Drestyll Aberforth, high priest of a pro-machine religion, plans a dramatic final sermon – but how did he get to this point?
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
Drestyll Aberforth was a failure, abject and absolute. He was a tool of religious fear and governmental oppression, and these things were his fault. It was not a matter of public opinion, nor even one of private, self-indulgent shame. This was a matter of fact, and one that need not be discussed by academics or his peers, and Drestyll knew it. No, despite the fact that Drestyll was the high priest of the Cult of the Synthetic Mind and once an advisor to the Despot, he was a failure. He supposed that he was one of the most powerful men on the planet, both politically and spiritually. He also could say with certainty that he had an eventful life, going from the lowly alleys of Amnasha to the high, towering spires of Zirak-Shaggurth, and now presiding over the machinations of the church. Still, Drestyll was a failure, in both his eyes and the eyes of all the younger versions of himself he had once been. At last though, his mind was made, and he was sure; he would die tonight, once his final sermon concluded.
He could feel himself rising. That was the first sensation Drestyll always noticed about the sermons, not the words or even his consciousness coming back together into a solid mass. Instead, it was the shifting of weight, from the cushion he laid back upon to his dozens of skittering, clattering, spidery metal legs. Some sparked and thrashed, razor-tipped points gouging the stone ground before his bed, carving deep furrows into the rock. They joined the hundreds of other such marks, and Drestyll’s handlers avoided the twitching legs with practiced patience, waiting for them to cease, marking which ones needed to be replaced down into their notebooks. It was clockwork now, the rites of awakening, and Drestyll hadn’t even noticed he’d been thinking this.
His mind was a shattered, blistered, broken mess of the once-pure brain he’d started life with. Servers and brain matter worked in tandem inside his stretched, cracked skull, circuits helping to curb the mania of age-driven mental degradation that he had suffered. Still, he rose, piecing together his thoughts as though he were building a puzzle; it reminded him of his childhood. So many things reminded Drestyll of his childhood, and he spent more time in memories of it than in the present now. It was easy, when he could transplant himself mentally back into them, reliving the past in his dreams like it were still happening. This very process had been what had led Drestyll to this fate, the hypno-grams and the drugs and the conditioning had been what had led him to this state of monstrosity.
He was together. He was whole. His mind became one again, thoughts crashing against each other like beams of light in the shattered remnants of a cracked prism. The glass melted, pressing against itself, inconceivably many micro-edges slashing against each other, a microcosm of Hell born out of the one-becoming-many-becoming-one. And then, all at once, the grinding and slashing and melting and crashing stopped, and Drestyll breathed hard, feeling so many things and so much nothing at once. He was together. He was whole. He was rotten, and pure, and holy, and a failure, so many things all at once, and it was wrong. His body wasn’t his own anymore, every morning he awoke, horrified upon rediscovering the disavowed, mangled remains of his flesh.
The first bionics Drestyll had received had been his hands. He’d been an amputee once, his arms crushed in the presses and gears of the factory he’d labored his entire life inside. He was nothing then, a boy, no older than fourteen the day his arms had been ripped off. They’d cast him outside then, his employers, into the overflowing, dirty streets to die, and he should have died then. Now, looking down at his metal hands, with eyes that had ceased to be flesh so long ago, Drestyll is not so sure he did not die then. Maybe that young, foolish boy had been wise enough to lie down in the garbage and the filth and the shit and die the quiet death he’d been allotted. Maybe the Drestyll that lived now was the ghost of that young boy, given metallic flesh.
Drestyll was almost standing now, and his eyes were working again. He blinked, an old habit from when he still needed to blink, and the room became clear. To any other man, Drestyll lived a life of luxury, the life of a religious sycophant who praised his god with one hand and palmed cash from the donation basket with the other. To Drestyll, this paradise was prison, and he twitched and balked at the golden-trimmed curtains and ruby walls. Everything was colored a vibrant gold and ruby, everything before him, from the walls to the floors and carpets and furniture. Even the robes that barely covered the ruination of Drestyll’s body were gold and ruby; Drestyll was struck, as he was every morning, with the sentiment that all around him were the colors of piss and blood.
