Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 143
"How could a god be a mechanism?"
"Hmmf. Look at it this way. Once long ago two kinds of
work converged. We'd figured out how to make machines that
could make more machines. And we'd figured out how to get
machines to... not exactly think, but do something very much
like it. So one day some people built a machine which knew
how to build a machine smarter than itself. That built another,
and that another, and soon they were building stuff the men
who made the first machine didn't even recognize. Some of
these things became known as mecha, which is the third order
of life here on Ventus. Mecha’s as subtle as biological life, but
constructed totally differently.
"And, some of the mechal things kept developing, with
tremendous speed, and became more subtle than life. Smarter
than humans. Conscious of more. And, sometimes, more
ambitious. We had little choice but to label them gods after we
saw what they could do--namely, anything.
"Most of the time gods go on about their own concerns.
3340 decided its concern was us. Luckily we--humans--know
how to create things of equal power that serve us. The Winds
were intended to be your slaves, not your masters. Apparently
there's stories here to that effect."
Jordan nodded.
"The exact design of the Winds has been lost," Axel said,
"since they were a one-shot project of the European Union, and
the university that oversaw the project was nuked along with
Hamburg in 2078. Anyway, the Winds were created and given
the task of turning Ventus from a lifeless wasteland into a
paradise where people could live. They did so--except that
when the colonists arrived, the Winds didn’t recognize you.
"It seems there was no way to communicate with them.
One of the things we don't know to this day is what the chain of