“– give your inhabitants any access to your interface!” Orpheus finished, sounding alarmed.
I double-checked that I had turned the mutation rate back down to normal before reducing the interface to a manageable size so I could glance at Orpheus. I smiled at her and gave a quick shrug, then turned my attention back to my interface and mentally tapped the Reality Points counter.
“I can see why you’d think that,” I said as I examined the readout. “It is pretty dangerous… but they aren’t directly seeing my interface. It’s more like the interface is feeding them very select pieces of information. They can’t really change anything, just update the names and descriptions. They’re not altering any actual data about what does what.”
Orpheus twitched her wings – an unmistakably nervous gesture. It was the most emotional I’d seen her since she had joined me in my sanctuary.
“That sort of thing has been done before,” she said carefully. “And while it is not explicitly forbidden, it is discouraged, especially for first-time Administrators.”
She paused, her tone shifting slightly as if she were recalling something distant. “I believe most of the time it was implemented as belief-based reality… which rapidly decayed. No one has tried it in my cluster since I first became High Administrator. I have heard plenty of stories from other clusters, though.”
I waved my hand as if to dismiss her warnings… even though I could feel a vague nervousness of my own. If I’d still had a stomach, it would’ve been doing flips.
She wasn’t really wrong. What I’d done was a risk. But I also didn’t relish the idea of sitting around with time slowed to a crawl, trying to come up with descriptions for every new ability all by myself.
“Why do you need them to write descriptions, anyway?” Orpheus asked, right as I found the setting I’d been searching for.
“That’s… a bit complicated,” I admitted, focusing on the controls. The Reality Point box expanded, showing more information.
Orpheus appeared to be splitting her attention between chastising me and examining what I had done more thoroughly.
She paused in midair and frowned.
“You gave this species the ability to make these descriptions,” she said slowly, “and now I see that you’ve placed a hook that allows others to view those descriptions. I don’t understand what you’re doing. Inhabitants really have no need of such specific information.”
“Don’t they?” I asked, watching as my net income suddenly ticked up to 0.041.
Still net negative, but that must have been the normal generation rate from the handful of dragons I’d seeded into the world. My Reality Points were steadily ticking downward—the time dilation wasn’t so extreme now, so I could actually watch it drop a fraction of a point at a time.
Orpheus wasn’t done lecturing me, of course.
“Now that you are near the Fourth Epoch,” she said, “I am permitted to give more of my opinions. And I must stress that these species you’ve made will never generate positive energy. They are too few in number, reproduce too slowly, and are so powerful that their only real source of conflict is one another… and even then, they generally avoid anything extreme. The secondary species you made for the other half of the world is similar, with the same limitations.”
I shrugged and smiled. “Well, I think my old self – before you wiped my memories – really liked dinosaurs. And people who like dinosaurs really like dragons.”
Orpheus blinked, clearly unsure what to do with that.
I turned my eyes back to the Reality Points counter and watched it update dramatically.
“I think you mean,” I added, “that they won’t generate energy reliably. But that isn’t really their job anyway.”
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I had to admit, I felt a little smug saying that. Sure, it had been a gamble. But it had paid off.
I knew this absurdly high return rate wouldn’t last. Once my dragon dreamers finished working through the backlog of unnamed and undescribed abilities, the creation of new ones – and the revision of existing descriptions – would yield drastically less energy.
But I doubted Orpheus could miss the sudden turnaround.
And I really wanted to show it off.
Orpheus paused. She’d clearly noticed the sudden reversal of fortune. For a long moment she hovered there, a perplexed look crossing her face… then she shot upward several inches in alarm.
“Oh… this isn’t good,” she said, worry creeping into her voice. “So you did have a plan – but this may not be the best idea for you. You’re going to trigger the Fourth Epoch without a sustainable income unless you somehow have a way to extend these gains long-term.”
That was not the response I’d been expecting. Frowning, I reached up mentally and slowed the time dilation down so I could consider what she’d just said.
The moment the world evened out to real-time flow, another notification blinked into view.
Then another.
And several more after that… each one bearing messages I liked much, much less.
I stared at the notifications as a new counter nestled itself into the upper-right corner of my vision.
I now had a 15,000 Reality Point debt… that had come out of nowhere.
I supposed it made a kind of sense… the World Seed itself had to cost something, and I’d been given 10,000 points to start with. But I’d assumed that was just the normal starting kit.
“You never mentioned that this whole starting energy was a loan! And why is it a fifty percent interest rate?!” I burst out, almost yelling at Orpheus.
The fairy remained calm but clapped her hands together with a small, deliberate gesture.
“It isn’t an interest rate. We’ve heard that complaint before,” she said. “You’re just charged extra to make up for all the failures that burn through their entire starting allotment and never produce anything positive.”
I winced. Unfair, sure… but when you were in the business of building universes, fairness wasn’t the most important metric, was it? Didn’t mean I had to like it, though.
“This is going to take forever to pay off,” I grumbled, eyeing the fading notice about the tithe.
“Not at all,” Orpheus argued. “Please remember that while you have been moving very fast, you yourself do not age in this space. And with your ability to speed up subjective time in your universe, even the energy you’re generating now could pay off your debt in only a few hours of your time here.”
I opened my mouth… then shut it again. Technically, she was right. And I really didn’t want to admit that my current output was very temporary, but hiding it wouldn’t help matters.
“This’ll probably only last for a few more cycles,” I muttered. “I’m pretty sure it’s generating a lot because the dragons are naming all the abilities that built up during the long mutation period.”
I gestured toward my interface, even though I knew she couldn’t see it directly. “After that, it’ll drop a lot. If I’m lucky, it’ll still be positive… but that whole system takes energy to run. My maintenance cost almost doubled.”
Orpheus bobbed lightly in the air. “I did try to warn you,” she said. “Do you have a plan to create more energy?”
I sighed and shrugged. “Yeah, I do. I was hoping I could get a little longer out of the Age of Dragons… but I guess that’s not going to happen. I’ll have to make more species. I’m pretty sure they’ll generate a good amount of energy, but the real returns won’t come for a while.”
Orpheus fluttered over to my end table and sat on the edge, watching me.
“I’m afraid I have to leave very soon,” she said softly. “Now that you’ve entered the Fourth Epoch. Before I go, can you tell me why you set up this… elaborate system?”
I shrugged again. “Well, you said energy is generated by struggle… by striving to achieve something. So I figured I’d give people something to strive for.”
I grinned sheepishly, turning back toward my interface.
“I’m going to harness the innate desire,” I said, “to watch a number go up.”
Foundation Classes