The Oracle of Pain

Twenty-two minutes stretched into eternity. Every hum of the machine, every click echoed in her tense body. When the brackets finally retracted smoothly and the humming ceased, she felt not relief, but emptiness. Like after a leap into the abyss – the fall had stopped, but the bottom wasn’t visible.

«Procedure complete. Your biometric and genetic data have been transferred for processing to the central «Prognosis’ processor. Results will be available to your attending physician in 48 hours. You may get dressed.»

The synthetic voice cut off. Silence filled the room again, but now it was different – heavy, ringing with anticipation. Elena stood up slowly. Her legs felt like cotton wool. She put on her coat, feeling its fabric as alien, rough skin. The nurse handed her a tablet for an electronic signature consenting to data processing. Elena signed without looking. Her signature came out uneven, trembling.

Stepping into the corridor, she inhaled the sterile air of NeuroVerdict. The sun still glared in the windows, the Verdict towers still shone proudly. But the world had changed. She had crossed the Rubicon. Now she stood on a shore called «Waiting.» Waiting for the verdict that could arrive with the machine’s inexorable accuracy, bringing not only knowledge of a future disease, but also the seeds of its accelerated arrival. Scientific detachment had melted like smoke. Only cold, clammy fear remained, and a question hanging in the sterile silence of her consciousness: «What have I done?» The next 48 hours promised to be an eternity filled with the ghosts of all those whose lives the «Oracle» had already broken. Including, possibly, her own.

Chapter 4: The Verdict

Forty-eight hours. An eternity vacuum-sealed in anticipation. Every hour, every minute stretched into torture. Elena tried to drown the fear in work – clinical rounds, consultations, reviewing studies on new preventative methods. But the shadows were everywhere. In the trembling hands of patients, in the overly cautious glances of nurses, in the impeccably cold walls of NeuroVerdict, which now seemed not like protection, but a prison cell. She caught herself listening to her own body with a painful, almost paranoid intensity. A slight tingling in her little finger? «The beginning?» A momentary lapse in recalling a word? «The fog?» Fatigue after a sleepless night? «Weakness?» The knowledge of a possible diagnosis was already triggering the «Oracle Effect» within her own mind, undermining the fortress of rationality.

The morning of the verdict was absurdly sunny. Rays of light danced on the glass towers of Verdict, turning them into giant crystals. Elena walked down the familiar corridor towards the office of Dr. Kirill Markov, her colleague and, formally, her attending physician for the procedure. She walked with her usual measured, professional stride, but inside, everything was clenched into a frozen knot. Kirill was a good doctor, rational, devoted to the ideals of Verdict. His office, as sterile and cold as everything here, felt like an execution chamber today.

«Elena, come in,» Kirill smiled, but his eyes held professional sympathy and… wariness? He knew about her doubts. The whole department was probably whispering. She sat opposite him, back straight, hands folded in her lap to hide the tremor that wasn’t there yet. Or that she just couldn’t feel.

«The Prognosis results are in,» Kirill began, clearing his throat. His finger slid across the tablet screen. A hologram flickered to life on the desk between them, waiting for activation. Cold blue light stabbed at her eyes. «Are you ready?»

Ready? For what? For a living death? For seven years awaiting her own disintegration? For turning into an Anna, a Karina? She nodded. Her head moved heavily, as if the hinges had rusted.

Kirill touched the screen. The hologram flared, blue letters, sharp, inexorable like epitaph carving, materialized in the air:

PATIENT: SOKOLOVA ELENA VIKTOROVNA

DIAGNOSTIC CONCLUSION OF «PROGNOSIS» PROGRAM:

HIGH PROBABILITY (99.9%) OF DEVELOPING AN AGGRESSIVE FORM OF HUNTINGTON-PLUS.

EXPECTED SYMPTOM ONSET: 7 YEARS (±6 MONTHS).

IMMEDIATE CONSULTATION WITH A SPECIALIST IN HEREDITARY NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT RECOMMENDED.

Huntington-Plus. Aggressive form. Her nightmare. Not just Huntington’s with its horrifying chorea and dementia, but its accelerated, enhanced version, a patented monstrosity of Verdict that they had so proudly «learned» to predict. Seven years. Not ten, not fifteen. Seven. Accuracy 99.9%. Unassailable. Unappealable. The verdict. Final and binding.

The world didn’t collapse. It evaporated.

