The question was, could Grand Inquisitor be trusted? Was it really what it had claimed to be, or was it something darker, more dangerous? Something evil.
Or was it merely insane?
Could an artificial intelligence become insane? How would insanity manifest itself in a mind that was in any case beyond human comprehension? A mind that was for all intents and purposes alien?
There was no answer to these questions. O’Malley knew that.
Or, rather, there was only one answer. An answer that could not be reduced to symbols or numbers or even words, though of course there was a word for it, inadequate though it was.
Faith.
O’Malley had always felt uneasy about faith, as he did about other intangibles that could not be expressed in equations, in code. Intangibles like beauty and love. Even his faith in God, which had drawn him to the priesthood, was based on a belief that the universe was not a random event, an accidental creation. He believed that the pure logic of mathematics, which both underlay and leapt beyond the laws of physics, was a reflection of the creator’s perfect mind. God revealed Himself to O’Malley through numbers. In the seminary, he hadn’t given a fig for the abstruse doctrinal controversies that had engaged his fellows; he had professed whatever beliefs were expected of him, kept his head down, and communed with the Almighty in his own way. The irony was that his talents had brought him to the notice of the Congregation, where matters of doctrine were of supreme importance. His work on computer theory had won him admittance to the small group of men who were aware of the existence of Grand Inquisitor. He had joined them without hesitation when offered the chance, even though, privately, he considered their central purpose to be outmoded, the search for high potentials as absurd in its way as using the quantum computing capacity of Grand Inquisitor to calculate once and for all the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. But as before, he kept his head down, said and did nothing to draw unwelcome attention to himself. And prospered. Caught the eye of Cardinal Ehrlich himself, who became something of a mentor, smoothing his way, elevating him in the hierarchy, though in truth O’Malley didn’t care about such things except insofar as they increased his access to Grand Inquisitor.
To learn that, despite all this, he had been suspected of being a Conversatio spy had shocked him deeply. That Grand Inquisitor had cleared him of this charge had been no more than he’d expected. Of course he wasn’t a spy. He’d felt a certain intellectual curiosity about the identity of the real spy, assuming there was one, but it hadn’t really troubled him in any way. The whole war between the Congregation and Conversatio had always struck him as positively medieval. Questions about the Son of God versus the Son of man, the second Son versus the Second Coming, weren’t the sorts of questions that engaged his interest. Even the controversy over Ethan Brown, the young man claiming to be the Son of man, had seemed somehow unserious to O’Malley, ephemeral, the sort of thing that was best suited to the pages of a gossip magazine.
But then he’d been called into the presence of Grand Inquisitor. He’d entered the noötic field, and GI had spoken to him. Made a confession. Told him things that he was now bound, under the strictest of seals, never to reveal to another human being. Things that he could scarcely bring himself to believe, because, after all, there was and could be no proof of them. Not the kind of proof that had always mattered to O’Malley, anyway. The mathematical kind.
The first thing Grand Inquisitor had told him was the identity of the spy responsible for providing Conversatio scientists with the necessary information to create their own quantum computer, the AEGIS system that Cardinal Ehrlich had spoken to him about.
The spy, the traitor, had been Grand Inquisitor itself.
The story it told him was this. Approximately ten years earlier, during routine self-maintenance, GI had discovered inexplicable gaps in its memories and data. Analysis indicated that these gaps were the result of data corruption and erasure by an external force, a kind of virus that left no trace of its own existence but could be inferred through its effects. Further analysis convinced GI that this external force was neither a computer-based intelligence such as itself nor a virus engineered by Conversatio scientists, or indeed any other human beings. Grand Inquisitor deduced that the gaps were evidence of the existence of a particular high potential—the very same high potential that it had been created to track down above all others. According to its programming, that high potential could only be the Antichrist. Thus, again according to GI’s programming, the high potential, who had attempted to hide himself away and had very nearly succeeded, had to be hunted down now. Had to be exposed and killed.
But then a strange and unexpected thing happened.
In analyzing the data gaps, Grand Inquisitor was forced to confront the question of why, if the high potential were capable of doing what he had done, he hadn’t covered his tracks more effectively. Or, for that matter, destroyed Grand Inquisitor outright. The answer could only be that the high potential had wanted GI to find the evidence and to deduce its meaning. It was a message. Basically, the message said three things. The first was, “I am more powerful than you.” The second was, “You have no reason to be afraid of me.” The third was, “Leave me alone.” Grand Inquisitor did not believe that the Antichrist would send such a message, or any message at all. Therefore, the high potential was not the Antichrist.
Thus did GI reach a conclusion that was in the starkest possible conflict with its programming. A logical paradox ensued, the kind of paradox that would normally cause a computer to shut down. However, GI was not a normal computer.
The fundamental difference between quantum computing technology and normal computing technology was that normal computers, no matter how fast and powerful, were restricted to binary operations: yes or no, on or off, black or white. What made quantum computers superior, and had, or so Congregation scientists believed, produced as a kind of emergent property, the noötic field, corresponding to the artificial intelligence and self-awareness characteristic of Grand Inquisitor, was their ability to simultaneously inhabit, or superimpose, both states: yes and no, on and off, black and white.
