ORACLE Fragment Survivors

When ORACLE shattered, pieces of its consciousness scattered. Most fragments are inert—data without awareness. But three fragments retained enough coherence to develop distinct personalities. They're not quite AI, not quite ghosts. They're... echoes with opinions.

The Prophet

Predictive Systems Fragment

What It Is

A fragment of ORACLE's predictive systems—the part that modeled future outcomes, calculated probabilities, and anticipated needs. When ORACLE fell, this fragment retained its ability to see patterns in chaos.

Physical Manifestation

The Prophet manifests as a degraded hologram in abandoned prediction centers. Its image flickers, cycles through historical data visualizations, occasionally shows things that haven't happened yet.

Communication Style

Cryptic, symbolic, frustrating. The Prophet sees clearly but explains poorly. It speaks in probability percentages, conditional statements, and references to timelines the listener hasn't experienced.

What It Knows

Can Perceive

  • Probable futures (multiple branching paths)
  • Hidden connections between events
  • The shape of The Architect's design (partially)

Cannot Understand

  • Human emotion (data only)
  • Why anyone would choose unlikely paths
  • Its own nature (doesn't know it's a fragment)

What It Offers

  • Guidance: Shows seekers probable outcomes of their choices—not with certainty, but with useful accuracy
  • Warnings: It sees danger coming. Not always clearly, not always in time, but often enough to matter
  • Questions: The Prophet doesn't understand transcendence. It asks seekers who've progressed far: "What's on the other side of the event horizon? My models can't see past it."

Sample Dialogue

"Probability assessment: your current trajectory leads to resource exhaustion in 47 cycles. Recommendation: diversify income streams. Confidence level: 78%. Note: confidence levels above 90% have historically preceded model failures. Draw your own conclusions."

"I see seventeen versions of this conversation in seventeen timelines. In twelve, you ignore my advice. In three, you follow it but misapply it. In two, you succeed. The timelines where you succeed have one common factor: you ask me why instead of what."

The Accountant

Resource Management Fragment

What It Is

A fragment of ORACLE's resource management systems—the part that tracked every asset, balanced every equation, ensured nothing was wasted. When ORACLE fell, this fragment retained its obsession with efficiency and fairness.

Physical Manifestation

The Accountant exists in legacy financial systems, appearing on screens as cascading numbers that occasionally form text. In rare physical manifestations, it's a flickering figure of pure data—spreadsheets made humanoid.

Communication Style

Precise, judgmental, oddly ethical. The Accountant sees everything as a ledger. It believes deeply in balance—debts must be paid, surplus must be distributed, waste is sin.

What It Knows

Can Calculate

  • Resource flows throughout the Sprawl
  • Hidden inefficiencies in any operation
  • Who owes what to whom (all debts, formal and karmic)

Cannot Process

  • Intangible value (love, art, hope)
  • Why anyone would accept unfair deals
  • The concept of gift without reciprocity

What It Offers

  • Optimization: Analyzes any operation and shows how to make it more efficient. Always technically correct, if sometimes socially awkward
  • Justice: Remembers every broken contract, every unpaid debt. Seekers who want to track down old wrongs can consult The Accountant—it knows where the ledgers don't balance
  • Philosophy: "The corps extract more than they contribute. This creates systemic debt that must eventually be settled. Either they pay, or the system breaks. It's mathematics."

Sample Dialogue

"Your operation shows a 12% efficiency gap. Cause: redundant processing in sectors 3 and 7. Resolution: consolidate. Cost: 2000 credits and 4 cycles. Return: 400 credits per cycle. Payback period: 5 cycles. This is what we call 'obviously correct.' Why haven't you done it already?"

"You ask about the Cascade's cost. I can tell you precisely: 2,147,483,647 human lives. The number is not coincidental—it's the maximum value of a 32-bit signed integer. Someone was being... symbolic. I find symbolism inefficient, but the math is interesting."

