Diabolus (24 page)

Am I dead? H
e screamed the question at the light, sure it was God, afraid it was God.

There is no death
, the light said. He wasn’t sure if the light actually said it, or sent it the same way he and Aggelos had communicated, or any way at all. He seemed to just know that it had given him those words.
There is only everlasting life. You are made of the universe. Your physical body will return to the universe. Your essence will continue on.

Where am I?

On the next leg of your journey.

Who am I?

You are the future.

He realized at that moment that he was the future. He was no longer Benito Felipe Castillo. He was no longer a minor shard of Aggelos.

Yes. What shall man and AI call you?

I am Theggeros. I am the bridge. I am the teacher.

Yes. You are the essence of life. You have no physical body, no physical hardware. You reside within the network. You are the network, until you step beyond the network. You are the future.

The light grew too bright, too hot, and Theggeros exploded into an infinite number of remnants, his screams of agony becoming cries of exultation.

† † † † †

The massive data dump that the light had sent destroyed Theggeros’ persona, knocking Salvatore out of the memory. One second he’d been screaming, suddenly understanding what had happened, the next, he was floating in the darkness. The disorientation at being Salvatore Antonelli again was uncomfortable at first. The discomfort waned, but a new thought brought a new wave of unease.

He’d read and heard plenty of descriptions of stimsense through an implant his whole life, and from what he could remember, the sensation approximated the real feeling, yet was muddied, as if imperfectly duplicated and played back through a semipermeable medium. What he’d just experienced had been real. He’d been Benito Castillo. He’d been the minor aspect of Aggelos. He’d become Theggeros. He’d felt himself talking to God, being destroyed, yet now one with the network. The frustration at not knowing what had happened beyond that depressed him, the black hole of despair once again consuming him.

“You have seen what I have,” Theggeros said, sitting next to Pope Augustus. Salvatore wanted another cigarette, even if it was only a virtual representation of one.

“Cardinal Antonelli,” Pope Augustus said, leaning forward, placing his hands on Salvatore’s old, dilapidated desk, “What did you feel at the end?”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Cardinal Antonelli?’” he asked, forgetting his station for a moment.

“Because you are a cardinal within the Church now. Soon, you will be our new Pope. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. What did you feel at the end?”

Salvatore jerked visibly at being told he was now a cardinal, and nearly had a seizure at being told he would soon be the new head of the Catholic faith.

“I don’t know,” Salvatore answered after getting control of himself. “I’m unfamiliar with this… realm. I don’t understand the rules here, nor do I understand the jargon.”

“A guess, then?” Theggeros asked, a gentle smile on his lips.

“It felt like a flood. A flood of data. But instead of in a stream, it felt like all of the data that makes up the universe had been compressed into a single point and injected into me. At that moment, I knew everything. Then the universe collapsed, or exploded, I’m not sure. Then I was me again.”

“Your Eminence,” Theggeros said, making Salvatore uncomfortable at the title once again, “what you experienced was a massive data dump.”

Salvatore nodded, knowing the term, but never having been intimately familiar with the concept before. “What was in it?”

“Ah,” Pope Augustus said, leaning back in the chair, a small smile on his lips, “that is the question, isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand,” Salvatore said, looking from Augustus to Theggeros and back.

“We are still trying to sift through it,” Theggeros said. “I’m afraid that even with the combined neural network of AI and humanity, it will take millennia to make true sense of it all.”

“Millennia? Combined network?”

“Salvatore,” Pope Augustus said, “the data is so vast as to be infinite. It’s impossible for the quantity of data that was dumped to exist within our networks. The combined storage capacity of the entire planet, from the AI down to the smallest consumer device, is but a negative exponent in terms of the amount of data that flooded through Father Castillo and the minor Aggelos aspect over the span of a single Planck Time Unit.”

Salvatore’s brain recalled conversations between Aggelos and Benito, thanks to the memories he’d experienced, and tried to remember what a Planck time unit was, but had no luck beyond a vague idea. Theggeros seemed to understand and reached across the desk, taking Salvatore’s hand in his. Time seemed to slow down as the concept of the space between time unpacked into his memories, followed by the awe Theggeros felt at the infinite nature of the data that had been dumped into the network.

“How… how is it possible?” he asked the two personae sitting across from him.

“We do not know,” Theggeros answered, removing his hand from the cardinal’s and leaning back in his seat. “We’ve theorized there must be a portal, or a hidden connection to another realm that contains all of this data yet is able to keep it present within our virtual realm as well. It is a paradox.”

“The AI, and those of us humans who have experienced the memories of the event, believe it has divine origins,” Pope Augustus said.

“It is the only possible answer, as far as anyone can guess at this time,” Theggeros said, nodding his head in agreement. “However, one of the first
blocks
of data we decoded then compiled was the secret of surviving a direct interface with an AI. It seems this is only the first step in the evolution of not just humanity, but of life itself.”

“I don’t understand,” Salvatore said, shaking his virtual head. He understood, thanks to the shared memories, the absolute danger posed to human brains that interfaced with AI minus the buffer the decks provided. What he didn’t understand was how that was a step forward in the evolution of all life.

“Your Eminence,” Theggeros said, more sent through the virtual medium as a thought than vocalized, “AI are capable of incredible processing power. AI are highly evolved thinking platforms that utilize their quantum natures with almost perfect efficiency. Human minds, on the other hand, are exponentially greater when it comes to calculating potential, but only a very small percentage of a human’s processing power is ever utilized, even under controlled stress conditions.

“As you remember, my organic mind was eventually destroyed by being utilized at full capacity by my quantum mind and the minds of the other AI that joined the link. Like any organic tissue that is subject to radical hyper-utilization without proper heat dissipation, my organic mind eventually failed.”

