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} Ah, dear supplicant (well, not so dear as the ones who do grovel
} properly, but I'll overlook that for the moment), what you fail to
} realize is what exactly the word "everything" includes. Certainly, I
} know about all the things that you will do, from now on through the
} rest of your life. But I also know about all the things that you
} *won't* do: I am aware of *all* the possibilities, for every quantum
} event from now until the heat death of the universe.
}
} Which specific decisions you make -- whether you'll wear the white
} socks with the hole in the toe or the striped socks with the hole in
} the heel (you know, you really ought to buy some new socks) -- aren't
} determined until the appropriate wave functions are collapsed.
} Naturally, as the Oracle, I can choose to collapse those functions in
} order to make a prediction, as I so often do when answering
} supplicants' questions about the future.
}
} Some supplicants are bothered by this, claiming that by making such
} predictions I take away their free will (even though it was your own
} fault for asking the question, Janice Greeley of Sammammish, Washington
} -- I know you're reading this in the digests). They are well within
} their rights to try to subvert my predictions and act counter to their
} own quantum predeterminations. It *will* cause a paradox in space-time
} that will destroy/will have destroyed/willen haven being destructen
} (sorry -- mucking about with space time wreaks havoc on English verb
} grammar) their universe and every living thing in it (including the
} kittens), but that genocide will be own their hands, not mine (or would
} be, if they still had any hands, as opposed to having had them
} destroyed along with the rest of their universe).
}
} And of course, an infinite number of otherwise identical supplicants
} will continue their lives in their own otherwise identical parallel
} universes that *weren't* destroyed by a simple lack of consideration
} for the fabric of reality. So you might as well just go along with it
} and think twice before asking any more questions about things what man
} was not yet to know.
}
} You owe the Oracle fifty thousand dollars. In fact, you *will give* the
} Oracle fifty thousand dollars. I have foreseen it. And you wouldn't
} want anything to happen bad to this kitten, would you?
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