That was not, in fact, the case. It wasn’t just that almost all the predictions had been used. Things were accelerating. Injust the past few days, he’d been abducted by agents of the president, the world had learned the Oracle’s identity, he andhis best friends had been attacked, and he’d run from his city like a rat scuttling down subway tracks ahead of an oncomingtrain.
It felt like a moment from his childhood, when he was eight or nine. He’d been riding his bike in the neighborhood and hadfound himself at the top of a hill. He was new to bikes at that point—his father had only taught him how to ride a month orso before. He pushed off, his speed almost instantly increasing beyond the point where his legs could keep up with the pedals,seeing traffic in the cross-street at the bottom of the hill and realizing that there was absolutely nothing he could do toavoid it other than ditching the bike, but being more afraid of the pavement than the cars, breathlessly waiting to see whichcatastrophe would end him.
That was this. The Site was the bicycle, and Will was riding it right into traffic. But not just Will. Everyone. The entireworld.
He looked down at the newspaper in his lap, frowning.
The front page—every front page—was using the same photograph CNN had run in its original broadcast outing the Oracle’s identity.Will Dando, sitting on the edge of a bandstand at a club, bass on his lap, tuning up before a show. He remembered the gig—aquick one-off in support of a hedge fund guy who could afford to hire a great support band to play under his crappy Dave Matthews-yoriginals. He’d had a photographer at the show, like it was some epic showcase for the ages instead of a 9 p.m. Thursday slot at the Mercury Lounge.
The pics went up on the singer’s website a few days later. One shot had caught Will’s eye, so he’d copied it and used it ashis profile picture on a dating website or three a few years back, not unsuccessfully, either.
Now it was in the corner of every screen, on every landing page, above the fold of every paper, and Will hated it with everythinghe had.
He skipped past the first three articles—all Oracle related, delving deep into his past, already featuring quotes from peoplehis life had touched in one way or another. He skipped it all. He needed to function, and sinking into the ongoing dissectionof his existence would paralyze him, if he let it.
Every story not about the Oracle described a planet in revolt. Economic turmoil; significant military actions on four continents:cleanup of U.S. operations in Niger, saber rattling by a warlord in a tiny nation in Central Asia who had gathered an armyand besieged a city, unrest in France, many other battles large and small; coups, plunging markets, fear.
Behind it all, the Site.
Will’s mouth twisted in frustration. He folded the paper and tossed it behind him, where a small but growing pile of otherpublications covered the backseat and spilled onto the floor.
He opened a notebook on his lap and reached for a set of colored pencils in the passenger door’s storage bay—purchased thenight before, along with the papers and magazines now avalanching across the backseat, at a travel plaza off the New JerseyTurnpike. He flipped through the book and started to jot down notes from the morning’s reading. Page after page was alreadycovered by scribbled notations in various colors—Will’s attempt to analyze the Site’s plan, to understand what it had done,and what it was attempting to do.
The original Oracle predictions, all one hundred and eight, were written on the first several pages in black, and the factthat he had done this twice, in two separate notebooks, did not escape his notice. He’d burned the predictions. They stillcame true.
Events listed in green represented confirmed aftereffects of an Oracle prediction being put into the world, either by sellingit or putting it on the Site. Ripples.
Anything in blue was unconfirmed, but likely—a maybe. Red events were dead ends—things that had originally looked connectedbut had ceased interacting with the rest of the Site’s web. Will included them because it was always possible that he justhadn’t seen the full set of connections yet, or that the Site would loop back and reconnect with them down the road.
Finally, purple for the big stuff. When green events meshed together to do something else, to move toward a larger purpose.As far as Will could tell, that larger purpose was represented largely by the litany of woes he had just read in the paper.
They’d only been on the road for two days, but dear God, Will missed the Internet. Staying updated on the Site’s activitiesusing only hard copy was maddening. He had a few prepaid phones he could use to get online if he had to, but he was savingthem for emergencies, and checking cnn.com didn’t count.
Will had tried listening to radio news as he and Leigh drove west, to stay updated in something closer to real time, but evena few hours of that had been too much. Too many breathless DJs and talk shows and morning zoos enjoying their deep dive intothe life of Will Dando.
Will finished making notes on the morning’s reading and closed the notebook, setting it and the pencils on the dashboard.
He looked at Leigh, sitting behind the steering wheel with her hands sensibly at ten and two. He wanted to talk through histheories, explain what the Site was doing, but the truth was that he didn’t know this woman at all. They’d managed some smalltalk in the early hours of the drive, but eventually it became clear that Leigh wanted answers Will wasn’t willing to give,and a stilted silence had descended.
The whole situation was almost breathtaking. He’d known Leigh Shore for something like three
