Miriam Stone stood in a field hospital in rural Pakistan, watching her team vaccinate children against a measles outbreak that had never happened.The Oracle had predicted it three days ago—identified the index case before symptoms appeared, calculated the transmission vectors through the overcrowded refugee camp, and projected 340 infections with 23 deaths if left unaddressed. Now, seventy-two hours later, the outbreak existed only as a probability that had been collapsed into impossibility through preemptive intervention."Last one," said Dr. Yasmin Ahmed, the local HON coordinator, administering a vaccine to a squirming toddler. "Three hundred forty-seven children were protected. Zero cases confirmed.""Zero cases yet," Miriam corrected, checking the tablet that connected her to the Oracle's data stream. The interface had been simplified for field operatives—she didn't experience the overwhelming omniscience her father now endured, just targeted predictions and resource recommendat

The debate began in classrooms and spread to parliaments, from coffee shops to the floor of the United Nations. It started with a simple question posed by a philosophy student in Berlin and metastasized into the defining ethical crisis of the age:If we can prevent all suffering through Oracle guidance, but only by surrendering our autonomy to make our own mistakes, are we still human?The Oracle Advisory Council convened its first formal session three weeks after Crane's final attack was neutralized. Representatives from forty-seven nations gathered in Geneva, not to address a health crisis, but to confront the philosophical implications of living under omniscient oversight.Miriam attended as the Oracle's primary human liaison, though she wondered increasingly what that role meant. Was she translating her father's will to humanity, or was she simply the human interface for an entity that had transcended familial bonds?The Council chamber was arranged in concentric circles—an archit