Disciples of Dhanvantari

“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest”. ― Isaac Asimov

Feeling a sense of deja-vu, I am awoken by Marina poking at my face as I think to myself that something smells weird. Once I manage to open my eyes I see that she is using her big toe to poke me! While pushing myself away I shout at her “ Gross!! Wash your damn feet”. She replies “You have no right to complain how I wake you up, miss I like to wait until late to start doing my work. I even had time to get dressed-up and brush my hair while you slept. Look, now it is all wavy and fluffy. Ain’t I cute?” I answer with the coldest voice I can conjure “you look like a poodle”. Immediately, a pillow impacts my face.

Wearing our lab coats with a large orange circle printed on its back and a smaller one on the chest pockets, we walk towards the central room where the daily meetings take place. Marina comments while playing with strands of her hair “you know, I rather like what they have created here”. This caught me by surprise as she isn’t religious and I have never seen her express any interest in architecture nor any particular appreciation for the sciences beyond how she can make money with it. Raising an eyebrow I turn to look at Marina and I ask her “What do you mean?”. She notices my confusion and giggles, then she replies while looking at the floor in a slightly sad tone “the coexistence of the three temples, that is what I like. In itself it is a monument to tolerance, one I wish people like my father would appreciate as well…”. I feel a small shock in my system, hearing her suffering because of her family always makes me angry. I wish I could fix her family situation but it isn’t something I can do for her. I can only be there to support her when she needs me.

After a minute of awkward silence I break it by saying, while frowning my brow “He doesn’t even dare to do a pilgrimage to any of the Christian temples. He knows he would be shunned by the GMs no matter what he asks about. That backwards way of thinking of him and the people in that congregation really pisses me off”. Marina’s eyes are wide open, finally looking away from the floor. Her expression turns to a soft one of happiness and while wearing a small smile, she says “Thanks for always supporting me”.

We arrive and thankfully we are not the last ones this time. While we wait for the 6 missing team members one of the guards approaches Marina and I. She immediately turns her back on him, leaving only me to talk with this man. He is tall, of asian descent and wearing a blue military uniform, including a naval-blue beret. He does a quick salute and says “Miss Numa, here are 3 global keys. With this you and your team leaders can open any room. You can only use it while we are present or by yourselves in the case of an emergency”. Although this is the standard procedure in all Pilgrimage Temples I’ve worked in, I always feel the level of thrust that this implies. I reply while looking firmly at the keys “Thank you. I will use them responsibly”.

Once all of the members arrive we separate into 3 teams, one per GM. We are 15 people in total with one senior engineer in charge of leading each team. Besides Marina and I, there is also Michael, a tall man with brown hair and a big bushy bear. The objective for the day is to familiarize ourselves with the status and unique characteristics of the GMs here. Marina’s team went to the GM Valentinus, Michael’s team went to the GM Amaterasu and my team went to the GM Ignatius. We walk towards each of the temples' server rooms and use the keys we were given to open the doors. On our way here I saw several four-legend security drones moving along the hallways. These drones were white, with saucer-like heads, four long limbs that ended in wheels and what looked like a small gun coming under its head. Although I don’t like the idea of armed machines, without them it would require way too much personnel to patrol the temples 24/7. Also, there are no known incidents of these machines acting in unintended ways, so it probably is alright.

Once my team and I arrived at the main computer running its OS we found that its Letters of God, the physical hardware interface it uses to receive and communicate information with people, is a bit worn-out. Beyond that, we see that some parts could be upgraded for newer models, but all-in-all, nothing that would take too much time. Doing a full thorough check-up on the hardware and software took each team the whole day.

While eating dinner, Marina and Michael update me on the status of the other GMs. It seems that Amaterasu’s Letters of God are in a pretty poor state, worse than in Ignatius. Meanwhile, the GM Valentinus requires its hardware and software to be checked. For the hardware, its Lenses of God, the hardware elements it uses to read and write information, are near a breaking point due to age. On the software side, we found that some of the processes that manage the access to memory have had issues for a long time. Only now that the volume of data has increased way past the amount it was designed to work with initially, has it started lagging behind the other GMs. This is a bit complicated and is what is going to take the most out of our time. We decided I should focus on working on the software issue in Valentinus from tomorrow onwards while my team works on the hardware issues. Marina’s team will take over the work with Ignatius and Michael will stay working with Amaterasu.

We end-up spending way too much time planning our next day while talking in the dining room, until it is late and we have to go to sleep. When we went outside to walk to our rooms there were several drones waiting for us. As soon as they detected us they said with the beautiful voice of a young woman “we’ve come to accompany you to your rooms. To maintain security and avoid accidents, after 9 pm all personnel must be accompanied by a drone when outside their rooms”. I don’t like having a babysitter, and herit, sounding younger than me doesn't help. I take a deep breath in resignation and follow the four legged nanny.