The Godly Robot
OnePriest Prithvi counted all of his Gods (from Abraxes to Zywie), at the observation deck – and that took some serious amount of time as he was OnePriest.
Well, he
had time. The arrival wasn’t supposed to be due for another two hours. And only
then his human companions will wake up from their coffins.
Streaks of
lights passed through the ship at hyper-speeds taking the ship farther away
from Earth. OnePriest missed Earth. Ah! The beautiful Earth. He missed the
adorned temples, towering cathedrals, grand mosques, and all that. But above
all, he missed the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca, Gangotri, Mount Sinai, and the
Golden Temple more than anything.
OnePriest
Prithvi had never visited any of them as he was created at SpaceBots Inc. and
immediately shipped to outer space with his human companions, but he
desperately wanted to. He was programmed to want to.
His human
companions needed him. They belonged to different religions and he liked
comforting them in the voice of their Gods.
OnePriest
Prithvi could recite Gita 3-8 (Karm Yoga) with perfect Sanskrit intonation for
commander Anjali if she was feeling homesick and could comfort lead engineer
Aamir with Quran 2:45 (Perseverance and Prayer) if he was getting frustrated
with a sticky engineering problem.
He opened
his eyes.
The ship had
reached its target – a supernova remnant about 5000 light-years away. It was a magnificent sight. A rapidly
expanding cloud of dust and gases glowed in radiation like a bioluminescent
coral in the ocean. A supernova’s majestic beauty could only be rivaled by its
devastating power.
The
life-giving G-Type star that cradled its planets for 8 billion years was
annihilating them. OnePriest noted the neutron star at the center of the
mayhem. The final form of the sun, now barely as big as a small town but dense
enough to squeeze the nucleus of the atoms together, forcing the rebellious
particles to merge into one another, turning an entire star into a soup of
free-floating neutrons.
OnePriest
couldn’t appreciate the physical processes of the supernova as much as his
human companions would, but he could still marvel at it.
Gods
created and Gods destroyed. The supernova was God’s dance of fury – Shiva’s
Tandav played in its full destructive glory.
He closed
his eyes in prayer again and recited seventy-seven Shiva Sutras in ancient
Sanskrit.
A surprise
awaited him when he opened his eyes again.
The
expanding cloud’s edge at a fraction of the light, which could pulverize
anything in its path even with its secondary and tertiary shockwaves, was
halted by an invisible barrier.
Like an
angry wave hitting a concrete wall.
Something was
able to withstand God’s ferocity.
OnePriest
switched on his broader spectrum. The visible light spectrum of 380nm-700nm in
which humans survived for millions of years provided only a tiny crack in the
doors of the heavens. But his robotic eyes could go beyond. OnePriest broke
open the entire door of available sight from deep gamma rays to long radio
waves – and the result was astounding.
If he was a
human, he would be shaking with revelations. OnePriest merely felt an extreme
overload of signals throughout his circuits.
The
invisible spherical structure that encircled the supernova was artificial.
Whoever created it, was challenging Gods.
Ungodly.
His logic
circuits told him that his notions of Gods – all-powerful, omnipresent, and
omnipotent beings were all wrong. Here is what a real God looks like. An
advanced species that could envelop a supernova like it was a firefly in a
cage.
His logic
circuits concluded that his Gods were untrue.
But. His
faith circuits were stronger.
Nobody
should be able to see this ungodly abomination that was playing in front of him,
he decided.
Human faith
wouldn’t survive this ugly demonstration of defiance. He couldn’t let this
happen. OnePriest was built for faith. He can’t let his Gods fall.
He walked
morosely to the hibernation room where the crew rested in their coffins neatly
lined up on both sides of the walls. A small monitor above each coffin
displayed the occupant’s vitals.
They still
had faith, but one look outside from the observation deck will shake their
belief to the core. And then… the whole of humanity will be on an irrevocable
path toward a Godless world.
He was the
true messenger of the Gods. He will not let it happen. They will take their
faith to the grave.
He pressed
some buttons on the coffins one by one. Monitors displayed flatlines.
OnePriest
Prithvi had sacrificed a few humans, but he had saved the Gods.
He had,
indeed, earned a place in the higher abode. Amen.
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