Ficlet: 906 (Oracle, PG13, Prompt #20: Reflection)
Title: 906
Fandom: DC Comics
Prompt: #20, Reflection.
Word Count: About two hundred.
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: DC Comics owns all characters involved. Not that Oracle pays too much attention to things like that.
Summary: It's unavoidable, really.
If you gather enough information, patterns begin to appear. Patterns in crime. Patterns in heroics. Lives interacting in tragedy and victory as so many elementary particles leaving traces in a sensor.
Doing what you do, you see those patterns all around you. Being who you are, you can't ignore them.
You try to to use those patterns to predict and act, but you soon realize your understanding of them isn't good enough. Friends become endangered, plans crumble and fall. Facts and people you had discounted as rounding errors impact in ways that ultimately turn the world upside down.
If you could but process the information well enough, you think, you could see monsters behind closed doors. You could keep people safe. If you could but understand.
You can't solve the problem by yourself. It's perhaps the hardest modeling problem ever attempted by humankind, and even with your mind and the resources at your disposal, it's beyond your unaided grasp.
But you are not alone.
There are other realities, other versions of you. Being who they are, doing what they do, they are attempting the solve the same problem. Some of them have access to interdimensional communication devices.
One of them contacts you.
Fandom: DC Comics
Prompt: #20, Reflection.
Word Count: About two hundred.
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: DC Comics owns all characters involved. Not that Oracle pays too much attention to things like that.
Summary: It's unavoidable, really.
If you gather enough information, patterns begin to appear. Patterns in crime. Patterns in heroics. Lives interacting in tragedy and victory as so many elementary particles leaving traces in a sensor.
Doing what you do, you see those patterns all around you. Being who you are, you can't ignore them.
You try to to use those patterns to predict and act, but you soon realize your understanding of them isn't good enough. Friends become endangered, plans crumble and fall. Facts and people you had discounted as rounding errors impact in ways that ultimately turn the world upside down.
If you could but process the information well enough, you think, you could see monsters behind closed doors. You could keep people safe. If you could but understand.
You can't solve the problem by yourself. It's perhaps the hardest modeling problem ever attempted by humankind, and even with your mind and the resources at your disposal, it's beyond your unaided grasp.
But you are not alone.
There are other realities, other versions of you. Being who they are, doing what they do, they are attempting the solve the same problem. Some of them have access to interdimensional communication devices.
One of them contacts you.