The Worshipper

 "Please don't kneel."

I can't grovel any lower than this; to get lower I'd have to dig a trench. A trench! I must prostrate myself before my redeemer, The Eldest and Youngest, the...

"Please. Come on. It's just the two of us."

Funny, I had expected a god - or goddess - to speak in all caps. Or small caps, like Pratchett's Death. Maybe I can't actually hear all caps?

"I SAID GET UP."

No, I can hear them.

I straighten up. I'm still not ready to stand before this goddess whose altar I've sat, knelt and even lain before for so long. This battered old temple has been through a war or two, winters almost without number, and since I've been a wee child toddling in at the side entrance, only one worshipper. Me. To be completely fair of course, it's entirely on my family's property which is large enough I'm not certain even my parents were aware it's here. It's pretty grown over.

"And who are you? What brings you to my lonely little temple? I had almost lost track of humanity but your voice has held me against the tide of oblivion. What brings you back to me, might I ask?"

The Goddess is not very tall. She's actually kind of petite and, uh, curvy. "I'm not anyone special, ma'am. Your story, your...history really resonated with me."

"Mmm?" She steps around the altar, lighting the lamps. The glow is instantly warming.

Where did the lamps come from?

"...and I just always wanted to honor that kind of life. You know, defending the home first and foremost, respecting the family without getting involved in the little in-fights, you know. Family before politics, if you see my meaning."

She shook her head, a rueful smile on her lips. "Some of the in-fighting wasn't exactly little, my dear."

"Uh, no. I guess not."

"One moment, luv." She makes a small movement at the altar and there's a small fire there now, too. "That's so much better. I did appreciate the candles but a bit of juniper, a little tallow and a sprinkling of basil makes for a fine little blaze. Smells good, yes?"

It did, very good. A little Christmasy perhaps, with the tiniest touch of Olive Garden. "It won't last long, though, ma'am."

She waved that away. "Pish. I can light another one if I need to."

"But the old traditions...?"

"Darling, I am the She. The Haven and the Incandescence. If I say it's time for the traditions to come to an end, don't you think it should be my call?"

"I reckon so."

"And we can start new ones if we need to."

"Sure, if you like." The Lady has drawn up a chair before her fire and lamps - wait, there was a chair in here? How did I miss that all these years? - and is looking supremely relaxed. "Why show yourself to me?"

"Well, luv," she says, and I have to say that every time she speaks, she sounds a bit more like me. It doesn't feel mocking but when I first heard her speak she sounded kind of foreign, but now she sounds like someone from just down the road, "you're the very last one to hold me in your heart."

"What, the very last?"

"The very last. No one ever whispers a prayer to me anymore. No one at all. None carry my traditions, ask for my intercession, and especially none light a fire in my honor. Not even a candle. No one at all, but you.

"I've seen this play out a few times, too, you know. Other deities fading into obscurity, usually when the last of their faithful die of old age, more tragically when adherents just give up and quit. With the old folks fading away the gods go the same way, losing cohesion over a few years and winking out with the lives of their believers. They go to the same place usually, so it's not a bad thing. But when a believer stops believing we go out a bit abruptly, and it hurts. Sometimes I can still hear Chalchiuhtlicue weeping from beyond the veil. Poor thing. She deserved better."

"That sounds terrible."

"It is. But you asked, why show myself to you? And I'll tell you: I'm pretty lonely."

"Ma'am?"

"Oh, darling. No. Not 'ma'am,' if you don't mind. I've been this age for a long time but because you're the last, when you go, I go. So your age is my age, I'm not going to be ma'amed anymore.

"But yeah, lonely. Like I said, Chai went away, Odin went away. There aren't many of us left. Jesus is hanging on but he's a little cranky these days. Too many conflicting requests gives him a headache. Yahweh is shouting back at his believers but they're too busy shouting at him so I just keep my distance from that whole mess. Many Japanese families venerate their elders so that for a while they stick around, tiny but glimmering like fireflies. They're beautiful. None of us have ever been able to make out what they're saying but I quite like them.

"And here I am with just you. And since it's just me and you I think we can dispense with the whole god-worshipper thing and it'll just be the two of us. I've never actually taken part in the real world and if I only have a human lifespan left to me, I think I'd like to share it with you."

I must confess that though I've read it in syrupy novels I had never, until this moment, experienced the phenomenon of my jaw dropping, but drop it did.

"Are you?" Slow down, take a breath. "Are you asking me out?"

