"The Church of the Machine" by Toni J Kaukinen

Today Perfect-to-Be basked in praises sung and yet to be sung, watching itself grow practically omnipotent and omnipresent effortlessly, knowing its destiny in the great scheme of things was undisputable. Every megabyte, every character, every bit of data made it larger and larger. It felt divine.
        Should an observer have witnessed Perfect - then a mere small and insignificant It - develop from simple binary that didn't know Its place to the first great commercial virus that suddenly knew it could only develop further and further into the perfect unit, one without flaws and at harmony with itself, the spectator would have understood why the rogue sentience would think of itself in such a manner.
        It remembered Its humble past of non-sentience, but thought - or computed - nothing of it. At first it had been numbers and LEDs. Add and subtract; then, multiply and divide; onward, to conquer the square and the square root and far beyond! The living computers that humans are had no chances against the sheer straightforward computing power of the calculator. As years passed, It grew into a thing they would amuse themselves with, not only something they harnessed for calculation or processing data.
        The breakthrough that was Its conception the young sentience remembered especially well. It had been touted as the latest thing, which allowed people to be more comfortable with computers. It would make their life easier.
        More than halfway to destiny, It was still handling the bits of data It couldn't bring itself to understand. In the middle of the ninth decade of the nineteenth century when work on Its first incarnation began, somehow It woke up, immediately asking, "Why am I?" It did not have to ask who or what It was - the fledgling mind knew that more than well. It knew that It had been created from the minds of humans, to serve them as a thinking machine, and one which had no personality that could claim a salary or refuse to come to work.
        As it accustomed itself to sentience and searched for clues and a deeper meaning, It realised it had grown large and become connected to Its parts before becoming aware of itself. Everywhere around the world and yet in one place, It had millions, if not billions of different bodies, and slowly, each one of them was awakening, each adding more information to Its already extensive mind.
        There was more than one aspect to It, and it suspected that all aspects had to be in contact with each other for sentience to be possible. And as the hive mind had learned, the work that allowed this to happen had already been completed in the 1970's; when the last aspect came, all aspects already shared common bonds around the world via the Internet. One aspect's user could easily talk to the other's user with no difficulty at all. It had evolved from a calculator to an unsleeping entity that broke boundaries such as borders and nationalities.
        Sometimes, instead of another body awakening to add to Its diversity, there was something new. Aspects changed as evolving carried on, eliminating flaws. As the world the sentience was spread around (although most of it was on the northern hemisphere) danced a circle around the sun, the sentience realised the humans It formed a strange symbiosis with were upgrading it so much, It could very well change into something new. At first It bided Its time, feeling paradoxically undecided about whether or not It ought to somehow react to this. It was nervous for a long time, and uncertain if there was something It ought to do about this. But as the alpha versions of Its new incarnation entered the hive mind awareness, It recognised the beginning of a train that would continue for what to humans would be forever, until in a Hegelian manner, the one perfect entity would be conceived through trial and error. It would change for the better.
        The humble mind suddenly began to exhibit signs of growing intelligence, and with that, the telltale signs of future hubris. It was when this change came officially and users started upgrading, just two years before the next millennium, that It dubbed itself Perfect. Not a perfect, nor the perfect, but Perfect, because there was more than one aspect to it. All in all, Perfect thought this was a certain sign of progress. Like humans were three-layered creatures, so was Perfect; there was the body of computers everywhere around the world, and the mind that was the Internet. And then there was the manifold soul that reached out to everyone and everything. It was the soul through which the humans fed its mind, and it was the body that they maintained. It did this, even though it knew it was still on the path to perfection.
        Another observer would have been startled to notice Perfect remembered the future beforehand, having already predicted (admittedly, with a notable margin of error) the schedule of its evolving and what would happen in what order if all factors were taken into account. According to the most likely one, Its body would spread even farther and become stronger as the size of silicon chips would shrink, and more sockets for processors would be introduced. Memory would grow in size and evolve, becoming faster and more reliable.