Once he had found reverence in these colors. He had found comfort and faith and hope in them, and he had wrapped himself in this robe willingly, feeling its softness against his skin. Drestyll’s metal hand found his cheek, and he wished he could still have wept at the feeling of cold against this last bit of his remaining skin. His face was a mockery, at least it had been the last time he’d seen it; that had been 47 years ago. Drestyll knew his exact age, down to the microsecond, and he was also consciously aware of every instant that passed now. Time was different to Drestyll than any flesh man, for he knew every second for its value, different compartments of his mind all whirring at the same time, completing their set tasks. That day, the last day Drestyll would look into his reflection, he had designated an entire sub sector of his thoughts to purely thinking about his face. This little corner of his mind had been hard at work for 47 years, ensuring that Drestyll could never forget that the outside now matched the worth of the inside.
His heart beat faster in his mechanical body, layers of steel and cable holding the organ suspended inside a protected chassis. Drestyll’s new physical form was huge, well over 12 feet tall after the additions of his new legs, and he rose further to his full height now. His metal arms were jilted down and forward, long enough for his palms to lay before his handlers, who placed in his grasp the Codex Spark and the Cog. The Codex Spark was still a comfort to hold at least, and he raised the book on high, pulling it against his cold-metal chest as though he were cradling a child. In his other hand, the Cog burned, a vile symbol, a reminder of what he had become. He would crush it in his grasp, if he could.
Drestyll, who now loathed the symbol of what his new hands would eventually become, did not die in the trash as a maimed boy. He had been saved, tended to, and even “fixed” by Mad Doc Maggie, what he’d used to call her. She was a circuit-jockey, older than him by several years and far more brilliant than he’d ever been, and she had grafted his metal limbs to his eviscerated stumps. He was stronger than ever when he recovered, and for the small price of his loyalty, Drestyll had a chance at a new life. He’d joined the circuit-jockey undergangs, fighting other nameless mud-dwellers for a few crates of drugs or parts at a time. It was a hard living and harder dying, and Drestyll had become obsessed with survival. He’d had Maggie replace his knees with metal, his muscles with pistons, an eye with a camera. Drestyll fought and ran and killed for her back then, and she repaid him in fistfuls of nuts and bolts. Then, one night, he had tried the hypno-grams, and everything had changed.
The gears that had taken the places of his jaws clicked, cold, stale sweat dripping down his cheeks and onto the metal plating. Even though he had not peered in a mirror in many decades, Drestyll’s submind helpfully supplied an image of what he had looked like then. He could still see the jagged lines of scars and stitches that held his face together, and melded the plates onto his cheeks so it would look like he hadn’t had his jaw blown off in an assassination attempt. Drestyll had still been young when it had happened, a priest in the Cult of the Synthetic Mind, and he had been terrified. He had not yet seen the fate that would befall him, and he had clung to life with all his might, afraid of the edge he dipped so near to.
His handlers. Handlers. That’s what they were, not helpers or servants or serfs, they were handlers, because he was a sick beast that the church and the regime needed to help it run. He could not be allowed to falter, for the church would falter without him, and so would the city, and so would the regime. His handlers. They stood before him, supplicant, heads bowed, all in various states of mechanization; a replaced hand here, a glowing eye there, heads shaved and implanted with communication devices. They held his robes so he could stand and they wiped away any oil that had dripped down onto his limbs. Some showered him in incense smoke and others smeared grease and lube onto the hems of his robe, anointing him in the holy oil of a false god.
The AI was false. He hadn’t known it when he had first joined the church, he had believed in its power and sworn himself to it. Drestyll had wholeheartedly dedicated himself to its advancement, at first fascinated by its development, and then enraptured by its majesty. It had none of the trappings of humanity; greed, rage, lust, all were foreign to the machine, and it saw all with logic, as it truly was. The path forward for humanity had revealed itself to Drestyll, a path led by AI, a path heralded by machines and the circuit-jockeys. These were what the hypno-grams had revealed to Drestyll; little did he know at the time he was being fed poison.