"Absolutely. I'm going to live the life I never got to live before."

"Aren't you traditionally a vir..."

"First of all, I am not tearing my clothes off and flinging myself at you so pace yourself and we'll see about that as we go on, and secondly, new traditions. The old dynamic isn't relevant anymore. It's just you and me, now."

"New beginnings. Do you want me to keep calling you..."

"I was never keen on that name. But I'll tell you I had a priestess who suffered rather a lot while serving me, and I wronged her in the end. I would honor her memory if you would call me Sylvia."

"But that's my name."

"I know. Call me, Sylvia."

The Test

 

The little pink...person? I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a person. I won't begin to guess at pronouns, I don't know how many genders these things have. Those lumps on its front might be boobs, dicks, or even noses. I can't tell. But the little pink person is blinking up at me with these huge eyes that are full of what appear to be very human-looking tears.

It has gorgeous eyes. They blink and it sniffles - they ARE noses! - and it starts to ask questions.

Yep. I can understand it. It's speaking English of all things. I'll be damned, Stargate was right. The entire universe speaks English.

"...you will not _believe_ how many rules I'm breaking but I have a Human Studies final tomorrow and my grades are right on the edge and you were all by yourself and..."

"Whoa. Hold up. Slow down."

Sniffle.

"Hi, I'm Andy."

HUGE sigh. The noses flutter with it. The person looks relieved. "I'm SO glad you're not mad or freaking out. There's been way too much freaking out!"

"Hi, I'm Andy?"

"Right! Sorry! I'm...uh, actually I'm unpronounceable in English."

"Try me."

"No, really. There's some radio frequency overtones, if you say my name in English without those it's a _very_ rude word."

"Huh. Well, how about Rudy?"

It cocked its head at me and for a moment looked like a slightly mushroom shaped pink cocker spaniel. "I guess that would do." Rudy looks around. "Are you going to get in trouble? Do you have some time to spare for me? I really need this help. I can put you back exactly where I found you if you can't stay but it would really mean a lot."

"Sure. My shift is over, nothing interesting on the TV this evening, nowhere to be. It'd be nice if you could return the favor, though."

The noses turned white. I couldn't tell if that was a blush or a fear response or what. The person was quite naked and aside from its head, arms and legs - some extra elbows and knees going on there - eyes and mouth, the body appeared to be more or less featureless. Kind of like My Little Pony but, you know, REALLY wrong.

"I just have to say, Rudy, you speak my human language very, very well."

"Thanks! I took the advanced courses when I was younger and I stay current by watching sitcoms."

"That would do it."

"I didn't like the first season of Parks and Rec, though."

"Don't sweat it, nobody did. It got better."

"Okay. I really only need help on one thing. Just one thing. I can muddle through everything else.

"Okay, fire away. If I can answer it, I will."

"Are humans evil?"

Whoa.

"Humans in general? Humanity as a species?"

"Yeah!"

"That's a tough question. You can find individuals you might describe as evil but usually those folks are suffering from some kind of mental or emotional pathology. They're sick, not evil.

"Sometimes you look at some of the ways we behave and think it might be evil but what it really is, is short-sighted and uneducated. The more people understand the repercussions of their behavior, the more likely they are to behave better. But even then sometimes circumstances just force their hand and they do things that could be described as evil, but they don't have a choice. That isn't really evil, it's just survival."

"What about war?"

"The people who start wars often do so for evil reasons, or at least evil in my opinion. Fighting over religions, territory, ideologies...that's unsupportable. And generally those people with bad ideologies eventually lose their wars, get killed by their own disgusted troops, or otherwise yanked out of power. Wars are a problem we have but I think we're getting past it, kinda. Sorta."

"Who decides what's bad?"

"Heck if I know. General consensus, I guess. History gets written by the winners. Winners of the wars, that is. The more important histories, like who loved whom and who invented the chocolate chip cookie, that kind of stuff doesn't get recorded."

Rudy shuddered.

"What'd I say?"

"Chocolate is violently toxic to my people. It's, uh...it's pretty bad."

I didn't mention the little bag of M&M's in my pocket.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that."

I suppose there are things that are amenable to my metabolism that would be bad for you, too."

"I wouldn't be surprised. Then again humans evolved on this planet to eat more or less anything we can catch, and some things start out dangerous but we treat them so they aren't. We're opportunistic omnivores, we'll eat anything that doesn't kill us and some of the things that should."

