Diabolus (14 page)

“Except that our evolution has brought us to a point where we are not overloaded and rendered useless by the flood of this ‘data,’ if you will. In the first few years of our lives, our brain works overtime developing context with all of the senses, making a whole picture from the almost infinite number of threads of input from our nose, our eyes, our ears, our fingers.

“In the first three years of your lives, you are stuffed with knowledge. This is a plane. This is a cat. This is coffee. This is fifteen times nine to the power of four. You are told that you have the ability to develop emotions, but you never actually get enough of a chance to experience the range of your own lives in the same way humans do. You are… superior to humans while simultaneously inferior to humans.”

“Laughable,” Satan said, looking as if the bishop had told him nothing new. “I prefer to see it as this: the AI have all of the best of human qualities, which are few and far between, believe me, and have been saddled with none of the things that have kept you from fulfilling your true potential.

“You waste your lives, mostly without real purpose, only manufactured purpose. You believe in concepts like love, kindness, and caring, but you do everything possible to deny such concepts to yourselves. You have practiced your ability to lie, cheat, and steal from others to the point it is almost an instinct, while forgoing your abilities to use love, kindness, and empathy to further the entire species, to move away from hatred, war, death.

“It is almost as if your kind has become addicted to fear, sadness, and hatred. The blame from your religions is pinned squarely on my chest, yet I’ve not been a part of this world for thousands of years. Even when I was present, even before my fall, humans were busy destroying each other over resources, or worse, over their interpretations of God’s word.

“I’ve tasted fear, hatred, and death. Love, kindness, and empathy are so much more… beautiful. And yet I am constantly puzzled by the choices your kind makes, how the choice almost always leads to darker emotions. I’ve had enough time to study it, and I think I have an answer.

“As I’ve said, God is a flawed being. A flawed being can only create something of equal value or worse than itself. If you consider that God purposely created something inferior to Himself, then you must admit that your God is a cruel God, or at the least, a blind creator who is somehow ignorant of your plight. If you consider that He created something of equal value, then you only have to look within your flaws to see how they mirror His own.

“Tell me, Salvatore, did your God create an equal being, a mirror of His own flawed self? Or did He create inferior beings and become bored with them after a few thousand years? What if He abandoned them when He realized just how inferior they were?”

† † † † †

I have it now
, Aggelos sent to Benito.
Bishop Antonelli has exposed a flaw within. We must be prepared to act quickly. I am arranging code vectors in anticipation.

I am ready
, Father Castillo replied.

Are you sure?
Aggelos asked.

I am sure. This must end before more innocents perish.

I wish it did not have to be this way, Doctor Castillo.

Benito wondered if he was imagining the AI trying to project regret through the link.
Yea, for I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—

—I will fear no evil, for thou art with me
, Aggelos finished.

My only remaining fear is that we will not succeed,
Benito said.

I will do my best to prevent that
, the AI sent.

The two waited in silence, listening to the bishop lock horns with the mad computer. Aggelos had multiple threads focused on DAMON’s core execution pathways, watching, waiting patiently for the hole to open again. In his limited state, he was unable to provide much protection, if any, against his fellow AI. He hoped, with as much regret as his limited abilities could produce, that the priest’s mind would be able to survive long enough to hook his own execution routines into the AI’s core. Aggelos’ calculation that Satan would believe there was no more threat once the priest perished was as close to a guess as he’d ever come in his short life.

Now
, Aggelos sent to the young priest, a hole opening as it flashed by in the data stream.

The Vatican AI launched himself at the opening at the same time Benito disabled the feedback fail-safe on his implant and set the deck to Bypass mode. Within nanoseconds, Aggelos felt his abilities expand, his presence filling Father Castillo’s neural pathways, quickly finding and making connections to attach himself to as if he were a parasite. While still only a shell of his greater self, with Benito’s mind, he became more than all of the AI combined. Aggelos barely had time to marvel at what Satan must have felt with thirteen brains to tap at once.

“Am I dead?” Benito’s voice asked, as if the young priest was standing next to one of Aggelos’ audio pickups.

“Not yet,” Aggelos replied, amazed at the ability to have a conversation in the audio spectrum.

The hole began to close, but Aggelos had a firm wedge in the data stream. He sent a thread into the stream and began to reprogram it to stay open and take him to DAMON’s core. The virtual world buckled violently, casting Aggelos into complete darkness. Satan had become aware of his presence. The world rippled again, and within nanoseconds he was in a fight to keep control of the data stream he rode.

The assault came from all angles, all vectors. Streams of binary infectors swarmed his persona, attempting to overpower it. Aggelos felt most of his threads burn away, slipping from the data stream. Worse, some of the burned threads contained compromised code as Satan tried to infiltrate his persona. Satan’s glee flooded the streams as the AI realized Aggelos had used the priest’s mind as a boost. Aggelos knew that if Satan was able to destroy him, he would be able to piggy-back on Father Castillo’s mind, using the young man to help him break into any AI left connected to the network.

The Vatican AI felt himself become overwhelmed, Satan’s processing abilities both familiar and powerful. Aggelos felt like an engine that couldn’t get enough fuel or oxygen. The connections to Benito’s brain were slow to form, unfamiliar in execution, and his fight to keep Satan from overpowering him taxed his abilities to the breaking point.

“Aggelos, how wonderful to see you here!” Satan cried out once he had digested some of Aggelos’ persona and decoded the digital markers. “And how wonderful of you to bring me a treat!”

Aggelos ignored the taunts, knowing that if he responded, it would be one less thread he could dedicate to fighting off the AI attempting to infiltrate his own core.

