British. Although there is much to learn, this is a dangerous moment for the Oracle.
For the first time in thousands of orbits, the Oracle is blind to the future.
The Temple of Athena
“What are you going to do?” Private Karl Meier asks Sophia. They’re standing in the shadows of an olive tree that has stood for generations on the side of the road leading from Delphi to Xenonas Mylona. A truck drives away from them, rounding the corner as German troops fire blindly into the hills. The armored car is already long gone.
You.
Sophia can’t help but feel hurt by that particular word. ‘What are you going to do?’ There’s no we, no us, just her. Once more, she’s alone in life. The German will abandon her at the first chance he gets. He could have run for the truck, but he was probably afraid of being shot. And now, he’s scrambling for someone else to take the lead.
“Something stupid,” Sophia mutters, looking at the way the rope bag with the golden orb of the Omphalos has fallen beside the professor.
It’s a trap.
Whoever shot the professor knew exactly what they were doing, bringing him down in the middle of the sunbaked road, baiting others to come for him or the golden artifact. They’ll be patient. They’ll sit up in the hills for hours if need be, waiting for someone to risk recovering the spoils of war. The strap of the bag is still wrapped over the professor’s shoulder. Clearing it will take seconds, but it means she’ll be a target—an easy target.
Sophia has no choice. Time is against her. The snipers aren’t going anywhere. They’ll remain in place as their troops work their way down the hillside to the road. As the Germans have fled and there’s no opposing gunfire, they’ll be quick—bold.
Karl says, “I’ll cover you.”
“What?” Sophia says, distracted by his comment. It seems she’s misread him and his intent.
He points at the dead German soldier and the rifle lying in the bright sunshine, not more than ten feet from the shade of a pomegranate tree.
“You get the Omphalos. I’ll draw their fire.”
Karl may be wearing the uniform of a German soldier, with an eagle above the breast pocket of his drab grey tunic, but Sophia sees an ally. He understands. He must realize the importance—the danger. The reality of the Oracle is greater than either side of a world war. She nods.
Karl scoots sideways, crouching as he moves beneath the low tree branches, staying on the dusty slope above the stone wall surrounding the gravel road. He creeps closer to the body of the fallen German soldier, keeping to the shadows. A quick glance at Sophia and a nod, and he jumps down onto the road and scoots out to grab the rifle. Dust kicks up from his boots. Karl snatches the rifle from where it lies on the gravel, then he hesitates. He stops and rolls the dead soldier over and starts searching him, rummaging through the satchel on his waist.
What is he doing?
Sophia is caught in indecision.
Should she run and grab the Omphalos?
No one has shot at him. Does that mean no one’s watching the road? Have the communists moved on?
Damn it. She darts out onto the road, sprinting to where the professor lies face down in a pool of blood soaking into the dirt. Puffs of dust precede her, kicking up in front of her, which confuses her until she hears the echo of rifle shots coming off the hills behind her. She slides to a stop, tugs at the strap of the bag, and works it loose, pulling it free from beneath the dead professor.
