The API of the Gods (3 page)

"Perhaps that's it. We just don't
know. But Pantheon Solutions is about
doing,"
the Head Supervisor
said proudly.

>>>
 

We weren't only making the API. One of
the office buildings on the campus was full of teams working on actual
projects. I was briefly pulled to be a liaison to a team working on reducing,
and eventually eliminating, drought in Africa.

The rain daemon was not meant for the
current ecology and its oddities lead to periods without rain at all. The team
was trying to create a secondary daemon that would pick up where the first left
off, and they decided on the python API for the speed they could work with it—and
thus, the lives that would be saved. We made so many changes to the API during
the project that it was one of the reasons I made Wyrm.

But shortly after the secondary daemon
was deployed and it was confirmed it was saving some lives, the team was
disbanded without explanation, and everyone was sent to different teams
altogether. I ended up on Tactical Solution Deployment, construct division,
where I
am today.

>>>
 

"How long are we going to be down
there?" asked Emily,
Healer
or
Onsite Healthcare Specialist.
She was a black woman perpetually wearing one thick leather glove even out of
armor, because she had once spilled Ichor on that hand and it never stopped
glowing. How she didn't die from the geas I never learned and I never asked,
even when we were dating. That didn't work out, by the way. Her lifestyle was
even more high-stress than mine. She used the new Perl binding, and more power
to her. It turned out a variant of regexes worked well with bodily repair,.

"The ship can only stay here for an
hour," I said and looked at the Head Supervisor.

He frowned. "If you can't get out,
we'll try to rearrange a secondary extraction method as soon as possible."

"We're carrying enough to stay for
days," Emily said. "MREs to eat, even."

The
Eater of the Dreams of Foes
said
"This was the best we can do. Upper wants this team, right here, right
now.
"

I shuddered slightly, and I did not know
why.

>>>
 

"Don't you
care!?"
my
girlfriend screamed, and I touched her arm gently. I barely dodged her hand.
"Do you even have a
heart?"

"Honey—" I said.

"Don't call me that. I am
continually
asking you to and I—I don't care anymore. We're through."
She stomped out and shut the door behind her so hard it rattled. Moment afterwards
I heard the engine start, and her car squeal away.

I looked around the remains of the
living room. I thought if it would be take less time just to call someone to
clean it up, and then I realized I had reached the point where I really didn't
care.

That had started after the Tactical
Solution Deployment where I killed someone.

All of it was a blur. We were after a
warlock, an oath-breaker, someone who had left one of the Divine corporations
and struck out on their own to make themselves a god. A blur, but I could
remember fragments: bolts of darkness, a flying ax that cut through a friend,
my sword—snapped and the other end in the dead warlock. The rest I could only
remember in nightmares which came and never stopped.

I couldn't tell her, and after one too
many missed dates this happened. I had returned from an emergency deployment to
find her systematically destroying my possessions. I thought about calling the
police, but I didn't care about that, either. Nothing I had here couldn't be
replaced. I owned as much as I wanted with my new job.

I had been told moving to Tactical would
be temporary, but of the three people who could control the golems one was
dead, one was missing, and the last was I. I had no choice. It became my job. I
didn't know what I would do if they fired me.

I didn't know what I
wouldn't
do
if they ordered me to do it, now.

And yet why did I need to do it? Why
couldn't they create beings that could do their dirty work, to kill and destroy
for them? Why us?

Why not, if they wrote this world's
code, write it so there wasn't a need to kill in the first place? What if they
fixed whatever bug caused war? Hatred? Death?

There was an almost palpable crack in my
mind. Maybe our Gods
weren't
benevolent as we thought they were.

Maybe they weren't even gods.

>>>
 

The metal beneath me shuddered as yacht
landed. The improvised side door in the hull we had made opened with a groan.

I was in the front cargo hold, and now
completely submerged in water. My old code was working: I was completely dry
inside my armor. I didn't even feel anything above normal atmospheric pressure.

golems.ready();
golems.follow()
. The golems
followed me out onto the marble roof of the control palace. It was oddly bright
down there. I wondered if we were at the bottom of the lake or actually some
kind of pocket reality. Whatever.
golems.draw(gateway_script)
.
The golems began scratching the characters the beard guys
had given us into the palace with their swords.

The markings were only a bulls-eye, in a
sense. The actual power was with one of the security guys inside the yacht. 
When the last scratch was made, I took a deep breath and said "Ready."
clock.start("1h",
warning)
.
The roof shook under my feet, the
carvings glowed, and suddenly I was inside a dark, dank, corridor.

Alone.

>>>
 

What if
we
had the powers of the
Gods, I wondered as I looked through the wreckage of my house. We lived here,
after all. We were the ones who had to live in the world they ran. What if
we
decided what was right for us? What if
we
had the source code for
all things, and fixed our own bugs?

>>>
 

I forced myself to stay in control, not
to let panic win.
golems.report()
.
Red spots overlaid themselves the across the small map in the corner of my
vision.

"Mike, situation?" asked the
voice of the Head Supervisor over the farspeaker.

