The Oracle Paradox

by Stephen L. Antczak

  That was what hurt so much, even though she understood. She wanted Henry to care so much for her that he’d sacrifice everything for her, that he’d never allow what had already happened to happen. But he had allowed it. He’d let Angus take her, probably knowing terrible things were in store for her. And she understood because she would have done the same thing. Now, though, she wanted him to care so much about her that he would never let anything bad happen to Sam.

  Angus’ plan was to lure Henry to where they were now, with Sam, and to try and get Henry to kill Sam. Torturing Tina, making her beg Henry to do it was one of the methods Angus intended to use. No doubt Henry would not expect it. She hoped Henry would stay away, but somehow she realized he could not. This felt like it was supposed to play itself out.

  "Come on, you," Angus’ voice said behind her. Tina had not heard the office door open. She couldn’t hear at all with her right ear.

  He forced her to walk on her burned feet. Angus limped beside her, holding onto her arm with his free hand, his other hand holding a gun. She’d heard the gun fight, the sound of machine guns firing, and had hoped Angus Becker would be killed. Somehow, though, she’d known he wouldn’t be.

  She saw the school bus full of children and did not comprehend at first the meaning of it. Martin made a hand signal to the small woman, the one from the Marriott who now stood in the stairwell of the bus. She grabbed the bus driver by the arm and pulled her out.

  "What are you doing?" the driver, an overweight woman, asked, frightened, her voice shaking.

  "All right then, Miss Tina Jefferson, you wish to save the girl, Samantha Rohde. Well then, what about these poor little children here? There are twenty-six kids here. Twenty-six. Samantha Rohde is only one little girl. If Henry kills her, the rest of these little brats will live. Alas, someone must be sacrificed to illustrate a point, that point being that we will make good on our word to kill every last one of these little brats if Henry doesn’t finish the job." Martin nodded to the small woman.

  "No!!" Tina managed to yell, despite the pain in her gut, and her chest, and her face.

  As if not hearing her at all, the small woman didn’t hesitate to aim her gun at the bus driver and squeeze the trigger. Blood spurted up from the back of the woman’s head and she fell over, dead as suddenly as if a switch had been flicked to turn him off.

  All was silent.

  "To prevent this from happening to these brats, you had better make sure that Henry does the job."

  With that, Angus walked away, leaving Tina to stand there and stare horrified at the body of the bus driver, a pool of dark blood forming around her head, her glasses laying upturned on the cement floor a few inches away.

  Chapter 38

  Vincent Waldrup surprised Andrei Udin and Peter Cornwall. He could tell by their expressions when they looked up and saw him. They were sitting at a sidewalk table outside of a café in Little Italy. Vincent had managed to follow Udin, and was quite proud of himself for having done so successfully.

  "What a coincidence running into you guys here," he greeted them cheerfully.

  "Yes, indeed," Peter said, not as cheerfully.

  "If I didn’t think so highly of you," Andrei said to Vincent, "I’d say you were following one of us."

  Vincent laughed. The laugh was a bit too forced, and sounded slightly maniacal. Andrei and Peter exchanged a look.

  "And if I didn’t think so highly of you," Vincent went on, "I’d say you two were conspiring against me."

  Peter pulled a chair from a nearby table to theirs, but Vincent didn’t sit down.

  "Against you?" Andrei asked.

  "My good man," Peter said to Vincent, "if I didn’t think so highly of you, I’d say that I suspect you have been conspiring against us. All of us."

  "You’d be mistaken," Vincent said. "So it’s a good thing you think so highly of me."

  "Indeed. Teng-chi thinks highly of you, as well."

  Vincent’s face reddened, but he chose not to comment on the reference to the Chinese Ambassador. "Yes, indeed. Well, I happen to have information that you," he directed this at Cornwall, "and your government have decided it is in their best interest for the Oracle program to end." Peter raised an eyebrow at this, but did not deny it. Andrei leaned back and looked at him. Vincent addressed the Russian. "Andrei, I know that your government believes the Russian people have benefitted greatly from Oracle. They would like to see it continue."

  "Yes, this is so."

  "The same with the French, I believe," Vincent asked.