First – freezing cold. It struck from within, from the very depths of her chest, instantly flooding her veins, icing her fingertips, locking her jaw. All air was squeezed from her lungs. Her chest constricted with invisible vices, so that inhaling became a rasping, futile spasm. She sat, staring at the blue letters floating in the air, but saw only white noise, a flickering void.

Then – her legs. They simply ceased to exist as support. Turned to cotton wool, treacherously buckling beneath her even though she was sitting. A sensation of falling into an abyss that wasn’t there beneath the chair. She instinctively clawed her fingers into the cold plastic armrests to keep from collapsing right then, right there. Her head spun, the room swam slightly. Kirill’s voice reached her as if through thick water: «…Elena? Elena, can you hear me? Breathe. Deeply. It’s shock…»

But she didn’t hear. Inside, only one voice sounded, her own, icy and utterly calm: «I am already dead.»

This wasn’t a metaphor. It was a physiological, existential truth. The doctor in her instantly activated her knowledge: the pathogenesis of Huntington-Plus. Uncontrolled expansion of CAG repeats. Death of striatal neurons. Chorea. Dementia. Aggressive form – meaning faster, harsher, more merciless. And then – the «Oracle Effect.» The knowledge of it. Knowledge that was already, at this very second, triggering cascades of cortisol, inflammation, accelerated cell death. Those seven years – an illusion. She was already sick. The disease hadn’t begun sometime later, but here and now, with the pronouncement of the verdict. She was Patient Zero. She was the next exhibit in the collection of horror she herself had begun compiling.

«Dead. Already.»

The vision of Anna in the wheelchair, her empty gaze, her speech in the past tense – overlaid itself onto her. She had already seen herself there. The blue hologram wasn’t a prognosis; it was a mirror showing her future-present. Social death under the «90-Day Rule» (but how long until her 90 days? 6 years and 9 months? Absurd!). Loss of her job – how could she operate knowing this? Loss of Alexei… Oh, Alexei… An «Unknowing.» How could she tell him? Should she even tell him? He would leave. Like others had left. Like… she probably would have left herself, in his place. Rationally.

The cold gripped her tighter. Tremors finally crept up her spine, fine, uncontrollable. She felt a drop of sweat – cold as a ghost’s tear – roll down her temple beneath her impeccably styled hair. Her hands on the armrests went numb from tension.

«…Elena!» Kirill’s voice grew sharper, more alarmed. He handed her a paper tissue. She stared at it dumbly, not understanding why. «Here. Wipe your face. Breathe. I understand, this is… a devastating blow. But seven years – that’s time. Significant time! We can do a lot. Preventative therapy, neuroprotectants, working with a psychologist… Verdict offers a comprehensive support program for the «Knowing’…»

His words bounced off the icy shield she had erected around herself. «Support program.» For the doomed. For the walking dead awaiting their hour. For those whom the «Oracle Effect» was slowly, surely, turning into its living proof. She was now part of that program. Part of the statistics. Her case – just another line in the flawless database confirming Prognosis’s accuracy. The irony was so bitter it caused a spasm in her throat.

She tried to speak. To say… what? To ask about the margin of error? If it was a mistake? But the figure 99.9% hung in the air like a brand. Her own rational mind, raised on Verdict, wouldn’t allow denial. Accuracy was the sacred cow. Knowledge was her god. Now that god had offered her up as a sacrifice.

«I…» Her voice cracked, became hoarse, alien. She swallowed the lump in her throat, tried again, summoning all her willpower, all her professional training, not to burst into tears, not to scream, not to smash that damned hologram. «I understand. Thank you, Kirill. The documents… for the program…» She waved a hand towards the tablet where he was already opening some forms. To sign. To agree to therapy of despair. To a life of waiting.

Silently, he handed her the stylus. Elena took it with trembling fingers. The signature beneath the agreement for «comprehensive support» came out crooked, unrecognizable. A blot. Like her life now.

Standing up. Her legs barely held her. She leaned on the back of the chair, sensing Kirill wanted to help but didn’t dare touch her. Knowing. A leper. Even to a colleague.

«Would you… maybe rest? In the on-call room? Or I can prescribe you…» he began.

«No.» She cut him off sharply, almost harshly. Her voice found a metallic note. «I… will go. Work. Patients are waiting.»

It was the last lie. The last attempt to cling to the wreckage of her former life, her former self – Dr. Elena Sokolova, neurologist, mistress of her domain. But as she said it, she knew: it was over. Her reign of rationality, control, belief in the power of knowledge without consequences – had ended.

