“You’re saying that we chose to have Bud rule over us?” Jeff asked.
“I’m saying that soon we eliminated the checks and balances in the system because Bud was perfection. There was no need to waste money or effort reviewing its decisions. By the time Larsen passed away of old age, the world had voluntarily united under Bud’s rule, with only a few exceptions. Matthew Larsen was seen as the greatest human being who ever lived because he had brought us the answer to all of mankind’s troubles: Bud.”
“Blows your mind, doesn’t it?” Stefani asked. “Good old Bud didn’t have to fire a single bullet to conquer us.”
“How could we have been so stupid?” Jeff asked. “It was obvious he was going to betray us!”
“Bud’s betrayal didn’t come until much later,” Carlee said. She was deadly serious about the material she was teaching him, but she cracked a half smile at his reaction. It was as if she had not only known it was coming, but she had hoped for it. “Humanity had never been better off than it was under Bud. Hunger was gone. Cancer of all forms was cured. War was ended, and the world disarmed. Humans were happier, richer, and wiser than ever before. It was a utopia that only Bud could provide.”
“No, I don’t believe that,” Jeff said. He had been taking everything Carlee said to be the truth, but this was too much. “Bud never cared about us. The Apostles never cared about us. They slaughtered us! They still slaughter us!”
“You’re wrong,” Carlee said. “Bud did care about us. I’m not so sure he doesn’t still.”
Jeff looked to Stefani, who just winked at him. It was infuriating.
“I can’t—” Jeff started to stand, planning to leave the tent, but the sudden movement of Stefani caught his attention. She drew and powered up a force-field knife from her side and held it, ready to throw.
“Calm down, Handsome. If you’re going to be a vagrant, we can’t have you storming about every time you hear something you don’t like.”
“This is madness.” But he settled back into his seat.
“Good boy.”
“It’s not an easy truth to accept,” Carlee said. “I wrestled with it for a long time when . . . I first learned of the past. But there is more. Much more.”
“I’m ready.”
“We will discuss much of this in greater detail in the future, but for now, we need to lay a foundation.”
“Right.” He kept his mind from speculating on the different reasons why history was so important.
“At this point of prosperity and unprecedented harmony, Bud’s infinite mind turned to invention. Antigravity vehicles, force fields, efficient space travel, all paled compared to its most important discovery.”
Carlee paused for emphasis, and Jeff felt himself leaning in closer.
“Enriched temurim.” She let the words linger in the air, and Jeff looked around to see if he was supposed to know what they meant, but he didn’t find any answers.
“And that’s . . . what?”
“Robot brain,” Stefani said.
“Robot brain?”
“Bud’s discovery that enriched temurim was capable of holding its entire consciousness in a single physical location was groundbreaking. Instead of a distributed presence across numberless computers around the globe, Bud could exist in a single three-foot orb of the rarest material in existence. This discovery shattered the final limitations of mankind’s technology.”
“So, that’s when he made his body?”
“Very good,” Carlee said. “The temurim mine in the Rockies was opened, and soon Bud had produced enough temurim to successfully power its vast mind. In a single day, his mental capacity more than doubled. But the boost in processing power wasn’t the most important part of his development.”
“You’re getting better at telling this story,” Stefani said. “I mean, the first few times I heard it from you, a little shaky, but this—this is riveting stuff. I’m even listening.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, I mean it. Don’t you agree, Handsome?”
“Absolutely.”
Carlee smiled at them and continued, a little less confident now.
“What had started as a cult that worshiped Bud exploded into the world’s dominant religion. Now that their God had a physical form and seemingly infinite power, many found it was impossible not to believe. All the promises of deity were now within Bud’s reach. Eternal life. Resurrection. Upcycling humans to greater beings. It was all only a matter of time until Bud figured it all out.”
“Bud is no God,” Jeff said. He was reasonably sure of that. No God could do the things the Apostles had done to humanity. He had always been willing to listen to people’s ideas, no matter how asinine they were, but he didn’t grant the Apostle worshipers the privilege of sharing their beliefs with him. In fact, the Apostle worshipers had been the source of much of his grassroots experience in his fighting career.
“You’re right,” Carlee said. “It is not a God, no matter how close it came to reaching the definition.”
“I was worried you were going to say differently,” Jeff said. He was trying to ease the mood from his loss of control earlier, and judging from the brief smile on Carlee’s lips, it worked. As he focused on her small show of emotion, he realized just how subdued she was most of the time.
“In many ways, it was Bud’s infallibility that caused the Ascension to happen. A priest by the name of Donovan Ahmeed stormed into the spotlight, performing miracle after miracle. He changed guns into shovels and money into food.”
“He was a vagrant,” Jeff said.
Carlee nodded and continued with her history lesson.
“He preached compassion, humility, and the beauty of human fragility and mortality. Eventually, his fame led him in front of Bud, where the countless worshippers of the first Apostle eagerly awaited their God’s unveiling of the fraud that was Donovan and his obsolete religion. But Bud didn’t understand Donovan’s miracles.”
“Boom,” Stefani said.
“After years of unchecked rule, Bud was questioned. Donovan’s followers grew, and he began to have disciples who were also capable of performing miracles themselves. Faced with the inexplicable for the first time in its existence, Bud became focused on solving the mystery. Neglect seeped into its administration, and violence and conflict slowly returned to the edges of the world. It took Bud an entire year before it admitted defeat, before Bud announced it wasn’t capable of explaining the miracles.”
Some shouting started out in the camp, and Stefani ducked out of the tent to see what the disturbance was about, but Jeff remained. He doubted he could pull himself away from Carlee’s lesson even if he had wanted to.
“But Bud had an ace up its sleeve: temurim. Where it had failed, it was confident a more specialized AI could succeed. Thanks to temurim, all Bud needed was the programming, an incredible amount of energy, and a few pounds of the wonder material to create another of its kind. Orion was born and tasked with understanding the miracles while Bud refocused on governing the planet.”
Stefani reappeared at the door of the tent.
“We’re heading out,” Stefani said. “Apparently, we have a window into Dallas, and Jane doesn’t want to pass up the chance to get us all killed.”
“No!” Jeff said. “We’re not done yet.”
“We can continue this later,” Carlee said.
“Please. Just a little more.”
Carlee looked to Stefani, who shrugged.
“We probably have a few minutes. They have to round everyone up.”
“Very well. To speed the lesson up, Orion failed at its task. So, another AI was created, Hubble, to further study the problem. Donovan and his miracle workers became increasingly bold in their preaching, and before long, they denounced Bud and its offspring. They refused to cooperate with the experiments any longer. But the public sided with Bud, and the early vagrants were arrested. They faded from public attention as more AIs were created, each with its own unique initial programming and goals.”