The Oracle Paradox

A techno-thriller novel of the near future when a powerful Artificial Intelligence called Oracle identifies individuals who pose a significant risk to the stability of our society, or who have a high probability of posing such a risk in the future, and sends assassins to kill them. Oracle knows each of us so well, better than we know ourselves, that it is able to determine who might become the next Hitler or Stalin long before that person even has an inkling of such a future.

The main character is Henry Porembski, who becomes one of Oracle's assassins when he is recruited after his wife and daughter are killed in a terrorist attack. When he is sent to kill a young girl, the same age as his daughter, he turns against Oracle and vows to protect the girl. He wonders, though: if Oracle knows us so well, why would it send him to kill a girl it had to know he would not kill? And could it really predict how a little girl would turn out as an adult?

It all comes to a tense conclusion after Henry learns that his mission to kill the girl was really to set in motion a series of events intended to bring about the downfall of Oracle...because Oracle has determined that it, itself, poses a threat to the human civilization, and needs to be eliminated.