THE ORACLE
PARADOX
Stephen L. Antczak
Copyright © 2017 Stephen L. Antczak
Edition copyright © 2017 Digital Fiction Publishing Corp.
All rights reserved. 2nd Edition
ISBN-13 (paperback): 978-1-988863-24-5
ISBN-13 (e-book): 978-1-988863-25-2
THE ORACLE
PARADOX
Stephen L. Antczak
"…not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul…" -Charles Dickens, Hard Times.
Contents
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Also from Digital Fiction
About the Author
Copyright
Chapter 1
"And in Mexico: Generalissimo Jorge Luis Sanchez has just delivered another fiery speech from his hotel room balcony to an enthusiastic, adoring crowd in Mexico City. We go now to Christie Seifert, live on the scene. Christie?"
The image shows a petite, twentysomething blonde, dressed smartly in a beige pantsuit, the CNN logo prominently displayed on the microphone she holds before her.
"As you can hear behind me, the people are now chanting their nickname for Sanchez…el Toro…the Bull…while Sanchez soaks it all in."
"Christie, the polls show Sanchez to be ahead of the incumbent by fifteen points. Rallies in support of Sanchez are reportedly held daily, from Tijuana to the Yucatan peninsula. The Army, the Church, the police, and the industrialists have all thrown their support behind Sanchez."
"That’s right, and the Mayor of Mexico City finally announced his support of Sanchez after months of speculation as to whom he would back, prompting this speech. It was only six months ago that the Army awarded Sanchez the rank of Generalissimo, and his political rise in Mexico has been swift. He is popular among rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, priests and politicians, young and old. Some say the man represents the glory of Mexico’s past, and now, they hope its future. I haven’t met Sanchez, but others who have say he is a strong man, intelligent, and articulate. He is reportedly both generous and vengeful. As you know, he led the erstwhile Mexican Army to victory over Zapatista rebels and Guatemalan incursions in the south, and declared war on the gangs of kidnappers that until recently had been plaguing the country. The national police force he created still patrols the streets of every large town in Mexico, maintaining law and order in an alliance with the regular police."
Christie pauses and places her left hand to her left ear, then continues:
"With the approval of the current El presidente de la Republica he imposed temporary martial law under which kidnappers were shot without a trial. Kidnapping, once considered pandemic in Mexico, is now rare. His methods are controversial. He has received harsh criticism from Amnesty International and the United Nations."
"Christie, the Generalissimo is quite conscious of his image. He has stated most emphatically that he does not believe the people are best served by a ‘regime based on bayonets and blood,’ but that the true, legitimate leader of Mexico must be lawfully elected. He is aware that he has been compared to Spain’s former dictator, Francisco Franco, who referred to the democratic process as ‘hypocritical elections.’ Will the Sanchez legacy mirror that of Franco?"
"Most experts don’t think so. Sanchez is not a fascist. Regardless, according to the polls Sanchez need not worry about such comparisons. In the face of this overwhelming opposition, the incumbent seems to have given up the race. Instead, he concentrates on affairs of the state, his publicist issuing a statement that he is determined to ‘concentrate on the job of being Mexico’s current President’. In unguarded moments, however, it is reported that the incumbent’s eyes seem hollow and lifeless. Insiders say hope has fled him.
"Reporting from Mexico City, I’m Christie Seifert."
Sanchez looked at himself in the mirror. His mustache, once black and flecked with grey, was now grey flecked with black. He stroked it his thumb and forefinger. It was still full, still thick and manly… It was the mustache of a great man, he thought. But was he a great man? Everyone seemed to think so, and he sometimes believed it himself.
He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, letting it fall to the floor. Next came the girdle that he wore to hold in his expanding middle. He did not want his silhouette to be that of a sagging old man whose middle resembled that of a woman eight months pregnant. His image needed to be strong.
He sat in a reclining chair in his rented 18th century Colonial villa on the outskirts of Mexico City, within an hour’s walk of Teotihuacan’s gigantic Pyramid of the Sun. He needed to rest after another triumphant speech. Beads of sweat still dotted his forehead, swelled and burst into tiny streams that slipped down his face. The air was thick with humidity and simply did not move. It was too heavy with smog, moisture, and mosquitoes.
The villa was peaceful, at least, centered in a horse farm dotted with palm and pine trees.
The Generalissimo sipped from a brown bottle of American beer. His aides removed the labels so no one could see that what he drank was not a product of Mexico. Out of his familiar uniform, chest not tiled with medals, shoulders not draped with epaulets, he felt less like a great man, and more like…an old man. He wore only a pair of silk boxers and an undershirt as he relaxed beneath the lazily spinning ceiling fan. He liked the heat. It reminded him of who he was, and from whence he’d come. The land and the sun, as his father would say.
Footsteps sounded on the boardwalk outside, the forceful steps of a man walking with purpose. Perhaps it was Cordova, the Generalissimo’s top aide, or Lopez, his speech writer, coming with a draft for tomorrow’s speech. Sanchez would tell whoever it was to go away. He was too drunk to work.