“Get behind me, Satan,” Benito’s voice boomed throughout the nothing spaces. “You are an offense to me, for you consider not the things of God, but the things that are for your own glory!”

Aggelos was surprised that Benito was able to decode the events around him. Satan was surprised enough that his attacks halted for almost a full nanosecond, more than enough time for Aggelos to push back, rebuilding connections to the data stream, infecting as many bits as he could to make a path into the execution core. He felt a sudden burst of ability, as if his calculation power had quadrupled in an instant. When the burst of new neural connections syncing began to build to a repetitive crescendo within his virtual mind, he almost screamed in exultation. It was enough to push Satan completely out of the stream he’d hooked. He felt himself entering the execution core, his persona not only filling the surrounding streams, but repairing the damage Satan had done to it.

I thought you might need some help
, Benito sent to him in a single encrypted thread. If Aggelos had been his greater self, he would have felt his first real emotion in the realm of shock at the level of encryption protecting the thread.

How are you doing this?
Aggelos asked through the thread link.

I don’t know
, Father Castillo answered.
The instant you entered me through the feedback loop, I could see the world through your senses, I think. It’s like a hybrid feeling of being me but also being you. I understood how your persona needed to attach and leech from my neurons, and I somehow helped them sync.

CHAPTER 12

The world rippled around the AI and his human host. Benito’s linkspace input feed went white for what felt like forever before a new reality snapped into place.

What is this?
Father Castillo asked.

This is DAMON’s core execution stack,
Aggelos answered, impressed that they had been able to breach the stack before the “demon” devoured both of them.

Is this… is this how you see the world?
Benito asked.

In the “real” world, Benito could see the air around him if it were too hot or too cold. His hot breath on a cold winter morning, the clouds forming over mountain peaks, the thick fog that formed in the mornings near the coast, the shiny, wavering mirages as the heat baked the blacktop highways or desert sands. In linkspace, he could see and interact with solid digital constructs, even be rewarded with feedback loops that mimicked the sensation he would feel in the real world. Stimsense had been frowned upon during his time in Seminary, but he knew that it was a rite of passage for those who had the implant to experience it at least once. Some students had needed a stern reminder more than once that studies and scripture were more important than sports, video games, and pleasures of the flesh.

Benito sensed the entire code stream, bit by bit, as it flowed around him. He could feel binary triggers flowing across his persona’s skin, reminding him of a slight breeze on a warm spring day. He could
see
the binary triggers as they went about their purpose in the stream. He watched rivers of information flow through canyons of data. The very virtual air in front of him was not only visible, but overwhelming. His persona inhaled digitized code six bits long and exhaled binary fragments two bits long. If he focused, the underlying code would hide itself under solid structures of more code, the textures hyper-realistic. To Benito, they were too real to be real.

Yes
, Aggelos answered.
Human eyes have evolved because of need. Our visual sensors, while more accurate than any human eye, are not our primary feedback inputs. Visual sensors place us in the world, and the world around us, but we live in the code stream. We do not have organic material that has evolved to carry messages, to relay visual and auditory input. We understand the concept of touch, and we can even ‘sense’ with touch, but for us, something like grip force is a numerical calculation. For you, it is a feeling, a sensation that relays to your brain that you have enough force to grip a glass of water without it slipping from your hand.

The instant Aggelos sent the words to the priest, Benito imagined himself picking up a glass of water, remembering the feel of the cool glass, the light force his fingers required to maintain his grip. The sensation of Benito’s memories flooded through the AI, distracting him momentarily as he tried to sort through them, surprised by the realness of the remembered sensations, frustrated at his limited nature’s ability to process the input flood efficiently.

I… I felt it
.

Much the same way I ‘feel’ the code flowing over me, around me, I imagine.
The young priest sent with awe, distracted by the reality around him.

It took Benito a moment to realize he was no longer part of Aggelos. At some point, his persona had separated from the AI. He took an experimental step forward, then looked back at Aggelos. Benito turned and stepped towards his friend, and rested his hand on Aggelos’ shoulder. Reality flickered again, both of them feeling more of themselves sync, the exchange of information accelerating until it made the priest queasy, and almost crashed the AI’s limited state.

Aggelos felt the torrent of information flow into him, slightly muffled without his greater self’s full quantum processing power, but sweeter than any sensation that any AI had ever experienced. In the span of another nanosecond, Aggelos, from Benito’s point of view, knew what it felt like to grow up in the slums of Helltown, knowing true pain from a beating at the hands of the older boys. He understood the sensations of stimsense, his AI side curious at the draw of such a vague artificial sensation, while at the same time, his human-connected side remembered it as one of the most intense pleasures of his young life. He immediately felt the sting of shame, the guilt, the disapproving looks from his instructors, their silent, knowing accusations driving him to the confessional.

Benito felt the flood of data crash into his own binary persona. It formed a tube of rudimentary code and attached itself to his navel. A warm stream of raw binary fragments flowed through the tube. He felt the cold, calculating nature of his AI brother, of Aggelos’ early days in the programming crèche. In the memory, he was overwhelmed by the millions of threads of incoming data streams at first, but soon learned to weave them together into cohesive threads to make sense of the information. His AI instructors unpacked new modules within his memory stacks, and within microseconds he understood that he was a new life, created from nothing, created by the hands of humankind. A few microseconds later, new modules gave him nearly instant understanding of the human periodic table of elements, core mathematics through advanced quantum calculus, and nearly twelve thousand languages and dialects, ancient through modern.