She walked out of the office. The NeuroVerdict corridor greeted her with its eternal twilight and bluish glow. But now it seemed like a tunnel leading straight into darkness. The blue letters of the diagnosis burned before her eyes brighter than any light. *Huntington-Plus. Aggressive. 7 years. 99.9%.*

«I am already dead,» echoed inside, drowning out the beat of her own heart, which still pounded, doomed, in her frozen chest. She took a step. Then another. Moving on autopilot, carrying not knowledge, but the verdict, and the chilling understanding: the worst symptoms had already begun. Right now. In the silence of her shattered spirit.

Chapter 5: The First Cracks

Returning to work after the verdict was an act of monstrous violence against herself. Every step down the NeuroVerdict corridor echoed in the void that had formed inside her. The blue letters «Huntington-Plus» burned on her retina, overlaying everything she saw. The clinic, her kingdom of reason and control, had become a museum of future deformities, where every «Knowing» patient was an ominous harbinger of her own fate.

She tried to cling to routine. She drafted treatment plans, wrote discharge summaries, held consultations. But her gaze, honed over years, now saw not the symptoms of disease, but the symptoms of knowledge. And it was unbearable.

A patient, 32 years old, prognosis – multiple sclerosis, onset in 8 years. Outwardly – a healthy, athletic woman. But as Elena filled out her medical history, the woman, under the pretext of adjusting her skirt, suddenly stood up sharply and paced back and forth across the office. Her heels clicked on the floor with exaggerated precision. Then she sat down, unconsciously touching her fingertip to the tip of her nose. The finger-to-nose test. Checking coordination. Elena remembered how she herself, brushing her teeth that morning, had caught herself staring intently in the mirror: «Asymmetry? No? Maybe the left corner of the mouth is slightly off?» She saw the patient secretly clenching and unclenching her fist under the table, testing her strength. Saw her eyes darting feverishly around the room, as if searching for a hidden camera recording the first malfunction.

A young man with a prognosis of early Parkinson’s (like Leonid, like Artem) flinched at every rustle. «Doctor, just now, when I raised my arm… is that a tremor? Do you feel a tremor?» – he extended his arm, perfectly steady, but his eyes were full of panic. «I feel like I’m thinking slower. Is it happening? Alzheimer’s? Even though my prognosis is Parkinson’s… Maybe Prognosis was wrong? Or is this a new symptom?» His questions poured out in a torrent, sticky, paranoid. Elena answered in an even, professional tone: «No, I see no tremor. Cognitive functions are normal. It’s anxiety.» But inside, her own voice whispered: «What if mine has already started? This slight numbness in my fingers? Or is it just from clenching my fist?» Knowledge was turning every sensation into a potential harbinger of doom.

She observed how behavior changed. People who had been sociable yesterday now averted their eyes in the corridors, hurried to their wards or offices, avoiding unnecessary contact. Conversations in the on-call room died down when she appeared. Not hostilely. With caution. With the same feeling as looking at someone carrying an open vial of plague. Knowing. A leper. Her colleagues, even those who used to nod amiably, now confined themselves to dry, professional questions. She saw it in their eyes – the calculation. «Seven years. So, in five or six, we’ll need to find a replacement. Or sooner, if the Effect…» Social isolation was starting earlier than the «90-Day Rule.» It began the moment the verdict was pronounced.

And then there he was. The mirror. The living embodiment of the «Oracle Effect» that she couldn’t ignore.

Dr. Glebov.

She literally bumped into him rounding a corner near the neurosurgery department. Sergei Glebov. A brilliant neurosurgeon, whose hands were famed for their jeweler-like precision. The man with whom she had once performed the most complex tandem surgeries. He, too, had undergone Prognosis six months ago. Essential tremor. Benign, essentially, often hereditary, not directly life-threatening, but catastrophic for a surgeon. Prognosis: onset of noticeable tremor in 5—7 years. Time to restructure his career, move into consultations, teaching.

Sergei looked… haggard. His once impeccable coat was rumpled. His eyes were sunken, with dark circles. He was carrying a folder with X-rays.

«Sergei?» Elena stopped involuntarily. Her voice sounded slightly hoarse.

He flinched, recognized her. Something flickered across his face – confusion, shame, fear. «Elena. Hi.»

