Leigh flipped back to her e-mail account—still nothing. She frowned, frustrated, then tapped her phone a few times and herarticle went live, now freely available to every one of the site’s millions of readers. The die was cast.
She stood up and emptied her tray into the trash bin, reflexively twinging a bit at the waste. She walked the two blocks backto the office, her stomach churning.
Urbanity had a few floors of a nondescript building at Fiftieth and Third. Just a cubicle farm with conference rooms alongthe sides on six, and the executive offices up on eleven.
Leigh sat down at her desk, glancing at the small mirror hanging on one wall of her cube. Her relationship with her reflectionwas evolving in a frustrating way as she neared thirty. Every look was accompanied by a little held breath. She didn’t knowwhat she expected to see—maybe some echo of her mother’s face—streaks of white in her hair or lines fanning out into the darkskin around her eyes.
Why did you do that? she asked herself.
She had a job in New York City, writing for a living, actually using her journalism degree. More or less. She could pay herbills with a minimum of month-to-month shuffling and humbling calls home. Fully half her friends couldn’t come close to anyof that.
So why did you just do that? she repeated to herself.
A head appeared over Leigh’s cubicle wall—Eddie, one of the company’s photographers. Approaching middle age, not fightingit all that hard, and very good at what he did. Eddie had taken some of the photos for her article about the Site and helpedher lay it out.
He was smiling.
“Just saw your article went live, Leigh. Good for you. I told you it was solid. Did they say anything about moving you overto News, or was this a onetime thing? Either way, they almost never take work from people on other desks, long as I’ve beenhere. You should be proud you got the green light.”
Leigh looked back at him, saying nothing. Eddie’s eyes narrowed a little.
“You didn’t,” he said.
The fundamental truth to Leigh Shore was this—something she’d realized years back but could not seem to change, no matterthe opportunities, long-term relationships, and overall happiness it denied her—nothing was less interesting to her than somethingshe already had. And nothing was more interesting to her than something someone told her she could not have.
“I was tired of waiting, Eddie. I e-mailed them the article over a week ago—and they didn’t even respond. You know what I’mcapable of, right? You just said so. I needed to show them something. I’ve been asking for a change of assignment for comingup on two years, and they just keep sending me out to bullshit club openings or whatever. When the verticals come back onthis article, it’ll speak for itself. Sure, maybe it’s a little bit of a gamble, but—”
Eddie exhaled loudly, more of a grunt than a sigh.
“You know this site is owned by a multinational entertainment conglomerate, right? You can’t just . . . post things. It’snot your Tumblr. People get sued over this sort of thing, Leigh, and they most definitely get fired.”
Eddie turned away.
“I’m going to go check your goddamn article and pray you didn’t credit me on it.”
Leigh opened her mouth, about to say she’d pull the post off Urbanity’s site. But what would that do, really? It was alreadyout there.
The first prediction to happen while people were paying attention was a claim that fourteen babies would be born at NorthsideGeneral Hospital in Houston on October 8, six male, eight female. Exactly correct, even though the last infant was born attwo minutes to midnight, and the mother was a woman who showed up at the hospital about half an hour earlier. She wasn’t evenfrom the area—she was driving through with her husband.
Not easy to stage, but naysayers on blogs and message boards came up with all sorts of ways it could have been done. The mostpopular was that the CIA ran the Site and had induced labor in a number of women at a secret facility near the hospital, liningthem up like brood mares to make sure everything worked out as planned, sending out the lucky lady to the hospital a littlebit before midnight.
Never mind that the CIA worked exclusively outside the United States, and inducing labor was far from a precision maneuversubject to split-second timing, and why would any woman agree to something like that, and and and.
The next prediction was dated about two weeks after the births:
PACIFIC AIRLINES FLIGHT 256 LOSES CABIN PRESSURE ON ITS DESCENT FOR LANDING IN KUALA LUMPUR. ALTHOUGH THE PLANE LANDS SAFELY, SEVENTEEN PEOPLE ARE INJURED. THERE ARE NO DEATHS.
Again, the Site was dead-on. A bird hit a window weakened from lack of maintenance, and it cracked just enough to cause ablowout. Exactly seventeen people were hurt, no more, no less. And even that could have been faked, people claimed, but theworld was much less willing to take the conspiracy theorists seriously on that one, because that event had been caught onfilm.
A crew of enterprising Indonesians brought a camera out to the airport and filmed Flight 256 as it came in for a landing.The clip was online within hours, and it very clearly showed the flock of birds entering the frame. Most turned at the lastminute. A few didn’t. When you started asking people to believe that the CIA had developed the ability to remotely controlbirds, and had somehow rigged the plane so that only seventeen people would get hurt, it became easier to just believe thatthe Site was real.
Someone out there could predict the future. The Oracle.
Most religious groups either denounced the Site or pointedly ignored it. A few embraced it. Politicians and pundits incorporatedthe Site into their rhetoric without a blip. Invitations to the most exclusive events, offers of sexual favors, payments,employment were extended to the Oracle, all of which were, as far as anyone knew, ignored.
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