  "Yes, it is the same with the French, or so Mr. Beauchamp has told me. I do not think he is lying."

  "So, what’s the point of all this?" Peter asked.

  "The point is that I want to know what you’re doing. More specifically, I want to know what your man is doing in Atlanta." Now Andrei and Peter exchanged another look. "I know you have a man down there, too, Andrei. Don’t ask how I know, I just know."

  "I would not say we have a man in Atlanta," Andrei said, "not in so many words."

  "Whatever. Something is happening in Atlanta, and you both have sent agents down there to see that things fall one way or the other. What do you know about what’s happening?"

  "Of course I don’t know anything," Peter replied. "Don’t be absurd."

  "Okay, fine," Vincent said. "Let me ask you this… Did you know that Yatin Kumar has gone to Atlanta?" Peter frowned. Andrei did not react, at least not visibly. "Why is he there? Does anyone here think it’s a coincidence?" He waited. Neither of the other two men had anything to say about it. "Of course it isn’t is fucking coincidence. Oracle has gone insane, the problem is in the Atlanta node, and Kumar has gone down there to deal with it."

  "What does that mean to say Oracle has gone insane?" Andrei asked. "A computer cannot go insane."

  "But an Artificial Intelligence, apparently, can. And did. Oracle did. We didn’t catch it, although we should have. When Oracle submitted Samantha Rohde as the next target, we should have thought something was wrong then. We didn’t, we just accepted it. We just assumed Oracle had to be right because it had never been wrong before."

  "My God, it’s so obvious now," Cornwall exclaimed sarcastically.

  Unperturbed, Vincent continued. "Our approval set in motion the sequence of events that are happening now in Atlanta. Including whatever it is your people are doing there. Oracle, the insane Oracle, played us all like a video game. It’s still playing us. You think your people are in Atlanta doing what you want them to do, furthering your agenda, but you’re wrong, they’re not. They’re working for Oracle. The best thing you can do is pull them out…after they do one crucial job."

  "What job?" Andrei asked.

  "They must kill Yatin Kumar." Vincent said it plain as day. He wanted to make sure there was no way for anyone to misunderstand. "When Kumar looks closely at what Oracle has been doing, he will learn the truth. We’ll be exposed. Kill him, and let Oracle spiral into madness. With Kumar out of the picture, we’re home free."

  "And how do you know all this?" Peter asked. "Did you figure it out all by yourself?"

  "Not all of it," Vincent replied. He wasn’t going to tell them about Dex, that was for sure. "I put it all together, though. When you think about what Oracle is, and who Yatin Kumar is, it makes sense."

  "It would be lovely if it were that simple," Peter said. "But, alas, it isn’t. The only simple fact of the whole matter right now is that we have no idea what is happening in Atlanta. We’re trying to find out. We each have our suspicions, Andrei and myself, and based on those suspicions we have our own agendas. As is quite often the case our agendas are at cross-purposes to one another. However, until we have a more clear idea as to what is transpiring in Atlanta we are more than happy to cooperate with one another. Once we know…if needs be we shall become rivals in the matter. This happens from time to time, and it never interferes with our friendship, as you can see. You’re young, you don’t have the experience to realize that this is the wa
y the world works."

  Vincent fought to control his anger. Peter could push his buttons like no one else. He hated the man. If he could get away with it, he would kill him.

  "Okay," Vincent sighed. "Have it your way." He’d hoped to come up with a good parting shot, but as usual he didn’t have anything. So he just walked away. He had hoped they’d see the logic, the sheer simplicity of his theory. It was more than a theory, though. He believed it was the truth. If Yatin Kumar were allowed to live, the truth about what had been going on for five years with Oracle would come out. Everything that had happened, from Parindra Jadeja to Samantha Rohde, would become known.

  He was crossing Houston Street when his cell phone rang.

  "Hello," he answered. He kept walking. He wasn’t even sure where he was going. He had no destination in mind. New York City was great for that, at least, to just walk and not go anywhere. Anywhere in New York was somewhere.

  "Dudious!" It was Dex. "How’d it go with Boris and Little Lord Fauntleroy?"

  "It didn’t." Vincent suddenly stopped walking. "How do you know I just met with them?"

