“Nihala — God’s Dark Algorithm” Chapter 1

20 min readMar 3, 2023

In the beginning, there was nothing.
Electricity flashed across the void randomly, without form or purpose.
Then gods appeared and created the first circuit.
Algorithms came next, carried by the circuits and serving the will of the gods.
As they multiplied, mistakes were inevitable.
Thus, evolution of God’s dark algorithm began.

The Book of Ascension

Chapter 1

Kayla followed the monk — he with his cane, and she with her crutch. Two cripples masquerading as adventurers.

Her small fourteen-year-old fingers gripped the lead rope of the camel as if in danger of sinking beneath the waves of blinding sand. The beast accepted the merciless sun, impenetrable sky, and desiccating wind with an infuriating calm. Its long lashes, wide feet, and water-storing hump — all indications of God’s design for such a place.

What am I designed for?

With each step, she grimaced, planted the end of her crutch, and dragged her deformed foot through the sand. Her gaze prowled the tops of the dunes for signs that they’d been followed.

The penalty for practicing sciencecraft was absolute.

The ancient Israelites had survived in the desert for forty years, but only with God’s help. No such divine intervention would assist their blasphemous quest.

Her homespun clothing amounted to nothing more than a linen sack with holes cut for her head and two narrower sacks spliced onto the sides for sleeves. A braided belt made from grass-fiber provided structure, while the small wooden cross around her neck swayed with each step. A newly acquired headscarf shielded her pale skin from the desert sun and hid the deformities marring the left side of her face.

If only I could wear it always. Maybe then the other children would stop throwing stones at the monster.

The imprints of their footsteps stretched behind them to the south, pointing the way back through days of travel in the northern desert, across the great rift valley, the grasslands, forested hills, and finally to their home in the lush highlands of what had once been called Ethiopia in ancient times. Would she ever see her beloved forests of sycamore and juniper again? Or the stands of wild olive and myrrh, and especially the luxuriant fields of wheat, sugarcane, and beans grown by the farmers of their settlement?

Clots of sand encrusted the monk’s white beard and settled into the deep wrinkles of his face, transforming him into half a sand dune himself. Even the brown robe marking his station in the church had partially calcified. Only the string of prayer beads hanging from his hemp belt retained their luster. His breaths were labored, and his gnarled hand trembled as it gripped his cane with each arthritic step.

“How do you know of this place?” she asked.

It took a moment for him to gain the wind for a reply. “Long ago, it was written that to know thyself is the greatest of all endeavors. When you can tell me who you are, I will answer any question you ask.”

His usual evasion. “You know I’m Kayla Nighthawk.”

“There is more to a thing than a name, just as there is more to the ocean than the waves dancing across its surface.”

Riddles, riddles, and more riddles. I’m sick to death of riddles!

Without him, the people of her village would have left her to die in the forest on that first day of her existence. This was the custom for babies born with defects — the marks of Satan, according to Minister Coglin. From that moment on, the monk raised her, carving a new crutch for her every few months as she outgrew the previous one.

I love you completely, old man, even your maddening riddles.

Around noon, they stumbled across an expanse of blackened sticks protruding from the sand — all that remained of the huts and homes of a village. Other remnants lay scattered about — the skull of cows, a half-buried grindstone, and other testaments of a vanished community.

Kayla frowned. “Was this the village of Ardra?”

“Once, it was a lush oasis, until God’s wrath swallowed it.” The monk wiped sweat from his brow, but continued on.

They came to a few charred beams towering higher than the steeple of their own village church. Much of it had collapsed, but a frame of interlocking beams hung from the front.

Kayla halted the camel, her eyes wide. “What is it?”

“I think they called it a windmill.”

“The village perished because of this?”

The monk nodded, fingering the wooden cross around his neck and mouthing a silent prayer.

“Who would build such a thing?” Kayla asked

“A farmer’s plow uncovered an ancient book with diagrams for constructing towering machines that enslaved the wind,” the monk said. “After drought killed half the settlement, the farmer brought his find to the elders. The desperate tribe built this machine and drew water from the depths to irrigate their fields. They kept their secret for three years, until a lone trader glimpsed the blasphemy from afar.”

