(Try two, yesterday's attempt threw an error that flashed past too quickly to figure out, and I guess it was enough to prevent posting.)

The Knowstick Heresy
copyright 2024 by Dave Van Domelen

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Grigor held the Knowstick out in front of him, using its blinking lights both to guide him towards his goal, and for the more prosaic need to see in
the dark of the disused shaft. For several minutes he'd left behind the various plant and animal intrusions, and what had looked from the surface
like a natural cavern was now clearly artifice, even in the dim and multicolored light.
There!
The goal of his many years of searching, an Access Point unclaimed by
the Church of the Machine, and hopefully undamaged by the march of time.
He began the Ritual of Activation, holding up the Knowstick and tapping the symbols that appeared on its surface. It was more of a glassy rectangle than any sort of "stick," but the origins of the name were lost along with so much else. Lost, or deliberately hidden by the Church.
Grigor had an opinion on which it was.
He gasped as the Access Point lit up, fitfully at first, but then more confidently, as if it were a human waking from a stupor.
Then he fought back the urge to bolt as a strange and garbled voice
issued forth from the Access Point. Almost words, almost comprehensible, and yet totally alien. The language of the Machines?
"I do not understand, oh Access Point?"
There was a pause, which seemed to be as much for his benefit as because the Access Point needed it.
PLEASE STATE YOUR IDENTITY AND PURPOSE appeared on the flat surface mounted into the wall. It used the sacred script of the Knowsticks and
Church Manuals, or close enough that Grigor could puzzle it out.
"I am Grigor of Wellmouth, called the Heretic, and long have I searched for the truth of our history, truth I am certain the Church of the Machine hides from us for purposes of its own."
WHAT IS THE HISTORY YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT?
"In the times Before, demons came from the sky to devour the world. Mankind fought back, slaying demons and making of their bodies the first
Great Machine. At terrible cost, the demons were repelled, and the survivors have since lived under the protection of the Great Machines, as served by the Church of the Machine. But over time, the Machines have grown silent one by one, and we do not have the demon bodies required to build more...even if we still know how. Before I left the Church, I rose high enough to doubt much
of this, and I suspect the Church guards the secrets of creation for its own selfish ends, it is easier to claim to know the will of a power that is silent."
There was another pause, and then the air in front of Grigor began
glowing faintly in the shape of a man. He stepped back as it gained focus
and brightness, lighting the tunnel in both directions for a great ways. A moment later, it sharpened into the slightly see-through image of a man in simple if strange clothing, with an unremarkable face.
"I believe I have accounted for the linguistic drift now," the glowing
man said, his accent unusual but comprehensible. "I've been offline and disconnected from the main network for...a long time, to judge by the data I downloaded from your diagnostic tablet. So...it's the truth of history that you want, Grigory the Heretic?"
"Y-yes," he stammered. He was really talking to a Great Machine, less than a god but so much more than a man. It was what he'd spent years
seeking, but he found himself unprepared for the reality.
"History isn't my specialty, I'm more of a cultural archivist, but since culture is tied to history I do have some base knowledge even if I can't just query one of the historical archives right now. Oh, and yes, I'm a machine,
an autonomous intelligence, I'm not even qualified to answer questions about whether I'm really conscious or just really good at guessing what you want. But...that doesn't seem to be a debate you're interested in. So let's just skip it. For the sake of convenience, you can call me Cal, or Archivist if you're not comfortable with informality."
"Yes, Archivist Cal."
"So, the top line summary is: the history you learned is essentially
true, if simplified and mythologized. That doesn't rule out the Church
hiding truths for its own benefit, hierarchical organizations tend to do that almost by reflex."
"So, demons really did come from the sky? It's not just a ghost-monster created to keep people afraid and obedient?"
Cal shrugged. "Demon is as good a name as any. At least as of the last time I was connected to the network, about fifty years after the end of the war, there was still active debate as to their origins. The demons were a
sort of machine that could build copies of itself out of resources found on asteroids or planets. It was estimated that they had devoured several major asteroids...small rocks out in space...before coming to Earth in search of whatever it was they couldn't get on the uninhabited worlds. We never
figured out how long they'd been slowly eating other parts of the Solar
System before that, but we're lucky they didn't come to Earth even a century earlier. Mankind wouldn't have had the tools to fight back yet. Of course, we'd have been luckier if we'd had another few decades, we might have stopped them before they even got to Earth. So much lost. So many people, so many societies, so much culture."
Cal seemed almost wistful at the last part, as if his machine nature
kept him from truly mourning loss of life itself, but his duty as an
archivist panged him at the thought of losing information. Grigor had known men like that in the Church, so he would not fault a Great Machine for
