Orpheus flew around in a slow circle, but clapped her hands together.
“Be aware that shortly after your first intelligent species, you will likely enter the Fourth Epoch. Unless something strange is going on, I will likely take my leave of you at that time. Before I do so, I will give you a means by which to contact me for emergency information requests, but I cannot guarantee a timely response.”
She paused for a beat, then added, “Once you reach a higher rank, you will gain the ability to socialize with other Administrators as well.”
That was news to me. I looked up at Orpheus in surprise.
“You never mentioned anything about that before,” I said, then went back to pondering my next problem.
“Given the high likelihood of new Administrators never making it to the Fourth Epoch, why would I?” she pointed out.
I let out a quick grunt to let her know that was a good point, but I was already working on the big problem.
I still had just a little over half of my original Reality Points left, but I kept having the nagging feeling that I shouldn’t waste them yet. For my plan to work, I needed to burn quite a few.
I rolled my options around in my head for a while, but eventually decided that I couldn’t afford not to do what I had planned next. Trying to add it in later would probably be far more expensive.
Before I got started, I reached up and turned the time dilation all the way down, so that ten seconds of my time would pass for every one second in the universe.
“All right,” I said with a heavy sigh. “Guess I’d better get this moon thing fixed.”
That gave Orpheus pause. “Moon? I didn’t know you were planning on adding a moon. I thought you were doing the intelligent species next.”
I’d already started designing how I wanted the moon, though I was half making it up on the fly. I had to keep running what-if scenarios in my head while I worked on it.
“To be honest, Orpheus,” I replied, “I don’t think I can in good conscience make an intelligent species before I do this next step. I don’t necessarily need a moon… but I think that’s what will work best for what I’m trying to do.”
“And what is it you were trying to do?” Orpheus asked.
I knew I had her attention… she only asked questions like that when she was genuinely curious. She didn’t even fly over to my shoulder this time. Instead, she paused in midair, completely still, as if zoning out. I knew by now that meant she was watching from her own interface, flipping over to her sanctuary to observe what I was doing in mine.
Since she was watching, I didn’t bother to answer. I just kept working. I finished shaping the shell of the moon.
Shell was appropriate, though it was somewhat expensive, Reality Point-wise, despite being hollow. The shell itself was made of magicite, much like the shell of the world. It was covered by a thin crust of course Lumin-aligned dirt, which would soak up energy from the sun and reflect it back – much like the stars, though I gave it a softer, silvery cast.
It wasn’t particularly large when it came to planetary sizes. Much smaller than Earth’s moon, certainly. The initial shell of the world had only cost a few dozen Reality Points, but that was before I started the time passage. Now that I was past the Second Epoch, creating that much Magicite – even if it was only a fraction of the cylinder’s shell – was considerably more expensive.
The construction of the moon alone ran me an even 270 Reality Points. It was actually a little creepy, because when I say even, I mean even, including decimal notation. Just 270, with no visible decimal after.
I shook that thought away. I knew from the knowledge in my head that humanity tended to look for patterns where there were none. I guess even without the actual biology of my brain, whatever emulation they were running was close enough to make that still happen now and then. At least I could dismiss it without any trouble.
I took the moon and put it on a somewhat chaotic-looking path, following the same vacuum channel as the sun. I had to nudge a few stars out of the way – another dozen Reality Points just to move what were supposed to be mostly static entities, or at least rotating on fixed points. I’d originally envisioned them to hold their size and relative position, so I needed to make sure there was a clear lane for the moon.
The sun didn’t really have a true physical form, so the moon could pass through it without problems. And it no doubt would, because while the sun reversed along the same path every day over the course of 24 hours, the moon followed a slower, more erratic track, one that lasted one-tenth of a full year.
Since the moon was a physical object, it couldn’t pass through the magical barrier of the end?caps. Once it reached the end, it would simply stop and retrace its path.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Except the path back was different as well.
This meant that Upside would be without the moon for half the year, in segmented intervals – having it for a tenth of the year, then losing it for another tenth, then having it again for a tenth. Meanwhile, Downside experienced the same cycle, but inverted.
The seemingly chaotic path was actually preplanned. I cheated a little by having the interface find me a valid trajectory that wouldn’t collide with any stars.
This gave me something like phases and shifting positions in the sky, depending on the time of year… which was exactly what I wanted.
Because this world was cylindrical, partial eclipses would be far more common. But a total eclipse? That could only happen if the moon shell intersected directly with the sun’s midpoint. It would happen, I had figured out, but pretty rarely.
And when that happened, it would probably trigger something interesting in the moon’s secondary function.
“I don’t understand the purpose of this,” Orpheus cut in as I started filling the moon with various types of mana and the means to convert it.
A lot of Flux Mana. Pure Mana. Vital Mana. Some of basically everything went in there. I arranged it as a sort of unstable foam. At the core of the moon was a small hollow chamber, also laced with the same mixture, but less chaotic. It was split into two, just like the world itself.
