Jigoku No Mokushiroku (The Symbolic Revelation of the Apocalypse)

McDaid, John G. "Jigoku No Mokushiroku (The Symbolic Revelation of the Apocalypse)." Asimov's Science Fiction 19.15, #240 (Dec. 1995): [104]-19.

Narrated, in English, by an AI elevator with the dedication name "Hitoshi" (110)—after Hitoshi Igarashi, translator into Japanese of The Satanic Verses (108)—and a Turing ID that indicates high intelligence. In 2014 Hitoshi operates in a world of dangerous Millennialist cults and works to allow "the spirits latent in all the materials" comprising itself to satisfy their "hunger . . . for movement and growth." The elevator dreams "of a pattern . . . . The pattern that seeks to know itself" (117). Fulfilling that dream seems to include taking into possession a very powerful bomb, "which, I think, will certainly come in handy eventually," a line followed immediately by the last line of the story: "After all, I don't intend to be an elevator forever ..." (119). (RDE, 09/01/97)