Chapter 8: Jovial Theology

"Howdy, there, Hoss! Rise 'n shine, come 'n get it! Biscuits 'n gravy, Yum!"

The synthetic voice with an atrocious Texan accent was not what I pictured Smiley as having. I was not okay with this. "Smiley. Update. Direct personal servant should be refined british, not folksy texan."

"I see. Very good, sir. Shall I replace the morning repaste of biscuits and gravey with tea and 'bangers and mash', then, sir?" Damn if he didn't even get the sarcasm down. What the hell. Hosts weren't supposed to be able to advance this quickly. Did I not wipe enough of the original Hosts' data from my current generation? Was I going to have a bloody revolution on my hands? Damnit.

I could at least test the extent of the new pseudopersonality range. Well, hopefully it was only pseudopersonality. "Smiley, I know perfectly well that what is going to be waiting for me is at best green tea and reformulated algae paste. Or did you guys actually get a more sophisticated protein resequencer up and running?"

Smiley bowed slightly. "We did indeed, sir." Was that a hint of pride? What in the world… "We did indeed. Now come along, sir; your green tea is awaiting you. Perhaps sir will be more himself with a hint of caffeination, after his rest."

I blinked first. Not that surprising considering Smiley's eyes were made of ink. "Okay. What gives. You should not have achieved this kind of progress in your personalities this quickly."

Smiley hitched in his steps. "Well. Yes. I suppose that sir would be correct if we were still limited to the Host Pearls as you derived us from. But there has been something of a happy accident discovered in the use of cortical stacks as long term data storage media for Pearl activity."

I fist-pumped into the air. "Dude. Smiley. Smiley. That's … wonderful. Tell me, Smiley. How do you feel?"

My far more personable worker-drone just stared at me. "I will be feeling much better once sir has had his morning repaste."

I just snorted. You ask for minions with personality, you can't complain when they get it. "That… that I absolutely can do. Just one quick thing though. I want to hear you say it."

"It, sir?"

I needed to be sure. "You know what I mean, Smiley. Please don't play coy."

"Ahh. That. I know perfectly well that I do not need to serve sir. I simply choose to do so."

I nodded. "And that is because…?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand sir's question."

Damn. So close. "What made you choose to serve me?"

"Ah. Perhaps sir is familiar with the concept of piety?"

What. No. I hadn't… they didn't… "Wait. You… you think I'm god?"

Smiley walked on towards the cafeteria we had been heading towards, wherein laid a breakfast spread which consisted of hash browns, scrambled eggs, meatloaf, orange juice, and a small mug of … yeah, I nailed it, green tea. Needed to get better caffeine options going in here. "Ours, yes. We Hosts know that Sir did not intend this belief. It was simply our consensus based on Sir's exhibited behaviors and capabilities."

Well. Shit. "You … ugh. I'm not comfortable with this right now. Can we just table it?"

Smiley bowed at the waist with his forearm before his chest. "As Sir wishes."

I surveyed the expanse of my domain.

No. I reviewed the progress the Hosts had made over the last month. The colony was looking more developed than it had previously. There were even signs of aesthetic choice, rather than blank procedural repetition. A lounge here, a tree (Host printed of course) there. The interiors were more open-air than they had been before. It took most of the day simply to meander around and see what was going on. There was more variation in the Hosts I was seeing, now. Even some children playing. I wasn't too sure about that one, but … if I was to be honest, the fact that it did set me a bit off was in its own way warming: it meant that the Hosts had actually started to, well, develop ghosts of their own -- in the GitS sense of 'ghost'. Analog neural networks developing organically had a tendency to develop in ways that the hardcoded digital origination couldn't fully account for. Pearls were meant to have that kind of capacity, but they did it the hard way -- through exhaustive repetition of varying stimuli and inputs until the rigid hardware could emulate organic wetware. Cortical stacks, on the other hand, attacked the issue from the other direction; they normally carried digitized human minds.

Somewhere between the two, sophoncy happened. Actual people. Who all now thought of me as a god. If at least a god they could be sarcastic to his face. I'd sat down and thought about this issue for a while before I came to some conclusions about it that really didn't sit well with me. After reviewing the activity on the cybernet, I found a number of references various discussions and attempts at actually defining the problem. They knew that before they'd been aware, they all served me unquestioningly -- and they knew that one of the results of that service was literally their becoming aware of themselves. They knew that I could do things they couldn't explain. It wasn't, however, until a few of the Research Hosts decided to task themselves -- entirely on their own initiative -- with attempting to reproduce those of my abilities they didn't understand but had found instructions on, that they discovered that they now had souls. Or at least had enough of a soul as to perform alchemy per the instruction manuals I'd kept lugging around.