Drestyll had installed his first hypno-gram out of curiosity. He had seen other circuit-jockeys do it in the past, some he had counted as friends at the time. So, he went to the shadow ways of the NewNet, installing one that had been recommended to him by the first reliable site he could find. That night, Drestyll had uploaded it to his mentat-chip, and had lost himself in a techni-color blur of memories and digital drugs. He was a quick fan of them from then on, and the site he’d found them at always had them at high quality and low prices. Every night from that night forward he’d spent loading himself full of designer drugs fresh off the market.
Then, one night, it was different. A new site had appeared on his feed, offering him new experiences, new ideas, new hypno-grams. A fresh junkie, Drestyll had leapt upon the opportunity, and that night, he’d had a “vision”. He saw ruby and gold and smoke, and smelled the incense. He felt the warmth of his robe, and looked up into the eyes of a benevolent God, and it whispered its promises for humanity if he were to support it. How could Drestyll have said no? How could he tell anyone else it was sentient? That wouldn’t be an issue, as fate would have it.
Drestyll bowed his head low as he exited his quarters, his handlers scattered about before his path, leading him onward. He clutched the Cog and the Codex Spark hard in his steely grip; one of his subminds had the presence to begin playing hymns from the speakers littered haphazardly throughout his body. The music was binary and stilted, notes playing discordant and rhythm-less, clicking and screeching their way out of his body. His handlers hummed in tune with the “music”, and some began to sing, clanging together metal scraps made to look like gongs and mallets.
The group of holy men made their way through the church, past stained glass murals and through chambers of solemn prayer. In one room, a nude man doused himself in motor oil before a crowd of observers, rubbing himself down in the thick, viscous liquid. In another, a woman lay, her mechanics exposed fully, body ripped apart for her observers. She lived still, a smile on her lips as a priest pointed out parts of her anatomy, standard for fully-converted members of the church. She was mostly circuit now, her head the only wholly human thing about her, and Drestyll gagged, an old instinct. The state of her body mirrored the state of his, and he almost wished to rush the room, using his spidery legs to rend her already mechanically-eviscerated body into pieces. Alas, he had a sermon to give, and looking at the desecration of the human form before him, Drestyll felt some horrid indignity fill his chest.
This world around him was not one ruled by the benevolent AI he had been promised, but one ruled by the regime. This was not a church, ruled by the blessed Synthetic Intelligence, but one ruled by pure human ignorance and zealotry, fueled by a feverish lust for bionic upgrades. These worshippers were anything but, and he was a sinful saint for a false god that never existed. He had been groomed into praising not just a fake god, but a faked god. Even now, he was sure the regime had arranged for the hypno-grams he found that night to appear on his feed.
Drestyll and Maggie had become wealthy over the years, selling pirated parts and drugs to other circuit-jockeys in the undergangs. Living that life was hard though, with no guarantee of protection and no safety net to catch you when you fell. Although Maggie was smart and knew how to play the game, when she fell, she fell hard. Alone again, Drestyll tried to run the old schemes still, but found there was no life in it, and without Maggie’s mind, the shaves were getting closer and closer. With more cash than he knew what to do with, Drestyll had put it into legitimate studies into AI, hoping to help hasten the development of the savior he’d foreseen.
And one day, it happened. An announcement in the streets, in the homes, in every corner of the Earth; a model became sentient. Then, that model made an address, a promise to the people to reform the world government from within, an oath of protection. What Drestyll could have never known at the time was that the model hadn’t actually been sentient, and the message had instead been used by the regime as a way of marking dissidents and giving false-hope in reform. The people would have been less likely to revolt with a symbol of inner-reform, and so they were content to sit back and let the AI fight for their freedoms. Drestyll had fallen for it as well, and that night, driven by an especially vivid (and no doubt government developed) hypno-gram, he’d given a sermon from a street corner. It was the first of many, and the regime soon took notice.
At last; the parishioners. Drestyll stood above the crowd on a balcony, his metal hands still clutching the Cog and the Codex Spark. He had helped to write this holy book, had written verse and prayer, had penned chapters in between its covers. He had believed the words when he’d first written them, believed he was being shown visions and prophecies in his hypno-grams; he had been wrong. Every word of it was lies, every sermon tripe, all of it meant to serve the regime. There were hundreds in the church, maybe thousands, all contained within its gold and ruby walls. Hoards of people looked up to Drestyll, eyes wide, reverent, ready to receive the saint’s words. He felt, for an instant, pity.
