Leigh was thinking about cutting it—it wasn’t that interesting, although she supposed it was important from a historical perspective.There were a few good bits, though. For one, after the Coach had dropped them off back at the cabin in Feldspar Creek so theycould make good their escape from the United States, she’d asked Will if he was really sure that the 23–12–4 numbers wouldbe the result of the Qandustan vote.
“Eighty percent sure,” Will had answered. “We’ll know soon enough.”
Leigh had laughed, but she was pretty sure what Will had said wasn’t funny at all.
He ended up being right, of course. The Oracle’s predictions always came true.
Törökul got his mosque back, although he didn’t keep it for very long. President Green spearheaded a multinational militaryeffort that captured the warlord—an action which, incidentally, looked to have won him a second term, cancer or no cancer.
Most of that had happened while she and Will were on their way to the Coral Republic—Will knew by the time their boat hitthe beach that he was right about the numbers. And from that moment, it was like he’d shed a two-hundred-pound suit of armorhe’d been wearing as long as she’d known him.
He’d done one last thing before, as far as she knew, retiring the Oracle forever. One last update to the Site. He’d removedall the predictions, and the e-mail address, leaving only the phrase:
THIS IS NOT ALL I KNOW.
And then he’d added one word:
BEHAVE.
Leigh reached the blank section of the page where she was planning to write her conclusions. It was a good story—strong, almostbeautiful—but it wouldn’t be finished until she tried to put down in black and white what she thought it all meant.
Music wafted into the room—just idle noodling on a guitar, but good. Very good. A lot of that, recently. She had begun towonder if that’s why the Site had chosen Will in the first place—a musician, used to improvisation, able to hear the tunein what it was doing, even if just on a subconscious level.
Leigh leaned back in her chair, turning her head. She could just see Will sitting in an armchair, with an open laptop on anottoman in front of him and a guitar on his lap. A smiling, captivated infant was visible on the screen, being held up bytwo hands around her midsection, the hands somewhat darker than the baby’s light caramel skin. Hamza and Miko had named herWilhelmina.
Leigh smiled. She put her hands to the keys and began to type.
It has been four months since the Oracle averted a nuclear catastrophe that would at the very least have destroyed the city and people of Uth and could quite possibly have consumed the world.
The Oracle Effect has ushered in a new era of compromise: people of all nations seem to feel that we came closer to the brink of destruction than ever before, and a global statement of purpose has been issued: Never again. Mankind has stepped away from hostility in favor of understanding.
Or, more likely, humanity’s leaders are terrified that the Oracle will make good on the implied threat in his final update to the Site and issue new predictions that will drastically rearrange the world in whatever direction he sees fit. And so, they behave.
Either way.
But in the end . . . who, and why? Who sent the predictions to the Oracle, and why did they try to achieve their goals in this particular way?
We know the predictions were sent by someone with a unique viewpoint, someone able to see problems humankind would suffer in the years to come, with a desire to help us avoid them. That’s the who.
That person, that entity, chose Will Dando as its instrument of change. It plucked him from an ordinary life and thrust him into an extraordinary one. He suffered through pain and uncertainty the likes of which the rest of us can barely comprehend.
Beyond that, we know nothing at all, which leaves us with the why.
The Site could have given Will its entire scheme, step by step, right from the start. It didn’t. Its plan depended completely on the fact that the Oracle, paradoxically, didn’t know what was going to happen.
He had to navigate the same way any of us do in our lives—with free will. He wasn’t a puppet. He was never under anyone’s control. Every decision he made along the way was his, made using whatever skill and knowledge he had amassed in his life, in the hope that he was doing the right thing.
Each of those decisions was, at its heart, a gamble—but he kept making them. He could have surrendered, let the Site do whatever it was going to do. He didn’t. He fought, every step of the way, trying to move his own life—and, in the end, all our lives, in a better direction. In the end, he succeeded.
I believe that may be the why.
Fate, destiny—they’re myths.
We are the sum of our choices.
Choose well.
Leigh stopped typing. She read over the text, and for the first time in many attempts at ending the Oracle’s story, she didn’thit the delete key.
Notes from Will’s guitar drifted through the air.
She stood, turned from her desk, and walked toward the music. If it turned out that she did have more to say, well, therewas always tomorrow.
Acknowledgments
This book has had many hands on it, and it wouldn’t exist without every last one of them. There are people out there who haveread endless drafts over (what seems like) endless years, and their smart observations and general support were what madethis book what it is. Let’s start with them, since they read The Oracle Year in its earlier incarnations for no other reason than they wanted to help me realize a dream I’ve had
