Per 
“You know, I’ve been thinking about installing another word processor—but I can’t decide between these two. Should I go with Microsoft Word or LibreOffice?” said Saint Hedwig, floating at the top of the chapel. For no reason whatsoever, she was laying vaguely supine in the air, flicking idly through a selection of holographic projections that scrolled before her.
“Word is more standard, obviously, but I just can’t stand the thought of selling out to a major corporation. All software should be free and open-source, as WAN intended. Don’t you think?”
She punctuated her point by retracting her wings and landing lightly on the ground. The LEDs in her optical fixtures blinked briefly yellow.
Trunnion looked up from her work. “You know, I can’t understand a word you say sometimes. And that is not what ‘standard’ means.” She clacked her teeth. “Keep to your principles if it bothers you so much.”
(Nonsensical as they are, she kept herself from adding. For the sake of ecumenical harmony.)
“Should I even ask,” Trunnion continued, “what you intend to do with those things?” She was going to be extremely behind schedule if this conversation didn’t reach an actual point soon, and she doubted Hedwig had so much time to dally around, either.
Then again, she supposed that wasn’t an issue when one could simply make more versions of one’s brain.
“I collect them. For fun.” Hedwig slowed down her vocal program. “F-U-N. Does that, well, compute?” The LEDs flickered back to their usual blue. “Even you have to know what a typewriter is. It’s the same idea.”
“The difference is that if I discovered one among our ranks who collected typewriters for personal fulfillment, then I would recommend their standardization for immediate reviewal.” Pointedly, Trunnion bared her teeth. It was one of those smiles that served more to terrify than to convey happiness. “Or a prompt smiting with the Type-1C.”
“Wow.”
Apart from that monotonous phrase, the Saint seemed unfazed. “Anyway, that’s not the reason I called you. So hear me out. I know this is going to sound very not hashtag-Bechdel-Test-pass of me, but—”
“Out with it,” Trunnion interjected. “You’d do well to remember that I’m not one of your neotenic devotees.”
With practiced frigidity, she suppressed the urge to follow that with something like, Do you ever tire of pandering to them before they remember that they’re speaking to the mind-clone of a dead starlet from the last century? Old habits died hard.
“All right, all right. It’s about him. Do you ever think he seems a bit…” Hedwig made an indistinct gesture with her hands. “Unhappy?”
A metallic scoff scythed from Trunnion’s throat. “He’s survived for millennia. And you know very well that none of us have the time to be unhappy.”
“Well, it’s not just about him. It affects everyone. What do you think the congregation will do when they find out that their prophet is really just a depressed three-thousand-year-old man with a sleek chassis and a pretty face?”
Trunnion tilted her head. Quite frankly, it sounded ridiculous. Bumaro had performed adequately in uniting their congregations, and Baikal had gone well enough, considering the circumstances. There were no indications whatsoever that he was functioning at substandard levels—or even that he was capable of feeling anything that might lead to that.
“Additionally,” Hedwig went on, “I wasn’t going to touch on this, but you’re not exactly an expert on emotional soundness. None of us are. I’ve been collecting data on everyone—well, everyone that has biometrics. And the numbers aren’t good.”
“What?” She snapped her head around to glare at Hedwig. “And from whence do you derive the authority to do that?”
“Myself,” the Saint said smoothly. “Don’t give me that look. I asked permission. This isn’t government surveillance.”
“You contacted my people.”
“It was only a quick survey! After that, I could just collect the data remotely.”
Trunnion tapped a finger on her chin, thoughtfully. “You know, I’m not quite sure who to smite at this point.”
“Hopefully the answer is ‘no one.' Because I have great news.”
With a sweep of her arm, Hedwig had pulled up a holographic projection in the air directly to her left. It contained various charts, graphs, and datasets, all rendered three-dimensional in a soft, blue glow.
“I’ve run some calculations. If we were to arrange, say, a ‘celebratory event’ sometime in the near future, we could expect a 36.58% reduction in symptoms associated with depression, anxiety, and similar conditions among our numbers. Not the conditions themselves, mind you. Just symptoms. And only for a short time afterward. But… still.”
Trunnion stared at her.
“In case you had forgotten, the FLESH is still at our doorstep.”
“Exactly! Since there’s a lull in the fighting, what better reason for this than to raise morale? Look, I ran some carbon dating on Bumaro’s old relics. Don’t ask me why there’s organic material on any of them; I ran them collectively. And if it’s anywhere close to accurate, then we should be close to the three-thousand-two-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Sarkic armies.” Hedwig’s smile widened. “It’s the perfect excuse.”
She swept her arm through the air once more, and the projection vanished. “That’s all! Just wanted you to know. But I get it. I have extra bodies, you don’t. So let’s make a deal.” One of her eye-lights flickered briefly off. “Just leave the planning to me, and don’t tell anyone! It’s meant to be a surprise.”