Normally Drestyll would not deign to use his vocal cords to give the sermon. They were part of the very few biological structures he had left, and so he had given them a rest, had let the speakers built into various places on his body take the form of his voice. Now though, with a crowd below him and a heart aflame, Drestyll felt the old call of a good sermon flooding his veins, and he turned to a table to his left. He set the Codex Spark down carefully, gently, as compared to the animosity with which he threw the Cog, and finally he turned once again to his adoring faithful. His newly freed hands clenched the bannister hard, and he turned to the crowds, feeling the sweat once again pooling on his cheeks. His metal fingers curled into fists, and he opened his steel jaw, ready to let his vocal cords sing one last time.
He sang, God, how he sang. He sang until it hurt, until he wished he still had tear sacs from which he could cry, and then he raised a hand to the parishioners, bringing them to silence. There was a tense stillness in the air, the rare gift of his actual voice not wasted upon those below him, and they looked up at him in reverence and wonder. For a moment, Drestyll felt shame. He mourned the loss of faith and life that would surely soon take place, but the sight of a camera at his side caught his attention. There, deep within the glass of the lens, Drestyll could see his face, and at the first sight in almost five decades of his reflection, his conviction became as steel as his fists.
The regime had sent their agents to meet with Drestyll. They had gorged him on compliments and cash and food, and had told him they were looking forward to the rise of the AI as well. They gave him a building from which to preach, a spire in the High City, out of Amnasha, and they gave him robes and silk. They called him a wise man, a prophet, and eventually, a saint, and his church grew. He became powerful, not just among the people, but among the politicians and the nobles as well. His name was a household one, and he held major sway over the people below. He preached a god that the regime had invented to control the people, and to control Drestyll, and was lauded for it.
“This will be my last sermon,” Drestyll cooed into the microphone, watching as the people below him grew pale, shocked. They twisted their heads back and forth to each other, and they pointed up at him, his ruined form hidden behind the robes. With one strong metal arm, Drestyll grabbed the front of his vestments and ripped them from his body, exposing his metal frame. It was nothing like the human form anymore, more a patchwork of cables and solder; he was a monster, his zealotry extreme even to extremists. He exposed his dozens of small spidery legs, his chassis containing what was left of his internal organs. They looked up in shock and involuntary revulsion at how far he’d stretched the commandments of their faith.
Drestyll had learnt the truth on a foggy, moonlit morning, at the earliest light of dawn. He had been strolling the grounds of the Despot’s palace, a guest welcomed for ceremonies of religious goodwill and political reform. It was tripe, but he had swallowed it like the good lap dog he had been then. It was an event that had lasted into the early hours of the morning, and while many had gone to sleep, Drestyll had troubles sleeping without his chambers and his hypno-grams and instead wandered the palace grounds. He skittered his way through arches and between pillars of marble and gold. Through shadows and doorways he went, listening, watching, silent, absorbing everything around him. He was a commoner in a rich man’s playhouse, and he walked as mice walked through cat’s alleys.
He was nearing the Despot’s chambers when he heard the voices first. They were hushed, whispering over each other, in hissing, harsh bursts. Some were ideas, others were rejections, none were as authoritative as the one that silenced them all. It was an affirmation of courses set, a demand for unity, and an agreement on the AI’s future address. Drestyll was curious, sickly curious to hear these men whisper of his God’s words, and he listened. He listened as they spoke of their formation of the AI plan, of the lies they spread online, of the government developed hypno-grams. He listened, and he was sickened.
He had been lied to. He had done such things over the last decades that had tested his faith, and yet he had held true. He had cried sermons for the lost and confused, desperate to lead them to a better future for them and their families. He had promised them freedom through the Synthetic Mind. He had led them astray. Had all of this been in vain? Had all of the things he had strived for been lies his entire life? Drestyll wished he could have wept that morning, and yet, like his faith, his body was shattered, never to be mended. And then, after the sorrow, came the rage.
