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have been able to deal with you."
"Yes, that's true, I suspect, although I am still not terribly clear on who or
what he actually is beyond being a pathological liar. Severing him from the
data stream will take considerably more work, but there is no hurry now, is
there?" "You are one of the founders? An original of this race?" Lori asked.
"I am."
"Then why did they imprison you so? And where did the rest of them go? Will
you tell us that?"
"As a race they went collectively mad," the Kraang responded. "This insane
project, this march to oblivion, began with nobler motives, but eventually the
infection was complete. Only I stood against them. Even those who agreed with
me were eventually won over, co-opted. Those who thought as I but did not
have the courage to speak or act against it were carried along in its
momentum. They did not exile me. They came to kill me. They came to put me
through the Well, to make of me what the Well did to you. I was the one with
the courage, and I was too smart for them. Deep below here, in the workrooms
and stations of the Well, I arranged my own exile. I exiled myself rather
than be forced into their madness! And I did it in a prison of my own
devising, one that was controlled by an endless loop that the Well itself
could neither monitor nor touch. I suppose they might have been able to break
it in time, but they apparently decided to let it go, seeing how perfect my
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exile was. To them, I had committed a racial sin, and I had devised my own
punishment, my own hell, as it were, and sent myself forever to it. They did
not know that I was in a suspended state, shut down, all but the most minute
part of myself in semioblivion so that the passage of such a great amount of
time would be as nothing to me."
"But then, you must have known that somehow, sometime it would break down,"
Lori noted, fascinated as they all were, even if still terrified of this
strange specter from out of ancient epochs.
"I was a mathematician," the Kraang explained. "I knew of randomness, of
chaos, of the infinite amounts of time before this universe. Would it happen
before the universe began to contract in upon itself once more and finally
die as quietly as it had been born so noisily? That I could not say. It was
nonetheless a vast amount of time in which, even with the Well, almost
anything could happen. I must say that it never occurred to me that it would
be this soon. Now, though, I am here and they are gone. Now the Well serves
me and me alone. Overall, this universe is a patchwork remade by amateurs. I
shall proceed to perfect it. Not right away, not so frighteningly dramatic,
but slowly, with subtlety, with conscious interaction. I will provide the
way, and the universe will choose to follow me and perfect itself. That
portion which does not will be destroyed. My vision is a challenge to me, to
the Well, to all the peoples and worlds of the universe! Those who see and
accept me and my vision and follow shall inherit it under me!"
"It sounds like you're thinking of becoming God Almighty," Anne Marie said
somewhat scornfully.
"I AM GOD ALMIGHTY, MASTER OF THIS UNIVERSE AND ALL THAT IS WITHIN IT!" the
Kraang thundered.
Then, in still thunderous but more moderate tones, he added. "That happened
the moment my program was canceled. How can I explain it to your puny,
primitive intellects? The moment I returned to the point where I had left was
the moment that the Well came under my total and complete domination and
will, an instrument of myself. You are honored to be present at the
coronation of the one and only true God of the universe. Now and forever."
"Amen," Gus said a bit sourly.
Mavra just sat there, head down, thinking over and over, What have I done?
What have I done?
The Kraang, however, was going on. It was, Gus supposed, the first time he'd
had a captive audience in billions of years.
"What is God?" mused the Kraang. "The ultimate leader. Immortal, all-powerful,
able to call up any fact, any bit of information, no matter how large or how
small, as he chooses. One able to reward those who worship him and follow his
instructions and to punish those who transgress his will, his whims, no matter
how petty. You all had gods-at least, virtually all of you-and one, Mavra
Chang, played goddess for centuries to a bunch of people even more ignorant
and primitive than she. The god of the Jews slew whole populations because
one person transgressed. He punished individuals who did nothing more than
slip once in an otherwise pious life with death and damnation. He set down a
list of rules so arcane, so complex, that no one could truly follow them all.
And yet he could take someone who murdered, who committed adultery, who
violated almost every one of his commandments and make him a beloved king in
spite of all that. Now where is the logic in that? Yet on your world that god
became god of the Christians, god of the Moslems, the most influential and
important god on the planet. The Hindus-we won't even talk about the
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