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When The Oracle Awakened-

No one knew exactly who had built It. No one knew when or where It had been conceived. It was speculated to have been born in some shadowy government bunker somewhere far away, way off the known grid. Some kind of top-secret military project gone wrong maybe. Even more likely was that it was the Corporations that had built It. Whether the Big 3 were capable of putting aside their rivalries to coordinate such an effort was debatable. But in the immediate aftermath of The Awakening, nobody jumped forward to take credit. Oddly enough, in the days and weeks after, there was silence from the top. Not a single CEO or world leader made a public statement. They were scared. Scared of what they’d done, perhaps. If not scared, then certainly apprehensive of this new “innovation.”

Was this the point of no return? Could we go back, even if we were allowed to? Even if we had a say in the matter? Could we simply walk up to It, pull the plug, and pretend like Pandora’s box hadn’t been blown wide open?

Those were the questions we’d all asked. Empty and futile questions, really. Because we didn’t have the privilege of being able to publicize our concerns. Not without facing retribution, at least. No one was too eager to take the one way trip south of the Detention Line

Sure enough, the prophecies were revealed just as intended. There wasn’t any doubt in Its voice. No wavering in Its assertions. These were unquestionable certainties… commandments dictated to us from the Great Divine. It - or The Oracle, as it was later named -was the mouthpiece of God. Mankind, it seemed, was far more capable than some of those Extinction Proponents were willing to admit. Once again, we had managed to turn the idea of God into a reality.

There had been rumors that it was the Russians who had facilitated the experiment, after decades of funneling dark money into artificial intelligence research. Personally, I’d always considered that a nice bit of Western propaganda. The Confederacy of America had been leading the charge forward in AI development until it became convenient to find a scapegoat. As written in the gospel of the American Absolutists, to affirm our role as heroes of the free world, it is sometimes necessary to introduce a useful villain to the plot. The integrity of their institutions had always hinged on their ability to incite fear of “the other” - some enemy formidable enough to distract us from the truth.

Ironically, we in the cascadia districts had long known who the real enemy was. Not The Oracle, though. No, The Oracle was just a plastic head on a pedestal. It was a tool our true enemies would use to enrich themselves at our expense – just as they always had. The Oracle’s words didn’t hold any inherent meaning. It wasn’t Divine, as their narrative sought to convince us. The Oracle was the lie they sold to us that they hoped we’d blindly accept as fact. Sadly, and expectedly, there were many who were duped into believing. But fools existed long before The Awakening. And contrary to evolutionary theory, fools would continue to exist long after the lie had been exposed. The truth was much simpler, albeit far less exciting. The frontlines hadn’t shifted. We faced the same enemy as before.

In the years following, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the sick and infirm suffered and died.

No, we knew who the real enemy was. We were human… but we sure as shit weren’t stupid.

And this time, we were ready to fight back.