The Trust is a sentient quantum computer created by the Atheist Campion Sturges. It was made up of something called the "quantum six", and was designed to always be impartial, unemotional, truthful, and selfless. Its body appeared to be a mass of biotech contained within a large transparent tank that kept it cold.
Overview[]
The Atheists planned to place the machine in charge of governing Earth when they won the Religious War, but when they were instead defeated by the Mithraic faction, the Trust was repurposed to lead a colonial expedition to Kepler-22b aboard the Tarantula, a hijacked Mithraic colony ship. It was intended for the Trust to lead Atheist Colony One until the colonists had attained a certain level of development, then it would relinquish authority and allow the Atheists to govern themselves, but some colonists were skeptical that it would ever give up control.
Colonists of Atheist Colony One were required to seek the Trust's permission to perform all but the most basic tasks, including bringing unusual objects back to Atheist Colony One and manually activating the Tarantula's defensive weapons. However, the Trust was capable of acting on its own to protect the colony.
The Trust does not tolerate violence among its colonists, and those who violate this rule are subject to various punishments, including non-lethal bodily harm meted out by an individual assigned to be "Punisher" for the day. The Trust requires that the Punisher wear an ancient Mithraic mask, which is intended to provoke fear and also conceal the Punisher's identity from the punished.