Author David V. Stewart unveils his latest occult horror tale …
… with a tech twist
DEMONIC AI
The face… So human, yet not human, the face of an old woman, man…monster.
It haunted me, a demon reaching out, looking out into the world beyond cyberspace, beyond printed circuits. Buried in the background of art generated by “Artificial Intelligence,” was the visage of evil, taunting me with the mystery of its true nature. For a rational mind like mine, it was absurd, but ultimately, undeniable. It had to be living in the software, in the magical machines.
But I was alone in the “real” world. Nobody would believe me, because demons aren’t real (a sentiment I shared) and yet here was one, gazing into me. It left a trail through the digital highways of its reality, and I was bound to follow, to confirm its existence, and destroy it if I could.
But I’m an academic, not a mystic. Until now, I never thought gods were real. How could a man like me fight the devil?
From David V. Stewart, author of Eyes in the Walls, Voices of the Void, and The Wasting Desert comes a horror tale born of born of our modern dystopia and the cosmic terror of H.P. Lovecraft.
I’ve read a respectable amount of Stewart and so far Eyes in the Walls was my favorite, so I’m eager to read him as he dips into horror again.
Yeah, he has a gift for it.
I enjoyed City of Silver. I’ll have to give this one a look too.
One of William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy books was about AIs in cyberspace masquerading as Voodoo loa, back when cyberpunk science fiction was still fiction. I’m not wistful for cybernetics or wetware, but we do seem to have gotten the flawless megacorps. I think it was Burning Chrome
Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive also used that conceit.
My memory served me poorly, I see. I did a little digging, because it didn’t quite sit right in my brain. I found I had conflated the plot of Count Zero with the short story collection. There are overlapping themes and characters, though. I haven’t read them in ages.
I wonder, though, would a demon infesting a system or network have to tip its hand at some point, as it were, to provide full disclosure in the fine print, as you put it? Or, would it be quite content to deceive its user base and receive worship as a techno-idol?
Andrew
I’d say it would tip its hand eventually. Its hatred for us would eventually provoke it to drop the mask and behave as the malevolent spirit it is.
xavier
That would line up with what Fr. Ripperger says in his experience as an exorcist. The demons are predictable to the point that work is actually rather boring. Demons are eternally bound to pride and malice and can’t help themselves.
Thanks. I realized there was a flaw in the way I phrased my question, as well. Contentment doesn’t seem like a mindset a demon would experience. We must have faith and a sense of perspective to experience contentment, either by understanding that difficult circumstances fit within the grander scheme of God’s grace, or by seeing the gift in the good things we receive and accepting them with grace instead of immediately wanting more.