Ordurlee paced around his office like a caged tiger, clutching a legal requisition form, a salvage permit, and a restoration request. What in the hell were they playing at? They wanted to salvage a divine instrument, like they could get the parts for the bloody things these days. On top of that there was an abandonment of livestock form placed against a GOD? (sure some deities thought of mortals the way mortals thought of cattle, but you didn’t say that aloud, it was rude and bad for worship.) A God who was uncontactable since abandoning their post One who by now probably couldn’t sign on the dotted line even if they did fill out the papers due to their identity wavering in and out of existence.

Worst bit was that that slimy little weasel had actually done them a favour, if he hadn’t pointed out these loopholes they could be carefully closed after this happened or any God could claim anything a previous God left unmonitored for five minutes (sure they already did that anyway, hell heroes practically made an entire career path out of nicking stuff from gods, but at least now they had to pretend to attempt to hide it. Or kill the God in question, so the niceties were properly observed.) The free for all that resulted from those loopholes would have been messy.

So Ordurlee had no choice but to approve the request, as much as he hated it, but being a god and all he was going to make that damned lawyer pay using the nastiest curse he could think of. They would never again be able to find a single paperclip or staple for as long as they lived. Sometimes his vindictiveness shocked even him.

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Back at the office Mister Forthryte was interrupted mid golf game by the sudden appearance of a divine edict. (which landed right in front of the hole/glass just as he was getting the putt right.)

Unfolding it he read the decree, it seemed their application had been successful. That done he walked over to his desk, and carefully examined a pile of assorted stationary. He knew Ordurlee wouldn’t have let it slide without some kind of consequence, now it was just a matter of figuring out what the revenge would be. Oh paperclips and staples, a nice choice (Forthryte had swapped to the use of bulldog clips, which were technically not the same thing round about the first time he’d wound up the paperwork obsessed deity, by actually successfully filling in the application for a Ledretter divine edition, by hiring a single intern to worship him persistently for six months solid, ah those were the days.) Ordurlee was nothing if not predictable.

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Unit 2b was watching over the little one when an emergency request came in, they were offering a fair price for what was frankly an absurd amount of the solar crystals. But they were going to be used in the preservation of life, that was a huge thing, and ticked every box in the Constructs remaining coding. Particularly as the creatures in question were innocent and held absolutely no prejudice against constructs.

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This meant because of Addy they were actually relevant and involved in national diplomacy, via a crown order no less. That made it legally as well as physically hazardous for strangers to accost a construct out on business. There were a lot of humans who were dim enough to accost a being powerful enough to rip their limbs off. But they were seldom the type to enjoy paperwork. Or getting their money taken off them.

“It would seem it is time to step up production” 2b mused, as they started to issue instructions. (Not commands, construct society absolutely hated commands due to their history, and likely always would. But a well reasoned request and suggested course of action? Well that was different.) It seemed that a few of the new constructs were happy to be able to do something again. Automata are not really built for inactivity, and now they were getting paid to do stuff, that made a lot of difference as nowadays several were planning a retirement to a lovely farm, with a picket fence, a lovely cluster waiting at home, and perhaps a necrodog and a cat.

Not all went that way of course, many viewed living in the chasm as their retirement, and gods know they’d earned it. 2b was a little confused of late, now they had spare run time they were finding side processes running alongside their core commands, and they sometimes even went off at complete tangents. A few years ago they would have thought of that as a sign of core matrix malfunction, now though? They were used to the stray programs and even liked them.

As soon as the job came up they gained an unexpected volunteer to make the delivery, and they were definitely not going to get waylaid during the delivery. Unit Grark had volunteered to make the delivery, their noble words “GRARK HELP” would not soon be forgotten. From what they could piece together from his message history it seemed while Grark was alive the Caymen were a dominant species on the planet, and they really had a thing for Protodragons. (What? Big lizards like bigger lizards, from a distance, they were big, strong, kept the territory safe, and you could leave your enemies tied up to a post as an offering to them, that was always something of a crowd pleaser.) So next step was to make a heat resistant protodragon scale pull cart, and a fairly heat resistant stone slab, as it was a safe bet with that much sun crystal concentrated in one place Schrodinger would try their best to nap on it. It seemed having undead senses made it easy to forget that warm had limits before you got into fire bad territory. The valley had a series of public announcement posters reminding the undead denizens of the chasm of that, the just say fire bad posters were really helpful in reaching the necromantic construct of today.