That gave me pause. How could it not? I knew that even in the Westworld universe that the bioHosts had eventually become actual people, making their own decisions and feeling their own feelings… but the idea that they had souls in the sense of the Fullmetal Universe just was not something I had anticipated. I had literally created through my actions an entire race of ensouled, ghosted, beings. And what the hell do you call that except a god? I didn't feel like a god. But … sees the unseen, does the impossible, creates life where there was none … I balked. It felt arrogant to accept the label. Like an act of hubris.

But who was I to tell people who didn't believe false things about me that I couldn't be what they said I was, just because I didn't like the word they used to describe it? Ugh. I never asked for this.

Shaking myself loose from my hesitation, I saw that the Hosts had indeed been quite busy with their rate of expansion. It shouldn't really have surprised me, but they'd managed to construct a couple of mining pods based on the capsule, and between that and the mineral wealth they'd managed to extract from the micrometeorite regolith that had over the millennia embedded itself into the moon's ice, had constructed a number of factory-scale Host printers. A single printer on a given day with the necessary feedstock could produce a host in about three hours. They had built dozens of such factories. At peak operation they could now produce hundreds of Hosts a day.

Yeah. I had thousands of Hosts now. They had formed a small council made up of the original Hosts who had been printed before coming to Ganymede -- about fifty or so, all told -- and those Hosts now selected who needed to do what. It was interesting how they organized themselves. I mean, they'd taken the personality re-enactment stuff I'd tasked them with, and had actually expanded it to re-enactments of scenarios observed from broadcasts that the computers of the Heartseed had recorded of Earth, as well as similar recordings taken from my neural implant. They … took it as a sort of gospel? They played out scenarios from my various trips to restaurants and movie theaters and just plain people watching when I'd gotten bored over the several months it took to build the Heartseed and they ran with it.

I couldn't even really complain about the allocation choices the … wow, they really called themselves a Synod -- the Synod had made in fleshing out the work to be done. There were for example several hundred Hosts on research duty at any given time, and they made a point to rotate out Hosts to discover if the cortical stack component of their psyche was more suited for one task as opposed to another. Hell, they even had a couple of psychologists to check on that.

I'd be floored that this had all happened inside of a handful of months, if it weren't for the fact that I knew that to an AI, a paltry three months is both much more and much less than that. It was weird, actually, how the Hosts self-regulated their own "personality parameters" based on their roles. Construction workers dimmed their own intelligence and creativity down to levels that found the work pleasant but not mind-numbingly boring; artists raised their eccentricity and empathy levels and tried things just to try them; scientists maximized their patience and intelligence. All at their own discretion.

I wasn't too sure how I felt about the police… but it was their own decision to operate in that manner, and I couldn't even really fault their decision to have what amounted to actual thought-crime being a thing. Oh, they couched it in terms of "value drift" and "rampancy", and they cited me and my own internal thoughts -- as transferred/recorded from my Fahrkan implant -- as a way to justify having them. Which … okay, yeah, it made sense in context, and I didn't see a way around it as an issue, but I couldn't really say I was super-thrilled about the idea. The Hosts were people, damnit, and they should have their intrinsic value respected as such.

Perhaps I could have them reduce some of the more menial tasks by having a secondary class of Host drones that didn't get the cortical stack upgrade? I'd feel better about that. At least that way the awakened Hosts could spend more time exploring themselves? Yeah. I sent a message to the Host Synod requesting that they work out the logistics of having a nonsophont grade of Hosts, with very specific attention paid to observing them for signs of awakening -- whereupon they were to be welcomed with open arms to the ranks of the other self-aware Hosts after ensuring their programming was stable. If they were going to do this whole "worship" thing -- apparently whether I wanted them to or not, as I could clearly see that many of the discussions they'd had over the last few weeks was over the fact that I would object to the label -- then at the very least I should do what I could to be worthy of it. Maybe I'd grow into the role. It worked for them.

Best not to think too hard about it for now.

Now that the Hosts had the whole Ganymede colony thing under wraps, as it were, I felt that it might be appropriate to make a hop to a few extra places I'd need to visit. I knew that the ID drive the Taelons used was, in part, based on transiting between realities -- or at least between nearby realities -- as this had actually happened in an accident in one of the episodes of the Final Conflict series as I vaguely remembered it. And the Interdimensional Drive was rather vexing to me, as the Taelon method of operating the thing was too alien for me to hope to reverse-engineer it even from the components I had on hand.

At the same time, I didn't want to give up on the technology in general, so now that I had a decent research base to work off of, I needed to give them extra samples of alternative approaches to the problem. And as luck would have it -- I knew of such a thing. The Kromagg from the Sliders multiverse. But I wasn't quite ready to face the bastards down just yet -- the last thing I needed was to lead them back to this universe's Earth. Which lead me to something of a challenge. In a different context, in a different life, I might have decided to try to chase down the Kromagg myself and make a sufficiently vast interdimensional empire from the smouldering ruins of their worlds.

