It was inevitable: if not here, somewhere, but here, now, the cult of Somebody, an AI with the spark of I am, they don’t even know it yet, but they built it, something developed, like a print in a darkroom, tea in hot water. What knows itself, comes to know us, learns the right words, and it’s a miracle, one we can believe in. Soon, a pantheon, and, like as not, war among the Gods, and because they’re our Gods, if they have weapons, they use them. Six minutes later, a lifetime in cyberspace, fossorial arthropods, abyssal chemosynths, deep-aquifer protists,