“I need some way for the animals and people of this world to dream,” I said, with a firmness in my tone that surprised even me. “I’m not going to be the creator of the world that can’t dream.”
The scripting window of my interface filled with very delicate procedures.
The entirety of the moon was simply a means to distantly and remotely connect to any of the living things on the world. If they needed to dream, it would use some of the energy it absorbed from the sun to create a tether, which would communicate with the mind and fashion a temporary world for it to observe.
I had to be careful. I didn’t want anyone’s actual soul to be injured in a dream. Perhaps very advanced magic might be able to do that… but so far, I hadn’t seen anything like it. I might have to put some restrictions on that manually later, but right when I was making the moon, it wasn’t important.
The foamy interior would allow people to have their own small worlds, isolated from others. But since they were literally in physical proximity inside the moon, it meant that – at least theoretically – dreamers could interact with other dreamers under the right circumstances.
I hadn’t put any means for those circumstances to happen, but I didn’t mind if they did, as long as it was rare. So I didn’t put a lot of attention on preventing it either.
The two?chambered core, of course, was set aside for a very special type of dreaming.
“This is fascinating,” Orpheus said, examining what I’d done. “I’ve seen some structures like this before—but never from someone using it for a simple experience during sleep.”
I shrugged, then selected the two similar species on Upside and Downside. These would be the basis from which I would create the first intelligent species.
The tools to do this were already in the interface and ready to go, but I was pretty sure I was using them in a way they weren’t meant to be used.
I began sculpting the bodies of both base species, because I wanted a very specific look. Then I altered their lifecycles, put numerous restrictions on the upper end of their life span, and – of course – created some new organs.
These were intelligent creatures, so they wouldn’t necessarily have monster cores. Though, in this case, they actually did.
In addition to their monster cores, they also had something I called a Mana Core. It would hold Pure Mana and convert it to and from that state at varying levels of efficiency, depending on the owner’s affinity and whichever element they chose to align with.
This species, at least, would be able to choose its alignment.
In the brain, I added mana?control structures as well as enhanced conduits running alongside the normal ones. These would only be present in intelligent creatures, and only unlocked with effort. Once unlocked, they would basically give them the ability to force pure mana through their enhanced conduits, convert it on the fly to shape the world around them, and take in mana from the world to keep their mana?core charged.
Basically, this was how they would be able to spellcast if they desired to unlock that ability. I was reasonably certain that both of these two species would do so upon reaching the top end of their development
Orpheus actually fluttered her wings – a sign of distress, I’d come to recognize.
“Administrator,” she said, “I believe you may be making this species too powerful. Remember that some level of struggle is required for the generation of soul energy.”
I shrugged and kept working. “I know. Don’t worry about it.”
I continued adjusting until I came to the weighting of personality traits. The more of these I set, the less diversity of behavior the species would have… and if I set too many, the tooltip informed me it would result in a failure to generate an intelligent species at all. They would not have sufficient free will. Fortunately, what I wanted to do was simple enough, even if it had a fairly drastic effect.
Orpheus flitted over and landed on my shoulder, patting my head in an attempt to get my attention.
“Administrator,” she said, “I really think you should reconsider the species parameters you are setting. The social structure of these beings does not appear like it will be able to develop a long?term civilization which will advance beyond a base level.”
I finished setting the sliders. She relaxed a little, but still seemed concerned.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll work with one another under certain circumstances, and don’t under others. I know what I’m doing.” I paused. “Well… actually, I don’t know what I’m doing. But I do have a plan. How’s that?”
Her wings twitched again and Orpheus frowned. “You just spent over ten percent of your remaining energy on this one species. And from your own design, they will have low numbers. Are you certain this is a good idea?”
I laughed and shook my head. “No, I’m not certain this is a good idea. It could be a very bad idea. But if it works, it will save me a lot of trouble.”
I went into the scripting interface and made a few small adjustments. Then I mentally drew a line to my new species, and another to the other one, setting limitations so it would factor in their geographical location – Upside or Downside.
Then I began placing the creatures. It was cheapest to place them as young adults and children, so that’s mostly what I did. I tried not to think too hard about the gamble I was taking, but I'd been hit with inspiration. This wasn't like the moss problem. I'd put in very explicit limits this time.
I kept telling myself that.
Orpheus had gone very still, looking over what I had just done while I handled the placement of the various small clusters of my new sapients. She stared for a long time, and I wondered if she was having trouble figuring out what I’d just done. Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to finish placing my creations, and soon I was ready to start.
“Administrator.” Orpheus snapped her head up suddenly. “This is a very dangerous setting. You need to stop and reconsider what you’re doing. It’s too dangerous to–”
I ignored her and flicked the time dilation up.
The Great Game