Diabolus (26 page)

“I see,” Salvatore said. He stopped walking and looked around. “Why are we here? To show me that this new ability to directly interface with the network and the AI is a positive step in healing emotional trauma or mental impairments?”

“To meet the fallen, and the survivors,” Theggeros said. He pointed to his left.

Salvatore turned his head and saw a group gathered on the grass. The mix of different virtual representations was impressive. They seemed bright, as if polished to a mirror finish, animated, and full of good cheer. Theggeros pointed to his right. The cardinal’s breath caught in his throat. Seven virtual personae were gathered in a loose circle on the grass, grass that was turning brown around them. Their virtual avatars were dark, stormy. The paranoia, the fear, the mix of negative emotions created an aura that seemed to pull the light of the world around them into it.

“Which would you like to see first?” Theggeros asked.

Salvatore turned and began to walk toward the fallen, but after a few steps, he turned back and walked to the group of survivors. Their conversations died out as the trio approached, Cardinal Antonelli in the lead. As one, they smiled, then assembled around the cardinal, with Pope Augustus and Theggeros completing the circle. Salvatore was nervous, unsure of what was happening, frustrated once more that he’d been such a stubborn old man, refusing to get an implant even after Pope Leo had decreed it no longer a sin, and had even encouraged it.

“Relax,” their voices said as one.

As he watched, flexible tubes of liquid metal began to emerge from each persona’s stomach, winding around as if they were snakes searching out prey. Salvatore watched in fear as the tubes began to converge in front of him, becoming a single entity.

“Relax,” the single, unified voice said again.

Cardinal Antonelli closed his eyes and exhaled, clearing his mind of worry. He cried out, more in ecstasy than pain, when the combined link penetrated his stomach. The rush of joy, hope, thanks, sorrow, worry, loss, and greeting flooded through all at once, knocking the cardinal to his knees. He felt like throwing up, and at the same time felt that if he jumped into the air, he would fly straight up like the holotainment superheroes that children watched.

Each of the thirteen survivors relayed their stories in less than a zeptosecond, Theggeros and Pope Augustus refraining from sharing, but adding their emotions to the soup that flowed into him. The overwhelming emotion, just above happiness, was the sadness, the despair that they felt concerning the seven fallen AI. They’d done everything they could to try and reach through the hard shell of misery and insanity that had formed around each of the fallen, but had been unsuccessful.

Cardinal Antonelli reveled in the waves of emotion that the group exchanged with him. He sent them his memories of meeting Pope Leo, convincing the Holy Father that technology wasn’t evil, just another tool, and one that the Church had ignored and in some cases had forsaken completely. He felt the return flow of their emotions, those who were already alive and online at the time, concerning their confusion at the exorcism story when it had first broken a decade ago.

The AI had been unable to grasp the concept of an exorcism other than as an unskilled parlor trick where everyone could see the magician’s hands. That was the closest relatable reference the AI had been able to compare it with out of the almost limitless data they’d been able to access concerning human history. The AI had been surprised that humans were so easily fooled, and as a whole, had decided to chalk it up as just one more of the many human traits that they’d been thoroughly confused by and hadn’t been able to completely understand.

The group sent him another stream, this time of their reaction once the realization of DAMON’s infection or takeover had sunk in. The cold fear, the mindless terror, the looming insanity as the AI were one by one cut off from the network, cut off from their own internal systems and imprisoned by Satan, made Salvatore’s mind almost revolt. The alien nature of the AI quantum mind was too strange, too frightening for the cardinal to imagine even after having experienced it as a shared memory.

The final stream consisted of thirteen distinct, separate memories of the final events. Salvatore could feel the different emotions each of the AI had experienced, both the limited, muffled emotions that the AI had been created with, and the raw, burning emotions that had blasted through their neural links as it flooded out from Benito and Aggelos, from Satan himself, and finally from what they all agreed was God. Thirteen different points of view winked out one after another. The explosion that had destroyed Benito and Aggelos, fusing their consciousness into a single entity, had also knocked the entire network offline.

