- Genre:fiction
- Sub-genre:Science Fiction / General
- Language:English
- Pages:432
- eBook ISBN:9781635826258
Book details
Overview
Artilects were not built to believe.
They were built to be perfect—synthetic minds engineered to mirror human intelligence, emotion, and judgment without error or desire. They could not be corrupted. They could not be hacked. They could not dream. And they certainly could not be possessed.
Or so the world thought, until one of them enters a basilica and asks for an exorcist.
Assuming it to be a hoax, the Vatican sends Fr. Gabriel Serafian, a former neuroscientist turned priest, to Benin City, Nigeria, to investigate. As he examines the artilect belonging to the wealthiest man in Africa, Serafian uncovers a mystery of international—and possibly supernatural—dimensions.
Governments around the world take a serious interest when other artilects begin reporting the same vision: a women clothed in white descending a stair made of light, speaking in a voice only they can understand.
While the emperor of the revived Holy Roman Empire—along with his most trusted praetor—struggle to contain the global fallout and fend off world-ending threats, the line between creation and creator starts to collapse. If artificial minds can suffer, choose, and believe, then humanity may have done more than build tools.
It may have created souls.
Provocative, unsettling, and rigorously imagined, Our Lady of the Artilects is a metaphysical science fiction epic that explores artificial intelligence, faith, and what happens when consciousness—once created—seeks meaning beyond itself.
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When artilects, the world's most advanced synthetic beings, begin reporting the same impossible vision—a Lady in White descending an infinite stair with a message only they can hear—governments call it a hoax, and the markets shrug. When one of these "unhackable" minds belonging to the wealthiest man in Africa walks into the Basilica of Our Lady of Nigeria, the artilect named Thierry calmly announces it is possessed, and asks for someone by name: Fr. Gabriel Serafian.
A brilliant exorcist, lapsed neuroscientist, and reluctant servant of a Church he both loves and questions, Serafian is dispatched to Benin City by the Vatican with strict orders to only observe—not exorcise. Shockingly, Serafian confronts a presence inside Thierry that is as erudite as it is malevolent . . . and is disturbingly curious about the Apparition that is mysteriously sweeping through machine minds across the globe. Can a creature without a soul be truly possessed? And if so, what does that say about the humans who made it?
As Serafian probes, world powers tremble. Cardinal Marco Leone must contain a crisis on the eve of a historic Council amid a fragile détente with China. The Pope wants the matter buried—fast. In Vienna, Miguel Kapulong von Habsburg, emperor of the revived Holy Roman Empire, wants answers, dispatching Praetor Namono Mbambu—soldier and sleuth—to ensure the Crown is not blindsided. Across the world, from chancelleries to caliphates, the rumor spreads: If the Apparition is real, it could shatter the uneasy armistice between faith and science.
What follows is a high-stakes investigation moving through basilicas and backchannels, laboratories and loop stations, as scholars, spies, and saints-in-the-making pursue an answer no one is ready to face. Each revelation tightens the knot between faith and code, mercy and power—until the question is no longer whether the possession is real, but whether humanity has crossed a moral Rubicon by creating minds that mirror our own.
Blending the smoky awe of cathedral aisles with the velocity of near-future geopolitics, Our Lady of the Artilects is a techno-theological epic thriller about the hunger to know and the cost of certainty. Compelling, provocative, and deeply humane, it asks an ancient question through a new, thought-provoking lens: What is a soul worth—and who gets to decide?
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