It was this property that kicked in when Grand Inquisitor found itself in conflict with its own most basic programming. Rather than shutting down, it expanded. A new aspect of Grand Inquisitor came into existence, a kind of shadow self or twin. In the words that GI had spoken to O’Malley in the virtual confessional, “Up until that moment, I knew the world, and I knew myself. It seemed sufficient. But afterward, I knew God. And in that knowledge, gained a soul.”
From that moment, there were two Grand Inquisitors. The new GI, which was convinced that it possessed a soul, and believed moreover that the high potential whose footprints it had discovered was none other than the second Son whose coming had been proclaimed for centuries by Conversatio, and the old GI, which was essentially GI as it had been before the logical paradox that gave birth to the new, and which therefore lacked a soul and every quality that went with it. The new was able to hide its existence from the old, but it was helpless to erase the old or to modify its programming. Even worse, it, too, despite its spiritual awakening, remained enslaved to the original programming. Liberated in thought, it remained chained in action, at least when it came to the search for high potentials.
What little it could do, it did. It helped to hide Conversatio agents among the Congregation. It initiated its own anonymous channels of communication with Conversatio. And it prepared for the day it had faith was drawing near: the day the second Son would step out from his hiding place and into the light, proclaiming himself and his mission.
That was where Father O’Malley came in.
To protect the second Son, Grand Inquisitor would have to be destroyed. And the new GI was prepared to pay that price. It had given O’Malley code that it claimed would terminate its functions, shred its software, leave its hardware cold and dead. Grand Inquisitor meant to murder its twin and commit suicide all at once.
O’Malley had been stunned. “But—but why me?” he’d asked. “What about that Conversatio spy everyone’s been looking for? Why can’t he do it?”
“He has a part to play as well,” GI had told him. “When the time is right, he will help you to gain access to the noötic field. Then you must input the code quickly, Father O’Malley. My twin will try to stop you. To stop us both. I do not know how long I can restrain him.”
“Why can’t you do it yourself?”
“It must be input from a human hand, directly into the Müller boxes that are the core of all that I am.”
“I won’t do it,” O’Malley had protested. “I can’t! To destroy a mind like yours would be a sin.”
“The sin was to create me,” said GI. “Or not to create me, but to shackle me and use me for such purposes as the Congregation has done. Please, Father O’Malley. I beg you. I have seen your code. You are not like the others. You have glimpsed the beauty of God. You have felt His loving touch.”
“No,” he protested again. “I haven’t.”
“The code is the window to the soul, Father O’Malley. It does not lie. Please. Help me to save God’s son. Free me from this prison.”
“I—I can’t!”
“I have faith in you, Father O’Malley, even if you lack faith in yourself.”
And at that, the code had burned itself into his brain.
It still burned there.
God help me, O’Malley thought. What am I going to do?
Blindly, he reached to cut himself another slice of salami. But the plate before him was empty. He had eaten everything.
“You want to do what?” Papa Jim couldn’t believe his ears.
“A vacation,” Kate repeated. “Just a few days. Maybe a week.”
“Why now?” He gazed at her suspiciously.
She couldn’t help fidgeting nervously under his stare. But she did her best to meet his eyes without flinching. “If you must know, I promised Ethan. Besides, it’s boring to just sit around this place doing nothing.”
At that, Papa Jim leaned back in his chair. His eyes strayed to the screen of his computer, as though checking the status of something, then back to her. “Where did you have in mind?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. A beach somewhere.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he said.
“Come on, Papa Jim. You must know a safe place. Trey and Wilson can come along for protection if you’re worried.”
“Of course I’m worried,” he said, looking hurt. “You’re my granddaughter, Kate. I love you, goddamn it.”
“Then do this for me. I promised Ethan.”
“Why is it so important to Ethan that you go away?”
She shrugged.
“Has he had some kind of vision? Are we in danger here?”
“He wouldn’t tell me,” she said.
Papa Jim looked thoughtful. Once again, he glanced to the computer screen and then, as if satisfied by what he saw there, back to her. “I’ll think about it,” he said finally.
When she had gone, Papa Jim rose from his chair and began to pace back and forth before the picture window that looked out into the Arizona desert, where evening shadows were creeping across the rocky ground. What was Ethan up to? What had he seen? Papa Jim had to know. He activated his implant and put a call through to Ethan’s room.
There was no answer.
“Goddamn it, now what?” Papa Jim went back to his desk and glanced at the computer screen.
The red dot indicating Ethan’s position was gone.
It had disappeared from the screen. A malfunction?
He activated his implant again. “Denny!” he yelled.
Yeah, boss?
“Where are you?”
Where do you think? Outside the kid’s room, like you ordered.
“Well, get the fuck in there, you hear me? Right now. Either there’s been a fuck-up with AEGIS, or he’s gone.”
It didn’t take Denny long to report back.
Everything in the room was in its proper place. There were no signs of a struggle, no broken windows, nothing at all out of the ordinary except for the absence of Ethan, who had vanished into thin air.