They stood in awkward silence. And then she saw it. His hands. They weren’t just trembling. They were shaking with a fine, uncontrolled tremor, as if under an electric current. Fingers drummed on the edge of the folder. Wrists quivered. This wasn’t just «slight shaking» that could be blamed on fatigue or coffee. This was a clear, pathological resting and postural tremor, already visible to the naked eye. A tremor that wasn’t due for five years.

«You… how are you?» Elena asked, unable to tear her gaze from his hands. Her own fingers clenched in her coat pockets.

He swallowed nervously, tried to press the folder to his chest to hide the shaking, but it only intensified. «Ah, well… Working. Trying. Mostly consulting. Operating…» He gave a bitter, short, soundless laugh. «You know, it’s hard. My hands… sometimes they fail me.» He looked at his own hands with such disgust and fear that Elena felt physically ill. «How will I look at mine?»

«But… Prognosis gave you time,» the words escaped her before she could think. Her voice was her own, clinical, analytical, but the question hung in the air like an accusation.

Sergei pressed his lips together. His eyes turned hard, empty. «Prognosis said: in five to seven years. It didn’t account for…» He stopped, took a sharp breath. «It didn’t account for the fact that knowing about it… it’s like living with a bomb. Every day. Every minute. I catch myself looking at my hands more often than at the monitor. Every cup of coffee is a test. Every signature is an exam. And you know what?» His voice broke into a whisper full of bitterness and helplessness. «The more afraid I am, the more they shake. It’s a vicious circle, Elena. A damned circle. And I’m trapped in it.» He jerked his head sharply, as if shooing away a nightmare. «Sorry. I have to go. Consilium.»

He walked past her, almost running, his back rigid, his hands, still pressed to the folder, betraying him with their fine, treacherous tremor. The scent of his familiar, expensive cologne mingled with the smell of fear and despair.

Elena remained standing in the middle of the corridor. The cold horror familiar since her verdict tightened her throat again. She had seen his tremor. Seen his fear. Seen how knowledge had created the symptom far ahead of schedule. Sergei Glebov wasn’t just a patient. He was a prophecy. A prophecy about herself.

She raised her own hand. Right there, in the brightly lit corridor, under the indifferent gaze of staff passing by. She held her hand out in front of her, fingers splayed. «Is it trembling?» She stared intently, until her eyes hurt. Her palm was steady. But… was it slightly tense? Or was it her imagination? She tried to touch the tip of her nose with her index finger. It hit the mark precisely. «Too slow?» She did the movement again. And again. Testing. Ritual. Paranoia.

Someone’s cautious cough made her start and drop her hand sharply, like someone caught stealing. A flush of shame flooded her face. She clenched her fists, feeling her nails dig into her palms. «It’s already started. With me. Right now.»

She almost ran to the nearest empty examination room, slamming the door shut behind her. Leaned her back against the cold wall, gulping air. Sergei Glebov’s hands swam before her eyes. His hands, which could no longer hold a scalpel. His eyes, full of the awareness of his own ruin. And her own hand, outstretched in a mute test of doom. The first cracks weren’t just appearing in the world around her. They were fissuring her own soul, her body, her profession. NeuroVerdict was no longer her fortress. It had become her laboratory of the end, and the patients – her fellow prisoners and mirrors. And the most terrible thing was understanding that her personal «Oracle Effect» was already in motion. And no one could stop it.

Chapter 6: Denial and Rage

The icy void after the verdict didn’t last long. It was replaced by a wave of such furious intensity that Elena scarcely recognized herself. She had always prided herself on her control, her rationality. Now, a volcano raged inside her, spewing molten lava of denial and rage.

Denial: «A mistake!» It began that night. In the silence of the empty apartment (Alexei was delayed on his business trip), while the digits «99.9%" seared her brain. She jumped out of bed, switched on the light, and stared at her hands under the harsh glare. Perfect. Steady. Her hands.

«No!» she hissed into the silence. «It can’t be. Algorithm error. Data glitch. Swapped samples!»

She paced the apartment frantically, switching on her terminal. Googled: «false positive Prognosis results,» «Verdict errors.» Found isolated cases, buried in official reports. Clung to them like a drowning woman to straws. «See! There! It happens!» screamed the inner voice. She reread her own genetic report (ordered herself three years ago, out of pure interest). There was nothing incriminating! No fatal CAG expansions! Verdict had made a mistake. Had to have made a mistake. She couldn’t be a carrier of this curse. Not her. Not Elena Sokolova. It was absurd!

The dam of denial broke. The lava of rage surged over the edge, burning everything in its path.

