The devo took them into the shuttle. The smell in the barn was bad enough, but inside the cramped corridors of the ship it was stale, fermented, overpowering. Someone had scrawled slogans like "Smile! Johnny Loves Yall!" and "I [HEART] Johnny" on the white plastic walls in what looked and smelled like human excrement.

"I don't know how much of this I can stand," JSN confided.

"Me either," LNR said, "but it's kind of like with DNS. I can't resist a crank. Just a couple minutes, okay?"

Brother Simon typed the letters GOODNEWS onto the keyboard of the shuttle's main computer, using only one finger of each hand and making a lot of mistakes. He stared at the finished word for a while then hit the RETURN key.

A meter-square screen lit up at the front of the room and a voice boomed, "There's Good News tonight!" The blank screen dissolved into a sound stage full of furniture. A dark-haired man stumbled onto the stage, tripped, and fell noisily across the furniture, smashing several of the chairs to pieces. The camera tightened on his face and the man said, "Live! From New York! It's... the Gospel According to Matthew!"

The scene changed to a murky river flowing through a desert. A bearded man stood in water past his knees, his back to the camera, addressing a mob of peasants wearing towels on their heads. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to lick! He will baptize you with Holy Sitcoms and with celebrities! And now... heeeeeeere's Johnny!"

A man with short white hair waded into view from behind the camera, then turned to wink. His skin was evenly, artificially tanned, and he had the arrogant smirk of a pre-adolescent. He wore a 20th-century dress suit with lapels out to the shoulders and had something orange tied around his neck. Laughter swelled to fill the soundtrack.

"Hey there!" the man said. "Have we got a great show tonight!" The river came nearly to his waist and his suit was starting to sag with water, but he didn't seem to notice. "We've got the poor in spirit (applause) for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We've got those who mourn (more applause), fresh from Las Vegas, and believe me, they shall be comforted. We've got the meek, and right here, on tonight's show, they're going to inherit the earth, and what do you think about that?" (Thundrous applause.)

"Wow," LNR said. "This is really twisted."

JSN had pumped the entire video into a core search. "Parts of it seem to be out of the Christian bible, but it's almost beyond recognition. Hey!" he shouted to Brother Simon, who stood enraptured in front of the screen, "are you guys Christians, is that it?"

"Christians?" LNR said with alarm. "You mean like Torquemada and Henry Lee Lucas and Jerry Fallwell?"

"We are Carsinagins," Brother Simon said. "We believe every Image of the Sacred Word was divinely inspired, and we live by Its Law. Johnny be praised!"

"Wait a minute," LNR said, holding.up one finger to indicate incoming data. "We were looking in the wrong place. This Carson was a twentieth century video star. Something is really wrong here. What kind of computer is this?"

"It's a Generation V," JSN said, reading the nameplate. "Uh oh. You don't mean..."

"Heuristic self-programming. Artificial--" she choked, unable to hold back her laughter.

"Intelligence!" JSN hooted. "No wonder!"

"Are yall mockin the Word?" Brother Simon asked. His anger seemed to be teetering on the edge of tears.

"No, no, just this fucked up hardware," JSN said. "It must have merged all those video broadcasts into one file..."

"...and then tried to make sense of it! What a disaster!"

"Now see here," Brother Simon said. "If yall cant show proper respect all hafta axe yall to leave."

"Respect?" LNR howled. "Are you kidding?"

"That's it," Brother Simon said, flapping his hands at them. "Out. Yawn yone."

LNR stared blankiy at JSN. "I think he means we're on our own," he said.

LNR took his arm.. "Suits me. You think we could get all those cables back the way they were?"

"Let's find out," JSN said, then hesitated. "What about DNS? We shouldn't just leave him here with these devos..."

"Don't worry," LNR said. "He may be stupid, but he's harmless."