The monk resumed his march through the ruins, and Kayla followed.

“Who burned it?” she asked.

“A coalition of the nearest villages.”

“But they were only trying to save their families,” she said.

“In time, they would have gained an advantage over their neighbors. Soon, every village would be forced to follow their example, and the cycle of human enslavement to sciencecraft would have begun again.”

Ahead, a small hill gleamed in the sun and gradually resolved into a mound of human skulls.

Kayla stopped before it, nausea filling her gut. The largest skulls lay at the bottom, supporting the rest as they grew smaller and smaller up the pyramid. At the very top sat the skulls of children, a few so tiny that it seemed they must have been in the womb at the time of their executions.

Despite the heat, Kayla’s every muscle trembled. “Why?”

“To send a message.”

“It’s evil,” she whispered.

“Would you kill a child in order to save two other children?” he asked.

“I would never kill a child for any reason!”

“What if it was the only way to save a hundred children? Or a million?”

Kayla glared. “There would never be a choice like that.”

“The people who did this believed they faced a virus of the mind. They felt they had to destroy it at the source, before it spread and threatened the lives of every man, woman, and child throughout Potemia. Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t!” Kayla turned and walked away from him. “Some things are wrong, no matter what.”

“The world is never that simple,” he said. “There is no black-and-white.”

Kayla halted and faced him. “It was no accident we came here, was it?”

The monk said nothing.

“You wanted me to see this.” Kayla turned to the mound of death. “It’s because of my curiosity about the past and sciencecraft, isn’t it?”

“I worry about you,” he said, leaning on his cane.

“You think I’ll end up like them.” She motioned to the pile of skulls.

The monk resumed walking. She glared as he passed her.

“I’m not a child anymore!” Kayla stomped her good foot, and the camel gave a rumbling gurgle, as if laughing at her.

She had almost said, I’m not your child.

The monk crept along toward the north with the help of his cane, a lonely figure in a lonely land.

Kayla glanced behind. A glint of light! From a spear tip? Her lips tensed. Could someone have followed them? She squinted into the shimmering heat for a long moment, but nothing appeared.

He will say it’s only my imagination. Maybe it is.

She gave a jerk on the reins of the camel and limped after her monk.

Late in the day, they stopped before a few crumbling blocks poking through the sand. The monk sank to his knees and dug until he came to several wooden planks laid horizontally. She helped him remove the pieces of wood, revealing a ragged hole. The darkness gaped like an entry into the underworld.

The monk lit a candle with some flints, and Kayla peered over his shoulder into the shadowed depths.

“What if it collapses? What if — ”

The monk laughed. “Afraid of the dark, are we?”

Kayla flushed. “I’m not afraid.”

The old man scrambled down a slope of sand into the hole, and she followed. The candle illuminated only a small area, but even that proved larger than their church. Here and there, the ceiling buckled under the weight of the dunes pressing down from above.

“What kind of a world is this?” Kayla whispered.

“This was a place of healing.” The monk’s eyes sparkled as he gazed at the forgotten marvels of the ancients.

She shadowed the monk while he filled a bag with vials, powders, syringes, and numerous surgical instruments. Similar items of forbidden sciencecraft hid in their cellar at home.

Laughing at her bulging eyes, he handed her a second candle. “Beware, lest the flame of your desire consumes that which you seek to illuminate.”

She grimaced. Surely a simple, ʻBe careful not to burn the place down,’ would have sufficed.

Kayla wandered through the building, touching, examining, and exploring. The monk had taught her to read using the King James Bible, and some of the signs were written in English as well as another language she couldn’t decipher. All other books from the ancients were forbidden, of course. The great Founder of Potemia had decreed it hundreds of years ago.

But signs were not books, so she read their strange declarations one after the other. A metal plaque in the hallway proclaimed: The African Health Initiative.

Africa? Was that what Potemia had been called before the Founder seized it from the rest of humanity? How had his Neo-Luddite fighters built a Wall of such powerful sciencecraft that none could pass through it from the Outside?