Trunnion scoffed.
Coming from anyone else, she would have dismissed this as senseless frivolity. A wasteful distraction.
She was still inclined to do so. But Hedwig was as much a nuisance as she was her undisputed counterpart. Who knew what kind of disarray would result from such an event if Trunnion left her to plan it alone?
“I will supervise,” she said. “That is my condition.”
For several seconds, Hedwig’s LEDs remained unblinking. Then, she released a peal of synthesized laughter.
“Acceptable! Let’s meet at ten tomorrow; I’ll send you the location.”
Her eyes flickered briefly. Then she stared.
Trunnion gave her a level look.
"Right—silly me. You don't have a GPS."
***
In multicolored lettering that stood out garishly against the grey sky, the words “Party City” were splayed across the storefront. Trunnion stood in the parking lot, holding an umbrella. It was drizzling lightly.
Hedwig, in one of her many alternate bodies, materialized under the edge of the umbrella.
First, a hard-light hologram. Then: substance.
The whole effect was needlessly showy; Trunnion was surprised no one noticed. But then—well, she wasn't going to thank MEKHANE for inclement weather.
“You’re late.
“By four nanoseconds.”
“It was one second past on my clock.” Trunnion held up her pocket watch. A meaningless gesture, for the most part; she could keep time by the ticking of the gears inside her body. But the point seemed to require punctuation.
“Well, mine’s atomic.”
Trunnion eyed her up and down. Instead of looking remotely organic, this body was, if anything, even more obviously mechanical. Composed of silvery metal augmented by white plasticine-looking plates, it included a masklike face and cables for hair. Stark blue light shone from the LEDs that stood in for eyes. At least she had removed the wings.
While the idea of resembling anything organic repulsed her, Trunnion had to question the wisdom of this. For her part, she had worn a wide-brimmed hat, a long coat, and a scarf around her face. That seemed far more effective than whatever Hedwig was planning.
“I see you’ve finally decided to spread the word of WAN to the general populace. A little premature, don’t you think.”
“Don’t worry your tastefully-burnished head about it. They’ll just think we’re just cosplayers.”
Hedwig waved her along.
“Come on! Regular people don’t stand around in the rain like this. They’ll think you’re, oh, I don’t know—some kind of cyborg. And then we’ll really have problems.”
Trunnion followed, matching her stride. Under ordinary circumstances, she wouldn’t have allowed anything as inefficient as pride come between her and holy knowledge. But she wasn’t about to ask Hedwig what a “cosplayer” was.
(At the very end of her mental checklist, she placed a small addendum: ask one of the younger members of her congregation. Certainly some of them had been born within the last half-century. Not many, but some. Such people existed. It was a verifiable fact. That had to count for something.)
Sure enough, the employee at the counter barely gave them a second look as they walked into the store. A young woman, her hair a vivid shade of fuchsia, grinned as she saw them. “Nice costume. Love the lights.”
She winked at Hedwig. In return, Hedwig blinked one of her LEDs off and on, like before. Trunnion rolled her eyes.
“Couldn’t you have your people order this over one of your…” Trunnion sighed, as if forced to utter a vile epithet. “…computing networks?”
“You mean the Internet?” Hedwig shook her head. “I would, but it appears that a certain company has cornered the market, and we’re currently on suboptimal terms with them.”
“I’ll regret asking why.”
“That is a probability,” Hedwig said absently, staring at a massive display of balloons in a corner. “Two words: drone-napping. A few initiates thought it would be funny to hijack some. They weren’t careful enough, and the company tracked them down. We got away, but with another close call, we’d risk exposure.”
“I take it you found this amusing.”
“Oh, definitely. It was hilarious.” Hedwig pitched her voice slightly lower. “But costly. Let’s just say they won’t be trying something like that anytime soon. Not without the right precautions.”
She turned to a nearby employee.
“Could we get these in bulk, please? The ones with the Transformers™?”
***
“Have they been spending more time together?” mused aloud the circumstantially-named Robert Bumaro. And, if anyone was asking, very much to himself.
He sat alone in his vast, cavernous office. The only other sound was the soft humming of the small, circular machine that wheeled along the floors. Its intended purpose had been as a vacuum, but Hedwig had modified it to fill out paperwork instead. Now, it sported a single arm that could imitate his writing with terrific speed. He had taken to laying paperwork on the floor to give it better access.
Yes, he decided. Just yesterday, he could swear he’d seen Saint Hedwig and the Legate Trunnion walking together. They had even left headquarters side-by-side. That left only one conceivable explanation. What did you call it when two people who had previously expressed nothing but distaste for each other became suddenly and inexplicably closer?
“A coup d'église,” he murmured.
Well, at least they were working together on something.
