[RE-ENG] What? My “Information Club” is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
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Chapter 2.2 : The Oracle
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[Location: Sector Delta : Central Jakarta, Menteng — Madeia Tower, 80th Floor Penthouse (6.1751° S, 106.8272° E)]
[Time: Day -29 / 11:30 PM]
[Temperature: 18°C (Climate Controlled)]
The tallest building in the capital city was an eighty-story monolith of black glass and steel that towered over the smog-choked sky near the Monas Monument.
It was the Madeia Tower.
To high society, the name "Madeia" was an enigma shrouded in fear. No investigative journalist had discovered the source of her wealth. No rival syndicate survived an aggressive takeover of her assets. She appeared from a dark alley a decade ago, a phantom who established a corporate dynasty with terrifying power, bankrupting old-money families.
Currently, on the eightieth floor, bathed in the glow of the city lights below, stood Ravena Madeia.
In the encrypted forums of the deep web, she was known by a different title: Seraph. The Holy Foundation. The Faith.
She stood by the panoramic windows, holding a crystal glass half-filled with a vintage 1945 Pinot Noir. The wine was the color of blood. She wore a silk nightgown that draped over her statuesque figure, her golden eyes reflecting the chaotic grid of Jakarta’s traffic.
Outside, the world suffered. The ambient temperature of the city had spiked to a suffocating forty degrees Celsius despite it being near midnight. It was a lethal heatwave triggering mass power outages and riots in the lower-income districts.
Inside Ravena’s penthouse, the air was chilled, purified, and silent.
Four years.
For four grueling years, Ravena had been a disciple of the entity known as The Architect. When she stumbled upon the Information Club, she had been a woman searching for patterns in a chaotic world. She found her Sovereign instead.
She did not keep the Architect's prophecies to herself. She harnessed his omniscience. Ravena decoded every cryptic riddle The Architect dropped about orbital mechanics or geological shifts. She repackaged the raw truth of the impending apocalypse and delivered it to the world's elite.
She disguised the Architect's mythology as her own "spiritual visions" and "macro-economic analytics."
She recalled a specific incident two years prior. The Architect had casually posted a riddle about the "weeping of the golden fields." While the other forum members debated the poetic meaning, Ravena cross-referenced his underlying atmospheric data and realized he was predicting an unseasonal drought in the Eastern European agricultural belt.
She had invited the CEO of the largest agrarian conglomerate and the Minister of Trade to this penthouse. They sat in the designer leather chairs, drinking her wine, looking at her with a mix of skepticism and lust. She calmly advised them to short-sell their wheat futures and hoard synthetic fertilizers, claiming she felt a "shift in the earth's spiritual current."
Three months later, the drought hit exactly as The Architect had predicted. The global wheat market collapsed. Those who mocked her went bankrupt and threw themselves off skyscraper balconies. The CEO and the Minister, however, survived, raking in trillions of dollars from the orchestrated market crash.
From that day forward, Ravena Madeia was no longer just a billionaire. To the elite, she was an Oracle.
Over the last four years, the most powerful men and women on many countries, oil tycoons, hedge fund managers, defense contractors, and foreign diplomats, made secret pilgrimages to the eightieth floor of the Menteng-Madeia Tower. They sat in her presence, trembling, begging for a fraction of her foresight. She guided their investments, steered political campaigns, and orchestrated global supply chains, all by following the fictional world-building lore dropped by a starving novelist.
Every individual who followed her spiritual guidance prospered. She held the leashes of the world's economy in her elegant hands.
*BZZZZT. BZZZZT. BZZZZT.*
The vibration of cellular devices broke the pristine silence of the penthouse.
Ravena turned her head. Resting on her imported marble desk were five encrypted satellite phones. They lit up simultaneously, vibrating against the stone.
She walked over to the desk, her bare feet silent against the Persian rug. She glanced at the caller IDs flashing on the screens.
