The Oracle Year

by Charles Soule

He knew what was going to happen, and he was coming to understand that no one should know what’s going to happen.

She’d never had time for people who didn’t recognize what she could do, or who somehow thought it was less just because she had a pair of tits. If the patriarchy didn’t want her talent on her terms, then they would have to get along without it, while she sat in the shadows, making their lives miserable from time to time, getting rich off their mistakes, exploiting flaws in their security, and selling the solutions back to them.

Teachers developed any number of superpowers—the voice was one, but another, almost as important, was the read.

It was like trying to play chess in a pitch-dark room, where you had to determine your opponent’s moves by sense of smell alone. And you had a cold. And your opponent was God. Futile.