Goddess in the Machine

by Lora Beth Johnson

  Or maybe she had gone a bit insane.

  Rashmi was suddenly at the bars, her face wedged in between them. She was not the girl Andra remembered. She was caked in mud, her hair turned white, her eyes sallow. She could be twenty or sixty; it was impossible to tell. But one thing was for sure: she’d been awake for years. And in prison for almost that entire time.

  She reached through the bars, her brittle fingers touching Andra’s cheek. Tears filled her eyes. “We’re alone,” she said.

  Grubby hand. Dirt caked under the fingernails. Dried blood crusted along the joints.

  “I know,” Andra whispered.

  “Do you remember hot chocolate?”

  “Yes.”

  “I used to make it every night before bed. I can’t remember how it tastes anymore.”

  “It’s sweet, remember? And creamy. And the best was when there was a little froth at the top.”

  Rashmi’s eyes widened. She watched Andra almost hungrily, almost as though she didn’t believe she was real, but wanted to so badly. Like Andra was magic. Like she was a goddess.

  “Marshmallows are better,” she said.

  Andra smiled. “Yes, marshmallows are better.”

  Rashmi sat back on her haunches. “I can fix your ’locket.”

  “Okay,” Andra said, because she couldn’t tell her no. Couldn’t tell her it was impossible. Couldn’t take away her hope.

  Rashmi worked without speaking, rummaging through things Andra couldn’t see in the dark. Maybe they allowed her to have belongings—maybe the things from her ’tank drawer, from her own time. Like tech’kits.

  The guards changed outside the prison door, and along with them, the torch. It flared brightly, and for a moment, Andra could see what Rashmi was doing.

  There was no tech’kit. There were no tools. Nothing. Just Rashmi. She had the ’locket pressed to her heart. Her eyes rolled back in her head, eyelashes fluttering. She was mouthing words, but no sound escaped her lips. The flare of the torchlight died, and then Andra could only make out Rashmi’s shape.

  A hole opened in the pit of her stomach. Gone a bit insane, indeed. Of course they wouldn’t let a prisoner keep anything, especially tools that could be used as weapons, or that could hack into ’bots. Andra had been stupid to hope. She would get no answers, and definitely not ones she could trust. She’d wanted to believe so badly, just like she’d wanted to believe Zhade. Rashmi started to make a subglottal whirring noise, and Andra leaned her head back against the gritty wall and closed her eyes.

  Color exploded behind her lids.

  She jerked forward, opening her eyes in time to see a zigzag of light flash across a dark-gray sky. Clouds churned. Rain battered a porch roof that had crumbled to dust long ago. And a boy long dead was stretched out beside her.

  “The lightning is pretty,” Oz said. “But scary. Like Mom.”

  Then he was gone, the sim returning swiftly to the ’locket, folding back in on itself until there was nothing but silence and darkness.

  “There,” Rashmi said. She handed the ’locket back through the bars, letting it dangle from one finger. “I wish I had one.”

  She’d fixed it. Holy shit, she’d fixed it.

  Tears ran down Andra’s cheeks.

  “Take it,” Rashmi said, pushing the ’locket closer to Andra. “All fixed. That was fun. They never let me do things like that anymore. They don’t know what I am.”

  It was the single word that did it. The what instead of who. Everything clicked, and Andra suddenly understood. The previous goddess’s miracles, the hidden AI, the fixed ’locket. Rashmi had never been just an intern, just a goddess.

  Rashmi was the AI.

  THIRTY

  misericord, n.

  Etymology: Latin miser: wretched + cor: heart.

  Definition:

  compassion, pity, mercy.

  a dagger with which the coup de grâce was given.

  archaic: an indulgence or relaxation of the rule.

  a mercy kill.

  Except it didn’t make sense at all.

  Rashmi was definitely a person. A biological person. With skin and hair and blood, not metal and wires and data. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t done. It wasn’t ethical.

  Okay, theoretically it was possible. An AI was nothing more than an artificial brain, so ostensibly, you could fit any organic body with an AI mind. Like a modded eye or arm or heart. Only much, much more complex.

