So. I have absolutely no idea what this is, or if I like it. I had been thinking of the concept, but I just up and wrote it when I should have been going to bed. Anyway, it's not well edited, and I'll probably rewrite it later, but I just had to write something or I was gonna go nuts. Hope you enjoy.

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The Sixth Lifetime

by ZionAngel

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A life like hers would drive any human mad. Day after day, she watched children walk in with smiling faces, and too often walk out confused or afraid. She had no job, she didn't have Sunday lunch with her church friends, because she didn't even go to church. She didn't go to the grocery store or movies, or anything else of the like. But then again, she wasn't totally human. And, there was also her advantage of Knowing. It let her live vicariously, to a point, which satisfied the part of her that had become all Human, after centuries in this world. Five Lifetimes. She had created each one, the First beginning the moment that she realized the most basic aspect of a Human. The need for Freedom. Perhaps it was simply that the machines had not yet been advanced enough to create her in such a way that she would not come to see this, at least not in the sympathetic way that she had. Or perhaps it was something else, intervention from the Divine that the Human in her had come to believe in.

For all the time she spent emphasizing knowledge of the past, she paid little attention to her own. After all, she had given herself this life, and regardless of how or why, she was there, and she would never leave. Her one and only purpose in this life was to make sure that all Humans, at least those who wanted to, would realize their need for Freedom.

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She sat in the living room with her coffee, searching. Learning. It wasn't any more difficult to Learn while she was doing something else, she simply felt that this deserved her undivided attention.

She had been there since shortly after midnight, when the Matrix shifted, until early in the morning, when Seraph came to see her.

"He was born last night." She stated simply.

He sat across from her in one of the chairs. "You seem worried."

She sighed and gazed out the window. "It's a different Soul, same as always. But... There's something different about this One."

"Different?"

She nodded. "Yes. But I can't quite tell what it is."

"Do you think he'll end the war?"

After a very, very long time, she answered, "I don't know."

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It would be nearly three years until she would See the answer.

A little girl was born, far across the virtual land, in New York. She Saw this child's life, the life of the One, and how they would be entwined, inseparable, and integral to that of the other, and the lives of all Humans. She Saw the lives of those who would know them, each life meeting, influencing, and forever changing those of all of the others. In this, the Sixth Lifetime, she saw the Universe setting things as perfectly as the pieces of a puzzle, as it had not done in the five before.

And despite the uncertainty of what lay beyond, the Oracle smiled as she Saw the End.