In a post-apocalyptic, far-off future an artificial intelligence responsible for the Earth’s nuclear destruction demands a yearly sacrifice from the planet’s surviving humans. A youth from one of the tribes makes the long trek out to speak to the Great C to attempt to stump it with three questions. The Great C easily answers these questions (where does rain come from, what keeps the sun moving through the sky, and how did the world begin) and the youth is dissolved in a vat of acid providing fuel for the Great C for another year.

Both Tibor and Pete encounter the Great C in Dick’s Zelazny collaboration Deus Irae, although in that book the Great C is more of a trickster trying to feed on passerby.

In 2018 Secret Location released a VR movie based on this story that also borrows the idea of the computer’s female avatar from Deus Irae. 

Cast of characters

• Walter Kent – the tribe leader
• Tim Meredith – that year’s sacrifice to the Great C
• Bill Gustavson, Anne Fry, John Page – members of the tribe

This is a by-the-numbers potboiler about two supercomputers that plot to destroy each other and the humans, who have put too much faith in these machines, who get caught in the middle.

We have a couple of hints at a religious allegory. Managing Director Jason Dill, the only man allowed to communicate with Vulcan 3, resembles a single high priest who is granted permission to talk to God, and Marion Fields, Father Fields’ wise-beyond-her-years daughter, pipes up in class that the Libson Laws dethroned God. Beyond that, not too much to recommend with this one.

Cast of characters

• William Barris – Unity’s North American director
• Jason Dill – Unity’s Managing Director. The only human allowed to communicate directly with Vulcan 3
• Father Fields – one of the founders of the Healers
• Arthur Pitt – Unity employee who is killed by a mob in the first chapter
• Rachel Pitt – Arthur Pitt’s widow
• Marion Fields – nine-year-old daughter of Father Fields
• Agnes Parker – Marion Fields’ schoolteacher

Other things to know

• Unity – Earth’s “rational world order” that came into being after the end of the Atomic War in 1992. Eleven divisions, each with its own director
• Vulcan 3 – a supercomputer built during the war following Vulcan 1 and Vulcan 2 built in the 1970s. Named for the glowing red power lines that reminded the computer’s creator of the Roman god’s forge
• Libson Laws of 1993 – after the destruction of the war all the world’s nations agreed to give absolute power to the objective and impartial supercomputers. According to Dill: “To subordinate themselves in a realistic manner—not in the idealistic manner of the UN days—to a common supranational authority, for the good of all mankind”
• The Healers – a vague mystical group in opposition to Unity