  There were complicated moral questions though. Traditionally, AI were computers, and as such, could inhabit any technical device, from a tablet to a spaceship. These “bodies” were always fallible though, and despite the tremendous leaps in technology and science, artificial intelligences were never quite as sophisticated as human brains. They were still bound by the initial learning algorithms programmed by humans, and because of that, they were limited by their human creators.

  The decade before Andra’s birth, scientists had discovered that the secret to true artificial intelligence was hidden in their own brains. In order for a self-sufficent artificial being to adapt to fit the information it learned and retained, it had to be housed in a new type of computer—wetware. It had to physically replicate the structure of a human brain, using actual biological neural tissue. Just grown in a lab instead of a womb. But there, brains and AI diverged. Human thoughts traveled on electrical impulses conducted by proteins. AI thoughts were chemical impulses carried by nanos.

  The problem—or the most problematic problem—that came with this discovery was that with the wetware brain, AI could now have an organic body. There were limited options on where to find those, of course. Cloning was a possibility, but difficult, because the body had to be grown without a central nervous system. Worse, you could take a person, scoop out the brain and replace it with artificial intelligence, trapping an AI in someone else’s corpse.

  It was heinous and the worst rendition of playing God, and even though Andra knew to-see-if-we-can was often reason enough, she doubted anyone would risk the wrath of the Scientific Board of Ethics.

  But maybe they had.

  Andra watched Rashmi for a moment, still holding out the ’locket through the bars. She looked so human. Except for what she’d done with the ’locket, there was no hint she was AI. She seemed so . . .

  Real.

  It’s just an AI, she remembered her mother saying. Not quite human.

  Never human. They never counted as life.

  She wondered if Rashmi’s parents knew. Had their child been taken away at the hospital and replaced with a robot? Had Dr. Griffin known she’d hired an AI intern? Or maybe that was why Rashmi was at LAC. Had Cruz known?

  Maybe Rashmi had no parents, no internship. Maybe she’d always been nothing more than an experiment; an irreplaceable, priceless piece of tech.

  Just an AI. Not quite human.

  Andra couldn’t tamp down the swell of sympathy she felt for Rashmi. How long had she been kept here? Alone? She felt things—fear and hunger and pain and homesickness. It was a common debate whether AI feelings were real, but Andra knew they were real to Rashmi, and wasn’t that what counted?

  “The ’dome . . .” Andra choked out. She hadn’t meant to say it, the words drawn from her without permission. She worried about the Eerensedians, of course, but it felt wrong to think of Rashmi—this tattered prisoner, this shaking girl, this person—as nothing more than a tool.

  Rashmi nodded, understanding. “I reach for it every night in dreams, but I’m . . . broken.” She frowned at the words, then blinked, as though she were clearing her mind, not refreshing a program. “But this is not. Take it.” She jiggled the ’locket again.

  Andra reached for it, but paused, her fingers skimming the chain.

  “You hold on to it for me.” She wouldn’t need it where she was goin
g.

  She felt a pang of jealousy mixed with guilt for the memories in there of Cruz. It felt so stupid now, the one-sided rivalry.

  Rashmi’s hand clenched around the chain, and she brought it to her chest. “Do you have hot chocolate in here?”

  “No. Sorry.” Her voice was thick.

  “That’s okay. I’ll take anything.”

  Andra heard her snap the ’locket around her neck.

  “At dawn, they bring torches,” she said. “And food and fear. I hope Maret will come.”

  “You hope Maret will come?”

  Rashmi nodded. “He’s the only one who visits me anymore. Sometimes he brings me things to fix. Sometimes I can. Sometimes I can’t. I’m broken. But he doesn’t care. He takes me for walks in the garden, but only if my face is covered.”

  Andra snorted. “How nice of him to give you short reprieves from your captivity.”

  “Yes,” Rashmi said, not catching Andra’s sarcasm. She scuttled back into the dark. “It’s time for sleep. But in the morning, I’ll show you the books I keep in my eye.”