*Caller 1: Director of the Global Energy Syndicate.*
*Caller 2: The Prime Minister.*
*Caller 3: CEO of Pharmaceuticals.*
They were panicking. The unprecedented heatwave was destroying their offshore assets, drying up their reservoirs, and causing their stock prices to plummet. They were calling their Oracle, begging for her spiritual guidance to navigate this crisis.
Ravena looked at the buzzing phones. Her golden eyes narrowed with an icy disgust.
To the billions starving in the slums below, the names flashing on these screens belonged to the untouchable masters of the Elites. In Ravena's eyes, they were a dying herd of livestock.
"Pathetic,"
Ravena whispered, her voice dripping with venom.
"For four years, I allowed you to gorge yourselves on the crumbs that fell from His table. I made you kings and emperors, solely so you would possess the capital required to build my sanctuary when the time came. You thought you were the masters of your own fate."
She reached out and, with a sweep of her hand, knocked all five phones off the marble desk. They clattered into a wastebasket. She didn't bother to turn them off. Let them ring until the batteries died.
"Your purpose is fulfilled,"
She said to the empty room.
"The milking is done. Now, you may proceed to the slaughterhouse with the rest of the ignorant masses."
The elites did not matter anymore. The global economy did not matter anymore. Nothing in this decaying reality mattered except for the truth delivered to her hands earlier this afternoon.
Ravena turned her back on the desk and walked toward the center of her private study.
Resting on a pedestal illuminated by a singular spotlight, was a climate-controlled glass display case. The secure casing utilized by national museums to protect priceless historical artifacts.
Inside the bulletproof glass, resting on a cushion of dark velvet, was the physical artifact she had recovered from a forgotten transit hub hours ago: *Page 5 - The Chronos Log.*
Ravena pressed her manicured fingertips against the glass, her breathing slowing as a wave of fanaticism washed over her.
She possessed eyes trained to evaluate billion-dollar artworks and antiquities. She knew exactly what she was looking at. The paper inside the case was not ancient parchment. It was not woven from exotic materials. It was standard A4 printer paper. The ink was slightly faded, bearing the micro-imperfections of a commercial inkjet printer. The QR code in the corner was a modern, digital contrivance.
To a skeptic, this physical presentation would have proven that the document was a hoax created by an ordinary person in a cheap apartment.
Ravena's mental state was one of religious delirium. She did not see any cheap printouts, what She witnessed was a divine humility.
"How magnificent,"
Ravena breathed, her eyes welling with reverent tears.
"To possess the blueprints of the cosmos, to hold the exact mathematical sequence of the apocalypse ... and yet, He chooses the fragile medium of this dying era to deliver His gospel."
She fell to her knees before the glass case, ignoring the cold marble biting into her skin.
"He is so far above our mortal comprehension that He prints the fate of the earth on common paper and leaves it in the dirt for His chosen to find. It is the ultimate test of faith. He wanted to see who would look past the dirt and recognize the divine."
She bowed her head, her forehead resting against the cool glass. The Chronos Log was flawless, and the sky was going to bruise.
"I have seen the truth, Architect,"
Ravena prayed, her voice a zealous whisper.
"The others ... they understand your power, but they do not understand your divinity. I shall be the holy foundation upon which your new world is built. I will prepare The Ark for you."
*Click. Clack.*
The soundproofed oak doors of the penthouse study swung open.
Ravena did not flinch, nor did she rise from her kneeling position. She simply tilted her head, her golden eyes locking onto the intruder.
It was Clara, one of the maid that belong to Madeia household.
Clara was a woman in her early twenties, a professional who had been trained by the royal households of European monarchs. Yet, as she stepped onto the plush carpet of the study, carrying a polished silver tray bearing a fresh bottle of wine and imported cheeses, her body was visibly trembling.
The silver tray rattled faintly, the crystal glasses clinking against each other.
Clara, also knew the truth about her mistress. She knew that the elegant woman kneeling before the glass case was the same monster who had casually ordered the financial ruin and 'disappearance' of a federal judge simply because he had spoken over her during a dinner party. Clara had watched billionaires weep at Ravena's feet.