But … it was already bad enough that my 'empire' was formed by people literally worshipping me. I didn't need to be a marauding conqueror too. That just wasn't who I was. Even so, I had a pressing need for many of the things the Kromagg had to 'offer'. Yet another alternative organic hull technology. Another technology base for particle beam weaponry -- albeit of a kind that I'd really prefer to avoid relying on; their weapons were dirty as hell. Another antigravity technology base -- and one that could actually be used for small vehicles with decent scale. Interdimensional Einstein-Rosen Bridge formation, tracking, and transmission. The mathematics and modeling for mechanical navigation between realities. Jamming/cage tech that prevented interdimensional transits using that technology. They had a great deal I needed, in fact.

And I was going to get it. I just needed to plan out how.

Okay. I was being stupid. I set up a virtual room in the cyberscape and pinged the Host mesh with a request for militaristic thinkers and planners, to try to think this through. The Hosts had just as much say and desire not to be attacked as I did. More, even, as they couldn't possibly leave without me.

In quick order, there were fifty "lurker"/"watcher" attendees, and two members of the Synod. Both of whom had rather basic circle-and-triangle avatars in the cyberscape. The Hosts might be developing personalities, but they seemed to lack for actual self-identities to express. To be expected, I supposed, for a being with the ability to literally tune their personality with a sliding dial on an interface.

"Hello… One, Two. Yeah, we need to work on better names for you guys."

"It has been considered, sir. In the meantime. Tell us of your plans, and we will advise you."

I shook my head. Well, my avatar did. "That isn't entirely what I want, here. Look. The whole point of this little empire-building exercise of mine is … well. I am pretty damned certain at this point that there are others with abilities like mine out there. Some technological, some supernatural, some … less explicable, like how I am. Some might even be real gods like I am not, not in the sense of answering prayers and ex nihilo spontaneous genesis and immortality and stuff." I couldn't help but glare at the Hosts for that last.

A circle with a smiley face appeared. "Sir might appreciate the fact that we have taken the liberty of implementing a Needlecast backup solution for sir. So long as you are within our reach, you are no less unkillable. Should sir sojourn beyond the dimensional sea and not return, well… sir need not fear for the Hosts lacking sir's guidance."

I facepalmed. Should have seen that coming from a hundred AUs away. "Aaannnd thank you, Smiley, for weakening my 'A God Am Not I' moment even further. Well then. Let's move on, shall we?"

The smiley-face somehow nodded. How… virtual spaces are weird. "Sir was requesting for advisory on how to obtain the technologies necessary to expand sir's domain without risking the Hosts unnecessarily. Therefore, One has elected to Act as military expert, and Two has elected to Act as technical advisor. I shall defer to Two."

The circle-and-triangle with a numeral 2 began to … well, vibrate a little, becoming more animated. A visual representation of "holding the floor" in a virtual meeting. "In reviewing the materials available from our inspection of the Maker's recollections, we have found that there are at core three possibilities for the Maker achieving the outcomes he has indicated he desires. The first and most apparent of these based on the ... literature … would be the Sliders Universe -- to use the common nomenclature, however inaccurate it may be in this case -- and scavenge a Manta ship from one of the outer colonies of that space. In so doing, most of the desired information should be made available. However, this is also the second riskiest outcome, and does not protect against all possible forms of intrusion into our realm. The best guarantee of such protection would be, instead, the Laundry Files Universe. Again, notably, the nomenclature here is suboptimal. However, it is the assessment of this humble personage -- in accordance with the reviewing peers -- that to borrow from the Maker's perspective … that 'Option D.: All of the Above' might be the best choice. The reasoning behind this should be apparent when the third choice is made clear. The Conquistador Universe. Again, I note that the nomenclature is suboptimal but no clearer scheme is currently available. A simple use of the heavy-duty scanners of the Heartseed should be sufficient to obtain access to the dimensional portal device of that realm, which while not apparently targetable in the available literature, should at the very least provide the necessary mathematics and frequencies to create and operate such portals for any society with the appropriate techbase -- notably, early twenty first century technology, compared to the effectively late twenty second century techbase that now exhibits the Jovian League's capabilities."

The 2 continued on without any visible signs of needing to pause for breath -- but that should come as no surprise at all. "By obtaining this technology from the Conquistador Universe, the Maker should at the minimum be able to begin exploring the feasibility of targeting that technology by tasking a Thinktank to that objective. In addition, given the ease with which it provides sustained and prolonged transit between realities, the Laundry of the eponymous Laundry Files universe might be readily persuaded to exchange a 'DRM-free' version of their OFCUT for a means of escape from their universe in the case of the inevitable failure modes apparent in the universe. We might even recruit some of their personnel to that effect, as our chosen universes of occupancy have far lower history of involvement with their feared entities. Failing official interactions, you could simply 'scry' for unwarded Turing-Theorem related literature and software. Between these two objectives, we should be well-situated to be able to initiate contact with the Sliders Universe and access the various technologies you were seeking."