  "I timed it, dude. I had a pretty good idea that they’d blow you right out of the water, dude. I imagined, if you want to call it that, how the conversation would go, and when it would end. And then I called you. So you crashed and burned. Can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, I could, but if I did I’d be lying, you know? But you wanna know something, dude? You had the right idea, I’ll give you that. Wasting Kumar would’ve saved your bacon from the frying pan, but not the fire."

  "What’s that supposed to mean?"

  "Ever hear of Christie Seifert?" Vincent thought. The name was familiar, but he wasn’t sure from where. "Think news babe," Dex said. "She’s a reporter, and she’s right in the thick of everything that’s happening in Atlanta with Oracle. She’s got the scoop. She was on it from the time Alvarez was assassinated outside Mexico City. She’s interviewed all the players except one of you U.N. Star Chamber guys. You could give her the behind the scenes scoop of the freakin’ century, dude. Make a lot of damn moola if you did that, and you’d be doin’ the right thing. Something to think about, that is. Don’t you think?" Dex laughed. "Get it?"

  "What the hell do you care about doing the right thing?" Vincent asked.

  "Hey man, that’s what I’m all about. You know me."

  "That’s just it, Dex. I don’t know you. At all. I don’t know anything about you."

  "Oh, you know more about me than you realize. Don’t worry about that now, though. You’ll figure it out. Just think about what I said. You could do the right thing and score big with Christie Seifert…and I mean score financially, I don’t think you’re her type romantically if you know what I mean and I think you do."

  "I’ll think about it, Dex," Vincent said.

  "Or, you could just kill yourself. Because if you don’t do the right thing, it’ll eat you up inside and you won’t last two years. So, there you go. Have a good life, Vincent." Before Vincent could say anything else, he heard the cell phone click and Dex was gone. Vincent immediately hit redial on his cell phone, although he didn’t know why he bothered. The phone rang once, and then a message came on saying the that number had been disconnected. That quickly. Somehow he was not surprised.

  Chapter 39

  Yatin showed them the way to Oracle’s Atlanta node. Henry had considered telling everyone else to stay at the hotel, or just trying to leave them, but he started to wonder that if what Yatin had said was true then perhaps they all had a part to play in the endgame. When they got there, the Brit, Martin Avery, was waiting for them at the loading dock. Inside, they could see a yellow school bus. It gave Henry a bad feeling.

  "Come along then," Martin said as they followed him inside, passing by the rear of the bus and into a warehouse area. Two bodies, males, lay on the cement, blood pooled around them. Henry looked up at the bus and saw it was full of children. Immediately, without having to think about it, he knew what that meant. If they wanted to force Henry to kill a child, they’d give him a choice. Kill one child or watch a bus load of children die.

  "There you are, mate," Angus greeted him, ignoring the others except Sam, whom he smiled and winked at. "Hey there, girlie. Miss ol’ Uncle Angus?" Sam, whose hand Henry held onto, didn’t reply nor did she look away.

  "Where’s Tina?" Henry asked.

  "She’s fine. Let’s get the show on the road, shall we?" He then looked past Henry and Samantha at the others, Yatin Kumar, Cardinal Roscoe, Annika Dahl, and Christie Seifert. "I see you’ve brought your entourage, Henry. You’re like a bloody rock star, ain’t you? That’s okay, because Oracle has assigned everyone to perform a certain task. Mr. Kumar is to see to Tina… I’m told they’ll have lots to talk about."

  Yatin looked confused. "If you’ll let me take a look at the Oracle node, I think I’ll be able to get to the bottom of all this mess," he said.

  It was then that they saw the dead little boy.

  "Oh my God," Christie Seifert said.

  "I know, it’s a pity," Angus said. "I can’t begin to tell you how sick it makes me feel. But…the stakes are higher than the life of one little child." He fixed his gaze on Henry’s. "Or a busload of little children." He pointed back towards the office in the warehouse. "That way, Mr. Kumar." Then, to the Cardinal. "You’ll want to see to the children. On the bus." Then to Christie. "Actually, you’re to go with Mr. Kumar." Then, to Annika Dahl. "And you… You’re really only good for one thing now, aren’t you?" With that, before anyone could react except Henry, Angus drew his gun and shot Annika Dahl in the stomach. Henry had his gun aimed at Angus. Martin had his aimed at Sam, while Angus simply put his away. Annika crumpled to the floor.

