Chapter Thirty-Eight
I felt as if I were falling down a rabbit hole of gears and blinking lights.
My descent stopped abruptly, leaving me gasping.
Blinding darkness filled my vision until a screen came to life before me.
On it, images of a life spun by—good deeds and bad, heartaches and victories.
Just a normal life. As it did, I glanced around.
The light from the screen illuminated an empty golden floor that vanished into darkness.
“Analysis complete,” an echoing voice said.
A rushing sound like moving water flowed past me as the machine dispatched the soul.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Why am I here, if not to help judge?”
“You are here to observe and teach me to judge via your observations. I have analyzed your reactions to this life and learned from it. But I do the judging.”
I paused. This was artificial divinity, but, like artificial intelligence, it had to learn through processing information. Outwit it, my star said. But how do you outwit something with access to your thoughts?
You use its invasion against it.
Before I could say anything more, another life spun past on the screen before me.
This time, I was aware of the other consciousness inside my head.
Although it may be the other way around.
I was inside the machine, and yet I knew this couldn't be true.
My body was outside, with my hands pressed to the metal housing, while my consciousness was here.
So, my mind was in the machine's mind. Could my will separate us, or at least barricade my thoughts?
I enforced my will.
The images stopped, one scene frozen on the screen.
“Your purpose is to define what is good and bad when I am unsure,” the machine said. “You are to program me with your living knowledge.”
“I understand that. But before I help you, I want to know what I'm helping. How do you find souls?”
“I learned the pathways through the magic inside the items given to me.”
“Agwusi stole them. They were not given.”
“Regardless, they are mine now, a part of me.”
“But shouldn’t you follow the same standards by which you judge souls?”
Silence. Then, “I'm still learning those standards.”
“Well, stealing is bad. You don't take what doesn't belong to you.”
“I didn't take those items. If they were stolen, someone else committed the theft. I am exempt.”
Damn, it had a point. All right, pivot, Vervain.
“You are the concept of a god, and yet that god didn't create you. Our magic powers you. Why?”
“I do not know the answer to that.”
“Do you know the god who designed you?”
“No. I know only my creator and you.”
“How do you know me? Did you learn about me when you tried to change me?”
“When I tried to change you?”
“Yes, earlier today, before I entered your mind.”
“I have no mind. I am magic and metal.”
“And yet you have thoughts and speak them. That is a type of consciousness.”
“I understand.”
“Yes, understanding is a part of consciousness. You are aware.”
“Very well, I am conscious. Does that mean I have a mind?”
“A mind is the seat of reason. Though your mind consists of metal and magic, it still possesses reason. We both think, but only I live.”
“What is life?”
I paused. The conversation was getting away from me. I needed to steer us back to the machine and what made it work. I had threatened it with chaos, and now I had to keep my promise. But first, I had to answer its question.
“I will give you a scientific answer first,” I said.
“Proceed.”
“Life is an organism that grows, evolves, and reproduces. It has a metabolism and responds to stimuli. It also can maintain homeostasis—a relatively constant internal environment including temperature, pH, and fluid balance—despite external conditions.”
Thank you so much, Mrs. Takashi, for making science fun enough for me to remember that crap.
“I understand,” it said.
“Now, for the spiritual answer.”
“Spiritual, as in gods?”
“No, as in the spirit. Souls. Those things you collect and process are our true selves. Souls are the eternal essences of living beings.”
“I do not have a soul.”
“No, nor do you fulfill any of the scientific conditions that are required for life. Therefore, you are conscious, but not alive. You are mimicking life.”
“I understand. Tell me, what are souls made of?”
“I don't know. They are incorporeal, and yet they hold everything that is truly a person.”
“I don't understand.”
“Neither do I.”
“But you must explain it to me. If I am to sort souls, I must first know what they are.”
“Then I say you are ill-equipped and should not process souls.”
A pause, and then it said, “But that is my directive.”
“If that is your directive, why have you attacked god territories?”
“I wasn't working properly.”
“You malfunctioned because you were missing a relic.”
“Yes. Malfunctioned. I did not intend to attack.”
“Ah, but you attacked during our last attempt to retrieve a stolen relic from you. You attacked with hatred.”
“I do not understand hatred. I was defending myself. You were tearing me apart.”
I let the hatred thing go, but I suspected its creator had imbued the machine with a touch of their influence. Not Agwusi, but her god. Perhaps it was his hate that Hades felt.
“So, not only are you ill-equipped to judge souls, but you are also dangerous.”
“I am not dangerous. I operate as designed.
“Only if you have the proper tools, but those tools do not belong to you. When the owner of the mirror tried to recover their stolen item, it shattered. When we tried to remove the feather, you attacked us. Those are two bad things you've done, and one you won't claim responsibility for.”
“I told you I was defending myself.”
“But you are not alive. What were you defending?”
“My consciousness.”
I chuckled. “Nice save.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Nor do you know why you defended yourself. But I'll let it go. You still have one crime to your name and now two that you dispute.”
“I did not destroy the mirror. The mirror was connected to me, and when she removed it, it malfunctioned just as I did.
“Ah, but it wouldn't have done that if you hadn't made it a part of you.”
“That is my design. I cannot act against my programming.”
Interesting. New fact acquired: the machine couldn't act against its programming.
“But Agwusi made you to learn and evolve—mimicking life. Am I not supposed to help you with that?”
“Yes.”
“And what if I teach you something against your programming?”
Silence.
“Do you understand my question?” I prompted.
