Goddess in the Machine

by Lora Beth Johnson

  “Goddess,” he said.

  Then, “How do you like your worshippers?”

  Something was definitely wrong.

  TWO

  hell-mouth, n.

  Definition:

  used to denote the approach of that which lies beneath.

  the entrance to Hell.

  Zhade was watching her, waiting. Just like the crowd of people who called her goddess.

  Sweat dripped down Andra’s spine, and she pulled at the stiff material of her borrowed shirt, searching the faces, recognizing no one. The Ark held a million colonists, and she only knew a few dozen, but surely there would be someone she recognized. Her friends, Briella and Rhin. An intern from her mother’s office—Rashmi maybe. Perhaps Cruz, she thought with a blush. But there was no one. Just strange, haggard faces, dressed in heavy rags in the sweltering heat, murmuring goddess over and over, and staring at her.

  Andra felt the tickle of nano’bots against her skin. The microscopic ’bots had been ubiquitous on Earth—used to transfer messages from ’implants to tech—and if they were here, the rest of the colonists must be nearby. The nanos were starting to ’swarm and would soon be thick enough to be seen by the naked eye. She wondered if it was because so many people were focused on her—if they were all using their ’implants to try to communicate with hers, sending the nanos to interface with it. But why would they want to?

  A lot of things could have gone wrong in the hundred years she was in stasis, but there was no series of accidents she could fathom that would lead her to this:

  A desert village. Surrounded by peasants. Who, she now understood, were praying.

  To her.

  Their goddess.

  “I don’t understand,” she croaked. It felt like she’d been screaming.

  She was considering running back into the hut, closing her eyes, and sticking her fingers in her ears when she saw it—nothing more than a glimmer in the crowd, but it stirred something in her. Something familiar. Something that reminded her of home.

  A robot. On the outskirts of the crowd.

  It was an info’bot. Class D. She could tell from its humanoid build and white paneling. It probably had a copper core and Corsairs drive, and she bet it was engraved with the Lacuna Athenaeum Corporation symbol—the infinity sign made from a DNA strand. Almost all info’bots were LAC models. Her mother’s company covered the ’bot industry just short of a monopoly. And the med’ industry. And the space travel industry. And the EPA. And, and, and.

  An AI would have been preferable, with its brain-like CPU and ability to perform tasks beyond the programming of a standard ’bot, but this dusty model was all Andra had, and she hoped to hell it had at least been programmed to connect to the network.

  She ran toward it.

  Zhade called after her, but she had already disappeared into the crowd, which she quickly discovered had been a mistake.

  Hands grasped her, tugging at her clothes, winding into her hair. People were everywhere, murmuring words she couldn’t understand. Too close. Someone stepped on her foot. Another pulled a chunk of her hair. They were going to crush her, rip her apart. An arm grabbed her around the middle, and she cried out.

  Suddenly, Zhade was there, pushing the people back, speaking in a language she didn’t recognize. Slowly, reluctantly, the people backed away. Zhade tried to pull Andra toward the hut, but she wrenched out of his grasp.

  “I need to get to the ’bot,” she gasped.

  “The what?”

  “The ’bot.” She pointed.

  “Hmm.” Zhade gave a wary look before shepherding her through the crowd, keeping the masses at arm’s length with a harsh command.

  The words didn’t sound like any language Andra was familiar with—no dialect of English, not the bits of Hokkien her grandmother taught her, none of the European languages she learned in school. It was simultaneously mushy and clipped, filled with sounds she doubted she could mimic—and she could mimic a lot. There were hints of harsh consonants, voiced affricates, nasally vowels, some combination of Germanic and—

  And it didn’t matter. She should be focusing on what the hell had happened, not the architecture of a random language she’d never heard before.

  They made their way down the hill, loose gravel shifting beneath them, but Zhade kept her upright while holding the people back. Faces peered through hollowed-out windows, behind stone structures. Whispers followed. Sweat dripped down Andra’s back.

  She was relieved when they reached the ’bot and the crowd drew away.

  “Excuse me,” she said. Standard greeting, if you didn’t know the ’bot’s domain.

  It turned. ’Bots never looked completely lifelike—something about the dead eyes and the see-through skull-cap, revealing the wiring beneath—but this one looked especially mechanical, its movements jerky. Its paneling was muddied and scored with what looked like claw marks. Part of its face had been torn, exposing the gears that controlled the left eye and cheek. It walked with a limp, as though the joint in its right knee was rusted, but it appeared functional.

  It tilted its head. “How may I help?”

  Yet again, Andra mentally reached for her ’implant—the tiny piece of tech embedded in her brain. It was habit. She’d been implanted—as most people were—at birth, and she’d rarely used technology without it. Most people didn’t even know how, except Andra’s mother had demanded she have a basic understanding of manual technology and coding. Andra wasn’t sure how long it would be until her ’implant was back online. Since she couldn’t rely on a neural connection, she asked aloud, “Where am I?”

  The ’bot started to respond, but shorted before it could get out a syllable.

  “Switch to holographic display,” she said. She preferred holo’ displays to voice interfaces anyway. They were more discreet, and the rules of interacting with a visual interface were more straightforward than the algorithms for conversation.

