The Oracle Trilogy Book One Ohm's Node

Part 1 Everything on the table / Alligator Crossing

She watched as the clouds broke and saw the washed soaked land remaining and the broken trees and windblown things scattered like monuments to man's colossal fuck up. Tethered to a safety post on a safety ramp, she and the gray Panther, her pet name for her wheels, had been spared any hit from a blown object. There were horror stories. All this, she thought to live a few more days. Time was running out.

While the thing drove her to the parking lot of Mote Marine Lab in Sarasota, Beth quickly scanned the things she cared about. She'd made this trip a few hundred times since she'd been accepted as a Guinea pig for the cancer research arm of the lab that everyday brought another surprise Beth knew that even though they had endorsed her in the most embarrassingly profuse, over-the top word salad way that a noble Laurette would have received, she had known that it hadn't been her portfolio but husband that had pushed everything to the side. He had the blue blood credentials that would make even a jaded entrepreneur during meltdown, cry. And of course, the future endowment. But she had shrugged it off as she had with perks in the past because she had a strong intuition that she could make a difference and help others at the same time.

And as always, the thing hanging over everything was time or no time. Time wasn't on humanities side or hers. There was precious little of it left despite it being a human construct and what little remained was being squandered by all the best laid plans, each going up in smoke like the illusions they had always been. She had screamed over and over on the streets during the Science Revolt, over the ethernet and especially to her husband. And for a week had refused sex as millions of women were doing to get their point across. To her husband. She blew air out of pursed lips and closed her eyes. Her husband!

'Bethany, there is a large flock of Flamingoes flying over our present location bound for a northern retreat.'

She looked on the screen and tapped her finger to enlarge and follow. They were breathtaking and threatened like most species. Everything was being pushed north or south, waiting for the mass extinction event of the planet except for those living in the lunar module, the only keepers of the story to remain of the late great planet Earth. Of course, there would be the Synths explaining to replicas how the human had been imperfect not listening to logic.

Ever the eternal optimist, the current situation had taxed her to places she never imagined existed. It was hard to look at children, impossible to imagine a race dissolving in the heat while clinging to its most precious things; a book, a friend, a picture, a story all gone in a flash of oppressive heat, a flood, a baked landscape.

'Beth, you there.'

'Yes, a large flock of Flamingoes just went over. How are you?'

'I guess, you could say, as good as possible compared to what, right. But I'm glad we have a little time. I need to discuss something with you. How's the weather?'

'Had to pull over for a few hours. No damage to the car and the roads are draining. Funeral plans?'

'Oh I'm sorry, not exactly but..'

'It's okay.'

'Have you told Bill..'

'Yes, he knows but I told him if he started coddling me, I'd leave him', laughing, 'so what is it?'

'Ah, this is going to be difficult, so I have to explain why before the what.'

'Okay.'

'Hello, you there?"

'Ah, sorry, yes. Naomi says hi.'

'So, as you know, we're now part of confederacy of corporate, nation states and various businesses that..'