This is quite a good story. Interacting with artificial versions of ancestors is a well-trodden path in SF, and is in the process of becoming not-SF. Talabi tries to add a little mystery to the technology with some kind of overdone jargon ("memristic", etc). But that is how he is connecting the spiritual practices of the protagonist's country, and that intent comes across clearly, so for me it's forgivable. Describing the feeding of all of people's available data into a large language model with a particular kind of training would be believable, right now, but would lose that cultural connection.
I was very interested by how the country manages interaction with that entity. It is not a public tool. It is consulted by representatives at need. And part of the tension of the story is whether or not it is really needed. In the end, the Electric Mother AI helps to answer that question in an artfully indirect way. Very much worth reading.
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