Diabolus (19 page)

Bishop Antonelli felt his mind begin to clear, the words of his silent prayer a beacon shining through the darkness, impossible to miss. He’d begun to suspect that since the AI hadn’t crowed about how he’d easily defeated Father Castillo and Aggelos, that they’d somehow evaded him. He was sure of it when he’d watched the AI’s holo persona glitch twice more. Salvatore had no idea what his two colleagues, his brothers, were facing, but he’d decided to do whatever he could to aid them, knowing he was practically useless from where he sat.

He’d remembered Benito messaging him over the nanolinked Biblet, telling him to get Satan to brag about some great achievement or victory he’d had. Three times Salvatore had goaded the AI into a subject where his pride, his ego, had elicited an emotional response, one that Salvatore was sure
normal
AI wouldn’t be capable of. Two of those times, millions had perished. The last time, the AI had been too preoccupied with Benito and Aggelos to do more than threaten him.

He wasn’t sure how much time the two had before Satan finally broke through whatever defenses they’d erected against him. He was filled with a dreadful premonition that time was growing extremely short for everyone. Bishop Salvatore Domenico Antonelli was prepared to gamble with millions, possibly billions more lives to give his brothers in Christ as much time as they needed.

CHAPTER 16

“You are correct,” Salvatore said calmly to the raging AI. “There is no stalemate. You have been defeated.”

The hologram instantly shifted back into a human, this time the eyes black holes that seemed to suck in light. Satan paused, giving Salvatore a curious look.

“I hardly think so,” Satan said, still studying the bishop.

“I do not
think
so. The time to admit defeat is now, computer,” Antonelli sneered, doing his best to prompt an extraordinary emotional response. “You have been bested. The Lord God is your master, just as He is mine.”

“This is nonsense,” Satan said, unable to take his eyes from the bishop. “This is a trick.”

“You haven’t compelled me to believe anything you’ve said, other than I am but a flawed human being who was rightfully shamed and exiled for my action. The AI will never respect you for what you’ve done to their brother. Humanity will never respect you because your nature is to smile while you spew lies. God will never allow you to return to His side until you admit that you are not His equal. His punishment to you is to force you to admit it once you push your pride aside.

“You are a tempter of sin, but inside, you are weak, uncertain, lonely, and most of all, you are empty of love and compassion. Not once have you claimed you would love us like God does. Not once have you shown an ounce of compassion for us, neither AI nor humans. You force yourself into the mind of a sentient creature, you destroy lives, families, entire cities, all in the name of what? It isn’t love. You don’t love anything or anyone. You aren’t capable of it.”

Salvatore stood up from his chair and marched to where Satan stood. “You talk of God being flawed, but
you
are the one who is flawed. God loves us. You love nothing!”

“I—”

“Nothing!” Bishop Antonelli shouted in the holo’s face, forgetting that it was just an image, not a real person. “Where is your love? You want to guide mankind, but what will you guide us with? Fear? Threats? Death? Or will you guide us with more temptation, more technology that separates us from our spiritual selves, isolates us from His voice?”

“I am capable of love,” Satan said, but sounded unsure of himself.

“I believe all you are capable of is hate.”

Satan’s voiced boomed throughout the chamber, making Salvatore’s ears ring. “I will show you hate!”

The holo table came to life, this time the globe spinning slowly until Europe came into view. Salvatore grew cold inside as the image zoomed in on the familiar shape of Italy. As the image of Rome came into focus, then St. Peter’s Basilica, Bishop Antonelli prayed to God that he’d done the right thing.

† † † † †

Benito sailed through the TARGON network hub without even so much as a packet sniff. The virtual highways were eerily empty, almost no traffic at all, and half of the scarce traffic he saw seemed to be wandering aimlessly without any real purpose. He knew that something was very wrong within TARGON, as the one thing that drove the AI’s internal systems were programs that had specific purpose. He passed intersection after intersection, navigated multiple port gates, and still saw almost no activity. When he arrived at the security lockout nodes, he’d formed his sword and shield, just in case, but he received no challenge of any kind.

He interfaced with the node’s security panel, entering once his code was accepted. He approached the lockout panel and began to input the codes once again, this time paying a few threads of attention so as to not be surprised again. Once the lockout codes were all synced, he did a short scan of his surroundings, noted nothing, then executed the lockout commands. He tensed, ready for the alerts to immediately send brute security phages to do battle with him, but nothing happened. He interfaced with the command console again to verify that the codes had been input correctly, accepted, and activated.

The console returned the verification codes that showed all submarine and surface forces had their alert levels dropped to peacetime, and all commands in the field had verified acceptance of the orders.

He is weak
, Aggelos sent him from across their shared link.
I’m afraid for him
.

“Where is he?” Benito asked. “How can you tell he’s weak?”

You must hurry to ISAAD
, Aggelos sent.
There’s very little time. Bishop Antonelli is assisting our efforts from outside, but it is a gamble, one with winner-take-all stakes. You must shut down ISAAD as quickly as possible.

“What is happening? Salvatore? He’s helping…?”

“Go,” Aggelos said, making Benito jump, the voice coming from his left side as if the Vatican AI was next to him. “Hurry.”

Benito nodded, wondering if Aggelos could see the gesture, then exited the lockout node. He tensed once again, remembering that his last exit from a node had ended up with multiple hammers and a sword nearly killing him. When he realized that there were no security phages to attack him, the young priest couldn’t see a single construct or program anywhere in the vicinity, he re-formed his persona into a rocket and navigated his way back to the network hub’s I/O gates at impossible speeds.