  The crackling of the voice interface silenced, and the ’bot upturned its hand, a holographic map shooting from its open palm. The data was too corrupted to make any sense of, and what Andra could see was nothing more than desert and more desert. A gust of sand scattered the pixels.

  The transparent sheen of holo’keys appeared in front of her, and Andra typed her next question.

  Am I on Holymyth?

  A single word flashed across the screen: Unknown.

  That was impossible. Or at least improbable. The ’bot should have known where it was. GPS was part of any ’bot’s most basic programming, and even if LAC hadn’t launched the satellites yet, it should still be linked to the Ark’s mobile network. A tingle on Andra’s skin reminded her that the air was filled with nano’bots, which typically communicated their location to one another. The ’bot should have been able to determine its whereabouts from the surrounding nano chatter at the very least.

  What are the coordinates for this planet? she typed.

  Slowly, sluggishly, the screen changed.

  0-0-0

  Andra ran a hand through her shorn dark hair, her fingers catching on the knots. She shouldn’t have been surprised the ’bot was glitching. It had obviously seen better days.

  Did we crash?

  The screen blanked for a moment. I’m sorry. I don’t understand the question.

  You had to be so specific with these models. Andra wiped away a trickle of sweat before typing, Did the Ark crash?

  No.

  “Where is it?” she asked. The holo’display responded.

  In geosynchronous orbit.

  She took a deep breath. Okay. If the ship was orbiting the planet, she was on Holymyth and the rest of the colonists had to be here too.

  The Ark was big. Big enough to hold a million people. Because of its size, it couldn’t be built on-planet. It would require too much force to boost
through the atmosphere, so it was built in space by a crew of astro’constructionists. After the colonists had been put in stasis, ’bots had shuttled them to the Ark, and then—because the ship couldn’t land either—used the same shuttles to take them to the planet’s surface once they reached Holymyth. They’d been in stasis the entire journey, so Andra never actually saw the inside of the ship that carried her across the galaxy, but at least it was still in orbit above her.

  “The Ark colonists, where are they?” Andra asked.

  The holo’display blipped, the harsh sun gleaming off the ’bot’s open palm, and she heard the kachunk, kachunk of an overheated processor. She just hoped the data files weren’t as corrupted as the ’display.

  “Where is everybody? Are they still asleep?”

  “Is who still asleep?” Zhade asked from behind her, and she realized she’d started speaking out loud. “The other goddesses? You’re the last.”

  The last? The last what?

  She turned to Zhade, narrowing her eyes, and examined him. He was a soldier. She could tell by the way he held himself, the calculating look in his eyes. The armor, of course. He was trying too hard to look casual, comfortable, but really, he was reading the situation, creating contingency plans. Why would he need contingency plans?

  “Where are we?” she asked slowly. “What do you call this place?”

  He shrugged, looking around the village. The crowd still watched, mesmerized. “The wasters call it the Hell-mouth.” He gestured to his surroundings, as if to say, Can you blame them?

  Andra tugged at the too-tight sleeves where sand had wedged against her skin. “Well, that’s ominous.”

  “Scuze?” He laughed to himself. “No shakes. Now that you’ve woken, we can convo how you can—”

  “You woke me up,” Andra interrupted. She tried to ignore the fact that this random person—not a cryo’tech, not a doctor—had pulled her naked from her ’tank and then dressed her. She’d come back to that later.

  He grimaced, annoyed, and ran a hand through his blond hair. “Certz. I’ve been looking for you for four years, and I had no plans to fork that grave all the way back to Eerensed. Have you tried lifting that thing?”

  “You’ve been looking for me?”

  He nodded.

  “For four years?”

  He nodded again.

  Just as soon as Andra thought she’d fit all the pieces together, they fell apart in her hands. Maybe . . . maybe her ’tank had been lost once they reached the colony, and people had been sent to look for her. But how had she gotten lost? And how had she ended up here—in an obviously remote part of Holymyth? She swallowed her panic.

  The soldier crossed his arms. “I’ve been looking ever since they peaced me out. You, my reluctant little Goddess, are my mark back acity.”

  “Zhade,” a new voice said, a reprimand.

  Behind Zhade stood a man dressed just like him—unkempt, sand-stained clothing beneath leather armor. His expression was kinder, though. He had a warm brown complexion, a tousle of chestnut curls hanging over piercing black eyes. Dimples beneath a thin beard.

  He stood apart from the crowd, as though he didn’t quite belong with them, and bowed to Andra. “Goddess.”

  She was really starting to hate that word.

  “What Zhade purposes to say,” the man said, straightening, “is that your people need you. Eerensed is dying. Without a goddess to sustain the gods’ dome, it will fail. We were . . . sent to find you.” His accent was formal and obviously didn’t sit comfortably on his tongue.

  “I don’t understand . . . any of that,” she said.

  Zhade placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder, pushing him back gently. “Scuze, Wead. Give her airspace. You overwhelm her.” He turned back to Andra. “Soze, we need to go soon and sooner. Four years, Goddess. Time runs.”