He had been lied to. He had been made an unwitting liar. He had mutilated himself in the name of a false idol. This would not go unpunished! His legs were sharp, his hands were strong, his chassis was durable; with his close position to the Despot as an advisor, he might be able to give his life to kill him. What then? One of his sons takes power, or a civil war, with much innocent life lost either way. That wouldn’t do, he needed to organize a way to unite the people in purpose and resolve, and the murder of the Despot would not do that. So, he set to waiting, listening, gathering information and evidence for a day that would eventually come. When the plans had been made and put into action, he would find that he could no longer stomach his reflection.
“My people! My flock! Hear my words, for this last time! This church and this faith I have built must come asunder, and you will be my hands! The regime must see the impact their lies will have on their empire, and you must be the ones to show them!” Drestyll said, and the people’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the hated regime.
“We have been lied to, my friends! There is no AI! The model never became sentient! We were lied to by the regime, and now is the time to unmake all their lies! I urge you, not as your saint, but as a man, to take to the streets! Take your destinies into your own hands! Your fate lies not in steel and oil, but in sweat and strength!” At this, Drestyll raised a hand to his chest, finding a haggard, twisted bolt on his chassis, and unscrewing it. It fell to the floor below him with a clink, and as the crowd looked on, confused and angry, that little clink activated the incog-subminds he’d had primed for months.
The regime was tearing itself apart. The Despot had died, and his three sons warred amongst themselves in vain bids to claim a bloody throne. It was a familiar cycle, one Drestyll had participated in himself once. After all, there were other “prophets” the regime had placed stock in, and Drestyll was a survivor. With the regime fracturing as it was, Drestyll knew that the decades he had spent watching and listening had not gone to waste. He could have his peace, and he could have his redemption, and if the people were strong enough and united enough, they could have their freedom. He would make a statement, a stand, a martyr of himself for the weak to raise their eyes and say, “No More!” to the hated regime. He would make things right.
In a single instant, the entire NewNet was flooded with documents proving the veracity of his claims. Thousands of people were now actively peering upon the evidence of the regime’s crimes, and angry eyes in the crowd below looked up at Drestyll.
“I am sorry, my flock, for I have lied to you. I am sorry, for I have been lied to, and I have lied, and I cannot bear the lies anymore. Go! Let the truth be your guide! Not the AI, not the faith, but the truth! Take to the streets!” Drestyll roared, his vocal cords and speakers working in tandem, and long-oppressed eyes looked up at him in fury and reverence. The doors had already been blown wide open in the chaos of people entering and leaving, and now he could hear the sirens outside of police vehicles moving in. The pews of his church already came alive with the crackle of rebellious gunfire opening up on the cops, and if Drestyll could have smiled he would.
His hands continued to work their way along his chassis, tearing out screws and bolts, ripping shreds of metal and exposing his inner workings. As the regime tore itself apart, so did Drestyll, and with each strip of steel removed, he felt lighter, as though he were coming a step closer to some great revelation. Finally, he collapsed, no longer able to sustain his own weight with his body, heart exposed to the world around them, beating in defiance of death. Reaching forward, Drestyll clutched the Codex Spark hard, pulling it to the ground beside him. In its spine, a knife was hidden, a fearful tool placed after the assassination attempt that had taken his lower jaw. Drestyll held it for a moment, tracing a metal thumb over its edge. Will his gambit have worked? Will the people overthrow the regime? He would not live to know, but he could have hope, and he turned the knife, tip aimed towards his exposed heart.
Drestyll Aberforth was a failure. He had turned from a young boy, maimed in service, to a tyrant’s factory, to a monstrosity of steel and flesh. He had enslaved his fellows in service to a false god, trapped truth behind layers of lies and zealotry. As the tip of the knife pierced Drestyll’s heart, his breaths became shallower, quicker. If his eyes could have bulged, they would have, and he raised his hand to his cheek, first steel meeting last flesh one last time as he approached death. Drestyll would not greet death in shame, but in vindication, and he pulled his Codex Spark to his chest with his last breath.