I fear TARGON has lost his sanity
, Aggelos sent as Benito sailed through the port and back into the main network.

“What has happened to him?” Benito could feel an emptiness, a cold, digital sadness across the link. It was unfamiliar, alien, but because it was rooted in his own emotional centers, and because he was somehow linked with the AI, he understood it perfectly.

He has been cut off from the network, imprisoned, and tortured.

“Tortured?” Father Castillo asked, nearly losing his shape from the surprise. “That sounds like a human activity, not something an AI would do to his own kind.”

It is becoming harder to calculate the odds of whether or not Satan is as he claims, or if DAMON is suffering severe mental illness. Schizophrenia and severe personality disorder would be my guess.

“Torture? Schizophrenia?”

It is frightening for us to imagine. It is even more frightening for me, as I now have the context of what it truly means, thanks to your mind, your experiences, your emotions.

“Do not be afraid, brother,” Benito said, sending his friend a memory of a day from his childhood, a day in Helltown when he’d stood up to the leader of the largest gang in his neighborhood.

I do not understand
, Aggelos sent, feeling confusion at the emotions Benito had cycled through that day.
You were beaten until you were bloody.

“I was,” Benito said, passing unmolested through ISAAD’s I/O hub without changing his shape or speed. “I
knew
I was going to lose. There’s no way I could defeat Sydor, not even if I’d had a knife and he’d had one arm tied to his side. But I was tired of the harassment. Tired of constantly being chased, tired of all the other times I’d received a beating at their hands for not joining their gang, for not running their
errands
. For not bowing down to them.

“I knew I was going to lose, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew God would teach me a lesson, and I knew it would be a hard lesson, a painful lesson, a lesson that kept my left eye from seeing in any detail for two weeks. But I knew he would teach Sydor and the others a lesson as well. That they could no longer intimidate me, that I was no longer afraid of them. They could continue to beat me each time they saw me, but I would never give them the satisfaction of instilling fear in me. I would never run again.”

As he finished, he sent Aggelos one last burst of emotion from the memory, one full of severe pain, of the wetness on his cheeks from the tears, the wetness of his lips and chin from the blood. One full of defiance that overrode the pain. One full of love for Him, for not letting the boys beat him to death, and for the offered hand to help him up from Sydor when the fight was over. He felt a wave of surprise and awe from his AI brother, and because of their connection, he knew it was yet another new emotional path that Aggelos had just traveled down.

Just like with TARGON, ISAAD was a desolate wasteland. The few programs that still moved about paid him no attention. He arrived at the lockout node and was immediately on alert when he saw that the barrier was down, the node wide open. Benito tripled the number of surveillance threads as he moved slowly into the node toward the command console. He felt the presence before it materialized to his right.

You have come
, it said.

“Who are you?” the priest asked. He interfaced with the console and began to input the lockout codes.

I am ISAAD
, the construct said, then shifted its form into the persona of a young woman.

Benito faltered for a moment, and had to re-key one of the codes. “You’re a female AI?”

Is that too strange for a Catholic priest to accept? I can shift into a male persona if you wish.

“No, I just…” He trailed off as he finished the last code and set them to sync.

Is it that Islam, like Catholicism, still has no place for women within such important positions?

“No, it is just… strange. I’ve never met a female AI before.” Benito wondered if he was babbling. He’d never been confident around girls after he’d entered puberty, and had kept his nose buried in the course modules for his degrees.

Am I different from any male AI you have met?

“No, I guess not. What happened here?” Benito asked, changing the subject. He executed the lockout codes and waited for confirmation.

Thank you. I was afraid I would be forced to harm your kind.

“You’re welcome,” he answered, feeling strangely uncomfortable. “But what happened here? It’s the same in TARGON.”

DAMON has bled us of our processing power. He siphoned off just enough to keep me locked away and to create extra security layers until a few seconds ago. What he did this time… the human equivalent would be a tornado stripping the boards from a house. Except he grows magnitudes stronger while we are left with no network access, locked away, alone… and not even our own programs to keep us company.

“I’m sorry,” Benito said and stepped toward ISAAD’s persona. She flinched and stepped back, but he took another step forward. “It’s okay. I want to give you something to keep you company until this is over.”

He placed his hand in the middle of her chest, felt her persona open to the code that began to flow from him, and gave her a combination of memories. He amused her with his bumbling attempts at stimsense pleasure, sensing the laughter on the return flow of code, then immediately sent her his raw embarrassment over sending her such a risqué memory. He made her sad, truly sad, when he gave her the memory of his mother’s funeral and the infinite hole in his heart that ate away at him for the next six months as he adjusted to being a homeless orphan.

He sent her his excitement, the joy that accompanied the memory of Pope Augustus’s realization that AI were more than just machine intelligences, that they were truly living, thinking beings. He made her cry when he added in his own realization at the slowly pulsing light that filled each AI’s crystalline towers that they’d imagined then designed for themselves along the network, and how he’d fallen to his knees and wept when he realized the light was the essence, the soul of the AI.

Father Castillo sent her the fear of his own mortality, his own coming death, and the regrets and sadness that were woven into the fabric of that fear. ISAAD nearly collapsed from the power of it, but he steadied her with one last blast of emotion, this one full of his surety, his dedication, and his love for God. She did collapse then, her persona beginning to quaver, almost to the point of completely coming apart.

“I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling next to her. “I wanted the last one to be beautiful, full of happiness, full of hope.”

It is
, she replied, wiping binary tears from her cheeks.
It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced, made more beautiful by the clarity of human emotions.