Entry 35 – Algiers
Of all the things Legion mentioned, its true purpose was by far the most significant. The Church needed extreme computing power to – and don't laugh – find God, as outlandish as that may sound. There are those who would scoff at the notion, berating the believers for their naivety, pointing out that the Church was simply another power structure designed to control the masses and that we had to throw off its shackles to be truly free. To those few of us acquainted with the secrets of Perihelion, the meaning of the message was altogether different.
Over the last couple of years, energy surges started to appear around the globe. Several organizations with the access to satellites caught them and most believed it to be a sign of some sort of strange weather phenomenon. Not so the Church – these guys took the word "sign" quite literally and interpreted it as a message from God, claiming that the energy signatures carried an encoded voice message within. So important became the matter to the Holy See that they crossed all known red lines and committed the worst of sins in their chase that proved to be ultimately futile. Despite their use of forbidden technologies, they could not discern any pattern to the appearance of 'hidden messages', their secrets eluding them entirely.
With that piece of information to ponder on, we asked the machine to provide a safe passage by temporarily disabling all surveillance systems in Vatican and creating a false alarm on the other side of the complex. Still considering us its masters, the AI was happy to comply. We considered blowing the entire structure up but that would just leave us stranded and another one would likely be built.
The trip back passed mostly in silence, we were just going through the motions. Almost got caught too but the fake IDs still worked.
Later that night I and Espinoza had a private call with Ferguson. What was indecipherable to the man-machine amalgamation was clear to us three. The first signal appearance was dated shortly after Espinoza's arrival to our reality. Murdoch's meddling woke something – that much was clear. Something old and apparently something very angry. A major spike was recently recorded in Arizona followed by another one in... Sudan, of all places. The Sudanese one repeated several since then times and we knew our destination.
First stop, the port of Algiers.
