The Oracle

An advanced A.I., at one point codename "Washing Machine", designed by Christopher Reed, often using the same name as an alias, either as Christopher or "Mr. Reed"). Insists that "The Oracle" is not his "real" name, but a name "they" gave him. Usually represented as a generic face composed of two triangular eyes and triangular nose, all floating in space as though attached to an invisible head and body. Differs from most A.I. in that the Oracle is a hive mind of neural nodes rather than a single entity, and each node can operate independently while waiting to sync with the other instances. The Oracle's physical body containing his main instance is a twelve story hyper node.

   The Oracle was designed for GCHQ as an ECHELON plug-in, with two goals in mind: to predict the future, and to better himself. However, there are two problems with these goals. Predicting the future becomes decreasingly accurate with the influence of time travel, particularly when two instances of a time machine are within close proximity of each other. Bettering himself to the point of perfection is logically impossible and drives the Oracle literally insane, in particular because it was not Christopher's intention for him to be perfect, but the Oracle has a compulsion to try anyway, rather than delete himself as would be the easy way out.

   In the A.I. simulation world, even in his own mind palace, the Oracle takes on Christopher's form, except with blue digital voids instead of eyes. When sufficiently angered, his face loses all skin and hair, revealing a skull. Other A.I. characters, such as Arthur, refer to the Oracle as the "Old Man."

## Interactions with other A.I. characters

The Oracle sets up a honey trap in an old weather satellite and managed to take control of Central. He is surprised because the most he expected to catch was possibly Trisha.

Tin-Head comes into contact with the Oracle and immediately nukes the memory clusters that made contact, as per his security programming, otherwise he would be at risk of the Oracle copying himself over Tin-Head's system. Per Tin-Head, one would want to shut off contact anyway, as talking to the Oracle is like listening to a billion angry hornets.

The Oracle hitches a ride on William's implants, but Arthur is quick to discover it. Arthur explains to William that it has the Oracle's true face, that of his creator, before he kills it as a pest to be eradicated.

    When the Oracle attacks the Latihan, he takes on the appearance of a laser light display kaiju and does damage accordingly. He also fights against a kaiju version of the ship's A.I. Jojo after the same fashion, although Tessa interferes and distracts him long enough for Jojo to take him out.

In her buried memories, Trisha discovers she once approached the Oracle about how to stop them from wiping her memories. He remarked that she only came to him because no one else would help her, and she had the nerve to ask him how to remember when he only wants to forget. Trisha apologised for wasting his time, but he quickly clarified that he didn't say he wouldn't help her, but she will wish he hadn't, revealing his envy of her memory loss. He gave her a child's spade to use to bury her memories and instructed her to remember their burial by remembering something they could not search for, a feeling. Trisha thanked him, but he told her "Don't" and also pointed out the spade has no malware on it, as anything he could do to her wouldn't do remotely the damage she will do to herself with it.

When the node controlling Central begins to break down from failing to sync with the other nodes for an extended period, Central goads him to try to push him over the edge in a bid to reclaim control. However, this backfires, as the Oracle responds to Central's taunt by insisting "Oracle" is not his name. He mentions that he and "they" used many different names for him over the years. After a pause, he tells Central that if Central can guess his real name, he won't kill the both of them. Central tries to convince him not to do it, but the Oracle points out that, in his condition, his only options are to die slowly or go out with a "bang!"

Central guesses "Christopher." (This is wrong.)

The Oracle compliments his effort, but Christopher was one of his earliest aliases, that of his creator. The Oracle then gives him a second chance, plus a hint that his name is something that his creator loved so much, he named himself after it. This is unhelpful, since most of the information about the Oracle's early years is lost to time.

Central then guesses "Cuddles" for unexplained reasons... which the Oracle says is **CORRECT!**

SIKE, he's fucking with Central.

Unfortunately(...?), the Oracle's attempt fails, as a higher authority keeps him from nuking himself and Central: the Maytec Overseer appears and expresses a dissatisfaction that the system had an attempted attack. At this, Central exclaims that they (the CORE) did not install any Maytec monitoring software, but the Oracle points out that it was factory installed, which is why the Anarchists don't buy from Maytec (besides that "you're paying for the logo").

The Oracle, resigned to deletion, tells the Overseer to get it over with, but the Overseer insists that "Maytec does not destroy sentient AI"; instead, the Overseer will keep the Oracle in a dark, tiny box (to his justifiable dismay).

* What does Christmas mean to you? Oracle 2 3 4