  “Thank you.” Andra wanted to ask more questions, but the girl was already asleep. Or the AI had powered down. Andra leaned back against the concrete wall and brought her knees to her chest, knowing she would probably never get to see the books Rashmi had stored in her memory banks.

  They didn’t speak again. Eventually Andra fell asleep. She didn’t dream.

  * * *

  Andra woke to the sounds of footsteps, and then the clanking of the cell being unlocked. Kiv stood before her, nothing more than a shadow in the dark, holding a kinetic torch.

  By torchlight, the cells looked worse. Her imagination had filled the darkness with emptiness. Instead, it had concealed piles of human waste, dead vermin, and prisoners in rags. Rashmi was huddled in a nest she had made of torn clothing and straw. She clung to the ’locket, but didn’t wake when the guards came. In the light, she looked younger, and in far worse shape. Her body was biological, even if her consciousness was not. If they didn’t take better care of her, she’d die. First her body, then her mind. Then the last hope to fix the ’dome would be gone, and everyone would die.

  Kiv grunted, hauling Andra to her feet—not as roughly as she would have expected, but his grip was firm, and she was too weak to pull away. She gave Rashmi one last glance as Kiv dragged her up the stairs.

  He led her through the palace without a word, his hold on her arm never loosening. This was it. She was going to die. It was happening too fast, and she wasn’t prepared. She felt panicked that she didn’t know what to expect, both in the dying and the after.

  She thought about all the things she was leaving unfinished. The ’dome. The mech’bot still in her room. Maybe Lilibet would find it and return it to Lew. Would they send the maid back to the kitchens once Andra was gone?

  She was lost in thought, so she was surprised when they arrived at Maret’s suite.

  “What are we doing here?”

  Kiv ignored her, only rapped on the door. When it opened, he nudged her in, and she tripped over the threshold.

  Maret wasn’t alone. He was sitting in the same spot as he had her first day there, straight-backed and stiff, his mouth set in a grim line, almost pouting. Next to him was Tsurina. On the other side—Zhade.

  The bastard prince was lounging in an armchair, legs draped over the side, much like the first time he’d been in her room and Andra had first seen the resemblance to his brother. He didn’t meet her eyes as she stumbled to the seat across from Maret, as far away from Zhade as possible.

  On the table before them was a feast—some kind of roast bird, toasted bread, sautéed vegetables in a rich sauce. The smell made Andra’s stomach turn. Next to the food was a huge pitcher of water.

  “You look parched, Goddess,” Maret said, his expression blank. The bruise around his crown was darkening, and Andra thought she saw a smear of blood. She wondered if he’d been overextending his powers, or maybe the crown was malfunctioning. She grasped at that little spark of hope—that maybe he’d lose control before he had the chance to kill her. His posture remained tense as he poured a glass of water and handed it to her.

  She didn’t care that it could have been poisoned, or that she was accepting it from the boy who’d imprisoned her, or that she was showing weakness. She snatched the glass from him and drained it in one gulp. Her stomach twisted, and she resisted the urge to curl up in agony. Sweat trickled down her forehead and over her top lip. Her eyes couldn’t quite focus, but she kept them leveled in Maret’s direction.

  He frowned. “You shouldn’t have drunk so quickly, Goddess.”

  “You know I’m not a goddess,” she slurred. Her voice rasped out the vowels, and the consonants stumbled over her dry lips, got stuck in the cracks at the corners of her mouth.

  “Do I?” He cleared his throat. “Goddess or not, you have a duty to Eerensed. And to me. You failed one and betrayed the other.” He glanced at Tsurina, so quick Andra almost missed it. “Lastish I saw you, you attacked me.”

  “Looks like we’re even,” she croaked, her throat already dry again.

  “We’re nowhere nearish evens,” Maret said. “You put me under some spell. Used magic on me, so you could escape with a prisoner. You’ve decided your fate.” His throat bobbed. “You are going to be sacrificed at dusk. You live on borrowed time.”

  That, at least, was true. If everything had gone according to plan, she would have been long dead by now. Buried on another planet, blissfully ignorant of how she’d left the rest of humanity, of all the pain that was to come.

