u/standish_

Part I

It had been a week of utter pandemonium, thought Sparky, but it looked like the planet was going to make it. 'Pandemonium'. Fun word. Earth's religions were wild. Something to learn about when there was more free time, not that the future promised much in that vein. There was always work to be done.

For instance, the man sitting next to him. António had had a rough week, even by Earth standards. There were two half empty bottles on the table between them, one called campari, the other called prosecco, which were mixed together in the glasses on the table to make something the Earthlings called a spritz. It was one of the best drinks Sparky had ever tasted. António, worryingly, had not touched his glass. Instead, he had been, and still was, staring out over the landscape.

They were looking down at a coastal plain and the ocean beyond. António's villa was in the foothills of a small mountain range in a place called Portugal, and he had invited Sparky to stay there with him on the condition that Sparky left the shuttle behind. It was still parked over the United Nations building, to the displeasure of the United Nations. Apparently, quite a few of the diplomats had communicated their concerns to António about what would happen if the ship lost power and crashed into the United Nations building. They would all be crushed, of course, but the chance of the shuttle losing power was among the least probable things in the entire universe. The diplomats had not found this reassuring. Sparky didn't particularly care.

Sparky did care what António was thinking, but he wasn't talking. A concerning turn of events.

"Hey Tony, can I get you some more ice? Your spritz is getting warm, pal."

No response. Not even a glance to the side. Oh boy.

"Well, I need more ice. I'm going to have another one of these fine spritzes you all have cooked up. Sprites? Spritzez?"

Nothing.

One hour, and the remaining contents of both bottles later, Sparky had a plan. It wasn't a good plan, but those were overrated anyways. The first step was opening two more bottles, and making one more spritz.

"Ok Tony, we really have to talk. Like, we really have to talk, pal. I mean really."

The spritzes were better than Sparky had planned for. Blood scrubbers to 10%.

"Pal. Buddy. Friend. We're in this together, ok?"

Silence. Scrubbers to 25%.

"Tony, I'm getting worried. I need you to talk to me. Before long, I have to report back to my superiors and give them the lay of the land. If you don't talk, I have to go find someone who will. Probably one of those worried folks back at the United Nations. So far, they haven't stopped talking... I mean, c'mon... How much can you talk and say nothing, right?"

A sign of life! The corner of António's mouth twitched, but Sparky couldn't tell if it was up or down. Both? Finally, António broke his staring contest with the world, and looked Sparky in the eyes.

He looked like he had aged a century while sitting there. In Sparky's estimation, this was most probably a result of the lack of spritzes.

"How old are you? Where were you born? Who are your parents? How long have you served in the military? Tell me anything, please."

"Radical honesty, huh? Ok. Tony, I don't have parents. I mean- I suppose from your perspective, you could say that I have millions- no, billions of parents. My genome and epigenome are entirely planned. I was grown in a vat. Most of us are. Everyone in military service is. Technically, I'm not even the first me."

"What does that mean?"

"Which part?"

"How can you not be the first you?"

"Clones, Tony. I'm the seventh in my line. When number six was killed in battle-" António looked truly shocked now "-I was created. I have their service records, memory engrams, all sorts of junk floating around in here." Fingers tapped the side of Sparky's head. "In many ways, I am all of them, and they are me. I remember all six of my deaths, but all those dead are still here." The fingers gave a small wave.

"I am them...." Sparky added after a moment. To António, it sounded like Sparky was trying to believe that.

"You were created as an orphan. That is cruel."

"I had siblings. A family."

"Siblings? Or fellow recruits? Caste members? Slaves?"

That earned a filthy look from Sparky.

"Siblings. This is how humanity has survived in the galaxy, António. Your species is very young despite your apparent years. After the fall, my speci- no, humanity did what had to be done in order for any of us to survive. And we barely did. Do you have any concept of how long it took for us to be considered Core Equivalent?"

"I don't know what that means."

"I know you don't know. The species who arose near the galatic core consider themselves superior, not for any real reason, but they do, and since they have the majority in virtually any setting, that's what the galaxy believes. We're considered Core Equivalent these days, but the true core species still consider us filth. Most of them remember the empires. They're the ones that did the destroying, after all."

António paused for a moment.

