Once again, with the time dilation sped up, I could watch months pass in just a few minutes. Not that this world had a conception of months yet… but who knew what sort of timekeeping a civilization in this world would invent.
I sat back and watched the interface carefully, zooming in and out of various places to see how the animals and plants were doing. This time, I didn’t get any serious warnings. I did get one extinction notice rather quickly, but after that, things seemed to settle down. That ugly purplish moss that had taken over much of the land steadily shrank, telling me the moss-eaters I had made were doing their job.
Normal greenery and vegetation spread throughout. The oceans didn’t get choked with algae this time, since there were animals – fish and otherwise – to take care of it. It still didn’t look exactly how I’d imagined it, but it was a lot closer.
Soon, greenery spread over much of the land.
Of course, my adjustment of the sun’s path had led to greater biome diversity. I had deserts now. Arctic tundras. Some more hellish landscapes of various kinds. I saw one broken land of scorched rock, and another that was thoroughly choked with strange plants. I didn’t remember creating those plants, but it had already been several years… and perhaps the mutation factor was working a little faster than I’d expected.
With no warnings to interrupt me, I actually spent several hours just taking in parts of the world and watching as the seasons settled into their patterns. I vaguely wondered if I’d made a mistake by introducing seasons into this world. Maybe a climate where everything stayed roughly the same throughout the year would have been more interesting… but then I mentally discarded the idea.
Changing seasons put more pressure on both people and animals. And if this world was supposed to create interesting choices, then monotony would be the enemy. I just wanted it predictable. There was a difference between “not monotonous” and “utter chaos.”
I lost track of time while I was doing this… and was interrupted by a pair of notifications I hadn’t expected.
I paused and frowned at the message. That was nice, but it was a little weird. I concentrated on the term Standard Cycle to see if the interface had any further information.
That was a little odd, but I supposed it made sense… at least having a standard cycle.
I briefly wondered how the time dilation would mess with it, but then realized that if I were dilating time, energy would be built up faster as well. So of course the standard cycle was tied to the local time of the universe rather than my personal time. Interesting.
The rest of the message was a little more puzzling, especially since it mentioned Orpheus directly. “Orpheus-class spacetime?” That was a little wild.
I cleared my throat and straightened, rising to my feet after another moment.
“Orpheus,” I spoke suddenly, “I just got a message referring to a standard cycle, and when I looked that up, it mentioned Orpheus-class spacetime. What exactly does that mean? Does that mean other universes use some weird different kind of time flow?”
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As I rose fully to my feet, Orpheus hopped off my shoulder and began floating around the room again.
“Correct,” she affirmed. “Almost all universes in a local cluster have some basic similarities. Only a few at the fringe drift out of these basic assumptions. This is one of the reasons why universes are clustered together.”
She zigzagged through the air to make her point. “A universe from another cluster may have a completely different way of having events happen, which is the best way I can describe to your mind how a universe would work without time as you perceive it. Even the translation protocols I’m using to speak to you break down rapidly in trying to explain these concepts."
The small figure then floated over to the edge of the small room, tapping a tiny finger on the wall. “It is possible for some of the strangest universes at the fringe of one cluster to interact with the concepts of the strangest universes in another cluster, so the dividing lines are sometimes arbitrary.”
I snorted to myself. “Aren’t they always?” Then I shook my head. “I have a feeling this is the sort of stuff that would give me a headache if I could still get a headache.”
I glanced back at my interface, but saw that everything was still running fine. Well, maybe not fine… some species were struggling somewhere, adapting, and so on, but I’d expected that. A small part of me still felt guilty about the fact that species extinctions were happening regularly. But I only got a few notifications relatively speaking; in a world the size of what I’d made, there were a lot of species to go through.
I just watched the world progress for a little while, musing over how to approach things.
Finally, I turned to Orpheus again.
“So, looking at my interface, I can just copy a type of animal and re?create it at any given time elsewhere. But earlier you mentioned that my interference was limited. If I create an intelligent species – like humans – and I think they’re going to die out, could I just copy their civilization and put it somewhere else? Would that count as interference? That seems a little unclear. Or is it just free will that I can’t interfere with?”
The golden?clad fairy bobbed up and down again.
“You’re asking the right questions—mostly,” she answered. “Before you put intelligence into your world, you have a lot more freedom to work with. Afterward, you will find yourself more limited.
“Depending on the situation, you may not even be able to place animals anymore, although that is usually still an option. More commonly, if you want to do something like preserve a species, you will have to work through some intermediary, much like you did when you wanted to get rid of that moss and you created things that would eat it and then die off without it. That was a clever solution, commonly used by world architects who are on their second or third world.”
She floated over and, strangely, decided to perch on my head this time so I couldn’t actually see her. She didn’t weigh much at all, so I barely felt her.
I briefly wondered what color of hair I had, because I hadn’t had a chance to actually check that. While she answered, I took a strand down from my bangs and crossed my eyes to look – except I didn’t actually have to cross my eyes.
I kept forgetting that I wasn’t in a real body. My attention focused rather easily and revealed that I had a dirty brown shade of hair. That was kind of boring.
I shook my thoughts clear, but kept my head level out of politeness to the figure perched upon it.
“So that was a standard way of cleaning up mistakes instead of doing it directly?” I asked. “I presume with a civilization I couldn’t just move them or something then. But would I be able to try and nudge them through, I don’t know, prophetic dreams or something?”
Orpheus was silent for a long moment before she answered.
“I do not actually know. I’m having trouble finding context for what you are saying. But if it is some kind of indirect action, then probably you are on the right track. Civilizations tend to be even more unique than life. So once you reach that point, I will be less useful for you anyway. This is one of the reasons why I normally leave during the Fourth Epoch.”
I picked up on that immediately while I was checking up on my magical creatures.
“Normally, so you have the option to stay?”
“No,” she replied. “Not exactly. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances that extend my terminal presence here. Normally, I will leave as the Fourth Epoch starts. However, you should at that point work on making your Sanctuary more presentable, because I will periodically check in on various Administrators in a less formal manner.”
She paused for a long moment and then added, “During these visits I have a little more freedom to speak to you about what you are doing. I expect this is what you originally wanted from me. While I still have limits on what I can tell you, in those cases I can make suggestions and discuss things with you in a more natural manner.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Huh,” I muttered. “That should be interesting.”
Then I frowned for a completely different reason, looking over the landscape.
I’d begun seeing a lot of species development now. And while that was interesting – watching creatures adapt to their environment – something weird was going on with any of the creatures that had magical abilities.
The Monster Cores seemed to be working, but sometimes creatures seemed to be developing more Mana Conduits or specializing them… and then dying off quickly.
I wondered if I’d made another mistake and it was just more subtle this time.
“Well,” I announced, “it looks like we won’t be starting the Fourth Epoch quite yet. I think I still have some minor debugging to do here.”