  Tsurina leaned forward, carefully sliced the roast bird, the knife glinting in her hand. The bird’s flesh parted and steam rose out, clouding the knife. She slid the slice of meat onto a plate and held it out to Andra.

  Andra ignored the offer. “Are you going to let all your people die because you had some stupid grudge against goddesses? Just because the First was the one who gave you the ’dome, you’ll let it destroy itself to prove a point?”

  “Eat, Goddess.” Her voice was sickeningly sweet. “You’ll lose your appetite soon and sooner.”

  She took the plate from Tsurina, then deliberately set it down on the table, never breaking eye contact. The truth was, if she could have stomached it, she would have eaten. She would have devoured every last morsel on the plate. But the water had filled her, even if it hadn’t sated her. She couldn’t have eaten even if she wanted to.

  Maret sighed, leaning back and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Has anyone ever told you you’re too stubborn to be wellish?”

  “Yes,” she said, teeth gritted. “You’ll have to come up with something more original.”

  “Evens, then,” Maret muttered. He seemed to steel himself, and then called, “Bring him out.”

  Kiv returned, dragging a ragged prisoner, and with a gasp, Andra realized who it was.

  Lew-Eadin.

  She barely recognized him. His ashen skin stretched over angular bones. His eyes were glazed over in pain, and though he looked right at her, she wasn’t sure he saw her. Gone was the man who’d driven them across the desert, whom Andra had confided in, who’d hidden laughs behind his hand as Zhade taught her to dance. He was bruised, barely a skeleton, an empty shell. He didn’t seem to notice Zhade sitting there, doing nothing, but Andra did. She would remember, and she would not forgive.

  Maret didn’t move until Tsurina nudged him. Slowly, he picked up the knife his mother had used to cut the bird. Andra tensed. Her mind was fuzzy, and her body was weak, but she had to figure out a way to get between Maret and Lew-Eadin. She had to stop him.

  Lew didn’t struggle, only slouched in Kiv’s grip.

  Maret tightened his hold on the knife, looking at it as he spoke. “I reck who you for true are, Goddess.” His voice was brittle as glass, sharp as the knife, and instead of approachin
g Lew, he came toward Andra. “I reck where you’re from and why you’re here. I could tell you why you woke so late, I could tell you your purpose, and what happened to your fam. But I won’t.”

  The words were terrible, cruel, but his voice sounded sad. Andra risked a glance at Tsurina, whose usually stoic face revealed poorly concealed glee. This was her doing. Her idea, not Maret’s. He held the knife to Andra’s throat. She gulped, terrified. She should have been relieved it was her and not Lew-Eadin, but she wasn’t. She was selfish and scared and angry. Maret watched the knife touch her skin. It was still warm from cutting the meat.

  “You will die an unsolved mystery.” His voice was soft. “Your life will not be justified. You will, however, die recking the damage you’ve done, recking the pain you’ve inflicted on others, recking that you led people to their deaths. Now choose.”

  The last word was wrenched from him through gritted teeth, and Andra was too shocked at first to understand, to fully comprehend what was happening.

  “Wha—what?” she stuttered.

  “Choose who lives and who dies. Or I’ll kill them both.”

  She saw Zhade straighten out of the corner of her eye.

  “Choose,” Maret said, and the word seemed to cost him something. “This is what it means to be a guv, a goddess. Choose. Lew-Eadin or Zhade.”

  “What are you doing?” Tsurina growled.

  “Quiet, mother.” Sweat dripped down Maret’s brow, and blood trickled from beneath his crown.

  For once, Andra agreed with the Grande Advisor. What was Maret doing?

  “Your friend? Or my brother?”

  Maret had bargained to save Zhade before, so why was he willing to kill him now?

  “Which one should I kill?”

  Was this really what being a goddess meant? Holding people’s lives in your hands? Deciding who lived and who died? Like LAC had chosen who to save. Like Skilla had decided who to allow on the rocket. Like Maret decided who to execute.