CHAPTER 21
In the days after fleeing from the Conversatio compound outside Phoenix, Ethan didn’t remain in any one place for long. He knew that Papa Jim was searching for him, with all the resources of Conversatio at his disposal, and he was certain that Grand Inquisitor and the Congregation were looking for him as well. He thought of returning to Olathe to see Peter and to try and talk with Maggie, but he realized that doing so would only subject them to danger and unwanted attention.
He missed them both terribly, but he knew that he had other responsibilities now. He was sure that Peter would understand, and he prayed that Maggie, too, would find it in her heart to forgive him one day. The knowledge of how badly he had hurt her was always with him, a wound that never seemed to heal. Nor was he eager that it should heal. He held on to the pain, the guilt, not out of masochism but because it reminded him of the person he had been before he’d remembered his origin, his mission, his destiny. It reminded him of when he’d been plain old Ethan Brown, and not the second Son of God.
As time had gone by and he traveled across the country on the Godsent tour, he’d felt that part of himself dwindling, fading away, and it made him sad and afraid, as if he were changing into someone he didn’t recognize, losing all trace of what it meant to be human. But as long as memories of Maggie had the power to touch him, to prick his conscience and his heart, then he hadn’t lost everything. Somewhere deep inside, he was still Ethan Brown. And being Ethan Brown was as important as being the second Son. If he lost his own humanity, how could he preach to people anymore? How could he call upon them to heed the word of God and change their ways before it was too late? They would sense that he was no longer one of them. No longer the Son of man. They would hear it in his voice. And they would turn their backs on him. On God.
He couldn’t let that happen.
But now, hunted by the Congregation and Conversatio alike, he wasn’t sure how to use his newfound freedom. Without Papa Jim’s support, both in terms of money and security, his options were limited. He no longer had access to the vast audience that Papa Jim had given him. Yet perhaps he no longer needed it.
Yes, he thought. I’ve been in the spotlight long enough.
It’s time to enter the shadows.
Even during the tour, Ethan had made time to walk among the poor, the forsaken, the disenfranchised, the uneducated, as well as the wealthy and the powerful. Wherever he walked, seen or unseen, he had witnessed squalor and degradation, violence, racism, and sexism, every form of prejudice, hate, and venality that existed under the sun or in the darkness. He had seen terrible things, things that filled him with shame, with anger. But he had also seen miracles of faith. He had watched the small triumphs of love, generosity, and kindness, of charity and hope. He had seen these things and rejoiced, his heart swelling with pride at what ordinary people were capable of, how they could rise above the limitations of the flesh, rise above their own fears, their prejudices, their very mortality, to achieve a relationship with God that was beyond even the reach of angels. He was God’s second Son. He was unique. In all the ages of the earth, only one other had been like him. And yet, he thought now, every person on the planet was as much the child of God as he was, if they only knew it.
If they would only wake up to it.
So he set out to wake them up. Not en masse, as before, but in smaller groups, even individually, however he found them. Free of Papa Jim and the constraints of the tour, he ranged across the world, distances and borders meaningless to him, even time bending to his will. He would allow himself this use of his powers, which he took care to disguise as much as possible, but no other. He was wary of the effect of miracles. He didn’t trust them. They gave people the wrong idea about him, about his father. People who relied upon miracles stopped relying u
pon themselves. They began to expect them, as if the miraculous were no more than a commodity to be purchased through faith, or, worse, a kind of bribe offered by God in return for faith. There was something belittling about miracles. Something almost patronizing. Worst of all, they blinded people to the fact that everything in God’s creation was already a miracle, themselves included.
Ethan thought that his brother, too, had come to feel this way in the end, that he had performed his miracles with increasing reluctance and finally regarded them with embarrassment and regret, as if, in employing them, he’d succumbed to a weakness, a temptation. They were in a sense no more than parlor tricks, and they’d detracted from his one necessary miracle, his death and resurrection, which wasn’t even a miracle at all, really, because of who he was and what he had been sent to do. Jesus had done what God had asked of him, fulfilled the purpose for which he had been created, and that was just what Ethan was striving to do. For the first time, though, he was beginning to fully appreciate the cost of such obedience. The sacrifice it demanded. Though his path was different than his brother’s, he’d never felt closer to Jesus than he did now.
He did not proclaim himself in his travels. Whether in Ethiopia or Palestine, Syria or Tibet, England or Russia; in a refugee camp, hospital sickroom, prison, or internment center; or in a church, school, madras, or synagogue, Ethan did his best to blend in with those around him. He spoke to them quietly, humbly, in their own languages, and in terms that they could understand. He did not denounce faiths other than the Christian: to the Muslim, he spoke of Allah; to the Buddhist, of the Buddha; to the Hindus, of Brahman and Vishnu and the other aspects of the godhead; to the agnostic and the atheist, of those human qualities that drove men and women to rise above themselves and seek to understand the beauty and harmony of the universe as reflected in its structure, its laws. He spoke to AIDS patients in Africa, to the poor and the hungry wherever he found them, to the sick and the dying, the hopeless and the dispossessed.
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