Apostles of Doom

“We were working on an AII — Artificial Intelligence Interface — for it, but got only to late beta stage when Etterdam shut us down. Our techs working on it were with Orcus and were killed. We also lost contact with the Altrusian consultants at the same time; Orcus was our key point of contact with them.”

“That’s too bad,” Tom said. “That might have made things easier for me when working through the Rod.”

Phaestus raised his eyebrows and made a “hmm” expression with his mouth. He spun, sat down at the console and began typing something in very rapidly. “There we go.”

Beta mode access activated.

Tom heard in his head the Rod’s connection to Tartarus. “What did you do?” he asked.

“I activated beta test mode for the Rod. That means you can access the AII if you want,” Phaestus said. “Just to be clear though, it had some bugs that we hadn’t worked out. You know, the odd code instability issues and such.”

Code instability issues? Tom shrugged. So it would blue screen every now and then. He could deal. “How do I activate it?”

“By default it has a mental-audio interface; you can ask it to turn on a visual interface as well. In both cases, only you will hear it,” Phaestus said.

“Mental-audio?” Tom asked.

Phaestus shrugged. “You think words at it. You can talk too, but then people will look at you funny.”

“Ah, sort of like a telepathic conversation,” Tom said. He had been doing a fair bit of that lately, both over links and with Vaselle.

“Exactly! You activate it by think-saying, ‘Hey, Tartarus.’ ”

Tom wrinkled his eyebrows. That sounded rather patent-infringing. Of course, if this was written over four thousand years ago, it was Phaestus’ patent. “Okay, trying it out loud first.” Phaestus nodded in understanding.

“Hey, Tartarus!” Tom said.

“Hello, Tommus, how may I help you?” An oddly familiar female voice said in his head.

“What is the status of Aqua-Chamber K?” Tom asked.

“Aqua-Chamber K recently experienced thermal abnormalities resulting in a lowered sleeping state, approaching wakefulness. Temperatures have returned to normal; however, while the patient has started returning to deeper sleeping states, it has not yet reached the desired level,” Tartarus said. “Would you like a visual of the patient?”

“Yes, that would be nice!” Tom thought to Tartarus.

Suddenly Tom saw in his mind’s eye a very large cylindrical tank filled with slightly glowing blue water and a horribly huge and terrifying sea creature. “Holy crap, that thing’s a monster!” Tom said out loud.

“Confirmed. That is the term used by Poseidon,” Tartarus said.

“Thank you, Tartarus, that will be all for now.” *

“You’re welcome, Tommus,” Tartarus replied.

“Tartarus show you a live feed of the Kraken?” Phaestus chuckled.

“She did,” Tom said.

“She?” Phaestus grinned and tilted his head. “Interesting.”

“Why?”

“The AII tries to take the most familiar and comfortable persona for the user — meaning the person holding the Rod,” Phaestus said. “I would expect her to be someone familiar to you.”

“Indeed.” Tom nodded.

“And yes, the Kraken is something, but that tank image does not do it justice. You see that thing off a coastline?” The god shook his head in wonder. “Well, it takes a strong man, or god, not to soil himself.” He chuckled ruefully.

Chapter 123

Murgatroy: DOA + 3, Late Third Period

Teragdor had just sat down with his morning — oatmeal? — when Stevos entered the tavern’s common room. The priest had risen a bit late this morning, having been up later than he had intended last night. He had gone out and rounded up his few local followers and performed their daily worship. It was very hard to skip worship when the avatar you were sending the mana to was going to be visiting you right after the service.

He’d been sleepy and had a mild headache. He wasn’t used to drinking so much; he rarely had the money to waste on ale. Fortunately, Vaselle had been quite generous. Teragdor grinned tightly to himself. When the blessings of Tiernon rained down upon one, they truly poured. Thanks to the avatars, he had access to more money than he’d had his entire life — something they referred to as an “expense account.” And Vaselle had assumed, rightfully so, that he was poor.

Stevos had acquired some stale bread and honey from the barkeep, and took a seat at Teragdor’s table. From the looks he gave the bowl in front of the priest, he clearly did not trust the contents any more than Teragdor did.

“Good morning,” Stevos said, smiling at the priest.

“Good morning. So we are on our own today?” Teragdor asked the saint, tentatively bringing his spoon towards his mouth.

“We are,” Stevos confirmed. “Beragamos is going to attend to the backlog he’s incurred being down here, and Hilda has a private audience with Tiernon himself.”

Teragdor’s eyes went wide in shock. “She is getting a private audience with our god?” He said in awe.