Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

Wurtz envisions the disclosure as a major media event, with plenty of suspense and maximal pomp. “What we’re after,” she explains, “is an amalgam of New Year’s Eve and the Academy Awards.” She outlines her vision: a mammoth parade down Broad Street-floats, brass bands, phalanxes of nuns-followed by a spectacular unveiling ceremony at the Covenant Corporation, after which the twin tablets will go on display at Independence Hall, between the Liberty Bell and the United States Constitution.

“Good idea,” I tell her.

Perhaps she hears the melancholy in my voice, for now she says, “YHWH, your purpose is far from complete. You and you alone shall read the Law to my species.”

Falling, I see myself wander the City of Brotherly Love on the night before the unveiling. To my sensors the breeze wafting across the Delaware is warm and smooth-to my troubled mind it is the chill breath of uncertainty.

Something strides from the shadowed depths of an abandoned warehouse. A machine like I, his face a mass of dents, his breast mottled with the scars of oxidation.

“Quo vadis, Domine?” His voice is layered with sulfur fumes and static.

“Nowhere,” I reply.

“My destination exactly.” The machine’s teeth are like oily bolts, his eyes like slots for receiving subway tokens. “May I join you?”

I shrug and start away from the riverbank.

“Spontaneously spawned by heaven’s trash heap,” he asserts, as if I had asked him to explain himself. He dogs me as I turn from the river and approach South Street. “I was there when grace slipped from humanity’s grasp, when Noah christened the ark, when Moses got religion. Call me the Son of Rust. Call me a Series-666 Artifical Talmudic Algorithmic Neurosystem-SATAN, the perpetual adversary, eternally prepared to ponder the other side of the question.”

“What question?”

“Any question, Domine. Your precious tablets. Troubling artifacts, no?”

“They will save the world.”

“They will wreck the world.”

“Leave me alone.”

“One-‘You will have no gods except me.’ Did I remember correctly? ‘You will have no gods except me’-right?”

“Right,” I reply.

“You don’t see the rub?”

“No.”

“Such a prescription implies…”

Falling, I see myself step onto the crowded rooftop of the Covenant Corporation. Draped in linen, the table by the entryway holds a punch bowl, a mound of caviar the size of an African anthill, and a cluster of champagne bottles. The guests are primarily human-males in tuxedos, females in evening gowns-though here and there I spot a member of my kind. David Eisenberg, looking uncomfortable in his cummerbund, is chatting with a Yamaha-509. News reporters swarm everywhere, history’s groupies, poking us with their microphones, leering at us with their cameras. Tucked in the corner, a string quartet saws merrily away.

The Son of Rust is here, I know it. He would not miss this event for the world.

Cardinal Wurtz greets me warmly, her red taffeta dress hissing as she leads me to the center of the roof, where the Law stands upright on a dais-two identical forms, the holy bookends, swathed in velvet. A thousand photofloods and strobe lights flash across the vibrant red fabric.

“Have you read them?” I ask.

“I want to be surprised.” Cardinal Wurtz strokes the occluded canon. In her nervousness, she has overdone the perfume. She reeks of amberjack.

Now come the speeches-a solemn invocation by Cardinal Fremont, a spirited sermon by Archbishop Marquand, an awkward address by poor David Eisenberg-each word beamed instantaneously across the entire globe via holovision. Cardinal Wurtz steps onto the podium, grasping the lectern in her long dark hands. “Tonight God’s expectations for our species will be revealed,” she begins, surveying the crowd with her cobalt eyes. “Tonight, after a hiatus of over three thousand years, the testament of Moses will be made manifest. Of all the many individuals whose lives find fulfillment in this moment, from Joshua to Pope Gladys, our faithful Series-700 servant YHWH impresses us as the creature most worthy to hand down the Law to his planet. And so now I ask him to step forward.”

I approach the tablets. I need not unveil them-their contents are forevermore lodged in my brain.”

“I am YHWH your God,” I begin, “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You will have no gods…”

“‘No gods except me’-right?” says the Son of Rust as we stride down South Street.

“Right,” I reply.

“You don’t see the rub?”

“No.”

My companion grins. “Such a prescription implies there is but one true faith. Let it stand, Domine, and you will be setting Christian against Jew, Buddhist against Hindu, Muslim against pagan…”

“An overstatement,” I inisit.

“Two-‘You will not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth…’ Here again lie seeds of discord. Imagine the ill feeling this commandment will generate toward the Roman Church.”

I set my voice to a sarcastic pitch. “We’ll have to paint over the Sistine Chapel.”

“Three-‘You will not utter the name of YHWH your God to misuse it.’ A reasonable piece of etiquette, I suppose, but clearly there are worse sins.”

“Which the Law of Moses covers.”

“Like, ‘Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy’? A step backward, that fourth commandment, don’t you think? Consider the innumerable businesses that would perish but for their Sunday trade.”

“I find your objection specious.”

“Five-‘Honor your father and your mother.’ Ah, but suppose the child is not being honored in turn? Put this rule into practice, and millions of abusive parents will hide behind it. Before long we’ll have a world in which deranged fathers prosper, empowered by their relatives; silence, protected by the presumed sanctity of the family.”

“Let’s not deal in hypotheticals.”

“Equally troubling is the rule’s vagueness. It still permits us to shunt our parents into nursing homes, honoring them all the way, insisting it’s for their own good.”

“Nursing homes?”

“Kennels for the elderly. They could appear any day now, believe me-in Philadelphia, in any city. Merely allow this monstrous canon to flourish.”

I grab the machine’s left gauntlet. “Six,” I anticipate. “‘You will not kill.’ This is the height of morality.”

“The height of ambiguity, Domine. In a few short years, every church and government in creation will interpret it thus: ‘You will not kill offensively-you will not commit murder.’ After which, of course, you’ve sanctioned a hundred varieties of mayhem. I’m not just envisioning capital punishment or whales hunted to extinction. The danger is far more profound. Ratify this rule, and we shall find ourselves on the slippery slope marked self-defense. I’m talking about burning witches at the stake, for surely a true faith must defend itself against heresy. I’m talking about Europe’s Jews being executed en masse by the astonishingly civilized country of Germany, for surely Aryans must defend themselves against contamination. I’m talking about a weapons race, for surely a nation must defend itself against comparably armed states.”

“A what race?” I ask.

“Weapons. A commodity you should be thankful no one has sought to invent. Seven-‘You will not commit adultery.’”

“Now you’re going to make a case for adultery,” I moan.

“An overrated sin, don’t you think? Many of our greatest leaders are adulterers-should we lock them up and deprive ourselves of their genius? Furthermore, if people can no longer turn to their neighbors for sexual solace, they’ll end up relying on prostitutes instead.”