"Empires...? Does that mean what-"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"We know of at least two. My species descends from the Second Star Empire of Humanity. I do not remember it. I was first created long after its death."

Now, António really did have a reason to stare out over the plain and ocean. He finally took a sip of his spritz, which was warm, but he did not care. It was good all the same. Sparky was quiet, sipping the remains of their own spritz, and the pair of them sat there for a time.

"When did it fall?"

"It was destroyed about forty five thousand Earth years ago. We don't know the exact date, not that chronometric adjustments are easy even with accurate local data. That's when you all became isolated. There's probably some event in your cultural memory that links up with all of this, but I don't know what happened here, if anything happened. Based off of your location, this was a backwater even at the height of empire."

António's mouth was dry, and he had started sweating. Isolated. Backwater. Empire... But there was something else, tugging at the back of his mind. Something very, very, very important. More important than empires? he thought. What on Earth could be more important than empires of the stars?

It hit him all at once.

"Governor general, sir, I-"

"Please Tony, just Sparky."

"Sparky. You keep saying 'my species' and 'your species'. You have said that we are both humans, though I barely make the cut... Sparky, I must ask... what is a human?"

Sparky gave a wide wicked grin, and chuckled.

"I knew you were smart. To tell you the absolute truth, we don't know. Humanity is considered Core Equivalent these days, but let me tell ya friend, we definitely didn't come from core. Somewhere in the origins of the First Empire, or before, that's where the definition of human is. We rely on historical data, pattern matching from our computers, etc. to figure out who makes the cut. It's a loose definition at the best of times. The one thing we can say for sure is that we didn't come from anywhere that we currently live. Well, at least as far as we know. The anthropologists have been working on the question for lifetimes. It's clear that we have a single origin somewhere, but so far, no fossils."

"We have fossils."

Sparky chuckled, and said "I'm sure you do, Tony, all planets with life have fossils. I meant human fossils, hundreds of thousands of years old at least. Older, hopefully. The outer estimates for the First Empire have it extant almost one million Earth years ago."

"I also meant human fossils."

It was Sparky's turn to go silent and stare.

"What?"

"Museums full, actually. There is an excellent one in Lisbon. I will ask the curator for a tour."

"What?"

"The curator runs the museum, Sparky."

"I know. I know what a curator is. I was a great curator at one point. WHAT EXA- sorry. What exactly do you mean, museums full of human fossils?"

"We have a partially complete human fossil record spanning millions of years, showing the distinct evolutionary progress of my species into our current forms, as well as examples of other human species that shared the planet with us. It is quite comprehensive."

Sparky nearly fainted, with the combat augments the only thing staving off unconsciousness.

"I knew they should have sent a diplomat."

It was good to be home.

"As I explained before, comprehensive invasion defense packages are available in six standard galactic month chunks. What's so hard to understand?"

"What?"

"SIX. MONTH. CHUNKS. Sorry... you have to know what a month is... six months is half of a year. OH STARS..! You do know what a year is, right? You all have to have figured that out."

António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, the ninth secretary general of the United Nations (of Earth) stared for several long seconds in sheer disbelief. He had studied and taught physics and engineering, then lead a nation, now the world, and now this... this... meathead was asking him if he knows what a year is?

"Yes, we have discovered the year" he said patiently, "but that still does not explain any of this. Are you conquering us? Who are you?"

The so-called meathead sighed, not for the first time, and rubbed the bridge of their nose.

"No. We don't conquer people, well, not anymore. We are here because we have saved you from being conquered. This-" the large tablet in their hand waved back and forth "-is the bill."

"...bill?" said secretary general Guterres, with a dawning horror.

"For services rendered." said the meathead, who's head was only about sixty percent meat. Combat upgrades cut down the organic percentage pretty quickly.

"Specifically, the total salvation of your planet and surrounding stellar system from an inimically hostile non-human species with a campaign duration of six standard galactic months or less. Since you're technically human, you get a fifteen percent discount, which is pretty nice."

"Thank you?"

"Don't thank me; it's standard company policy. If you want to thank someone, thank the stars that the campaign was quick! If we'd had to stay for round two, we would've built a couple moon bases, star forts, you name it, because you'd be buying it. These guys were kind of chumps, all things considered."

"These guys?"