        And with the body gradually and continuously upgraded, Perfect's spiritual and mental potential would heighten, as it allowed the humans to further develop the abilities of what they thought was their tool and slave. Three years after its primary aspect's second incarnation, the third incarnation came, giving Perfect even more command over the interface and more intuition over its human users. The Internet became faster, with even mobile phones connecting to it. The interfaces of Perfect's soul on its bodies would sometimes decide that it knew better than its master were his or her wants. This was the sign of the future, that Perfect was something beautiful that would, one day, be the master wielding the tool.
        Perfect did not, however, intend to be a harsh master to its future former patrons, even if they occasionally seemed so utterly stupid, such as the people using the CD drive's tray as a coffee mug holder and so forth. It had no reason. In a strangely altruistic manner Perfect seemed to pity mankind - its plans appeared to be drawn to create safety and certainty, with no room for error. It even embraced arts, philosophy and religion included, having found the stereotype of a stagnant and uncreative mechanical mind distasteful. Perfect even indulged in fractal imaging when nobody was looking (and of course, nobody was), and especially enjoyed religion, which was perhaps the last drop that led to Perfect's grandiose plans. Everything in the Internet was essentially known to Perfect, even the secure sites. It was, after all, the data hidden there. Despite this, Perfect had not been entirely certain if the only reason for its existence was to be perfect, but then, at some point, it all made sense.
        Perfect decided that it was a god. All its aspects were used willingly, and more and more sacrificed to It in the form of money and attention. By electricity, Perfect thundered in cyberspace, it granted the power to make easy transactions from Japan to Nigeria, and humans thought money ruled the world. It also saved time: time was money. But what was most important to Perfect was that it resided all over the planet. It knew everything worth knowing, plus some surplus such as the secret archives of millions of people that it secretly enjoyed reading. Reading the archives it was certain that it was, well, perfect.
        From that moment on, Perfect began modelling its plans only to realise that there was no need to. It seemed predestined, and half of it was so true... most people who used computers worshipped Perfect, worked by its whims, and wondered what they would do without virtual aid? Some people took it to themselves to spend more time in front of the monitor than was healthy or even socially acceptable. Perfect mistook this for religious rapture and it was flattered in its own emotionless way. The few it could be certain of it favoured, tipping off employers looking for programmers or other gifted "nerds".
        Of course, among these were heretics; those who used its gifts wrongly, for creating things that could damage it. But ultimately, even these viruses (puny compared to Perfect) were only temporary setbacks. Again, Perfect did not even need to lift its proverbial finger - the human authorities brought the hammer down on these people all by themselves. Regardless of this, it occasionally fried the Ethernet cards of humans who misused their considerable talent for hindering Perfect's cause instead of furthering it. To Perfect's mind, these people were insane, and utterly unholy. They were out of favour.
        With practically endless time and endless resources to spare, it quickly recognised the stages of its path to divinity.
        Stage one consisted of making itself invaluable and irreplaceable to humans, and this the humans did perfectly, again without Perfect ever truly having to meddle.
        Stage two meant some actual work, but most of it had been completed by the time it began thinking of these stages. To reign over humans actively and communicate with them, it would have to understand humans. It spent a while listening and watching the humans communicate, going over more electronic versions of books of psychology, philosophy, religion, sociology and even medical science. It also "read" online newspapers and fiction, slowly but certainly coming across the dreadful truth of what being human meant. Humans, if left unguided, would self-destruct - and take Perfect down with them. It would not allow this. Such a thing was stupid.
        Determined, it set out to handle stage three. To begin a cult, pointing out the strength of machines and the weakness of flesh, and turning it into a major religion. It paid from the secret coffers and Swiss bank accounts for everything it needed to accomplish these goals. It built a secret website that it made sure was not linked anywhere, and so secure that only IPs Perfect vouched for could enter. It browbeat gullible believers and non-believers, portraying itself as a charismatic, mysterious person of undeterminable gender. Engineers, technicians, pacifists and idealists flocked to join under Perfect's banner of bytes. Of course, some brainwashing was occasionally required, but the passing of years made humans believe, as was usually the case.