"I'm in, the golems are scattered
all over the place."

"That's not supposed to
happen," said a voice I didn't recognize. The security guy? "The
daemon would have to know we were coming, and how."

golems.regroup(me.location,
fight=true)
.
Come to me and fight if necessary.

"It just did," said the Head
Supervisor. "Plan B: everyone prepare for forced entry. Mike—"

I saw two stone daemon servitors
approach, and I screamed "Got company!" as they charged.

>>>
 

Of course, it could just be that the
Gods were immeasurably more intelligent and powerful than we did, I thought as
I dumped another dustpan of smashed tablet into the trash. Maybe even the
seeming evils were part of some greater plan for the good of all.

"So?" I said at last, out
loud. "Do you hear me? Do you plan to do anything about it?"

There was no answer.

>>>
 

I had never had a chance to examine
daemon servitors up closely until that moment. The stone remains looked like
pieces of gargoyle and blocky battlemech from some kind of SF story.

I gasped for breath, and my whole body
was covered in sweat. I was almost overwhelmed again. If the other golems
hadn't arrived, I wouldn't have made it. One of the golems didn't; its pieces
were scattered all over the hallways. Another two had broken hands, one had a
broken sword, and the last three were fine.

"Mike! Mike!" Then more
muffled, "By the Gods, hold that left corridor; stop them!" And
again, "Mike! Status!"

"Made it," I said, between
panting. "Two servitors came out of nowhere. You?"
nearby =
GetCloseGolems(); nearby.reassemble()
.
My newly-formed golem squad began to
take parts off the ground and replace their own.

"Barely keeping it together. Most
of us are in a room close to the main entrance. We got a bunch of your guys
just standing here."

"Because they've regrouped with you
and are awaiting orders, but no one’s giving them." I said. A logical
error: I hadn't imagined that could ever happen. Some weird corner of my brain
wanted to file a bug report right then, but I improvised.
golems.follow(ANY_FRIENDLY,
fight=true)
.
Follow anyone you can and fight. But
then they would stop regrouping—I couldn't think of the syntax for that, and I
didn’t have time for trial and error. Screw it. The fallback was to defend
themselves, which would have to do. I had to move on. "They should
follow
you now."

"Thanks. Ashley's missing."

"I'm with Andy; we're moving,"
her voice came on the farspeaker.

"Something going on the third
floor," said the
Eater of Dreams.
"I sense a large deal of
thought—two thoughts?"

"Drop everything. Move downstairs
now!"
the Head Supervisor shouted.

"Yes, sir," I said. Instantly
I thought of how to command the golems. I took a big breath and said
golems.clear().regroup().follow(ANY_FRIENDLY).downwards().fight()
.
That would give them a reasonable strategy to obey on their
own.

I looked at my map again. The nearest
stairs down were towards the center.

>>>
 

But what could I do? I wondered, all
that night. The geas was unbreakable. Which left what? File a complaint with
those surveys they always wanted us to fill out?

Of course, maybe I was just going
insane. Breaking up with your girlfriend was not a reason to began doubting
your choices in life... unless it was.

My mind felt coldly clear.

>>>
 

I'd seen other commanders of golems or
the like wear special armor like an officer among soldiers. I'd seen them, past
tense, because they tended to be the first target against anything intelligent.
I had my golems made to my exact measurements and wore the same armor, and
stood a little away from the center for good measure. It saved my life as
several arrows and a bolt of frozen fire pierced the center golem within the
first few seconds of the ambush.

For the next few seconds there was too
much chaos to think or understand. In a brief moment of clarity I recognized
the jerky motions of the armored skeletons, and without thinking I charged
through a lull to the man in a black cloak. A blade cut my arm, but I stabbed
my target through before his icefire hit me. The skeletons fled down the
hallway, and something with moth wings hopped off the dead man's face and flew
with them.

My golems surrounded me.
repair.fix(me.arms[1])
.
A faint warmth began working in my arm. The pain started
to dull immediately. "We've got warlocks!" I shouted over the
farspeaker.

>>>
 

I bought another house, and a third,
just to be sure. I set up a system—I won't bore you with its elegance—that
would, across my personal networks in a mix of encryptions, one time pads,
stenography, and at one point ROT-13, hide an extremely large and extensive
porn collection. The mechanical typewriter was just lying in a closet.

I had no problem working with code I
couldn't run to test. After all, Ichor was so carefully measured that most
testing with the API was either simulation or actual deployment. The lack of a
backspace was more an issue, but I had patience. Patience, willpower, and a
plan.

>>>
 

I ordered my golems to bring me the
cloaked man's corpse while my arm was still being repaired. I removed my helmet
to get a better look and I saw I was right. I knew him: Alfred, the second
golem controller, who had gone AWOL. He had talked about the possibilities of
human corpses vis-a-vis golem bodies, but I had pointed out rigor mortis might
make that impossible, in addition to being a just plain screwed up idea.
Apparently he had figured out skeletons would work better. Come to think of it,
that might also explain the missing ships.