Saviors 101

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Cassandra felt awful. She hadn’t been able to sleep at all last night. Her prophetic sense was screaming that something was coming. Something bad.

She learned over the ages that when she couldn’t pin down what was coming, it was even worse than when she could. The Fall of Troy had been hard to see, this was proving equally difficult. She knew it was bound up in the Software that Runs the Universe and some pending failure. But all she knew was that it was bad and it was fairly soon. Which was of almost no help at all, but it had gotten her to force Virgil to lead her on the journey.

She went downstairs when the sunrise began poking into the curtained bedroom.

She wanted a look at Jeremy’s software anyway.

Virgil was crashed out on the couch. Jeremy was sitting off to the side watching a porn video and mumbling to himself, “Software that Runs the Universe.” Looked as if he’d been sitting there all night.

Not wanting to trigger his disbelief response, she waved for permission to check out his software.

He gestured nicely enough without turning. He didn’t appear to be actually watching the screen, his eyes were just aimed there while he was off somewhere thinking.

She sat in front of the primary keyboard and three central screens. It was a monstrous index of all knowledge. Far from complete, but it was walking right into personal computers, digital libraries, and even interpreting scanned images, though he only had a dozen languages running so far, she could see where he was developing others.

It took her a bit to figure out the interface and then find her father, Priam, the last King of Troy. The sheer mass of references and subreferences that had survived the three thousand years spoke to how her family had captured the imagination of history. That so many of the facts were wrong, of course, could be traced back to that drunken sot Homer. He could barely remember his own name most mornings never mind history, but his voice had been mesmerizing and thus his drunken ramblings were well remembered. So well remembered that the unknown poet who’d written down the story six-hundred years after Homer spoke it, wasn’t all that far off. At least from Homer’s version.

“The universe is run by a piece of software.” Jeremy hadn’t been able to stop saying that last night. She couldn’t imagine what else it would be run by; the Gods were certainly not organized enough.

It was funny how modern humans kept repeating things they didn’t believe until they did. That was a fairly recent development, Post-Greek. Post-Roman. Post Mongol-hoard, too.

She poked around briefly in the index before unearthing “repetition-statements during disbelief.” In moments she was staring at a half-dozen speculative articles about building brain pathways to accept new data. And then there was a minor piece, a short story in a science fiction magazine, that was based on the premise it had all been started when the first Jew walked the first burning sands of the desert with the first unleavened Matzah in her hands and said, “Who? Me? Oy vey. Couldn’t you choose someone else once in a while?”

Cassandra knew that was the right answer just as she knew they were all in deep trouble no matter what kind of lame status reports Virgil had been sending to the Power That Be, since she couldn’t write them as no one would believe her. The gift of knowing, compounded with the curse of no one believing you, had worn thin a few millennia ago. Now it was a major pain in the ass.

Thankfully the modern era had produced a few individuals so disconnected from the world-at-large that they could learn how to hear her. Virgil was so self-centered that he was completely disconnected from the world-at-large. And Jeremy…She wasn’t sure why he could hear her. Perhaps because while he knew a great deal about the world-at-large, he had never been there.

“Software that Runs the Universe.” It was now a declarative statement. She waited, but Jeremy clearly wasn’t quite ready to make the next step.

She returned to the database and finally found her own name. She had almost as many entries as Helen of Troy. Which was actually a misnomer. She was Helen of Sparta, and her husband, Menelaus, had been a good man in a bloodthirsty, Greek way. She was just a self-centered slut who really only cared for broad shoulders and good s*x. And she’d heard it from enough different handmaidens of Troy to know that Helen found Cassandra’s twin brother Paris to be exceptional in both those areas.

She tapped the screen where her name glowed just as the subheading, ‘s****l encounters with’ cropped up. That should be a very short list, but it wasn’t. Subheads formed quickly. She didn’t recognize half the names. And the ones she did, man, it made her so angry she could spit. They’d probably made up the rumors themselves about fornicating with the prophetess of Troy’s demise.

“Who wrote the software? God?” Jeremy’s nervous system had finally reached the next step, and just as she was starting to sort out the myths and inaccuracies regarding her own past. It took a physical effort to shrug off the irritation, this was not the time for self-indulgence. Actually having Paris and Helen as relations was strong proof against that particular trait.

Jeremy’s gaze had drifted from the porn video to the main screen, which she cleared quickly of her own entry. Virgil was, as usual, fast asleep when the real questions came up.

“The software wasn’t written by God, nor by the Gods. And it wasn’t responsible for the Gods either. You’d have to ask one of them for the true creation story. The bit I know is that when the software was booted up, the Big Bang happened.” She watched his face carefully.

“The Big Bang was caused by the bootup of the Software that Runs the Universe.”

Repetition again. He was still okay.

“It depends on who you talk to. It is unclear which was cause and which effect. Chicken and egg problem you know. Was the software fully booted at the moment of the Big Bang, or was it the Bang itself that powered up the software. We don’t really know, but they were definitely closely related.”

“Uh-huh.”

Grunting. Not a good sign.

“The software is a little dated. For one thing, its data-gathering engine was never designed with the Internet Age in mind. Your little database attracted our attention. And—“

“Our who?”

“What?”

“Who is ‘our’?”

“A small group of us, specifically the Celestial Subcommittee About Technology—“

“C-SCAT?”

“We prefer C-SAT.”

Jeremy shook his head, “But it isn’t. You’re from C-SCAT. Your from the Poop Patrol.” He started to giggle. An annoying sound that clawed its way up her spine.

“We didn’t get to choose our name.” And one of these days she’d get her revenge on the one who did. Only the Devil herself would have named the technology committee after the study of poop. She was sick of the scatological jokes that had followed them ever since, but she hadn’t been able to do anything to change it. Yet.

“So, what does C-SCAT do?” He was still grinning like a nutcase.

She turned away from the screen and faced Jeremy. She’d just lay their cards on the table and see what happened.

“C-SAT works with the technological infrastructure of the Software that Runs the Universe. And, well, for lack of a better explanation, the software needs an upgrade and it needs it really soon.”

“And does C-SCAT issue the upgrade service pack?”

“There isn’t any such thing. We’re talking about the Software that Runs the Universe. There is no primogenitorial programmer.” Actually, that didn’t feel right. Her prophetic sense was twinging, but she’d never figured out what that particular twinge meant. She shrugged it off.

“And we at C-SAT don’t know how to do it.”

“And you think I would?”

“Well, you have to meet it first and see if it likes you.” She couldn’t help grimacing at the memory of her run-ins with the software.

“The Software that Runs the Universe doesn’t like me one bit.”