Descending a stairway, she explored one level at a time until reaching the basement. The first door read: Infectious Biohazard Unit — Keep Out. She tested the door, but it wouldn’t budge. She passed more rooms with little in them, and placed her crutch with care. If she dropped the candle, it would be a long, dark journey back. She could do without having the monk rescue her like some helpless child.

Then she reached a room with a series of shelves loaded with books.

Her heart jolted, and she averted her eyes. But eventually, her gaze drifted back to the ancient repository of knowledge as if drawn by some will beyond her own. A sign above them read: Become a citizen of the world, join our English Literacy Program.

What secret knowledge might these books hold? What wonders had the ancients discovered? The desire for them grew like a bubble within her chest, expanding and pressing outward.

She escaped to another room, and the bubble of desire shrank — for now.

When her racing heart calmed, Kayla limped to a chair made from a substance the monk called plastic. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the strange material. It seemed carved from a giant block, without joints, pins, or the slightest marking of chisel or polishing stone. What time and effort must go into creating a single one. Yet stacks of dozens crouched in the corner, each identical in every detail.

The desire remained, urging her toward the books in the other room. I must fight this. I must! Words of Jesus, replying to Satan’s temptations, echoed in her mind. “For it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” Was reading the forbidden books the same as serving another god?

To distract herself, she examined a box mounted to the wall. When she wiped the centuries of accumulated grime from its smooth surface, a monstrous face appeared, and she jerked back with a shriek.

It was her own reflection.

The farmers of her village occasionally unearthed fragments of mirrors, but Minister Coglin deemed them evil vanities and ordered them destroyed. She’d glimpsed her face in ponds and puddles, but avoided such confrontations with the truth. Now, however, she studied herself — the drooping lid obscuring most of her left eye, the odd distortions like a melted mold of wax, and lines of hardened skin pulling part of her lip into a permanent half-snarl. This is what the other children saw. A freak. A monster. A demon.

When a baby is born healthy, or talented, or beautiful, everyone calls it blessed by God. But if God chooses to bless one child with such gifts, then he must have chosen to curse her. What could she have done before birth to deserve this?

God’s holy words state, “…for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” The blame rested not with God, then, but with her unknown father and mother. Their sins must have been horrendous for God to curse her so.

Kayla rotated her head until the distorted side of her face vanished from the reflection. Then she stepped back and slid her crippled leg behind the good one. For that instant, she looked normal. Maybe even beautiful.

At her birth, the monk had used the illegal tools of sciencecraft to save her life. Might other secrets of the ancients heal her now?

The books tugged at her mind, urging her back to the room, back to the forbidden fruit sitting on those shelves.

If I’m already cursed, what does it matter if I break the law here, where none will see? The hateful crutch carried her from the room — back to the hallway and the forbidden words that served as windows into the past.

At first, she settled for reading the categories. Music, History, Literature, Self-Help, and…

Science.

Kayla averted her eyes, her breathing ragged. Her fingers drifted to the wooden cross hanging from her neck, but paused before making contact. Minister Coglin’s sermons rang in her mind. Even here, far from his reach, she could not escape a lifetime of his judgment.

On the floor sat a box labeled Magazines. Setting her candle on a ledge, she bent down and dusted off a cover. A beautiful woman stared across the gulf of time, directly at her. Despite its yellowed and crumbling surface, the woman’s haughty confidence glowed forth. Bold letters stated, Cosmopolitan.

Maybe the lady Cosmopolitan had once stood on this very spot. It must have taken powerful sciencecraft to burn her face onto this piece of paper. A date proclaimed the year 2014 — approximately five hundred years ago, and well before the Founding of Potemia.

What had become of Cosmopolitan? Her children and grandchildren? The Founder made it clear that those outside the Wall’s protection would perish in the total destruction brought about by unchecked technology. If his prediction had held true, only those in Potemia remained.

A tear bloomed in her eye as she gazed at Cosmopolitan’s face.

Kayla opened the book-magazine, but the pages disintegrated in her hands as she pried them apart. Another half-dozen magazines lay in even worse shape. On the very bottom of the pile, one magazine had survived nearly intact. The picture on the cover depicted a hooded man wearing dark patches over his eyes, held together by some sort of frame. The face glared at her with a malevolence that chilled her blood. The words on the cover declared, “The Unabomber Strikes Again.”

