Chapter 7: Landscaping

  The interface could sometimes be overwhelming, but I was starting to get how it was customized to me. To make a cylinder, I just set the parameters – wall thickness, radius, and so on.

  Now that I wanted to actually make some terrain, selecting the surface opened up something like a 3D paint program. I didn’t have to actually do the painting, though. It was more of a 'picture it in your mind and the interface responds' kind of thing.

  Probably a good thing, I thought, because while I might not be able to remember details of my previous life, I definitely don’t seem to have a lot of memories involving artistic projects.

  Of course, that still left quite a lot of space to sculpt.

  I vaguely wondered if there was an easier way to handle it, but I didn’t trust any of the solutions I was coming up with to not make things worse. Maybe later I can experiment with something like that.

  In the meantime, I made sure to carve out a lot of space for oceans. I left two of the landmasses wide enough that going from one ocean to the next simply couldn’t be done by ship – but most of them either had at least one passage, or some areas where a thin land bridge could be walked across in a few days.

  Even this project took quite a while. It might sound easy, but I was working with a surface area several times that of Earth.

  I later sat down and did the math: it was something like seven times Earth’s surface area.

  I finally filled in the oceans with varying amounts of salinity. It was interesting how scooping out “earth” like that gave me credit for matter. I had originally filled the surface in with a fairly generic mixture of what I thought of as dirt, but on the menu it actually defined it as something like metamorphic rems or something similar.

  It was nice to know that I had something like a budget. Just creating all of this – in addition to the 73 Reality Points I’d spent earlier – added another 642 to the cost. That didn’t sound like much when I had 10,000 to spend, but I knew that creating life – and then intelligent life – might burn through the rest pretty quickly.

  I stepped back from the interface and turned to Orpheus. “This is taking a long time. It’s a lot more work than I thought. Am I going to have to design every living creature? There are tens of thousands of species I probably can’t even name, but I know there are a lot.”

  Orpheus, who had been silent for the entirety of my work on the oceans, shook her head. Or would it be its head? The revelation that Orpheus was something else was a bit hard to grasp. Either way, the fairy responded:

  “While some do an entire biosphere of custom species, more commonly several base species will be created, and then the timeline is fast?forwarded to allow for natural diversification. This presumes that you have made a system that allows for some kind of natural selection or evolution over time.”

  She paused, and once again I guessed she was trying to put something into a frame of reference I would understand. “You may wish to spend a small amount of your Reality Point budget on temporarily increasing the evolutionary rate of living beings when you prepare for that step.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t feel like going right back to the grind quite yet. Instead, I asked her, “Are you sure you can’t hold a conversation or something with me? Or at least give me thoughts on what I’m doing? I’ve spent a little over 700 so far, and I’ll probably have to spend some more before this part is done. Spending 1,000 Reality Points before I even create life… is that a lot? Too much? Very little? I have nothing to go on here. That’s about one?tenth of my total budget.”

  Somewhat to my surprise, Orpheus bobbed up and down.

  “As I stated before, I am not your companion. My silence during this stage is imperative for you to properly express your creativity. Once you enter the Third Epoch, I can more freely state my opinions, but even then do not expect help or suggestions.”

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  She paused for a moment, as if thinking. “The amount you have spent is a little high, but your starting amount is relatively low for a new world. This is normal for new Administrators. You have also created a much larger world and, while your initial cost is significantly higher than average, your maintenance cost is dramatically lower than normal. I cannot give you an opinion on whether it is too much or not enough, but the energy you have spent in your design so far is not alarming.”

  Well, that was a relief… both the cost analysis and the fact that she wouldn’t be totally silent until I addressed her, once I reached a certain point. This was looking to be a lonely job anyway, because I knew she wouldn't hang around for the entire time either.

  Still, if she was going to give her opinions once I entered the Third Epoch, I might as well give her something to comment on.

  I went back to the interface and looked at the continuous donut that was the actual cylinder. With this design, people could almost walk all the way around in a loop lengthwise. I didn’t actually want that, which was why I’d set up a barrier wall of magicite.

  I’d also thickened it with various mountains and so on, so it could be walked upon, thanks to the weird way gravity worked – but I’d made sure that the center of each side of the wall was a giant mountain with a magicite spire inside it. This stuff was incredibly dense and tough; I didn’t want it being casually broken or mined.

  If civilizations later did manage that… well, I guess that would be an interesting storyline, wouldn’t it?

  The end result left the loop of the donut interrupted, like the hoop of an earring rather than a continuous ring. The land I was shaping was along the inside of the donut, allowing people to walk along and look up at the center, and theoretically see the far side of the tube.

  Yet walking in the other direction would eventually hit that wall of magicite covered in dirt and mountains, which they could then walk up… at least as long as there was atmosphere. I didn’t intend to have air in that central spire. Though looking at it now, it really did look like an earring.

  After a bit of thought, I went back to my terrain shaping.

  I’d probably have to adjust things later – I didn’t really understand things like wind currents, erosion, and so on – but after handling the oceans, the various mountain ranges weren’t that difficult.

  I was tempted to try and do this with some sort of plate tectonics system, but I was pretty sure I’d screw that up. So… divine creation it was.

  This was where the properties of magicite became kind of important. I had designed the material to soak up extra energy and convert it into mana and heat, depending on how much excess it was taking in.

  The whole thing operated like a giant mana battery. And since it also emitted heat during the process, I could use it to make volcanoes and the like.

  I don’t think I’m a geologist either, I thought, but the interface will hopefully make adjustments once I make my intent clear.

  I wondered why it didn’t do that when I was setting universal constants and such, but I guessed maybe it needed some kind of baseline before it could adjust to what I wanted.

  Something to think about for later.

  I was finally getting close to finished, but there was one more major adjustment to make before I reached the last step in world creation.

  I made another barrier on the opposite side of the donut to the first one… but this barrier didn’t fully close. Instead, I made it a large series of mountains, encircling the diameter of the tube but not fully closing it off in the very middle, leaving a gap in what I intended to be an airless void in the null-gravity center.

  The final product was no longer like a donut, but like two halves of macaroni melded together, making a hollow ring for people to live in. The ends of the macaroni were sealed off, so it was two hollow arches that couldn’t freely be moved between.

  I added a fair amount of magicite to the barrier too, but made it very porous, so it wouldn’t reach critical mass and create gravity. Unlike the other wall, which would appear to be the ‘end caps’ of the cylinder, I wanted people to be able to go through this… just with great difficulty. They would have to scale incredibly high mountains, or tunnel for an obscene distance, but it should be possible.

  I also wanted animals to be able to migrate through it, but only if really stressed.

  “You said we need challenges and conflict,” I mentioned to Orpheus. “What I’m doing here is setting it up… well, one of them anyway.

  “The world they know will be divided in two by this. Most likely, civilizations and entire ecosystems will develop largely independently. Once a civilization has advanced enough, explorers will likely start checking out the boundaries… and discover a second world.”

  I grinned. “Pretty neat, huh?”

  Orpheus didn’t answer for a second. When she did, it seemed almost grudging.

  “It does appear you are putting some thought into how this will generate energy.”

  I chuckled back at her and put the finishing touches on my new world.

  It was barren of anything like trees or grass – I hadn’t gotten to that part yet – but I’d carved out the major rivers, springs, reservoirs, freshwater and saltwater oceans, and so on.

  I stepped back and stretched, despite the fact that I felt no tightness in my simulated body.

  “Almost ready,” I announced.

  I turned and smiled at Orpheus.

  “Now let’s get a sunrise.”