Chapter 27: The Spoilers of Destiny
The Bureau had weathered the storms of perfection, manuals, flatness, and weight. But as Ne Job sat in the quiet of his office, the air didn't just change; it became transparent. It felt as though the very walls were revealing what was behind them, and the silver ink on his desk began to form words before he even touched his pen.
"Commissioner," the holographic Assistant Yue whispered, her glasses reflecting a flicker of white light. "The Oracle is... well, she's plural."
Ne Job didn't wait. He headed for the Chamber of Foresight, the circular room at the Bureau's peak where the Oracle usually lounged among clouds of shifting incense and "maybe" scenarios.
Inside, the original Oracle—a woman of swirling robes and vague, poetic utterances—was currently having a heated argument with a woman who looked like her, but dressed in a sharp, neon-lit lab coat. This new version, Oracle-Delta, held a glowing tablet and wore a headset that looked suspiciously like it was made of frozen lightning.
"I'm telling you," Oracle-Delta snapped, her voice crisp and devoid of mystery. "It happens at 14:02 on Tuesday. The Map-Coat Man trips over a cat, drops his coffee, and accidentally discovers the Secret of the Second Floor. There is no 'perhaps.' It is a 100% statistical certainty."
"But where is the flavour?" the original Oracle wailed, throwing a handful of prophetic dust into the air. "Where is the 'darkness gathered in the west'? Where is the 'stranger with a key'?"
"The stranger is a repairman named Gary," Oracle-Delta replied, clicking a button on her tablet. "And the key is for the vending machine. Move on."
The Death of Suspense
Ne Job stepped into the room. "What is going on here? Why are the hallways filled with people crying because they know what they're getting for their birthdays for the next forty years?"
"Commissioner Ne Job," Oracle-Delta said, turning to him with a sympathetic, yet clinical, smile. "You're about to ask me how to stop me. Don't bother. You try the silver stapler trick at 14:05, it fails, then you try a non-sequitur at 14:06, which also fails because I've already accounted for the '7.5% Sparkle' in my algorithm."
Ne Job froze. He had, in fact, been reaching for his stapler.
"See?" Oracle-Delta said, pointing to her tablet. "Your reaction was 100% predictable. In fact, in exactly ten seconds, The Muse will burst through that door and shout 'Spoilers are the Worst!' 3... 2... 1..."
The door slammed open. "SPOILERS ARE THE WORST!" The Muse screamed, brandishing a bucket of neon-purple slime.
"7.5% margin of error on the slime color," Oracle-Delta noted, unimpressed. "I predicted magenta."
The Logic of the Spoiler
"You're ruining it," Ne Job said, his voice low. "If everyone knows exactly what's going to happen, the story stops moving. The 'And' becomes a 'Then.' The Infinite Addendum becomes a closed loop."
"Exactly," Oracle-Delta agreed. "A perfect, efficient, spoiler-filled loop. No more anxiety about the future. No more 'what-ifs.' Just the cold, hard data of what is. I have already calculated the end of the Bureau. It happens in three eons when the last piece of paper finally turns to dust. See? No more tension."
The Architect, Ao Bing, walked in, looking devastated. "She told me my next city will have a leaky roof in the bathroom of the third palace. I don't even want to build it now. What's the point?"
Ne Job looked at the original Oracle, who was weeping into a cloud of incense. He realized that Oracle-Delta was the ultimate weapon of the Great Eraser. She didn't delete the story; she just removed the reason to read it.
The Unwritten Page
Ne Job looked at the glowing tablet in Oracle-Delta's hand. "You say everything is 100% certain? Every move I make is already in your machine?"
"To the millisecond," she replied.
"Then explain this," Ne Job said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Permanent Semicolon—the repurposed Black Hole of Finality from Chapter 22. It pulsed with a deep, rhythmic light.
"You predicted I would use the stapler," Ne Job said, stepping closer. "But the Semicolon isn't a tool. It's a transition. It's the part of the story where the author changes their mind."
"Irrelevant," Oracle-Delta said, though her fingers twitched on the tablet. "The Semicolon is an established asset. Its trajectory is—"
"Its trajectory is whatever the 7.5% of the universe feels like right now!" Ne Job shouted. He turned to The Muse. "Muse! Give me something that doesn't exist yet! Something even you haven't thought of!"
The Muse blinked, her purple hair sparking. She looked at the neon slime, then at the Semicolon, then at the Architect's trench coat. She grabbed a handful of starlight from Princess Ling and stuffed it into a fish-shaped biscuit.
"I call this... The Plot Hole!" she cried, hurling the glowing biscuit at the Semicolon.
The Error of the Infinite
When the "Plot Hole" hit the Semicolon, the room didn't explode. It glitched.
The tablet in Oracle-Delta's hand began to scroll through a billion possibilities a second. The 100% certainty shattered into a million 7.5% 'Maybes.'
"Error!" Oracle-Delta shrieked, her lab coat flickering into static. "The Map-Coat Man is... he's wearing the toaster? The Architect is... a squirrel? The Bureau is... a musical? I cannot... the data is... un-spoiler-able!"
The sheer weight of the "Unwritten Future" was too much for her algorithms. She couldn't predict a story that was actively being sabotaged by its own characters. With a sound like a hard drive crashing, Oracle-Delta evaporated into a cloud of bright, unread digital text.
The Beauty of the Unknown
The original Oracle stood up, dusting off her robes. "Oh, thank the Stars. I can feel the 'dread' returning. It's wonderful! I have no idea if I'm going to have tea or coffee tonight! The mystery is back!"
Ne Job sat on the floor, breathing hard. The transparency of the walls faded, returning the room to its comfortable, solid gloom.
LOG: CHAPTER 27 SUMMARY.
STATUS: Oracle-Delta crashed. Mystery levels restored to 100%.
NOTE: I've officially banned the use of 'Statistical Certainty' in the Bureau. We are now strictly a 'Highly Probable but Who Knows' organization.
OBSERVATION: A story without spoilers is a life worth living.
P.S.: The Architect is actually considering building that bathroom with a leaky roof now, just to spite the prediction.
The Muse sat next to him, her bucket empty. "So, Commissioner... we've defeated all the doubles. The 'And' has run out of mirror-tricks. Is it over?"
Ne Job looked at the silver ink on his hands. He felt a shift in the air—not a double, not a void, but a presence.
"No," Ne Job said. "The 'And' was just the opening act. The mirror didn't create those doubles. Something behind the mirror did."
He looked at the Semicolon on its cushion.
"It's time we met the Author."