“It's too late for that.” I let go of Re even as my other husbands entered the room. I didn't look at them. Seeing their fear would weaken me.
“I love you, La-la.” Re's grim expression made the silly nickname serious.
“I love you, Sun God.” I laid my hands on the machine. “You like to cause chaos, don't you? Well, let's see how you handle it.”
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 otherconsciousness 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?”
