Flotsam
The next D-Shift to set up shop was at the south end literally just a couple of yards from the side of the Road, it was initially stationary like the 'Sweeper'. Remember Billy the bus driver well he wasn't always a bus driver when he was younger he was an up and coming actor. Set on the gravy train for life until he was caught with the director's wife of the film he was in, in a very public incident with a recently printed giant banana. It basically put his career in the toilet, so he chose anonymity as a school bus driver and became well known in the local bars as 'Only-if' a man of many regrets apparently the incident with the director's wife was just the tip of iceberg when he got drunk which was pretty every night he would bang on saying over and over again only if he done it differently he would be so rich not stuck out here in the sticks. Billy did however have one redeeming feature he took care of his Mum and the locals knew this so they always made sure someone drove him home if he was too drunk to drive.
It was on one of these nights that Howard James one of Billy's friends was driving him home, they had literally just turned onto the Road when Billy said he needed to take a leak. Howard stopped the truck and let Billy out who wandered in a less than straight line off the edge of the Road. Ten minutes later Howard was still waiting for Billy to return, he grabbed a torch and walked off in the general direction Billy went in. I've met Howard and he said to me it was pitch black out that night even with his flashlight he couldn't see a lot. He spent about half an hour looking for Billy until he tripped over Billy's body lying face up, he was alive but with an odd calmness about him that Howard had never seen in Billy's eyes before. He couldn't work out what Billy was looking at until he looked up and for a moment he couldn't drag his eyes away from the spectacle above him. Unlike Billy Howard was not a man many regrets so he was not drawn into what he saw above him, he knew it must be another D-Shift probably something to do with time he supposed. He dragged Billy's body back to Road and back into the truck, fifteen minutes went by before Billy blinked his eyes and asked if he had beer in the truck and that he just had a really odd dream. Howard gave him a light beer then drove Billy home and didn't mention anything to Billy about what he saw. In hindsight Howard regretted that particularly decision although he never went back to what became known as the Oracle of Madness.
Unlike other D-Shifts known at the time this particularly one was spherical in nature hovering some twenty feet above the ground and was approximately twenty feet in diameter. To get a proper look at you really needed to lie under it although that wasn't always easy because it tended to wander across the land, at first it was thought that its route was random but when it was plotted it always took the same route across the plain and always ended up where it begun. It did however make stops during its journey across the plain and took exactly nine hours from beginning to end. The land that it traveled across was owned by a local entrepreneur called Jake 'River' Hook who instantly saw the D-Shift's money making potential and despite many attempts by the government boys was unable to stop him from raking in a fair bit of cash on the tourist ride he called River Futures. The government boys did managed to force some health and safety regulations into Hook's operation but it didn't stop several people losing their minds to the Oracle including Only-if Billy before the government boys shutdown Hook down permanently. Hook himself disappeared shortly after the shutdown he was found lying face up on the Oracle's route chained to ground, dead from exposure. It was written off as a revenge killing however not enough evidence was ever found to point the finger at a viable suspect.
What you saw when you looked into the Oracle according those big scientists from the City was all your possible futures based upon your past decisions made differently. The only problem is that you are effectively staring into an infinite number of realities all at once though according the scientists it appeared to affect people differently. Not everyone looking into it went mad which according to the government boys was why it took so long to shut Hook down. With Hook gone with no heir apparent the government took over and installed forty foot high fences around the Oracle's route and a daily security patrol. The same D.S. Agent that visited the 'Sweeper' on a monthly basis also monitored the Oracle.
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