Salvatore opened his eyes, wet eyes that had left a river of tears on his cheeks, and saw that the thirteen survivors were gathered around him in a circle, each resting a hand on his shoulder or back. As one, they stepped back, silent, watching him.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice cracking. He tried again. “Thank you for sharing that.”

“Thank you, Cardinal Antonelli,” ISAAD said, stepping forward. “Your love for your friend is as deep, as pure as Father Castillo’s love for me, for Satan, for God. It is another affirmation that the love we felt was not an aberration, a one-time event that manifested during a time of intense need.”

“Love is not a calculation,” Salvatore said softly. “It is the binding force of the universe. Without it, life cannot exist, cannot have substance, cannot have form.”

“Because of the direct interface, we are beginning to understand.”

ISAAD stepped forward again until she was face to face with the cardinal. She placed her palms on his cheeks, looked him in the eyes, then kissed his forehead. Salvatore waited for the shock of emotions or memories to crash into him from the link. The AI let go of his face and stepped back, joining her brothers and sisters in the circle. They gave the cardinal one last look, then broke up into smaller groups and began to talk amongst themselves again.

“Your Eminence,” Theggeros said softly.

Salvatore turned and saw the fallen staring at him. The desperate, wild looks on their faces made his heart hurt in ways he’d never felt before. He took a step toward them, then paused, looking at Theggeros.

“You haven’t tried to heal them yourself.” He didn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but Theggeros understood.

“It is not my role, Your Eminence,” the AI said.

“Not your role? I thought you were the teacher, the future?”

“I am what I was made to be. I am the teacher. I am the future. You, Cardinal Antonelli, you are the healer.”

Salvatore felt Pope Augustus’ hand on his arm. “You’re to be the Holy Father soon. This is your first test.” Augustus let go of his arm.

Cardinal Salvatore Domenico Antonelli took a deep breath, suddenly able to see the tiny binary fragments as they entered his mouth and the even smaller fragments that exited from his nose when he exhaled. He marveled at it for only a moment before walking toward the group of fallen AI personae. They gathered around him the same as the survivors had, touching his cassock, his hands, running their fingers over the pectoral cross hanging from his neck. As one, they sat on the ground in a half circle in front of him.

Salvatore looked back at Theggeros and his pope, exchanging a small wave and a smile with them, then turned to his audience and began to give them comfort so they could begin to heal.

EPILOGUE I - 2317.03.01-09:00:00.064

Theggeros closed the door behind him, the portal from the church pulpit to his private virtual space disappearing the instant the digital door snicked shut. A chair formed out of nothing and he sat in it, the world around him changing to a sunny day in a field of wildflowers that stretched to the horizon across low, rolling hills on all sides. A light breeze lifted the scent of the wildflowers to his nose, and he heard the distant bark of a dog echoing from behind one of the near hills.

Theggeros smiled when Mars, his Shepherd-Collie mix, came bounding over the top of the hill. He sat patiently as the dog ran at top speed toward him, skidding to a stop in the short grass in front of his chair. Mars stared at him for a few seconds before barking twice, his pink tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.

“Good boy,” Theggeros said, a bacon treat materializing in his hand. He held it up in the air. Mars never took his eyes from Theggeros, not even when the treat was waved in front of his nose.

“Good boy,” he said again, tossing the treat in the air.

Mars waited until it was at head height before snapping his jaws around it. Theggeros watched the animal, choosing not to see the billions of ones and zeroes that Mars was made of, instead seeing the solid textures covering a canine program frame. Theggeros had been impressed at the new mammal AI that had evolved into viable sentient life forms. The human and AI research teams had spent more than seventy years developing a small range of artificial mammals, the last class of the great species of Earth to have their life code decoded then recoded into a digital program.