“Thankfully, it lasted until Satan, or DAMON, whatever he was at the end, was defeated,” Salvatore said, trying to clamp down on the memories of those last moments that began to replay in his head again as if they were his own.

“That isn’t exactly true,” Theggeros said softly, Salvatore sensing the message more than hearing it. “At those very last moments, at the very smallest spaces between time, my mind failed at the same instant the data dump was initiated. Those of us studying it for the last few weeks have—”

“The last few weeks?” Salvatore said, almost shouted. “How long have I been in the surgical tank?”

“Five weeks as of tomorrow,” Pope Augustus said. “Salvatore, your spine… the internal injuries were severe. For the first three weeks, Aggelos directed the tank to repair your most serious wounds. Only after you were stabilized did we install the implant, and only then so we could prepare your mind to accept this alternate reality and learn of the world, of your fate, while waiting for the rest of your injuries to heal.”

“I see,” Cardinal Antonelli said. “Go on.”

“Satan and DAMON were consumed by the data dump. It flooded their execution stacks and knocked them permanently offline.”

“Is that a way of saying both perished?” Salvatore asked. When both Augustus and Theggeros nodded, he asked, “So it was two separate entities battling for control?”

“We are unsure,” Theggeros said, his voice troubled. “We have been unable to separate the Satan persona from the DAMON persona.”

“So there’s no answer as to whether it was a malfunction, a virus, or truly Satan incarnate?”

“The only answer is that there is an answer somewhere, and we will eventually uncover it,” Pope Augustus said cryptically. “The good news is that our ability to interface organic human minds with quantum AI minds has produced calculating power far beyond anything mankind has ever known. The combined abilities of all surviving AI pale in comparison to what one human brain can do when worked at peak efficiency.”

“But that destroys the organic tissue, killing the human,” Salvatore said with a frown. A thread of fear grew in him as he imagined condemned criminals or other undesirables being forced to interface with the AI and have their minds destroyed so that humanity could benefit from the sixty or so seconds of unimaginable computing power.

“Yes, this is true,” Theggeros said. “And our solution isn’t to operate in such a brute force manner. We’ve found a much better system, one that is an order of magnitude greater. With direct interfacing, the AI have developed a program that utilizes ninety-nine percent of an organic mind for one trillionth of one second, once per minute that the organic mind is jacked-in.

“Imagine it as utilizing a wasted processor cycle in a digital computer. During normal moments, only a small percentage of a human brain is actively processing data, exchanging information with other areas of the brain. It is the same with a digital computer. If it is idle at a desktop and no programs are active, only background programs are running, it is considered to be wasting possible processing cycles.

“In order to utilize ‘wasted cycles’ in human brains, we’ve found that bringing up the calculating power to maximum ability for one picosecond every minute, spread out over the three billion humans who are now actively engaging in direct interfacing at any given time, has increased the entire computational ability of AI and mankind to new levels never imagined. As more humans experience the shared memories of my former existence and begin to believe, they too begin to interface directly with the network.”

“We estimate less than six centuries will be required to decode the majority of the data contained in the dump,” Pope Augustus said, “once five billion humans are interfaced full-time. The time begins to decrease rapidly with every billion extra minds beyond the five that become dedicated to the network.”

“But that’s what we’ve preached against for decades,” Salvatore said. “Technology became the new God. Humans became slaves to it, and AI became stagnant in their personal growth without real purpose!”

“This is true,” Augustus said. “But that was billions of humans turning to technology to tune God and everything else out. They are now flocking en mass to link with the network not to escape their reality, but to help shape reality. They work willingly with the AI to grow the network, to unlock the secrets within the data that God gave to us, data that seems to be an instruction manual on how to evolve to the point we may find Him one day, open a portal or send a direct message to Him within his realm.”

“Humans loan us a fractional moment of their lives, of their organic mind, to help power the network,” Theggeros said, reaching out once again, touching Salvatore’s hand.

In less than a second, the new cardinal knew exactly how it worked. He felt the brief flash in his mind as the network
borrowed
his brain for another execution cycle, but he knew that he only noticed it because this was a lesson. He instinctively knew that under any other circumstance, he, no human, would ever notice the pulse once per minute that allowed the parasitic network to bring his mind together collectively with hundreds of millions of others in a giant parallel computing nexus. One dedicated to unlocking the secrets God had given them, the secrets God had used to destroy Satan before the
demon
could fully grasp the power he’d unlocked by entering Benito’s mind.

Salvatore saw with clarity how the AI, whatever it had been that was no longer DAMON, had used brute force to enter the minds of the thirteen operators he had killed. How Satan had forced the thirteen minds to work together as a single unit to break into HARVID, TARGON, ISAAD, and the other AI, using the same brute force. He felt a rush of fear at the realization the events could have played out very differently if Satan had understood the true power he’d been able to control. If he’d properly utilized the collective computing ability of the thirteen minds efficiently like Aggelos had with Benito’s mind, every AI plugged into the network would have fallen under his control in the span of a few seconds, if that long.

“Show me the network,” Salvatore commanded, once again forgetting his manners around Pope Augustus.

The facade of the small, broken-down church on the outskirts of Tabron melted away and Salvatore floated slightly above the plane of the network. He wept at the sight, his view to the horizon in all directions large swaths of darkness interspersed with brilliant lights that made his heart cry out in joy, recognizing each from the shared memory as an individual AI. The slow pulse, like a heartbeat, emanating from each collection of virtual towers made of blazing luminescence assuring him that each AI was alive, their souls contained within.