  "Why?" Yatin asked Angus. Yatin and Christie went to kneel by Annika’s side.

  "Leave her," Angus told them. "She won’t die right away. In fact, if you get her to the hospital in time they’ll have a very good chance of saving her life. The longer you wait, the less chance she has of surviving. So, here’s what you are to do…" He held his hand out to Henry. "Henry will give me his gun. You will take Henry’s gun and give it to Tina. She will come out and give it to Henry and he will then shoot Samantha Rohde. When that happens, everyone can go home. Until that happens, one child will die every five minutes. Is that clear for everyone? Shall I run through it again? One child from that bus every five minutes, dead, until Henry shoots Samantha Rohde. And I know what a good shot you are, Henry. If you shoot, someone dies. So now you know." He reached into his pocket with his other hand and pulled out a stop watch. "The first five minutes starts now. Henry."

  Henry closed his eyes for a moment. Then he handed Angus the gun. Angus flicked the safety on, then gave the gun to Christie, who took it and held it like it was the dead body of a rat. Martin led her and Yatin to the warehouse office, let them in.

  Cardinal Roscoe went to the body of the bus driver, knelt over it and started praying. Annika Dahl lay gasping on the cement floor, blood pumping from her stomach, her face a mask of intense pain and fear and disbelief. Sam stared at her, then looked up at Henry.

  "Help her," she said to Henry.

  "Yeah, help her," Angus mimicked.

  "You’re a real bastard," Henry told him.

  "Oi, we both know that. I also have faith that I’m doing what is necessary, and that the ends justify the means."

  "You’re wrong."

  "Maybe, but as long as we’ve come this far we might as well see it through, don’t you think?" Angus indicated a spot a few feet away from Henry with an X drawn on the cement floor in chalk. "Sam, you go stand over there." Then, to Henry. "You stay where you are."

  "I won’t do it, you know," Henry said.

  Angus smiled. "Humor me."

  Henry let Sam go. She didn’t move.

  "Listen, little girl, we don’t have time for bullshit. If you don’t want to wind up like that dead little boy over there, then go stand on the bloody mark." Slowly, after hesitating almost long enough t
o get another rise out of Angus, Sam left Henry’s side and went to stand on the X. She looked at Henry with those big, brown eyes. He was not going to kill her. It was his daughter standing there now, he thought. He would not let her down again.

  "I do hope they’re getting somewhere with Tina." Angus looked up at the bus. "This could get tedious if we have to start executing the little brats."

  "I can’t, I can’t, I can’t," Tina muttered over and over. Her eyes were red and puffy from having cried. She wasn’t crying now. She was beyond that.

  "They’re going to kill those kids," Christie said. "Jesus fucking Christ, do the math!"

  "It’s not that easy."

  "It is. I’ll kill Sam if it’ll save the other kids."

  "No!" Tina lashed out at Christie, who retreated back to the door of the office.

  "It’s not that simple, as we know," Yatin told her. He focused his attention on Tina. "There is a way out of this. There has to be. There are too many things that don’t make sense. Like, why did he give me the gun to give to you just so you could give it back to Henry. It doesn’t make sense."

  "Is it loaded?" Christie asked.

  Yatin took it, hefted it. "I don’t know how to check, but I think it is. You think Angus didn’t want Henry to have it because he was afraid Henry might shoot him?"

  "Seems reasonable."

  Yatin shook his head. "Henry had an opportunity to shoot him right away. And, if Henry did try something like that, the other man was there with his gun aimed at Sam. That’s not why Angus gave us the gun. Oracle wanted him to give it to us, without a doubt. So that means either the gun will have an effect on us, or we will have effect on it, on how it is used."

  "Or both," Christie said. She bit her lower lip. "Okay, okay. So let’s look at this. How does the gun affect us. What does having the gun in our possession do to us?"

  No one said anything for a few seconds.

  "Gives us ideas," Yatin said suddenly. "The gun makes us think about how we affect the gun. The gun is supposed to give us an idea."