Right now, the most powerful woman in the hemisphere was kneeling in subservience to a piece of printer paper. To Clara, that was more terrifying than any execution order. If a monster like Ravena Madeia knelt ... what kind of being was she praying to?
"M-Madam Madeia,"
Clara stammered, her eyes downcast.
"Forgive my intrusion. I have brought your evening refreshments."
Ravena pushed herself up from the marble floor. She smoothed the front of her silk gown, the fanatical warmth in her eyes freezing over into a mask of authoritarian ice. The Oracle had returned.
"Put it on the side table, Clara,"
Ravena commanded softly.
Clara hurriedly complied. She stepped back, clasping her hands tightly in front of her apron.
"Will there be anything else for the night, Madam?"
Ravena walked over to the window, looking out at the sprawling, doomed city.
"Yes. There has been a change in the schedule. The timeline has been accelerated,"
Ravena said, her tone conversational but carrying the weight of an executioner's axe.
"I require you to mobilize the internal security detail. You will initiate the eviction protocols for floors fifty through seventy-nine."
Clara gasped. She looked up, her eyes wide with shock.
"Madam ... floors fifty through seventy-nine? But ... those are the ultra-premium residential tiers. The tenants currently occupying those floors include the CEO of the National Bank, three foreign ambassadors, and the royal family of—"
"I did not ask for a census of the livestock, Clara,"
Ravena interrupted, her voice calm but carrying a drop in temperature that made the maid flinch.
"I gave you a mandate. Their leases are terminated effective immediately. They have twelve hours to vacate the premises and remove their personal belongings. If they refuse, authorize the security detail to utilize lethal force and throw their bodies into the street."
Clara swallowed hard, her mind struggling to process the legal and political war this order would trigger. Evicting the most powerful people in the country by gunpoint would invite the military to siege the tower.
"Y-Yes, Madam,"
Clara bowed deeply.
"And ... what shall we do with the thirty floors once they are emptied?"
Ravena turned around, her golden eyes reflecting the city lights.
"We strip them down to the concrete,"
Ravena declared.
"I want the internal walls demolished. You will coordinate with our shell companies to import hydroponic farming rigs, high-capacity geothermal generators, and industrial water filtration systems. You will reinforce the exterior glass with blast-plating."
Ravena walked toward Clara, stopping inches away from the trembling maid. She reached out and traced the line of Clara's jaw.
"The sky is going to fall, my dear Clara,"
Ravena whispered.
"The world as you know it is going to drown in a sea of black snow and freezing death. The dying herd down there will tear each other apart for a crust of bread. But we ... we shall be safe. We are building The Ark."
Clara stared into Ravena's eyes. The fanaticism was infectious. The certainty in Ravena's voice bypassed Clara's logical mind and planted a seed of primal fear in her heart. If Madam Madeia said the sky was falling, then the sky was already dead.
"Ho-how ...?"
Clara whispered.
"How? Because he gave us this salvation!"
Ravena smiled. She turned her gaze back toward the spotlight illuminating the cheap printer paper inside the museum case.
"The Architect,"
Ravena answered, her voice laced with religious reverence.
"He has drawn the blueprint of the new world. And I have been chosen to build its foundation. Do not fail me in this, Clara. We have thirty days until the judgment."
Clara dropped to her knees, mimicking the posture she had seen her mistress take mere minutes ago.
"I will not fail you, Madam,"
Clara vowed, her voice shaking with desperate faith.
"I will clear the tower."
"Good,"
Ravena murmured, turning her attention back to the sweltering city of Jakarta. She raised her glass of Pinot Noir in a silent, solitary toast to the heavens.
"I shall prepare everything for you, My Architect."
[note: Please don't mind me about these blank pages; I'm burnt out just reworking this chapter Imao, and I'll update them later if I feel better and want to.]
›› To Be Continued ‹‹
—KS