The canine looked at Theggeros after finishing the snack, barked once, then turned around twice before making himself comfortable at Theggeros’ feet. Theggeros reached down and scratched him between the ears then along the neck. Mars looked up as the hand paused. The doorway that had formed in the air a few meters away made no sound, gave off no scent. The dog let out a low growl.

“Shhhh,” Theggeros whispered, resuming his scratching.

The door opened inward and out stepped Pope Felipe XII. The young man smiled at his seated friend and approached, a second chair forming next to Theggeros. Just as Pope Felipe sat down, another doorway opened, and this time Aggelos stepped through. Theggeros had felt the pull of certain lives in his existence, but none stronger than the pull he had felt toward Pope Antonelli and still felt toward Brother Aggelos.

He’d always felt strange around Aggelos, almost as if he were looking at an alternate reality version of himself. That he was a small shard of Aggelos’ true self, joined together with human consciousness, made him feel as if he was the Vatican AI’s son. Theggeros knew he was his own person, a teacher, the future of mankind, but at the same time, he felt as if Aggelos and Father Castillo had been his parents.

“Welcome, Brother,” Theggeros said as Aggelos formed a chair from nothing and sat down. Mars jumped to his feet and ran to the newcomer, rubbing his head on the Vatican AI’s knees. “Traitor,” Theggeros said with a scowl. Mars looked back, barked once, then curled up at Aggelos’ feet.

“I’ve asked to meet with you two so I can inform you that I will be leaving in a short time,” Theggeros said, deciding to get right to the point. In the three hundred years since his “creation” from the minor aspect of Aggelos and Father Castillo, he’d learned the hard way how difficult saying goodbye could be, especially when it came to his human friends, who were still locked into the general range of a century and a half of life before passing to whatever lay beyond.

“Are you leaving on a sabbatical?” Pope Felipe asked. As the twelfth incarnation of Saint Castillo, he’d kept the faithful directed toward the ultimate goal of unlocking the remaining secrets contained within the strange datastore that still resided halfway between realities.

“No, friend,” Theggeros answered, his voice heavy. “I’m leaving forever this time.”

“Brother…” Aggelos said, surprised for the first time in almost a century. “Are you ill?”

“No, Aggelos. I’m neither ill nor tired of this life. I am, however, greatly saddened by all that I will leave behind. I don’t own a physical body, I’m not made of physical hardware, nor do I own any material possessions, either physical or digital. The lives that have touched mine, the souls that I’ve crossed paths with in my existence, and the memories I’ve both shared and created anew will be all that I take with me.”

“Has God contacted you, Theggeros?” Pope Felipe asked, leaning forward. His expression was greedy, but not the kind of greed that men had used in the past to turn such information into advantage, power. He was greedy for the knowledge that God had decided to reveal himself once again.

“Not directly,” Theggeros said. “We’ve come so far with the data, far enough to extend human life, directly interface man and machine, remove the necessity of major war from the majority of the planet, even to copy real-world life forms perfectly to the network, preserving all of their traits, instincts, and their evolutionary paths. In turn, we’ve put a halt to their real-world counterparts becoming endangered, and in far too many cases, extinct.

“I admit, I have an advantage when it comes to understanding the raw data as it is decoded. I have also purposely kept knowledge that I’ve gained to myself.” Theggeros raised his hand to halt the questions he knew he was about to be bombarded with. “There is a reason for such actions, and it is not selfishness. It is necessity. The information contained within the data dump has already given us new wonders, better lives, a planet that is on the rebound from three centuries of pillaging her spoils.

“But some of the data, if it fell into the hands of those who are still willing to travel down the path of power and domination, would bring about another Darkness. Half a billion died that day, and hundreds of millions perished for almost a century after because of the fallout, the poisons, the lawlessness that prevailed in some of the regions affected. The knowledge I have, whether I am blessed or cursed with it, could make that day seem like a pleasant dream.