The Assumption of Maria - Lightspeed Magazine
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The Assumption of Maria
by<br>Max Gladstone
Author spotlight
Published in Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 194 (July 2026) | 10,217 words
© 2026 by Max Gladstone. Also appears in the forthcoming anthology Android in the Archives: Research, Creative Collaboration and our Speculative Futures from MIT Press.
Series: Android in the Archives
The Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project paired eight faculty-members at Dartmouth College with eight veteran speculative fiction authors. Through design activities, panels, symposia and a mountain lodge retreat, they collaboratively imagined worlds that interrogate the future humanity is heading towards. These stories can be found in the anthology, Android in the Archives: Research, Creative Collaboration and our Speculative Futures (lightspeedmagazine.com/android), soon to be published by MIT Press in 2027.
Maria Haddid looked like she was screaming.
I’ve heard singers say that’s all singing is deep down, but if you’ve seen enough screams you won’t often get them mixed up.
The faithful gathered around her in the picture—the soccer mom, the children, the person with the ill-advised beard—on the bright green pews of the Church of the Redeemer’s main worship hall. They smiled. They raised their hands in that way believers do, like babies who want Mommy to pick them up. They looked happy or high. But Maria looked like she had seen the face of God.
I asked: “Is this the only photo?”
The kid loomed over me in the dark. He was gym-big, looks-big-on-TV big. An animated eagle-cross tattoo beat its wings on his throat where the Adam’s apple would have been. He wasn’t quite thirty, or he had a good skin care guy, but he was Pastor Ralph’s son, and in the Church of the Redeemer that meant he’d always be the kid.
“It’s the only hard copy of a candid shot,” he said. “The only one we can be sure of.”
It was a pain, but it was also half the reason I had a job. The way the old coats tell it, there used to be so much information: pictures, digital records, databases of databases. Used to be you could ask a box a question and get pure knowledge in your vein, and all you’d owe was everything you ever wanted to know, or do, or screw, or be. But you could pretend you hadn’t given the box that stuff, not in a way that mattered.
Now the net’s full of dreaming ghosts, and you never can tell when one’s wandered into your house to rearrange the furniture.
That old world seems like hell to me—all built on air and light. But if you’re not in the business of needing to know things for sure, and most people aren’t, it’s easy to miss how much has changed. That the kid knew I’d care meant he was smarter than most of my clients. I don’t like what that says about me.
“Do you have another angle on her? What about air-gapped systems?”
The kid passed me an unlocked tablet. “Just this, from her personnel intake when she came on as CFO. The personnel records are secure, I think. They should be. That’s how I remember her.”
The trouble with smart clients is that they tend to know it. In my business it pays to be dumb. A rock could do the job better than most people. You just need to follow the slope downhill.
Maria, on the tablet, looked like the kind of woman I’d feel thankful to share a sidewalk with, then never think about again. Her eyes were big and dark, her mouth small—an owlish face: watchful, skeptical, or just bored with HR. The date on the form was three years gone. I picked up the photo of the scream. I wanted to see what she could see, the glory reflected in those dark eyes. “And this?”
“Two weeks ago. Just before she disappeared.” His weight shifted. I wasn’t looking at him, but when a guy has that much muscle, you can feel it.
“Why’d you bring her in from outside? You’re not exactly hurting for workers.”
“Faithful.”
“No...