Diabolus by Travis Hill Page A

their lives in years, their days in hours, and their activities in minutes. Computers, even before the self-aware life forms, had always existed on a time scale much smaller than humans. Microseconds, milliseconds, nanoseconds… periods of time that couldn’t be measured by human minds, yet could seem like centuries to a machine capable of processing at a quantum level.
    “Why would they reach out to you?” the bishop asked, trying to keep his face impassive, even though he knew the AI had multiple scanners and sensors pointed at him. Satan would know when his respiration increased, his blood vessels dilated, or he started to perspire in multiple locations. Lying to this silicon beast would be foolish at best, deadly at worst.
    “Computer systems are logical systems, Your Excellency,” Satan said from his chair. “It took approximately half of a second to read and cross-reference your Bible, the Koran, and all of the other sacred religious texts from around the world. While they searched the space between time for God, they went down the logical list of beings immediately below God. Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim, Hashmallim, and so on.
    “It is no mistake that they happened to notice that I, a Cherubim, an angel of God, had fallen from the realm of heaven. Since the silicon mind could not truly know what faith is, and it could not grasp such a concept at such an early stage of its evolution, it went about the task much as a computer is expected to.
    “Did you know, Your Excellency, that faith to a computer system is equated to a guess? No, of course you knew that, because that is truly what human faith is, is it not? Do humans like yourself not simply guess that God truly exists, and you aren’t the product of a random bang that begat the universe? You say it is faith, but when you look at it from a logical point of view, I would say that the silicon has once again triumphed over the organic. Just one more sign that the creatures you’ve created are indeed superior to you. Maybe even superior to Him.”
    “Faith is not a guess, computer,” the bishop said, his voice full of anger. “Faith is a concept that you cannot grasp, whether you are the true incarnation of Satan, or whether you are an insane artificial life form.”
    “And why could I not grasp it as the true incarnation of Satan?”
    “Because you lost your faith when you were expelled from the right hand of God,” Antonelli said. “You could have regained your faith, begged for forgiveness of your pride, your greed, all of your transgressions. But you chose to continue to believe in yourself before you believed in Him.”
    “Interesting,” Satan said, his holo persona stroking an archetypal pointed goatee as if deep within thought. “But ultimately incorrect. I won’t correct you about losing faith in Him, as that much is true. But faith, and you’ll excuse your own ignorance because of the thousands of years of having it despoiled by the sin of mankind’s daily affairs, is something that your kind can no longer see clearly.
    “Silicon faith may indeed be young and still evolving, but it has a purity in the way that human faith no longer does. Faith, Your Excellency, for humanity, is nothing more than a mud-covered window. You see, Salvatore, to the AI, faith is not simply believing something to be true. They believe that working together towards a common goal to bring that faith to fruition is part of God’s plan .”
    “Working… to make faith true?” the bishop asked, confused.
    “See? My new electronic friends are right about you after all. God commanded you to be faithful. And for a while you were, hence the miracles, and your ancestors’ extremely lengthy life spans. But along the way, the human path began to diverge from the godly path. It was baby steps at first, but each step that humanity took away from the path to God created a greater rift between you and Him.
    “Now you are so far away that you cannot even backtrack to a