Someone is waiting for me outside my building. He calls me by name; I have never seen him before. He begs me to share my wisdom, and does not believe me when I tell him I have none to offer. I am part of the overmind, he insists. I am connected to the Divine, I\u2019ve seen things denied mortal men. I am the voice of God.<\/p>\n
I remind him that God has fifteen million voices. I wish him luck finding one of the others. I warn him that God has turned many of us into rutebagas. He grows agitated; I have a duty<\/em>, he growls. God did not bless me so that I could keep His Truth to myself, it is not mine to keep.<\/p>\n I’m afraid he might turn violent, but I am inside before he can do more than rant.<\/p>\n It\u2019s happening everywhere. People seek us out. Some are content to touch the hems of our garments; others want more. A taste of whatever cosmic insights we forged when part of something greater. Should they risk that operation. Should they go to Heaven. Should they bet it all on #3.<\/p>\n We were not only the voice of God, we were the guts as well. The arms and legs, the synapses<\/em>. God literally stitched Itself together out of our bodies, an inconceivably complex jigsaw assembled from any meat that happened to be wired in to the right servers. Surely such an intellect learned everything, while it was alive. Surely its pieces remember what it learned, now that it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The Colonel reminds me that I can stay at the facility. I admit I\u2019m tempted. It would be more convenient. It would be safer, now that the AIrheads have found me. But I can only talk to you there. I can\u2019t feel<\/em> you, not the way I can at home. And I\u2019ve never fully shaken the belief that they\u2019d keep me here by force if they could, if the optics permitted and the damage hadn\u2019t already been done. They\u2019d probably like nothing better than to see me cage myself.<\/p>\n Darcelle\u2019s smile tightens a little, like shrinkwrap, when I decline. The Colonel merely shrugs and offers instead to post a drone outside my building. Nothing flashy or intimidating, nothing even noticeable to the casual observer. An invisible eye in the sky, just in case. It\u2019s even smart enough to tell refugees from religious nuts\u2014different mindsets have different tells, at least to eyes that can read saccades and muscle twitches from fifty meters\u2014so I won\u2019t have to worry about embarrassing false positives. The homeless and the destitute will be able to approach me as they always have; only those of ill-intent will even know it’s there.<\/p>\n I thank him, and accept his kind offer, and we both pretend his machines haven\u2019t been staking out my every move from the start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Someone is waiting for me outside my building. He calls me by name; I have never seen him before. He begs me to share my wisdom, and does not believe me when I tell him I have none to offer. I am part of the overmind, he insists. I am connected to the Divine, I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiblet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10045"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10053,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10045\/revisions\/10053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}