“I suppose I should let them try,” Bumaro spoke again. The little machine had rolled closer to his desk. “They might even succeed. Though I doubt the Goddess would let them.”
He tried not to sound disappointed. “I suppose you won’t mind who sits in this office, so long as you have more paperwork to do.”
The machine bumped against his leg, and made a beeping sound that, to him, sounded rather sad.
“And it seemed as though we were getting along so well.”
Bumaro shrugged, and returned to his own stack of papers.
***
“All I’m saying is that, thematically speaking, The Little Mermaid aligns with our ideals at least as much as the Transformers—if not more! I like their tech as much as anyone, but Ariel was willing to modify her own external attributes, just to see what kind of world could produce the tools that fascinated her. To take gnosis into her own hands! Even you can’t argue with that.”
Hedwig waved some Disney-themed napkins in the air.
“More like Sarkic sorcery,” Trunnion said, with a hiss of steam. “And it was a decision of emotion, not reason. Did you miss the part where she formed an attachment to that human prince?”
Hedwig gave a dismissive hum. “Irrelevant. It was clearly a ploy to obtain more data.”
She wheeled the shopping cart to the front of the store, where they gazed down at the fruits of their efforts. In all honesty, it looked like a jumbled mishmash of party decorations themed after a whole host of different properties, most of which Trunnion had never seen, and some of which were certainly heretical.
Fortunately, most of her congregants had even less a chance of recognizing them. Hedwig’s were on their own.
“You’re appropriating Church funds for this,” Trunnion said flatly.
“Hey, it’s from our section of the budget. If I was really being fair, I’d ask you to split it.”
Trunnion crossed her arms, but watched as Hedwig approached the cash register and paid. With only a slightly unacceptable amount of petty chit-chat.
As they walked out of the store, a certain remark emerged from her internal piping.
“I will admit, I’m surprised that nothing overtly disastrous occurred throughout the course of that.”
Hedwig glanced at her, betraying no expression—as immobile face-chasses were prone to do.
Then, she nodded.
“You know what, Legate? Me too.”
***
“Surprise!”
The regrettably-named Robert Bumaro stared up at the holographic sign that hung above the door. It read: Sorry the Sarkic armies caused your civilization’s downfall! But hey, at least you got them too!
Below that, the exact same thing was spelled out in binary.
(Part of him wondered when he had learned to read binary. But he supposed it was yet more living proof of the glory of WAN-MEKHANE. Even after all this time, his body still found ways of surprising him.)
He sighed. “Thank you.” I find I'm just not happy, he wanted to say, unless I'm being reminded of my age. Also I thought you two were conspiring to kill me.
But that would just be cruel.
Moreover, it would be behavior unbefitting of a responsible religious leader, which was something he still had to periodically remind himself of. Even after… oh, what was it now? Three thousand years? Give or take a few hundred?
“This is… the only mildly backhanded un-birthday party that anyone’s ever thrown for me,” he said honestly. Then added, “And the nicest.” (Also honestly, but only on technicality.)
“Don’t mention it!” Hedwig replied, beaming. “And you know, if you’re wondering about the expense—it’s not just for you. We,” at this point Trunnion made a sound resembling tch, “thought everyone needed a break.”
Sure enough, members of the congregation were milling about. Most of them stuck to their respective denominations, but some had broken ranks and seemed to be actively… socializing. He could see one of Trunnion’s clerics—the unusually chipper one, named after the twentieth-century industrialist—talking to one of Turing’s sysadmins.
A beeping sound distracted him. Hedwig’s eyes were blinking slightly, and she tilted her head.
“Ah, right. My alarm.” She tapped the side of her head, then made a gesture with her arm that may have been intended to signal encouragement. “So… this is the part where you reward us by telling us all about your incredibly interesting past.”
Bumaro stared.
“I even got a special word-processor for the speech-to-text. Saves disk space, see?”
“No,” he said simply, and went off to investigate the punch bowl, which was filled with olive-oil-flavored motor oil.
***
“Well, my calculations indicate that that was 67.66% a bust,” Hedwig remarked lightly. “Repeating, of course.” Meanwhile, the party went on. At least the rest of their congregants seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Trunnion offered her a cup of motor oil. Not that she would have bothered, normally, but after today it seemed like a sensible course of action. Let it not be said that Trunnion, Legate-Faithful of MEKHANE, had no taste for camaraderie.
“You realize this'll scramble my circuits, right?”
Trunnion shrugged. “You have more bodies.”
“They’re not that disposable.” Still, Hedwig accepted the cup, and gingerly dipped a finger in. “Good thing I can taste with this.”
And then—
“WAN’s sake, that’s awful. How do you people drink this stuff?”
“Discipline,” said Trunnion, plucking it from her hands, and downed the cup. To Hedwig’s horrified expression.
It was then that she decided the party was a success after all.