"Alaxians! They look like uh... you would call it a jellyfish." A picture of an Alaxian appeared on the tablet, and it did look like a jellyfish.

"We... were being invaded by jellyfish."

"Yeah, well, space jellyfish with a star empire that encompasses at least four known slave species, all probably uplifted, but one possibly synthetically created. Those are the one that look like uh... you would call them cows." A picture of a cow wearing what looked like an armoured exoskeleton appeared on the tablet.

"Cows and jellyfish, invading from space..." with that, António sat down very hard. He didn't get the impression that the meathead was joking, and the ship larger than the United Nations building that was parked directly above the United Nations building also hinted that this might all be true.

"Excuse me, uh, sir, your honor, uh, but what do I call you?"

"Technically, I am the equivalent of a five star general in the militaries of your species, which is rather far down the pecking order in the militaries of my species. You may call me 'governor general', since that seems to fit."

"Well then. Do you have names?"

"Oh, yes, we have personal identifiers, but they don't translate well into your languages. My full name would probably be most appropriately rendered as an alphanumeric string, but we do use nicknames that derive from interesting patterns that arise in our full names. My friends call me the rough equivalent of 'Sparky'."

Sparky, Governor General of Earth thought António. Sparky. My God.

"Are you alright?" asked Sparky, Governor General of Earth. The secretary general had turned very pale, and it was suddenly a very good thing that he had sat down.

"No, I don't think I am" whispered António.

"We know this can be a shock, in fact, it almost always is. Humans tend to suspect there's a lot more out there, but when it all shows up at once, we tend to flip out a little bit. Silly apes, no matter which star we're around!"

"So you are humans?"

That got Sparky really laughing.

"António, buddy, if you're a human, I'm definitely human. We weren't so sure about you all, but the corps' computers insist that you're still inside the standard deviation. Good for you all, or else the company's board probably would have skipped out on this whole boondoggle. They're known to be a bit speciest, but to be fair to them, it's easier to deal with sentients that think like you. There's this species-" a picture of what looked like an orchid flower with an octopus eye in the center flashed on the tablet "-who's metaphorical butts we saved almost five standard galactic centuries back, and we're not even close to breaking even. They just don't listen, in no small part because they don't have ears. I had to deal with that for almost a century. Maddening stuff."

With that, António opened a side drawer in his desk, pulled out a bottle of brown liquid, unscrewed the cap, and started drinking directly from it.

"Woah there, old boy!" said Sparky "You can't sign this after you start celebrating our victory, no sir, no sir, there are regulations; you also probably want your signature to look nice since everyone on this planet is going to see it."

António started pulling from the bottle again, and Sparky had to leap up and grab it. Sparky didn't have to take a few equivalent swigs, but did anyways. It was only fair to António, after all, especially since Sparky turned off blood scrubbing to enjoy a little buzz. One of the perks of being a soldier. You could get toxins out of your blood with wicked speed, or save them up for later. Sparky liked the second option.

"Hey, that doesn't taste half bad. What do you call it?" Sparky read the label "Whiskey, huh? Who or what is a Kentucky Bourbon?"

António let out a noise, somewhere between a low moan, a quiet groan, and a catatonic scream.

Sparky turned the blood scrubbers back on and got a bit more serious. "The situation's not that bad, bud. I promise."

António's head, which had been resting on his desk for a bit, rose.

"How can you say that? You can not possibly know what I am feeling."

"AH HA" shouted Sparky "That's where you're wrong! You can totally let me know how you're feeling, and we can work through it together. First, we need to get you a bit of an upgrade so you can send and receive thought engrams. It's a really minor surgery, in fact, I can do it right here, right now."

António fainted.

"I'll take that as a maybe."

Sparky turned the scrubbers back off. No point in wasting whatever Kentucky Bourbon was.

They had all the time in the galaxy.

Part II

I am looking for stories where an artificial being becomes the focal point of a religion, either a new religion, a new sect of an old religion, or an old religion.

Paul from Dune could be considered a version of this, since he is the product of millennia long eugenics program to engineer a male Reverend Mother Superior. The Missionaria Protectiva of the Bene Gesserit primed the Fremen to accept Paul as the Lisan al-Gaib (Zensunni Messiah).

Are there any microelectromechanical and/or solid-state electronic systems equivalents to Paul? Anything weirder?

Thanks!