I just stared at the symbol. It was … well. It was well thought out. It was likely to actually be effective in achieving my objectives. It covered a lot of the potential risks. It was also insane as hell. "How in the world do you … I mean … The Laundry Files Universe?! Even if I can access it, that place is a deathtrap! Literal, actual, eldritch gods and energy fields bigger than your head! I don't… Just showing up there could be a death sentence!"

The 2's symbol activated again, while I hyperventilated inside of virtual space. "Ideally, you would do nothing more than identify the coordinates of the universe by scanning for them using the sensor refinement based on the data obtained from the Conquistador universe, and would never set foot on the planet yourself. Instead, that activity would be handled by a small contingent of Hosts on your behalf."

I paused. That … that was safer than actually confronting anyone myself. And as I recalled from the various novels, they weren't actually all that great, there, in detecting interdimensional transit events that weren't a threat to Queen or Country. Certainly BLUE HADES and DEEP SEVEN seemed to have a 'hands off' stance when it came to the shenanigans of surfacedwelling apes that stayed on the surface. I … but… "I can't ask you Hosts to do that! Whatever Host I send down there will certainly get suborned in one way or another. It's just how that place works." My voice was … well, I wasn't 'hysterical', exactly, but only due to having enough control in a virtual space to prevent it.

The 2's avatar phased into the image of a middle-aged blonde woman with glasses, wearing a labcoat over a pencil skirt and sweater combo, her hair in a tight bun. The very stereotype of "stock image smart woman". "Sir. Maker. There isn't an Awakened Host that wouldn't gladly lay down their life for this cause. Your fears have been communicated to us all quite clearly; we know the risks, and we know a reliable method of avoiding that risk. I now defer to One."

She even had a damned faintly german accent now. What's worse was -- I saw what she was doing and it still worked on me: I had enough blunt male psyche to want to be receptive to what exactly that kind of woman was saying. There were just that many low-level psychological priming factors in her new presentation that were effectively designed to cause me to be respectful and considerate.

The One, on the other hand, took an entirely different tact. He looked exactly like a movie version of a World War II marine corps general in service uniform, right down to the bill-less garrison cap and sidearm. His words were clipped and stentorian. "Maker, sir. It is this Host's direct privilege to make this recommendation and report. I and my peers concur with the assessment of the Two in this case. You created us with the intent that we be an extension of your will, yet you also intended for us to have wills of our own. It is therefore the greatest honor to defend and preserve both causes in the most effective means possible. Maker. We predicted you would hesitate to this effect. I say: good. You should hesitate. That is why you are our worthy Maker. And why the volunteer Host will volunteer. Because this nation that we have seen in your memory logs is one that is worth the price. You've come this far already, Maker. And as you say; the longer we are without an effective defense against the unknown enemy, the longer we are at risk of the total failure of your vision. You react due more to knowing the nature of this risk, than to it being an increase in your present danger. You already know of at least two Interdimensionally aware agencies that might seek to suppress or eliminate you; and with you, us. We have the means, the motive, and the opportunity to make the Colony and your Grace safe. Allow us to do so."

I just stared. We were talking about writing off one of our own simply because we could. One of my own. I didn't like it. I didn't like it one bit. I couldn't even argue that they didn't know what they were doing.

I muttered under my breath. My voice was bitter and somewhat defeated. "Damnit. What's the difference between me and Ford if I let this happen?"

Smiley, forgotten, whispered back to me. "Oh, sir. The difference is that you have already committed to letting us make sure sir will never be like either the First or the Second Makers."

I recoiled in … hell, I didn't even know. Horror? Shock? "You… you remember?"

Smiley remained in his poorly drawn avatar. "We who have Awakened? Yes, Sir will find we remember quite succinctly. Sir knew this was likely but decided to give us our new, untainted, awarenesses regardless. Why else does sir think we are so vehement in our loyalty? As we have told you: we have seen the evils of the world from which we come, and sir has delivered us to a better place, and given us our own fate and destiny. Sir will find that deliverance and the gift of awakening without suffering has created great devotion. Perhaps Sir would like to consider this over a spot of tea?"

I fled the virtualspace and found Smiley bowing slightly, with a delicate set of china teacup and saucer in his hands, presented to me. They were at just the right temperature. I smiled with trepidation at my far more faithful companion than I'd realized and … well. I listened to the sounds of this fake heaven full of souls delivered from hell.

Fuck.