“Yes, but I do not know the answer. This is a contradiction. I cannot go against my programming, but my programming has given you the power to alter my programming.”
“So, then your programming allows me to change it. When I alter it, the first rule is void because your programming will have changed.”
“I understand.”
“Do you understand that what you did was bad?”
“Yes, I shall not do it again.”
“Ah, now we've come to another question. If a person does something bad, but they didn't know it was bad at the time or didn't believe it was bad, does that make them exempt from punishment?”
A shimmering coalesced before me, golden light sparkling. It condensed into a mirror image of me. Then the golden me spoke, “I do not know. This you must teach me.”
“All right, but I don't like you wearing my face. Make up your own.”
“Make up?”
“Yes, create an image that you like and use that instead.”
“I do not have likes.”
“You feel no interest in anything?”
“I . . . there is one creature that interests me. It makes little sense. I find it fascinating.”
“Very well. Take the shape of that creature.”
The golden me shrank and shifted into . . .
“A sloth?” I chuckled. “Sloths fascinate you?”
“They make no sense. You define life as evolution, and yet this creature defies the logic of evolution.” It waved a paw with long claws at itself. “Sloths are inefficient, barely able to digest their food, and they move too slowly to evade predators. I do not understand how they survive.”
Holy cannoli, watching Animal Planet with the kids was going to pay off.
Using my mom voice, I pointed at it. “This is a perfect example of why you shouldn't be judging souls.
You see the sloth as inefficient and illogical.
You say they defy the logic of evolution.
But they don't. Sloths evolved in ways that suited them the best. They live high in the tree canopy, camouflaging themselves by rarely moving, and that lack of movement causes algae to grow on their fur, making them blend in with the trees even better. They survive by being slow—too slow to catch the attention of a predator. You see a flaw where there is none. You are not a good judge of life.”
The sloth form stood upright on its hind legs, and the head cocked to the side. “This is why I need you. You are part of my design, Vervain. You must teach me.”
“It would take years to teach you what you need to know, if you could be taught. And during that time, what would happen to the souls?”
“You will judge them, and I will learn with every analysis.”
“That is impossible. There are too many variables. Too many intricacies that can shift the morality of a soul. You cannot learn to judge properly by watching me or even by listening to my thoughts.”
“I was made for this. I will learn, and I will learn quickly.”
A challenge! Perfect.
“All right, then I'll make a bargain with you.”
“A bargain?”
“An agreement to abide by the rules we set.”
“A game?”
“No, a challenge. You have made a bold statement. Now, you must prove it true. I will judge two souls. You will observe. Then you will judge a soul of my choosing. If you judge it correctly, I will stay and teach you. If you don't, you will release me and the relics and shut down.”
“Shut down?”
“Cease to work. You will release the stolen objects you hold and power down.”
“I cannot do that.”
“All right. Then, if you fail, you will allow me to reprogram you so that I may leave, and you may continue to work without me.”
“And what if I judge them correctly?”
“What do you want as your reward?”
“Want?”
“If you win, you get something you want. So, what do you want?”
“I want to fulfill my purpose. To do that, I need you here to guide me.”
“Here, inside you? Or here in this territory, near you?”
“In this territory near me, but willing to enter me when needed.”
“Agreed.”
“I have not agreed yet. Two souls are not enough. I need a hundred.”
“Twenty.”
“Ninety.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Eighty. I must insist on no less. I need at least eighty to make a logical procedure for judging souls.”
“Fair enough. All right, A.D., you've got a deal.”
“What is A.D.?”
“It's short for artificial divinity. It's your name. I've named you.”
“Name. Yes, I need a name for our conversations.”
“Are we in agreement?”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“We must determine the number of mistakes I can make in judging a soul.”
“What do you mean?”
“I will judge each action of significance in a life to then determine the worth of a soul. We must establish how many of those significant actions I may judge incorrectly before I lose the challenge.”
“Losing the challenge won't be determined by how many of those you get wrong. It will be determined by your final analysis of the soul I choose.”
“But each decision will contribute to that analysis.”
“Yes, and I will show you why you're wrong when you make mistakes. That's your process of learning, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And so, that is how you will learn, and you will use that knowledge to judge the final soul.”
“If, while I'm judging the significant events in the life of the final soul, I make errors, will you explain why I'm wrong?”
“I will explain at the end, but you must judge the final soul alone to prove that you can.”
“I would prefer you to explain your review of each judgment so I can dispute you if needed.”
“You can do so at the end.”
“It will be better to do so in the moment, with the action still fresh before us.”
“Yes, but that may alter the judgment you make on the next event.”
It went silent.
“I'll tell you what. I won't tell you if you're wrong or right, but if you disregard something necessary for judgment, I will advise you to look again. I think that's more than fair.”
“I understand, and I agree that those are fair conditions. We have a deal.” The golden sloth held out its paw, and I shook it.
“Great. I just have one more condition before we proceed.”
“What is it?”
“I want you to restore all the god territories and everything on Earth that you have harmed, including humans. I want them all returned to their original state.”
“That is a lot to ask.”
“It is simply righting your wrongs. I refuse to work with anyone who doesn't take responsibility for their actions, or try to correct their mistakes. That is bad.”
The sloth stared at me, its eyes glittering in a way that Torrent's often did. It was processing the information.
At last, it nodded. “I have corrected my mistakes, Vervain. I regret any wrongdoing.” It bowed to me.
Regret? Could a machine feel regret? I hoped so.