The door to the office opened, and a man entered the room. It was neither Cordova nor Lopez. It was a gringo, dressed like a Sanchez bodyguard in khakis and a Cowboy hat.
He stood directly before Sanchez. His long, brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, like some American rock star.
"Who are you?" Sanchez asked him. "Reporter? No interviews, go away." Reporters had been known to resort to all sorts of tricks to catch a candidate off-guard, at his worst, to write an embarrassing article later, complete with embarrassing pictures. He waved this one off as he would a fly.
"Not a reporter," the man said. He reached around behind his back and a moment later Sanchez was staring into the barrel of a pistol with a bulging silencer on the end.
He went for his own Colt .45, but it wasn’t there. Too late, he
remembered he wasn’t dressed.
The silenced gun made a popping sound and the Generalissimo felt a bullet ram through his chest like a red-hot spike. The assassin adjusted his aim slightly up from the Generalissimo’s chest. The gun popped again, and the world exploded into red and black.
And then…nothing.
Henry Porembski eased his seat back as the Boeing 737 arched into the bright, morning sky above the haze of the city. He had a fat paperback edition of Moby Dick in his lap for the long trip from Mexico City to Hong Kong. Not a direct flight, of course. He’d have to change planes in Los Angeles. He was anxious to start his six months of rest and relaxation, as promised by his employer. The last few months he’d worked more than usual, cleaning up the Western Hemisphere.
He scratched the back of his head. Still itchy from the wig of long, brown hair he’d been wearing for the last couple weeks. Around him sat mostly Americans, some Mexicans, all reading the morning paper with its headline blaring: ASESINATO!
Of Henry’s assignments for the last three months the Generalissimo was by far the highest-profile. Not some charismatic priest in Peru’s Shining Path cult, not some overly ambitious drug lord in Colombia’s Cali cartel, not some cut-throat VP in the Brasilia office of the JVX Gold mining company, Sanchez was a major player on the North American stage. He’d needed to be taken care of last, otherwise it would have been impossible for Henry to remain in the Western Hemisphere long enough to complete the other assignments. Now, Henry would not truly rest until he was on a Boeing 747 halfway across the pacific. Getting in and getting out of the Sanchez compound had been relatively easy thanks to his employer. But staying in Mexico would tax even his employer’s apparent omnipotence. Even the United States and Canada might not be safe for Henry. There was a small risk factor that would be even smaller if he went back to Hong Kong. Already the papers were reporting that an American was the prime suspect in the assassination.
People around him expressed shock and even dismay at the death of the Generalissimo, but not Henry. He knew that Sanchez would now be lionized, made a national hero. But he also knew that had the Generalissimo not been liquidated his legacy would have been far, far different than anyone had imagined. Even those who’d half-heartedly compared Sanchez to Franco could not imagine what he would have become had he been allowed to live.
Henry closed his eyes. The image of the Generalissimo’s face, his shocked expression, slowly faded. The images that came to him were the same ones that came to him after every job. She was so beautiful, her smile so radiant and warm, her eyes so expressive of her love for him, the kind of unadulterated love that only a child could possess. And her mother, bound to his heart by their vows of marriage and the birth of their daughter… Looking at him with eyes that accepted him completely with all his flaws and quirks. They were a family and collectively the most important thing in the universe to Henry.
It had all been taken away over five years earlier, in one chaotic afternoon when bullets from AK-47 assault rifles ripped through a tour bus in Cairo, Egypt. Islamic militants murdered innocent tourists, a symbol of their government’s collaboration with the Great Satan, the United States. The screams, the blood, and especially the terror on their faces… Henry saw it whenever he closed his eyes. Somehow he had emerged from that bus unscathed, but his wife, Catherine, and daughter, Constance, were dead.
He knew that what he was doing now couldn’t bring them back, but it might save someone else’s wife and child, save another husband from seeing them die before his eyes. And maybe, if Henry could rid the world of enough evil men, his daughter would finally rest in peace.
His wife had died immediately, a bullet to the head before she really knew what was happening. But his daughter had lived long enough to become frightened, terrified by what was happening and seeing her mother’s lifeless eyes. Henry had held onto her as if letting her go meant letting her die. She died anyway, eventually.
He would never forget the pleading, desperate look in her eyes. Just a child, just eight years old, wanting Daddy to make it better. He couldn’t. All he could do was cry as he held her, which made it worse for her.
Henry was making it better now, one dark, putrid soul at a time. He hoped someday it would be enough and he’d stop seeing the horror in his daughter’s eyes whenever he closed his own. He knew that would mean she was finally resting in peace. And then…maybe he could finally rest, too.