Rage at Verdict. Those cold, inhuman temple-towers, those smug algorithms that had arrogated the right to decide fates! Had they planted this diagnosis as a test case for their «infallibility»? Or was it punishment for her doubts? For daring to look behind the shiny facade? She imagined blowing up their server farms, the mirrored walls collapsing, burying their cynical top managers calmly counting profits from human despair. «Sellers of curses! Murderers!» she mentally screamed, clenching her fists until they hurt.

Rage at the World. At this unjust, cruel world where some were born with a ticket to hell in their genes, while others lived peacefully to a hundred. At the society that created this monstrous rift between «Knowing» and «Unknowing,» this system of stigma and fear. At her healthy colleagues who now looked at her warily. At Alexei, out there somewhere in his safe «unknowing,» blissfully unaware his wife was condemned. «Why ME?! Why not someone else?!» – a selfish, wild howl erupted from her core.

Rage at Herself. The most caustic, corrosive rage. For going for that damned test herself! For her stupid belief in «professional interest»! For failing to find convincing proof of the «Oracle Effect» sooner. For knowing now. Knowing and being unable to rip that knowledge from her brain like a splinter. For her own body, which might betray her, carrying this bomb. «Fool! Idiot! Your own fault!»

The rage boiled within her like poison. She caught herself slamming cupboard doors, throwing dishes into the sink with a clatter that made her flinch. At work, her voice became sharper; colleagues exchanged glances when she passed. She buried herself in data, not seeking truth, but hunting for an error in her own file, furiously searching for the slightest inaccuracy, inconsistency. But Verdict’s flawless algorithms left no loopholes. Their flawlessness was unbearable. Every digit, every symbol in her electronic chart burned her eyes.

The Breakdown: Betrayal of the Hands. It happened in her own office, after a patient appointment. The patient – an elderly man with benign tremor, an «Unknowing,» just in for a routine consultation. Everything went smoothly, rationally. But when he left, Elena felt a savage exhaustion and tension. She needed to input data into his electronic history – a standard procedure. She picked up the stylus, brought it to the tablet to sign the discharge summary with her flawless, confident signature.

And it happened. Her fingers wouldn’t obey. A slight tremor in her wrist, which she’d attributed to fatigue and rage, suddenly intensified. The stylus jerked in her hand, leaving a thick, crooked smear instead of the first letter. She froze. «What? No!»

She tried to erase the mistake, gripped the stylus tighter. Concentrated with all her might. «Just a signature. You’ve done this a thousand times!» But the harder she concentrated, the more she tried to control the movement, the worse it became. Her fingers felt wooden, her wrist trembling fine and fast. The stylus jerked again, leaving another absurd squiggle. She tried to put a dot – and made a thick blot.

«NO! STOP IT!» she screamed silently. Panic, cold and clammy, mixed with rage. She grabbed the stylus with both hands, trying to immobilize her wrist. But the tremor spread to her forearm. She stabbed the stylus at the screen – hard, sharp. An unpleasant scraping sound. Another blot.

«WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!» Her own cry, hoarse, inhuman, deafened her in the office silence. The rage pent up for days erupted. She hurled the stylus across the room. It hit the wall with a crack and snapped. The tablet followed, crashing to the floor, its screen dying darkly.

Elena jumped up, knocking over her chair. Her breath rasped in her throat. She clenched her treacherous hands into fists and started pounding them on the desk. Again and again. Dull thuds, with vicious force. The pain in her knuckles only fueled the fury.

«Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!» she screamed at her hands, at her body, at Verdict, at the world, at the unjust universe. Tears, hot and salty, streamed down her face, mingling with the rage, turning the scream into sobs. She hammered her fists on the desk until the pain became unbearable, until her strength gave out.

She sank to her haunches, hiding her face in hands shaking with sobs. Her hands… Always her tool, her pride, her symbol of control. Now they had betrayed her. Refused the simplest task. Trembling like Sergei Glebov’s. Like Leonid Petrov’s on that fateful day.

Fear or Effect?

The sobs subsided, leaving emptiness and a burning pain in her bruised knuckles. Elena sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, staring at her red, swollen knuckles. The tremor in her hands gradually quieted, replaced by a dull, throbbing ache. But the question hung in the air, heavier than any diagnosis:

What was that?

Fear? Hysteria? A mental breakdown from the unbearable burden of knowledge? Her rational mind, muffled but not broken, clung to that explanation. Severe stress. Panic attack. Psychogenic tremor. Perfectly explainable.