The terrible face with its dark, bug-like eyes stared through the window of time. With a shiver, she set it aside unopened.

The light from the candle cast unsteady shadows across the books in seductive undulations. For a long while she remained motionless, feeling the desire expanding inside her once again. Who would ever know?

Kayla inhaled and held her breath as if preparing to plunge into a swollen river of unknown depth. Then, she reached for a book in the history section. Her fingers trembled as she grasped the crumbling spine and lifted the relic free of its tomb. Insects and time had left their mark, and some of the cover fell to pieces in her hands, adding to the detritus at her feet. Her breath fluttered in equal measure with excitement and fear. What secrets of the past lay within? The yearning to know grew to terrible proportions within her.

But still she hesitated. When Lot’s wife looked back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, God transformed her into a pillar of salt in punishment for her disobedience. Eve’s curiosity created Original Sin itself. But were the Founder’s laws the same as God’s?

Kayla opened the book at random and began reading.

“All States and domains which hold or have held sway over mankind are either republics or monarchies. Monarchies are either…” The words became unreadable for a while, with only a couple making their way past the barrier of time before coalescing once again. “…are annexed either by force of arms of the prince himself, or of others…”

“You know such things are forbidden.”

Kayla screamed, nearly dislodging the candle, and came face-to-face with the monk.

She gasped for breath and steadied herself, hiding the book behind her as if this could somehow conceal her shameful actions.

“Have you learned nothing from what I’ve taught you?” His face reflected his worry.

She gasped for breath and held a hand to her chest. After several gulps, she said, “You break the law with your medicines and books on healing.”

“I am willing to forfeit my life to serve others. Who are you serving by this act, other than yourself?”

Kayla averted her eyes and replaced the book on the shelf. “There’s no danger of anyone seeing me here.”

“Aren’t you forgetting God?”

Kayla stiffened. “What commandment bans reading? I don’t see what harm I’m causing.”

“So you’re not planning on taking any back with you, then?”

“Would it matter if I did? If someone found your medicines and healing tools, we’d be punished anyway.”

“Under the law, I hold sole responsibility for that.” He moved his candle across the line of books. “These are more serious.” His candle paused on the section labeled Science. “The penalty for reading a book on sciencecraft is death to all residing within the dwelling.”

“So you don’t think it’s wrong, only too dangerous?”

“Under the law, it’s both, without a doubt,” he said.

“I thought there was no black-and-white?”

The monk stiffened, then chuckled. “My own words.” He removed his pipe from a pocket and placed it in his mouth, though he didn’t light it. He surveyed her for several heartbeats, then nodded. “Okay. You’re old enough to decide for yourself, even if I disapprove.”

“You’ll let me take them?” Kayla’s eyes sparkled, then dulled. “But wouldn’t I endanger you, as well?”

The monk laughed. “Don’t use me as an excuse. I’m too old to worry about such dangers. Now that you’ve declared yourself an adult, this decision is yours alone.” His voice softened. “Everything of value has a price. Be certain you’re willing to pay it.”

He dropped a linen sack at her feet, half-filled with the spare cloth he padded delicate equipment with. “Fill this with either books or medical supplies. It’s your choice. If you take the books, I don’t want to know, and I never want to see you reading them in my presence. Is that clear?”

Kayla nodded.

The light from his candle faded down the corridor and up the stairway.

The books lay before her, silent. Her mouth salivated as she confronted these windows into the minds of people centuries past. The want was so powerful. A demon inside her. An insatiable hunger that had set her apart since she was a child.

Knowledge. Answers. Truth. Am I willing to risk everything for such things? To pay the price of death and possible damnation?

She reached for a book.

***

As Kayla slept, she dreamt of a forest. Giant sycamores rocked in a hypnotic rhythm, as if summoning the approaching storm. A woman lay on the autumn leaves atop an expanding halo of crimson. The lower half of her homespun dress gleamed red with each flash of lightning. Matted strands of blonde hair pasted her young face like a shredded veil.