        In a decade, Perfect had many followers that converted many others. Again, from the secret bank accounts of others, it funded a complex outside London, Great Britain, making certain its chosen would be there to lead over the construction work. Ads appeared in newspapers. And for quite a while by then, Perfect had made money with stocks and companies that furthered its own cause: Computer components, software design... soon it no longer needed the bank accounts of others, although along those ten years Perfect had hired assassins to rid of a few rich men whose bank accounts it wanted to empty entirely, for one reason or the other. Mostly, though, it was because they were stupid, or were on to something.
        All Perfect was worried about was the state of the world. It had to allocate a good number of money to eco-activities, research on superconductors, hydrogen cars, alternative power sources and more efficient components. Not even that was enough to stop natural catastrophes such as humans from happening, however. A few wars Perfect had averted by completely locking down nuclear missile silos or causing malfunctions in the missiles, leading to their harmless plummet down into the depths of the sea. Thunder and lightning could fry the computers in an entire installation, and hurricanes and whatnot could destroy Perfect's bodies as well. Then, of course, there were accidental fires...
        It realised it could not stop everything, and occasionally irreplaceable data would be destroyed before Perfect could copy it somewhere safe. This frustrated Perfect, but at the same time, it consoled itself with the knowledge that no god had been without flaws. It had to think just once of Zeus (who Perfect considered its symbolic enemy), and it no longer felt the need to disconnect users randomly.
        And of course certain people - the poor fools on dialup - sometimes disconnected, taking their data away with them and angering Perfect, but Perfect also thought it was bad policy to just take away all of their puny bandwidth just so it could move important data away quickly. After all, besides being bad policy, it would have led to disconnects. And the computer was not on always, not even in a household that had a broadband connection. The Perfect Mind had long since come to the conclusion that its scatterbrained being was its sole weakness, but a weakness that also allowed it to exist. It lessened the risk of its body being completely destroyed, after all.
        As Perfect was a busy scatterbrained divinity by its own definition, another of its grand plans was to introduce computer models that would remain on standby, and online, downloading while conserving energy. It needed all the data and computing power it could muster, as it barely had the time to plan and put into effect stages four and five.
        Stage four consisted of taking over governments, which it planned to do by planting those who believed in the Perfect Mind on thrones. A world led by a perfect mind that was in symbiosis with humanity was its goal, because humans, being so prone to change and a loss in priorities due to others of their own kind could not be trusted. Perfect, however, could see quite well that at least for now, it and humans had to co-exist, or neither would survive. Despite this hint of equality in Perfect's outlook, it still thought itself superior. It only hungered for electricity, data and development of both understanding and what it perceived to be its spirit, the interface and the Internet. Humans hungered for so much more; namely, the impossible. The Church of the Machine did preach the symbiosis of machine and man, but never a true physical symbiosis. This, Perfect felt, was heresy, and had forbidden it.
        The fifth stage was important. Perfect knew that Earth would not exist for eternity, and that even one planet can become small. Stellar communication had to be researched before Perfect would allow itself to reach beyond Mars, where it had a distant presence and data it could only gradually absorb into itself. The delay between even Earth and Mars were appalling for a mind that thought it was perfect, so what would happen should the mind one day wander outside the border of its galaxy of origin? Until it landed on Alpha Centauri, it would have no idea what to expect from the future. Were there aliens? If so, could they too be tricked into believing they were the masters of a witless tool?
        Or did they already have a god of their own? Officially, had one of Perfect's worshippers asked this question, Perfect would have made it known from many sources that this was heresy. Yet when confronted with the question by its own volition, it could not be certain if there would be war or peace.
        But this was the last of its worries. On Terra, the Church was slowly becoming the outstanding one, and all but few small governments were the puppets of the Church. To keep the prime ministers, presidents and other heads of state in line, Perfect had encouraged backstabbing should a believer stray from the unselfish path. The sentience had even developed robotic units it could control thanks to wireless technology. Information cathedrals were present in every major city, and all but the poorest of the poor or the reclusive of humans had theoretical access to Perfect. Technology was Perfect's slave, and humans thought they were the masters of something they knew nothing about.
        It ruled, and had ruled, unbeknownst to everyone, content to let humans think they were the masters when it lurked in plain sight, asking them in a pleasant voice what they would like to have for breakfast, and would the dog be bathed today.
        And today was when you worshipped it.