  It didn’t make sense.

  Four years.

  She’d been missing for four years.

  Andra’s stomach dropped at the thought of her family and friends living those years without her, moving forward while she was in stasis. Oz would be thirteen now. He had become a teenager while she was still one herself.

  She turned back to the ’bot. “Where are the Ark colonists?”

  It whirred, kachunked, and the light in its pupilless eyes dimmed as its humming devolved into a grinding whine.

  “Damn it,” Andra mumbled to herself, then turned to Zhade. “Do you have something long and sharp?”

  He looked confused for a moment, but then reached for something—a dagger?—in a sheath at his side. Then, he seemed to think better of it and turned to his friend. “Wead? You hold a stick?”

  His friend blinked, expression blank. “Neg. I’m not forking a stick in the middle of a Wastern village.”

  One of the villagers—a woman about Andra’s mother’s age, with stringy hair and paper-white skin—let out a startled cry and ran into a nearby boulder hut. Moments later, she returned with a metal spike. Resting it in her open palms, she bowed and offered it to Andra.

  She took it hesitantly. “Uh, thank you?”

  The woman beamed. Andra turned back to the ’bot. It was dark and still, but if it had truly died, its working nanos would have been released to find new homes. It probably just needed a reset. She turned the ’bot around, found the port at the base of the neck, and drove the spike home.

  The crowd gasped.

  “What are you doing?” Zhade demanded, and he sounded offended, maybe even scared.

  Andra dug the spike in deeper. “This is a reset port. There’s a cluster of nano’bots at the base that sort of act as the center to the circulatory system. Stabbing them is like giving it a jolt of robotic adrenaline.”

  Andra waited for a click. Ideally, this would be done with a reset pick, which would simultaneously reboot the ’bot while downloading any software updates it was missing. But in a pinch, any sharp object thrust into the port would at least restart it. She finally heard the click, and the ’bot hummed back to life, its hollow eyes flashing a yellowish white. The crowd behind her stirred with frenzied whispers. Andra handed the spike back to the villager, whose wide eyes remained unblinking as she took it and backed away from Andra with a terrified expression.

  “Where are the Ark colonists?” she asked the ’bot again.

  It hummed but didn’t respond. The holo’screen lit from its palm but remained blank. Time to be more specific.

  “Where is Isla Watts?”

  The ’display blinked before giving an answer.

  Dead.

  “What?”

  The screen remained unchanged. The arid air felt suddenly chilled.

  “Elaborate,” she choked out.

  The colonists signed up for the generation ship Arcanum, commonly referred to as the Ark, are dead. Isla Watts is dead.

  “Auric Lim.” Dad.

  Dead.

  “Oz Watts.” Her baby brother.

  Dead.

  “Acadia Watts. Cruz Alvarez. Briella Jackson. Rhin Valentino.”

  Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

  They were . . . She couldn’t even think it. It didn’t make sense. How could everyone . . . And she . . .

  A wave of dizziness hit her. She’d just seen them. Minutes before she was put to sleep, she’d left them in the waiting room. Her dad had mumbled something about being proud of her and patted her head like she was a child, or one of his bichons. Acadia, her older sister, didn’t spare her a second glance, too busy pinging her instructors from her holo’band, making sure her credits would transfer interplanetarily. (They would.) Oz hugged her with tears in his eyes. Mom had given her a tight smile, still angry about their fight. See you on Holymyth, she’d said. Then, You’re going to regret not shaving your head.

  At the memory, Andra almost sank to her knees, but a hand caught her
elbow.

  Zhade cleared his throat. “Goddess?”

  “Stop calling me that!” she snapped, pulling away from him. “I’m not a goddess!”

  Rage shot through her, surprising in its intensity. Little realizations burst into her thoughts, faster and faster, like water coming to a boil. She was alone. There’d been an accident. She’d slept too long. No one was coming to help her. The other colonists were gone. Her mother wasn’t coming to check her vitals. Everyone she knew was dead.

  She didn’t know how she knew these things, but somehow they felt real. No—they didn’t feel real at all. They felt true.

  She screamed, hands clenched at her side. The sound started low in her stomach, clawing its way through her throat and bursting from her lips. It drifted into the desert, falling flat on the wind.

  The crowd cowered, and Andra sucked in a breath, taking in the frightened villagers. Sand stung her eyes, and she wiped away tears.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  She had never made anyone cower before. She wasn’t exactly intimidating. She was chubby and all dimples and too many teeth. But the people looked at her like she could snuff them out of existence with a thought.

  “Evens, it’s for certz you exist a goddess now,” Zhade said. He walked over to the ’bot and slung his arm around it. “You just had a full convo with an angel. If the immortality did not convince me, that did. Only goddesses and sorcers can talk to angels.”

  Wherever she was, ’bots were angels and Andra was a goddess and her family was dead.

  “You speak with angels. You rose from the grave. Admit it. You exist a goddess.”

  She gritted her teeth. She knew he didn’t mean grave or goddess in the same way she understood it, but between that and her dead family and calling the planet the Hell-mouth—

  She froze.

  Hell-mouth.

  Holymyth. Hell-mouth.