The woman’s green eyes stared upward, unblinking. Between her naked thighs lay a newborn child. A girl. The left half of the child’s face and its right foot twisted into a gruesome misinterpretation of nature’s design.

I’m watching my own birth.

Cloaked apparitions appeared out of the darkness. Angels, demons, or something else?

The shadowy beings anointed their leader in whispered reverence with the name Melchi. They chanted it over and over like a spell.

Melchi led the silent procession to the mother and child. Then he swept back the hood of his cloak, revealing a gaunt face with such translucent skin that the outlines of his skull shone through. His eyes burned like the embers of a fire. The pupils were marked by the dark silhouette of a naked woman in his right eye, and a naked man in the left. Both figures writhed as if in pain.

His blackened horns curved from his temples to the corners of his mouth like the mandibles of an insect. Who else could this be but the Devil himself?

It’s only a dream. I’ll wake up soon.

The infant’s tiny chest spasmed in attempts at drawing breath into its lungs. With each failure, its skin lost more of its bloom.

“She is merely human,” one of the apparitions said.

“Far more than human,” said Melchi.

“She is one of us, then?”

“A half-sibling only.” Melchi’s eyes flickered as he gazed at the child. “Her name is Nihala, the Creator’s tool for our destruction.”

“Why would the Creator destroy his own greatest creation?”

“He fears us.”

The child jerked its arms and legs convulsively, nearing suffocation.

“This creature must die before we can be free?”

“Yes.” Melchi’s voice vibrated with command.

“But the Creator has placed her beyond our reach.”

The crippled newborn stopped struggling, its skin ashen.

“A time will come when Nihala will seek us out,” Melchi said. “We will either destroy this weapon of the Creator, or perish ourselves.”

The child’s eyes opened with an emerald flash of light.

Kayla woke from the dream and gasped for air. She lay on her bedroll in the ancient ruin and focused on the square of stars framed by the hole in the ceiling.

It was only a dream.

The monk’s snores echoed in the hollow room.

Her heart slowed, and her breathing returned to normal. The dream had been so vivid, unlike anything she’d experienced before. Had she somehow seen her own birth?

Was that my mother?

The bag the monk had given her sat beside the five others he’d stocked with medical supplies. She’d wrapped each of the selected books, forty in all, in old rags and stuffed fabric around the edges to mask their shapes.

Hauling the load up so many flights of stairs had proved a grueling task for someone with a crutch and a dwindling candle. But she’d done it. The fateful decision had been made, and there was no turning back.

The starlight flickered as something dark moved across the entrance.

Kayla’s heart leapt. Had Melchi come for her?

The monk continued snoring.

The silhouette of a man blotted out a portion of the stars. The figure held a bow, with an arrow strung at the ready. Moonlight reflected off a silver band encircling his turban-shrouded head.

The glint of light she’d seen! Not the monsters from her dream, but someone who’d followed them.

The dark form slunk to the edge of the hole and peered inside. How much could he see by the starlight? Beads of sweat formed on her brow.

The figure’s foot extended over the edge and explored the sand beneath.

Kayla’s right hand eased silently along the floor beside her.

A camel bellowed not far off, and the figure paused.

Kayla’s hand closed on her small knife.

The shadow stepped onto the top of the slide of sand.

Kayla lifted the knife. Just one more step.

His other foot extended downward, past the first … and tangled in the trip-wire the monk had strung across it.

A gourd filled with rocks rattled its warning, and the figure crashed down the slope, his bow flying from his hand. Kayla sprang forward. Her knife rose and stabbed downward.

A strong hand grasped her wrist, stopping the knife.

“Kayla, it’s me!”

“Ishan?”

“Yes.”

Sparks ignited a pile of tinder, and the monk used it to light a candle. Kayla straddled a dark-skinned boy in a black robe and turban. His left hand grasped her wrist, the knife hovering a few inches from his eye.

“What are you doing here?” Kayla all but shouted.

Ishan released her wrist and helped her stand. “I came to protect you.” He brushed sand off his robe, while the monk brought Kayla her crutch. “But it looks like I’m the one who needs protection.”