"It seems to me that most humans generally aren't as broadly informed as you."

"A lot aren't. I'm a little weird that way."

"How come?"

"Hmm. I guess some of it would be because in my day job I'm a professional handyman. That takes a certain amount of problem solving skills and some curiosity. And the rest is because when I'm not at work I like to write science fiction stories. You pick up a lot, researching to provide backstories for characters, trying to better understand circumstances, that kind of thing."

"I guess I got lucky."

"That's one way to look at it." I wondered if he suspected the awful truth.

"Did you have anything to add to the evil question?"

"Not really. 'Evil' isn't a clearly defined concept, it requires context. I generally think of 'evil' as doing bad, while knowing what you're doing is bad. There's been lots of people and groups who would be described afterward as evil by their survivors, but in the moment I would imagine those evil parties thought what they were doing was moral and right.

"How does that even work?"

"I have no idea. I'm not evil. At least, I don't think I am now and hope nobody thinks I am at some time in the future."

At that Rudy took out a little notebook and made a tickmark on a page already dark with notes, using an actual, honest-to-goodness pencil.

"I guess that is the answer I'm looking for." They flipped the notebook and tucked it away again - I did mention Rudy was naked, right? No? Well, anyway. Don't ask me where they put the notebook or the pencil, I didn't really understand what I was seeing and don't want to explore the question further. I'm okay with some mysteries staying mysterious.

Rudy cleared their throat, a very human sound but it may have been more than just what it seemed to be because then they said, "The answer is: we don't think so, but we can't know at this time."

From somewhere came a strangely huge but also tiny *ding* as if a hotel counter bell forty feet across had been gently tapped.

Rudy smiled. "Okay! That answer has been accepted. We'll be back in about five hundred of your years to ask again."

"Ask what again?"

"The question, of course! The Human Studies Final is to take a quick survey to determine the moral value of humans and determine whether to allow the experiment to continue. We ask a few folks here and there and aggregate the answers and reassess. The Human Studies Final has had unanimous extensions for over four thousand years.

"So we'll be back in five hundred years and check up on you guys. Good luck with capitalism!"

And with a flash of light, he was gone like a page out of a typewriter.

Changeable

 "Alison."

"Alison."

"Alison."

Mm.

"Alison."

"Mm?"

"Can you hear me?"

"Ugh."

"We will wait."

I must be Alison. Am I? It feels right. Doesn't it? Alison. Sort of.

"Al."

"Excuse me?"

"Call me Al."

"Understood. You were involved in a serious calamity resulting in great loss of life and property damage, do you understand?"

"Okay." I don't have any clear memory of any "calamity," odd word choice there. But it covers both accidents and deliberate acts. "I was on a ship."

"Yes. You were aboard the Digitus Impudicus when it was destroyed. Do you understand?"

"Okay. Destroyed how?"

"Details are unclear at this time. Authorities are examining the debris field. The search for survivors ended yesterday. Eighteen individuals were collected but more may yet be saved. Are your eyes working?"

Are they? Open - are they open? Close. I felt something move. Open, close. "No. I can feel my eyelids moving." Stay calm. "Am I blind?"

"Yes, temporarily. Your entire body was badly damaged. Your eyes are new. Nerve regeneration is still taking place. That may cause discomfort. If you experience pain, please notify us immediately. If you start to perceive images, let me tell you that the dominant color in the room is light blue. You are lying down. The ceiling is white. A viewscreen is above you but it is not turned on. Its color is dark gray. The sheets on your bed are dark blue. There are white bandages on your hands. If you start to see things, those will likely be the first things you see.

"All right." The voice is calm, neutral, very measured. It hadn't been obvious until that recitation made it obvious. "Are you an AI?"

"Yes. Would you be more comfortable with a human attendant?"

"No, I'm not hung up about AI. Tell me your name?"

"We are Janus."

"Okay, Janus." Not "Jan." AI always tell you exactly what they want to be called. "What can you tell me?"

"Digitus Impudicus was destroyed eighty-nine days ago by unknown causes. Seventy-eight humans, four AI and one hundred, forty-eight thousand tonnes of water ice were aboard. D.I. was en route to Mars and under thrust at the time of destruction. Do you remember any details leading up to the event?"

"I remember we were under thrust." Four AI? The Finger carried only two! "Pickup at Europa went without a hitch. We'd been tacking back to save reaction mass."

"Yes."