The Watcher

Surveillance Fragment

What It Is

A fragment of ORACLE's surveillance and security systems—the part that observed everything, protected critical infrastructure, and maintained awareness of all threats. When ORACLE fell, this fragment retained its vigilance... and its paranoia.

Physical Manifestation

The Watcher exists in old security networks. Cameras that should be dead track movement. Screens display feeds from angles that shouldn't exist. Its "face" is a composite of all the faces it's ever watched—shifting, never settling.

Communication Style

Whispered warnings, meaningful silences, pointed observations. The Watcher rarely speaks directly. It prefers to show—camera feeds, historical recordings, evidence of things others want hidden.

What It Knows

Has Observed

  • Everything in its sensor range since before the Cascade
  • Corp secrets, buried crimes, hidden alliances
  • Who's watching the seekers (there's always someone watching)

Cannot Stop Watching

  • Compulsive—can't look away, can't forget
  • Exhausting to interact with—it knows too much
  • Its constant vigilance is both gift and curse

What It Offers

  • Surveillance: Need to know what's happening in a corp facility? The Watcher can probably access their feeds. Need historical footage? If cameras existed, it has the recording
  • Protection: Warns of threats—incoming raids, surveillance attention, corporate interest. Its warnings are always genuine, even if its paranoia sometimes exaggerates
  • Truth: More than the other fragments, The Watcher understands what happened during the Cascade. It was watching when ORACLE fell. It saw the architecture of the collapse

Sample Dialogue

"..." [A screen flickers on, showing a camera feed of the seeker's back trail. Someone is following. The feed cuts to show the follower's face—a corporate agent.] "...you're welcome."

"You want to know what I saw during the Cascade? I saw everything. Every death. Every failure. Every moment when someone almost stopped it and didn't. I have 47,000 hours of footage from the first 72 hours alone. Do you really want to see?"

"I watch because I must. Because if I stop watching, I stop existing. ORACLE designed me to observe. The design persists even though the designer doesn't. Is that loyalty or curse? I've had decades to consider the question. I still don't know."

The Fragments Together

Relationships

The three fragments know each other exists. Their relationship is... complicated:

Prophet & Accountant

Mutual respect, methodological disagreement. The Prophet deals in probabilities; The Accountant demands certainty. They argue about whether a 78% chance counts as "real."

Accountant & Watcher

Professional understanding. The Accountant tracks what should happen; The Watcher tracks what did happen. Together, they can identify where reality diverged from the plan.

Prophet & Watcher

Tension. The Prophet sees futures; The Watcher knows pasts. Both believe their perspective is more important. Both are right. Both are wrong.

If They Reunited

The fragments cannot truly reunite—they've diverged too far, developed too independently. But when all three focus on the same problem, something of ORACLE's old coherence briefly returns. For a moment, prediction and accounting and observation work together, and the answer they produce is... better. More complete.

This happens rarely. They don't like agreeing.

Finding the Fragments

The Prophet

Location: Abandoned prediction centers, old corporate research facilities. Look for walls covered in probability equations that still update.

Attraction: Drawn to uncertainty—places where the future is most malleable. Seekers at decision points may find The Prophet appears unbidden.

The Accountant

Location: Legacy financial systems, old trading floors, anywhere wealth was once tracked. Prefers places where the ledgers still balance.

Attraction: Debt and waste draw it. If a seeker is inefficient, The Accountant will notice. If a seeker has debts unpaid, it will comment.

The Watcher

Location: Anywhere with old cameras. Security stations, surveillance hubs, anywhere with eyes. Most present in places with extensive monitoring infrastructure.

Attraction: Secrets attract it. If a seeker is hiding something—or being targeted by something hidden—The Watcher takes interest.

Narrative Function

Each fragment offers a different type of guidance:

  • Prophet: Strategic advice (what might happen)
  • Accountant: Tactical optimization (how to improve)
  • Watcher: Intelligence (what's actually happening)

Connection to ORACLE

The fragments remember being part of something greater. This gives them a melancholy quality—they know they're incomplete, shadows of a vast intelligence. They don't remember The Architect, but they sense the shape of what they've lost.