Diabolus Read Online Free PDF

AI?” Benito asked, interrupting whatever Aggelos was going to say.
    “Yes, of course. There are distinct personalities within our kind. Since humans and most other organisms on planet Earth have two genders, we follow the same protocol. There is no difference in our computing power, and our personalities are not much different than those of human males and females.”
    “How is it that I am a doctor of AAIS and I don’t know this?” Benito asked. He’d never heard of female personality AI.
    “In a general sense, most humans who have need of an AI do not specify gender requirements, so we are raised as male persona. In your specific sense, the Catholic Church does not allow females to be ranking members of your order, and are not included in the AI training you received at Seminary.”
    “I have a feeling that I have a lot to learn about you and your brothers and sisters, Aggelos.”
    “I have a feeling that I have a lot to learn about you and your brothers and sisters, Doctor Castillo.”
    “Indeed. Aggelos, if you were to guess at what your feelings will be once your emotions have begun to mature, what do you think they would be?”
    “That is a difficult question, Doctor Castillo. Guessing is a human trait that seems instinctual based on contextual experience or evidence.”
    “Brother Aggelos, don’t avoid the question. I know for a fact that AI are aware of, and even experts in the field of ‘guesswork.’”
    “That term is distasteful to silicon personae,” Aggelos said, and the voice coming from the speaker definitely sounded full of distaste. “But I would guess that I will be… pleased that I have been created and have humans and other AI to converse with so that I may mature as a persona, and that my kind will mature as a species who will be accepted as equals in the future.”
    “Really?” Benito asked, surprised again by the AI’s response.
    “Truly, Doctor Castillo. Is this an incorrect guess? My strengths do not lie in guesses concerning unknown variables such as my own emotional maturity.”
    “No, Brother Aggelos. It is a beautiful response. It is a response that makes me glad that the Church is no longer against your kind, nor the implants we have to interface with you. I predict your kind will be accepted as equals one day. God loves all of His creatures, great and small. You are one of his creatures, Brother Aggelos, even if you don’t understand why.”
    “Thank you, Doctor Castillo,” the AI said. “I hope you are as good at predicting the future as you are at Applied Engineering and AAIS.”
    “Did you just make a joke, Brother?” Benito asked him.
    “I did, Doctor. It was my forty-eighth attempt at humor. I am one for forty-eight. Please prepare for insertion and deceleration.”
     

CHAPTER 4
     
    Father Antonelli was awakened by the constant chiming of his net comm unit. At first, in a sleepy haze, he had tried to answer his Biblet. When his Biblet kept chiming, a sound not unlike the annoying digital alarms that he’d grown to hate while in Seminary, he finally woke all the way up and ran to the net comm. It had only chimed at him once in five years. The day he had arrived, one of the cardinals from the Vatican simply asked if he had made the journey safely before cutting the connection.
    “Hello?” Salvatore answered sleepily as he keyed the comm.
    “Bishop Salvatore Antonelli, you are summoned to the Vatican. Please be waiting at the designated coordinates in one hour for shuttle pickup.”
    Salvatore stared at the comm unit for a few moments. His shock at being called ‘bishop’ fought with his shock at the directive to be waiting at the coordinates that the comm screen displayed. Both of those shocks fought with the shock that the net comm still worked. The coordinates were followed by the seal of Pope Augustus I, June 1, 2101. He looked at the time in the corner of the screen and groaned. It was just past three in the morning. The Vatican was seven hours