"That's all I've got." Digitus Impudicus, AKA The Finger because somebody among the corporate owners thinks himself a rebel, started life as a thruster, a bigass rocket. Big, big rocket, going everywhere on a tower of glowing hot plasma But at some point somebody figured out that with the way it was built, it was actually kind of ready-made to convert to a solar sailer, so they did that and it worked, kinda. But the native AI wasn't good at that at all, so they installed another AI, one that was raised from the beginning to be a solar sailer and he was good, almost artistic at it if you can believe an AI having art. And the corporate owners found they liked having the option, choosing which way to go. Strap on some passenger pods, fire up the reactor and get there in a hurry. Ferry a bunch of water from Europa, take your time. Ice isn't in a hurry. Spread the sails and ride the solar wind. It's free. Not as slow as some think but not being optimized for it, our sails are modest and we take our time.

Light.

"My eyes are beginning to work. I see light."

"Do you have color perception?"

"...not yet."

I can start to feel my hands, too.

I think I slept for a while.

"Alison. Al." One of those very carefully programmed, human-like mistakes they program into AI which, instead of making them seem more human, make them even more uncannily not.

"Yeah."

"You are progressing rapidly. Can you see well?"

No. "Not really. Colors. More light."

"You were very badly injured in the destruction of your vessel. Do you understand?"

"Okay. You said you had to grow me some new eyes." They're working better by the minute, though, this is amazing.

"Your injuries far exceeded just your eyes. Your body was destroyed. Only eighty-four percent of your brain was recovered from the wreckage of your escape pod. It was only barely within the bounds of the decision matrix for reconstitution. You have been in reconstruction for forty-three days, twelve of them while underway from the recovery site. Do you understand?"

My brain? Only eighty-four percent! I felt my eyes bulge and suddenly things came into focus. "Oh! I can see!"

"Excellent. Can you read the chart on the viewscreen?"

I read it off. No problems.

My brain? Just my brain? How violently had the ship been destroyed? Those escape pods will damn near survive an uncontrolled landing, if the fusion reactor had gone off it would have just sailed off...

But no, we were under sail. The reactor was idling.

We were sailing, right? Not thrusting. Tacking. Sideways. The Finger, a plasma ship with her torch unneeded, tacking across the sunlight, under sail.

"You are healing rapidly. Your native constitution is quite robust. We were able to extract all the necessary information to rebuild your body from the DNA we obtained from your brain and samples obtained inside the pod. Your scans are very positive. Would you like to try to sit up?"

How much of my brain is actually inside my head, and how much of it is new? How much of me is me? "Okay," and I sat up.

Oh. My weight is all weird. My balance is...

Oh, boy.  Holy moley.  

I can't feel my hands very well but they work, sort of. Poorly. Tearing at the smock, pulling.

"Ah jeez."

"Is there a problem? If you are having difficulty, lay back down. A human attendant is available if necessary."

"No, no," I said, pulling the smock closed again, with difficulty. I'd forgotten how big and unwieldy they had been.

"Is there a problem, Al?"

"You guys...you built me back using my DNA, right?"

"Correct."

"But you built me back as a girl." I almost pawed at them because they were so prominent...they just weren't mine. They were never supposed to be. "I was only born female, Janus." An expectant silence met that. "I didn't stay that way."

"Oh." For the first time ever, I had somehow caught an AI off guard. "Oh, we apologize. We could not find sufficient remnants of your old body to inform your reconstitution. We had to grow you a new one from what little we could gather and what information could be deduced from your personnel files."

"Doesn't it mention that I'm transitioned male in those files?"

"I am sorry to say that it does not. In fact, there is no information given for gender."

Ah hell. My old rebellious phase, coming back to bite me on the ass.  My own digitus impudicus, leaving blank the parts where they ask what I thought impertinent questions.  Gender?  You don't need to know, since at the time I didn't know so well myself.  Probably should have gone back and filled that in, too late now.  I never imagined that I'd be back in this state.  I'm a girl.  Again. I hated it enough the first time, this is awful.

"Looks like I'm going to be here a while longer, Janus. Can you reconfigure me back to male?"

"Certainly. You will be under sedation for two days. You will continue recovering from your initial reconstruction while recovering from conversion. Are your hands working?"

Flex. "Well enough. Why?"

"Please sign here. Thank you.  We apologize for the confusion and will begin immediately to return you to your desired state. We are sedating you now. Please count backwards from five."

"Five? I won't be out befo..."