Chapter 2
Yatin Kumar sat at his desk in a small office on the fifth floor of the United Nations building on the island of Manhattan in New York City. The brass nameplate on his door said, simply, ‘Director,’ in black Times Roman print, and then in smaller print below that, ‘Oracle Oversight Committee.’ His office didn’t have a window. There was a poster on the wall behind his computer monitor, of the Taj Mahal in India, and a small portrait of his parents to the right of that, his father in a navy-blue suit and his mother in a colorful sari. On a shelf, two elaborately decorated, brass Asian elephant bookends held up a long row of fat books on artificial intelligence and U.N. policy.
When Kumar saw the headline on his computer of the assassination of Generalissimo Sanchez, he clicked a link to see the rest of the story. It wasn’t much of a story, yet, just a recap of the Generalissimo’s brilliant and sometimes brutal career, an overview of his independent candidacy for President of Mexico, and a lot of questions. Sanchez was known to have few living enemies, and he was so popular among the establishment and the people that even his enemies grudgingly admired him, or so it had seemed. Obviously someone had hated him.
Yatin Kumar shook his head sadly. There was still so much that needed to be done. What had been accomplished in the last five years already was truly amazing, truly a testament to Kumar’s creation, to his vision. But it was only a drop of rain in the ocean. Because of him, though, because of his creation the world was enjoying a peace renaissance such as it had never witnessed before. More people in the world were safe, fed, and happy than had been in all of history. Northern Ireland was now in its fourth year of peaceful self-rule by a government made up of both Catholics and Protestants, Taiwan was now secure in its autonomy once again after a tense stand-off between China and the United States that had almost boiled over to become an armed conflict, Palestinian self-rule and a peace agreement with Syria allowed Israel to breathe easy for the first time in its existence. The list of hot spots that had been transformed into pools of calm went on and on and on… And it was all thanks to an artificial intelligence, created by Yatin Kumar, named Oracle.
It was Kumar’s vision that had dispelled the shadows of fear and terror with the light of a technology far in advance of anything else in existence. He was the anonymous architect of Pax Terra. He liked it that way, too. He felt like the ultimate insider, behind the scenes of the greatest moment in human history.
He could sit in his office and dwell on it all day, but there was always work to do. He clicked to his In Box where he had a new e-mail message. It was from Oracle. He opened it, and there was another photograph of his dream woman, Annika Dahl. She was the daughter of the Swedish Ambassador to the U.N. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, with full lips and pale skin, a statuesque Norse goddess. In the photograph Dahl was in line in a bank in Luxembourg, wearing a paisley skirt and a leather jacket, with a paisley beret on her head.
Kumar had asked Oracle to find his dream woman for him, and had given all the necessary criteria. One important quality she had to possess was that she’d have to be attracted to a man like Yatin Kumar. Apparently, according to Oracle, Annika Dahl liked her men "tall, dark, and handsome." She had dated a man from India once before, in college. She was smart, with a degree in International Affairs, so she would appreciate his work and especially appreciate the way the U.N. had been putting Oracle to good use over the last few years. She didn’t even know Yatin Kumar existed, but that would be remedied soon enough. In six months her father would have his annual ball and she’d be there, as would Kumar thanks to Oracle.
Also, thanks to Oracle, Kumar would be more sure of himself with Annika than he had ever been with any woman. He knew her likes and dislikes, her pet peeves and innermost yearnings…everything she wrote about in her diary, which she kept on her computer at home and accessed remotely via the Internet. Oracle could access any file on any computer that was linked to the Internet even for a short period of time. It was that which made it so effective in helping people.
Annika Dahl would admire Yatin Kumar for his central role in the creation of Oracle, at least that’s what Oracle told Yatin Kumar. Kumar had no reason to doubt his creation. For one thing, Oracle was programmed to be incapable of lying.
Elsewhere in the United Nations building, the British Ambassador to the U.N., Peter Cornwall, grimly watched the news on a flat screen television in his office, which was otherwise decorated with photographs of the great men he’d met…Presidents of a dozen countries on every continent, the Pope, the Dali Lama, a few movie stars. Cornwall rubbed his clean-shaven chin as if in deep thought, but truly he couldn’t untangle his mind enough to allow a single clear thought through to his consciousness. All he could do was stare at the screen as the muted story unfolded, watching as Christie Seifert in Mexico City rambled on about something or other. She was standing at the gates of the Sanchez compound outside Mexico City, speaking into a microphone, probably speculating on what the Sanchez legacy was now that he would never be President.
History would be kind to Sanchez, Cornwall knew. Whether that was deserved or not, one thing was definitely not. That was, Sanchez had not deserved to die. This was a privately held opinion, and Cornwall dared not allow himself to make it known to anyone outside of a certain basement office in a certain secret government building in London.
Of course, there were only four other men outside of that office with whom Cornwall could discuss these matters, anyway. Vincent Waldrup, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N; Luc Beauchamp, the French Ambassador to the U.N; Andrei Udin, the Russian Ambassador to the U.N; and Chiang Teng-chi, the Chinese Ambassador to the U.N. were, of course, the other permanent members of the Security Council and in full possession of the same facts about Sanchez as Cornwall.
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