“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.