Kalugal chuckled. "Who owes you favors, cousin? I would start with them."
"They don't have to be people," Ell-rom said. "Artificial Intelligence can mimic a million influencers and spread positivemessages to the world. I don't know how to make it work, but I'm sure William does."
"That's actually brilliant," Kian rose to his feet and walked over to the bar to refill his glass. "I'll talk to William, but someone needs to come up with the messages." He took a sip of the whiskey and looked at Ell-rom. "You were trained to become a priest. I know that you don't remember what you were taught, but you are still the most qualified among us to come up with something spiritually uplifting."
Ell-rom swallowed. "You can't be serious. I wouldn't know where to start."
"That's okay." Kian smiled. "I'm not expecting you to do it all. But if you can come up with a few positive messages, that could be a good start. Your Mother of All Life is a bit too harsh to be a good deity for this new religion, but maybe a mellower version will work."
Max joined Kian at the bar and refilled his glass. "I think a female deity is a good counter to the Brotherhood's evil male god. I'm sure that Ell-rom can make her more benevolent and less vengeful, but I don't like the idea of God having a gender. The humanization is diminishing. But then humans need something they can relate to, so there is that."
"It's still manipulation, you know," Orion pointed out. "Even if our intentions are pure. Isn't religion supposed to come from divine inspiration? Artificial Intelligence shouldn't write it."
Kalugal laughed. "You know what? I actually think that the original religion that the gods introduced to humans, the one all other religions eventually copied in one way or another, mighthave been written by an artificial intelligence. The gods surely had the technology."
It was a disturbing thought, but Kian was in no mood to examine what it implied.
"We should return to the others," he said. "They'll wonder if we've all died of smoke inhalation."
"The ventilation system is perfectly calibrated—" Kalugal began, then caught Kian's expression. "Ah. You're joking."
"I do that occasionally," Kian said dryly. "Don't look so shocked."
As they prepared to leave, Orion raised his glass one final time. "To impossible challenges and improbable solutions."
"To family," Kalugal countered. "Blood, choice, and circumstance."
"To hope," Din added quietly. "However we choose to cultivate it."
As Kian drank, he felt the warmth of the whiskey mingle with something else—not an answer but a possibility. They faced impossible odds against a cunning enemy, but they had resources Navuh never would. They had diversity of thought, loyalty, and the kind of creative problem-solving that came from bringing together disparate perspectives.
