Oracle by Nicola Mody (G)

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

And with this one last fanfare, I'll bid you adieu.

Fandom: BLAKES 7
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: vilakins
Author Website: unknown
Why this must be read:

[Disclaimer: I'm mentioned in the author's notes, so I'm not entirely an uninvolved party. However, as my involvement was limited to reading it and liking it, I think I'm still a neutral one, and it's still great fic.]

This is another small character study, taking up the implications of canon where canon itself failed to go. Bridging Redemption and Shadow, it picks up on Orac's self-serving trickery, the technology of his carrier waves, and Cally's character background, very neatly. Vila becomes suspicious of a plothole dangerous inconsistency in Orac's story and Cally takes steps to solve the problem.

Now, there is a subset of fandom that's rather anti-Orac, and not without some reason. I'm not one of them; I love the little plexiglass monster with his Christmas lights. But it's still rewarding to see him get his comeuppance, for once. To come over all pretentious for a moment, if Orac is the trickster character, the unreliable voice of fate in computer form, then here we have Cally as the show's hand of justice taking him in line, even if only temporarily, as later events show. To be a little less pretentious, but only a little, there aren't many stories that actually pick up on this specific aspect of Cally's training, perhaps because the series itself never explained what exactly she meant by it or how she used it, and only a few more that develop or use her alienness, so this is a rare demonstration of both her technical skills and her alien ones, and it's all the more rewarding as both anticipation and payback for the events of "Shadow".

"Of course. The acquisition of data and the prediction of future events therefrom--"

"Yes, yes, I understand that and I have worked out what Orac is short for. However, as Vila has so rightly pointed out, you could have advised us on how to avoid the whole situation. Instead you chose to hide vital information to show how clever you were, at the risk of our lives. We could have died back there."

"That would not have altered the outcome I predicted."

Cally controlled her fury with an effort. "I am a telepath, Orac. Are you aware of that?"

"It was irrelevant in this case."

"Ah, but it is not now. To do your calculations and not be the size of a spaceship, you use another dimension."

Oracle