Pullman's alethiometer - an advocate for determinism?

Re-reading through an article for my extended project the idea flashed through my head like some kind of crazy flashy thing.

I didn't quite yell "eureka!"

I did decide to publish it in my blog.

In His Dark Materials, Lyra's alethiometer is a truth device telling her all that is happening in the present. It is powered by Dust, this giving me the following idea. Dust to Pullman's Church is Original Sin, but to the narrative voice and outsiders to the Church it is experience and wisdom. We are made from it, it is our conscious and even unconscious being. Surely this Dust, which is in us and in the very fabric of Pullman's universe, is the means by which Pullman can claim that everything is determined.

Mind flashes back to rather strange super computer illustration in philosophy.

Imagine there is a supercomputer that knows all the laws of nature and knows every human action that has happened since the beginning of time. In other words, imagine a machine with the mind of God. If you asked it what would happen in the future it would collect together all this information to form a cause which in turn would result in one unique effect that forms our future. The future is closed and cannot be otherwise.

Does this ring a bell? Liken the supercomputer to Lyra's alethiometer. The alethiometer contains the substance which is the essence of human experience and the nature that surrounds it. When Lyra asks it a question it can only ever give one answer, regardless of how cryptic it may be.

The only question in my mind now is why Lyra never asks the alethiometer about the distant future.

Maybe she, like the rest of us, didn't really want to let go of her fond attachment to what Pullman may call an illusion: freewill.