[ WP ] As your life flashes before your eyes , you realize that you can change what happened .

Predicting the future relies on knowing the present, and extrapolating possible variations from there. So to predict the future, they first had to record the present in its entirety. Getting a snapshot of the entire universe at a quantum level was impossible, so the Oracle team looked only at the Earth. 
 
 They took their data, and ran it through a program on a computer that used every quantum particle in a separate universe to do calculations. 
 
 They described it to me as `` like trapping a smaller balloon inside a larger one, then filling the smaller balloon with water''. 
 
 It's all way over my head. All I really understand is that I'm getting paid £100 to put on a neural interface, and tell them what I see. Apparently the program is tuned to detect the wearer, and show them their entire future at once. 
 
 And I'm the first test subject. 
 
 I finish signing the last of the papers, and they are taken away from me. The scientists file out of the room. Leaving me alone. Me, a chair, a mirrored wall, and the Oracle. 
 
 The Oracle looks like a biker's helmet. Sleek and black, with a tinted visor raised up to leave the face visible. It seems hard to believe what they say it's capable of. But £100 is £100. 
 
 I glance at the mirror, take a breath, take the helmet in my hands, and push it down onto my head, careful to keep my hair out of my eyes. It's a snug fit, enough to be slightly uncomfortable, and I scratch my neck nervously before taking the final plunge, and sliding the visor down. 
 
 The white room goes darker as the visor filters out some of the light. My eyes adjust quickly, and I wait, my heart racing. 
 
 One breath. 
 
 Why were my palms sweaty? 
 
 Two breaths. 
 
 The helmet chirped, the Oracle was starting up. 
 
 I panic, and try to remove the helmet, but my slick hands ca n't get a grip. I hear yelling from behind me, through the mirror. The visor displays an image, of me, pulling off the helmet and running out the door. Then it shows me, sat in the chair, engrossed within the helmet. Then I appear slumped, then dead, in a pool of blood. Images flash faster and faster across my sight, blurring. 
 
 Then the interface kicks in. 
 
 Sensation floods my mind. Sights, sounds, touch, emotion - every feeling imaginable. 
 
 A duck paddling in a pond, the smell of lilacs, a screaming child, boredom, joy, sorrow, pain; a billion billion possible mes existed in the future, and I live every moment of their lives all at once. 
 
 My wife is leaving me, but she's growing old with me, loving me, hating me, killing me, dying, grieving, weeping. Children I had never had lived their whole lives before me. 
 
 An infinite number of me lived their lives, and fed their combined experiences straight into my brain. Maybe the human brain is n't built for such a thing, but the interface was working anyway - ignoring the limits of my mind. 
 
 Then it stopped. 
 
 The lack of sensation jarred me. I'd... no. We'd lived more lifetimes than there were grains of sand on a beach. The combined experience of all those versions of me are inside me. I had seen all possible futures, and, though my memory was slowly fading, I know that they could all come true. 
 
 The only question now was - which one do I choose? 
 
 
 
 