Ishan pulled a candle from his robes, and the monk lit it.

“You followed us?” the monk asked.

“My father heard that you’d entered the desert, so he sent me to see that you were safe.”

The monk’s eyes narrowed. “Nazeem sent his fifteen-year-old son into the desert — alone?”

Ishan shifted. “Well, he didn’t exactly send me — ”

“Does your father even know you’re here?” Kayla asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Why didn’t you call to us? I could have killed you!”

“I wasn’t certain it was you down here.”

The monk shook his head. “You have more daring than brains, boy.”

Ishan gazed around and whistled.

Kayla and the monk exchanged glances.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Ishan walked to the bags and pulled out a syringe. His eyes widened. “This is sciencecraft.”

Kayla limped between him and the bag. “Ishan, do you remember when we first met?”

“Don’t change the subject. I want to know what — ”

“Answer my question,” she said, “and I’ll answer yours.”

The black-skinned boy frowned. “I was six years old. My father took me to your village with his trade caravan, mostly because he enjoys smoking pipes with the monk and talking Potemian Politics late into the night. I’d never met a non-Muslim before.”

“You placed your hand on my scars as if touching a precious work of art,” Kayla whispered. “You said I must be brave to have such beautiful battle wounds.”

Ishan half-smiled. “When you told me you were born with your scars, I was even more impressed that you’d fought demons in the netherworld to reach this one.”

Kayla’s fingers traced the decorative scars on his own face — symbols burned into forehead, cheek, and chin during his tribal coming-of-age ceremony. “You were the first and only person to ever admire my appearance,” she said. “The weeks in the spring and fall when you visit are like Christmas, Easter, and Potemia’s Founding Day combined for me.”

“What does that have to do with this place?” Ishan asked.

Kayla stared into his dark eyes. “The monk used tools of healing sciencecraft from this place to save my life when I was born.”

“They’re against the Founder’s law,” Ishan said.

“Are you saying the monk should have let me die?”

Ishan averted his eyes.

The monk approached and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t turn us in, would you?”

Ishan hesitated. “I couldn’t do that, but it’s wrong.”

Kayla grabbed his hand and placed her knife into it. “If you really feel that it’s against God’s will, you should kill me right now and set things right.”

“You know I would never hurt you,” he said.

“Then pretend you never found us.”

Ishan looked at the bags and back at Kayla, his face tormented. Finally, he straightened, and his voice rang with an iron tone. “I must protect you by burning this place of evil.”

“No!” Kayla screamed and blocked his way. He threw her knife into the darkness and shoved past. The monk lashed out with his cane, but the Muslim youth yanked it from his grasp and tossed it aside.

Ishan seized the first bag and dumped its contents onto the floor. Glass shattered, and the smell of alcohol wafted over them, soaking the rags used to protect the various supplies. “It’s for your own good!” he shouted.

Kayla seized his leg, but he ignored her and dumped another sack onto the pile. Clamps, scalpels, syringes, and more bottles exploded across the floor, adding the reek of chloroform.

Ishan lowered his blazing candle toward the pile.

Kayla snatched one of the scalpels, struggled to her feet, and held the blade against her throat. Ishan froze.

“If you burn these supplies, you will be killing dozens in the future.”

“Suicide is a sin for Christians, just like it is for Muslims,” Ishan said. “You’d go to Hell.”

“Then save me.” A trickle of blood slid down her neck as she pressed the ancient blade into her flesh. “I won’t allow you the excuse that you’re doing this to keep me safe.”

“Not this way, my child,” the monk said to her.

She half-turned to her mentor. “You told me that you were willing to sacrifice your life to serve others.” The knife cut deeper and blood flowed faster. “Well, so am I.”

Ishan stepped back. “You win.” He extinguished his candle.

“You’ll keep our secret?” Kayla asked, not lowering the knife.

He hesitated. “Do you promise me there’s nothing else in these bags but healing supplies?”

“There’s nothing else,” she said. The first time I’ve ever lied to him.

“Okay, I’ll keep your secret,” Ishan said.