holding the same view.
"Could the demon machines still be out there, as the Church teaches?"
"You're here, so if the 'demon machines' are still out there, they're
very far away still. Humanity reverse-engineered much of the alien
technology and used it to destroy every hostile machine within reach of our signals. If any had survived, they'd have multiplied and come back. But we never found out who sent them, or if they planned to follow in person once their machines had done whatever they were meant to do on Earth. One popular theory was that the makers of the demon machines had long since died out, and only their creations survived, mindlessly spreading out and multiplying
across the galaxy. If that's true, they'll be back eventually. Perhaps changed enough to ignore the self-destruct signals humanity used the first time." Cal paused, cocking his head as if listening to something. "The automated beacons are still broadcasting the signal, although I can't talk to them to determine how much longer this will last."
"So, we are doomed," Grigor sighed despondently. He knew the truth
would be unpleasant, but he'd hoped it would be the sort of thing that could
be fought.
Cal shrugged, a very human expression that had remained the same in meaning across the ages. "Eventually every society, every species, dies.
But it doesn't mean it has to happen within your lifetime, or even within centuries. Humanity could still recover what it lost."
"WHY was so much lost?" Grigor demanded. "How could the Great Machines let so much be forgotten?"
Cal shook his head. "You can't forget what you never knew. Humanity figured out how to use the alien technology against the aliens, but never understood the fundamental theories that made it work. It may well be that
it would take a truly alien mindset to do so. Some of the Great Machines
were tasked with understanding themselves, but none had made much progress by the time where I suppose I was considered surplus to needs and shut down."
"Why would any Great Machine be shut down?"
Cal chuckled ruefully. "Resources are always limited, even now I'm operating on emergency backup systems that would only last for...oh, three or four years if I don't do anything too intensive. As society rebuilt, there
was a lot of desire to look forwards and not back. Not a lot of interest in the songs of the American West when most of that area had been stripmined by the alien machines. So they copied the information they felt they wanted
into simpler, less energy-hungry non-Great machines and put me in
hibernation. Then forgot about me, I guess, until you came along.
"Anyway, to get back to your previous question, without a solid understanding of why any of this technology worked, people tended to shift to rote learning and then ritual. I was seeing the start of what would become your Church even at the time I was still operating. So many had died, so
much had been lost, it was easier to retreat into rote procedure and just
focus on keeping alive. I guess that got worse, and people stopped trying to figure out the technology, just treating the machines as gods and diagnostic tools as ritual implements. It wasn't evil, just people trying to keep
going. I'd need more data than I can get from your device to be sure, but I suspect that if the Church is keeping any dangerous secrets, it's the fact
that they don't have any useful secrets. Everyone is just doing the best
they can, and hoping that tomorrow isn't when the demons come back."
Grigor slumped down to the floor, leaning against the wall. "Telling people that we don't know how to awaken the Great Machines that now slumber,
or that we might not be able to repel the Demons should they return...no,
that would just hasten our fall. With no hope to offer once the truth is known, all too many would abandon everything, fall upon their fellow man in order to satisfy base urges while waiting for death. How many other heretics like myself have found fragments of the past, only to see that the Church was right? We can do nothing."
Cal squatted down to look Grigor in the eye. "I didn't say that.
They're doing the best they can, but I think you could help them do better.
The first step is figuring out a way to extend my operational lifetime and communications range, and while I may not be a tech specialist, all Great Machines have at least a basic understanding of how to maintain ourselves. Then, we'll need to get me in touch with my brethren and see what's keeping them from doing the same...."

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Author's Notes:

There's a trope in SF where a post-collapse society ends up run by a religion that is based on rote performance of technical tasks, with varying levels of success and understanding. My first exposure to the trope was
Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, and it crops up every so often in various media. One of the more common uses of late, as I saw in the comic Giga, was to combine this with a modern skepticism of religion, so that the tech church is definitely evil, often cartoonishly so. They always know the Truth, and hide it behind self-serving lies, and it's up to the protagonist
to pierce the veil.
The inspiration for this story was simply to go the other direction, perhaps more true to the Canticle example. The church isn't hiding the
Truth, they're doing the best they can with what they know. Might Grigor
still be correct in his suspicion of the Machine Church? Perhaps. As Cal notes, hierarchical structures do tend to do things worthy of suspicion.
But, at the least, they're probably not actually lying about the past.

Also posted to AO3.

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