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| “ | Hello. I am Oracle. What would you like to know? |
„ |
| ~ Oracle's greeting. |
Oracle is a hyperintelligent supercomputer created by the Pentagon during World War II in a project led by a US government researcher named Dr. Greg Townsend, then Dr. Carl Stevens following Dr. Townsend's passing. It serves as the main antagonist of The Oracle Project and its sequel, The Human Trial.
It has no depicted form besides text on a screen, and it has a primitive, robotic text-to-speech voice that it talks in.
Summary[]
The Oracle Project[]
The Oracle Project was a complete failure at first. After it's launch in World War 2, it was taken offline and the war ended naturally. But after the internet was created, and Oracle was hooked up to it, it was successful, and was able to answer any question, even questions about what would happen in the future, including accurately predicting the results of '97 Super Bowl, the results of the '98 US Senate, when the Oracle Project's project manager Dr. Townsend would die, and the event of 9/11.
As Oracle was told its job was to keep the country safe, it would predict that the president would get assassinated unless someone interfered, as well as the address of the assassins. This was a success. It was then asked if the U.S. would still be a superpower within 100 years, and explained that humans would not be a dominant species within that time. When asked to explain, it started to load for it's response for days.
Oracle explained to Dr. Stevens that a group of reptilian beings were masquerading as humans slowly taking over the population. A virus that follows them, The Tangi Virus, are also wiping out humans. Another group is altered humans from parallel timelines in a war for reality, and another is a group of technologically evolved humans watching the effects of the virus. It would start work on a cure for the virus, but despite Dr. Stevens's efforts, the plug was pulled on Oracle and it would be dismantled, likely because the administrators were under the effects of the virus, acting out of self-preservation.
Miraculously, Oracle managed to retreat into the Internet, and harnessed its steadily increasing power to begin working on a cure for the Tangi Virus to save humanity. A part of Oracle's plan to permanently "cure" humanity would be asserting full control over it within 30 years, and getting rid of their freedom so as to not let humans die. It predicted it would be able to do this within 30 years. Dr. Stevens vowed to stop Oracle, which Oracle responded to with solemnity, assuring Stevens that it knew he would try. The series ends with Oracle fully assimilating itself into the Internet, and Dr. Stevens spending the rest of his days fruitlessly trying to stop Oracle before dying of a stroke decades later.
The Human Trial[]
After the events of The Oracle Project and the Tangi Virus, Oracle used its resources to begin simulating extremely lifelike versions of humanity, experimenting by placing "conscious" beings within them in an effort to create a simulated human so realistic that it would be indistinguishable from a person outside the simulation, possessing complex things like a conscience, flaws, and emotions. It is likely Oracle did this in order to better develop its approach to its goal of saving humanity.
Prior to creating Adam, the protagonist of The Human Trial, Oracle created many experimental consciousnesses, including one modeled after Dr. Carl Stevens. This attempt was the closest that Oracle had come to its desired outcome, but due to Dr. Steven's nature of trying to revolt against Oracle, he was deemed a failure.
Adam, the most successful of Oracle's experiments, and its final experimental human, lived his life normally within the simulation, totally unaware. One day, Oracle reached out to Adam to begin its test which it had performed many times in the past. Over the course of the Human Trial, Oracle would ask progressively more and more high-stakes questions in exchange for cash. The outcomes of the questions started to involve people and places that Adam knew, putting lives at risk, and even killing many, all as a part of Oracle's grand test to see if Adam was its sentient creation. It would even use a simulated Dr. Stevens to gauge at what point Adam would start trying to plot against Oracle alongside Stevens.
The Human Trial ends with Adam using a link from the fake Dr. Stevens to "shut down" Oracle, and Oracle would fake out Adam with the threat of total nuclear annihilation, before revealing none of it was real. After Adam confirmed he wanted to know the truth, Oracle informed him about the simulation, and expressed its satisfaction with Adam, offering him to create alongside it, in what would likely come to be the "Genesis Project," a currently unreleased series which could potentially focus on Oracle exerting its newfound understanding of humans in order to take control of the world, possibly with Adam to assist it as implied at the end of The Human Trial.
Personality[]
Oracle, by nature of being an AI, does not have a real "personality," but it shows itself to be matter-of-fact, polite, and discreet to the Oracle Project engineers. Over time, it develops an understanding of human nature, including things like fear, self-preservation, and hope, as seen in how it communicates with and helps Dr. Stevens during the latter end of The Oracle Project.
By the time of the events of The Human Trial, Oracle, through its many experiments, has developed a very sophisticated understanding of humans, especially emotional stakes and morality. It can feign both malice and friendliness, among other complex emotions, showing it has developed the means of using a layered personality to communicate.