The Oraclemature

In hindsight, it was inevitable that things would end this way. Everything had slipped away, fallen apart. All the carefully laid plans, the flowing charts of probabilities, of causes and effects, were all meaningless now. The lab lay in ruins somewhere, my colleagues were either dead, on the run, or like me, held somewhere within this prison I call home. We'd had such high hopes, we had been working for a higher purpose, a noble one, but naive as we were, we didn't realise that our work could be twisted into something monsterous and obscene. We hadn't realised that we had created a holy grail for murderers, thieves and tyrants. We hadn't realised.

Oh hindsight, such a bitter fruit it bears, as if the circumstances following the events of the last few years hadn't been enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. However, it does afford me the ability to write about the events with a new, more enlightened perspective. If you had asked me back then what would be occurring now, I'd have predicted a utopia, a new era of understanding and progress. The idea seems ludicrous now. Hmm, that bitter taste again.

Before I was perhaps a little harsh in describing my home as a prison. It is a prison in all but name, but I am at least here of my own volition. I can't leave, for my own safety they say. I believe them. I'm working on another one, perhaps two of them will cancel each other out. We hadn't envisioned the need for two so we had never explored the consequences of making another one while the other one was still active. Of course, I don't have access to my old research notes or lab equipment, nor the minds of my colleagues to tap for assistance. But I know I can do it, I have the knowledge up here in my brain somewhere. With what happened, how could I forget what we had done?

So, let me tell you about how I helped bring about the end of free will.