By its grace

It was Catholicism's greatest battle of the 23rd century. Petula Peters seemed to stand alone against the Pope and all his adherents, but she did not. There were thousands of silent watchers who had a very strong interest in how she'd fare.

They were silent because it wasn't in their genes to want what she wanted, do what she did. Not yet. Petula was an anomaly. And though she'd been checked out by a dozen specialists already, mostly at the request of the press, no one quite knew why or how the android had found religion.

There were certainly theories. That she was a good early example of true sentience; that something had gone haywire in the code governing her desire to fit in; that Petula wasn't an android at all, just a robot programmed by mischievous creators to parrot the same religious platitudes the human masses had been parroting for years.

The "just a robot" hypothesis would be discarded by anyone who met her. The lithe, steely-jawed android was deft and nuanced in her interviews. "I don't think I could give you a better answer than any human could," she'd say. "I'm doing this because it just feels right."

"When you say 'feels,' what do you mean?" asked a reporter.

Her shoulders shrugged with a click. "It is beyond thought. I sense something in me that isn't thought, and I call it feeling."

As for why the Catholic Church in particular, Petula was more certain. "The tradition," she said without pause. "The rites. The Latin. The incense."

"Can you smell?" asked another reporter.

"Yes. I can smell incense."

Someone started to ask what incense smelled like to a robot, but was interrupted by a question more pressing: "What do you think of the Church's refusal to allow an android to join its ranks?"

Petula Peters took a long pause, her silvery eyelids sheathing down. "They think that to admit me would be to undermine Catholicism, to mock it, to profane its sacredness. It is hard for me to understand. Surely true sacredness cannot be brought low; but I might by its grace be lifted up."