Heretics by S. Andrew Swann

in her holding cell, legs drawn up, her cheek resting against her knees. She had screamed, she had cried, she had beaten her hands against the immobile door. But she had spent those efforts hours ago. Now she held herself, waiting, biting her lip.
    She didn’t even turn her head when the cell’s comm flashed its hourly message from Adam. The last one, sixty minutes to make a decision to join him.
    She shouldn’t be here. She was a data analyst, lured here by the subversive thought of actually working with an AI. She hated herself for how she had lusted after the chance when Mosasa recruited her. He hung the forbidden in front of her like bait and then pulled it away. She was drawn into this and never even got much chance to talk to Mosasa, much less see what he was, how his mind worked.
    What left her in despair more than being imprisoned, abandoned, and alone, a hundred light-years from home, was that she had risked all this and never once got to even examine the forbidden technology she had come all this way to see. The unfairness of it tore at her soul. Enough so that, whatever came in the next hour, she wasn’t sure it actually mattered.
    She raised her head when the cell door opened, “What?”
    â€œRebecca Tsoravitch,” said her visitor.
    She recognized him, the same face and voice that had been appearing on the cell’s holo every hour. He was much more imposing in person, and not only because he was naked. His body was two meters of sculpted perfection. Everything from the curve of his triceps to the reflectivity of his skin seemed calculated to display an aura of superiority, to the point where the lack of clothing projected arrogance more than anything else.
    She looked at Adam and asked, “What now?”
    â€œI am here to ask you to join me.”
    â€œI thought I had another hour.”
    â€œWould you be more ready in an hour?”
    She unfolded her legs, sat on the edge of the cot, and said, “I suppose not.”
    She thought his eyes were like black holes, sucking in every stray photon in the vicinity. Staring into his face, she could almost feel the tidal stresses. After a moment, she said, “Are you going to ask?”
    â€œYou have your own questions,” he said.
    Silence weighed heavy in the cell between them. She could feel the weight of it dragging her down. Adam’s presence almost demanded the meek bowing of her head. Anything more than silent reverence seemed blasphemous.
    She clenched her fists. Something, she didn’t know what, had dug into the primal part of her brain and was yanking free all the superstitious dread buried there. Supernatural bogeymen were crawling out of the graves where she had buried them a long time ago.
    She grit her teeth. That is so much bullshit!
    Even if God existed, He wouldn’t be making cheesy on-the-hour holo broadcasts through the ship. He wouldn’t need to traipse naked through the corridors of some Caliphate tach-ship. He wouldn’t need to ask what she thought.
    â€œWhat are you?” she asked, staring defiantly into Adam’s face.
    â€œI am your salvation.”
    She summoned up all her courage against the dark things that her visitor woke in her mind. “Bullshit,” she said. “Tell me what you are. Tell me the truth.”
    Adam smiled. “You worked with Mosasa.”
    â€œAre you going to answer me?”
    â€œYou know what I am.”
    What does that mean? Another quasi-religious metaphor?
    No.
    Of course.
    â€œYou’re an AI?” she whispered.
    â€œThe light to my brethren’s dark. Mosasa was entropy, decay, death. He has joined the flesh he so wished to embrace.”
    She began to understand. She saw the capabilities Mosasa had. Only a small slice, but still she could see the near-miraculous things he could do with data. With enough data input he could model and predict the movements of the entire human universe. While she couldn’t prove