“And I’m saying, why do you have to be so stubborn about this one aspect of the experiment? The first go around was fine! We got the data we needed without having to endanger the actually important mortals!”
Adaptability poked his head through the floor, cautiously scanning his surroundings for his shadowy pursuers. He’d made sure to bundle up nice and good, the special energy-masking rags wrapped fully around every inch of exposed skin. Other than his eyes, of course. He still needed to see where he was going. The end result of this judicious binding was that he was now more mummy than God, but appearances were a small price to pay for safety.
“Apologies, God of Stories and Creativity, I’m new to this… “being nice to people” routine, so forgive me if I step on any toes here, but are you implying that we treat less intelligent mortals as less important? Additionally, outside of your frankly condescending labelling of that subset of mortals, I don’t see a solid argument for reverting to our previous methods of picking what amounts to livestock as test subjects.”
He knew how he sounded, of course; all jumpy and paranoid, fearful of potential assassins lurking behind every corner. But this self-awareness didn’t preclude his personality turning out the way he did. Gods just came the way they did, after all.
“Don’t try that with me, lady. You know what I mean. Life wants the smart bunch to live longer; he couldn’t care less about the other dumb ones! Of course, he doesn’t know where the smart ones are, or if new intelligent races have developed anywhere over the course of centuries; that’s why he’s taking that roundabout way of manufacturing more of us! And wait, you’re calling them livestock! That’s way worse than what I said!”
Besides, the other Gods were the weird ones, not him: did they really think that Gods were the apex of all existences? There was bound to be a greater, higher tier species, far outside of their ability to perceive. What would happen if afore-mentioned beings decided to snuff them out, just like that? They needed to protect themselves! And blotting out the one identifiable characteristic that Gods projected outwards at all times; why, that’d keep those beings from tracking him!
“I’ve never pretended that I didn’t hold the belief that all mortals are lowly beings. Coming from you, on the other hand… when you’ve been so active in advocating for them? Besides, that’s what I’m saying; if the God of Life and Creation wants the perfected method to work for his intended targets, we need to test on that group rather than lollygag and work with mortals that have already hit their evolutionary limit at conception. Going back to beasts and creatures when we have humanoid, speech-capable civilisations, is a huge step back.”
“Hello.”
“WHAT THE SHI-oh, it’s you. Thought some bloody nightmare creature had hitched a ride back with me for a minute there. Nice of you to join us, Adaptability. But maybe use a louder voice next time? And a heads-up before you creep up behind me would be real great, thanks.” Stories had flung himself backwards at the sudden appearance of a mummy in the Library, and was now swimming back sheepishly to join the two.
“Greetings, God of Adaptability. Now we can begin the briefing proper.” Order extended a hand towards the newcomer, but noted after a moment that he was uncomfortable with the gesture, as he'd chosen instead to bow lightly at his senior. So withdrawing the hand, she proceeded with the presentation. Pulling down a canvas screen, Order picked up a remote and tapped the play button on its front to engage the projector.
“Blessed 34 is located here, behind this orange star. You weren’t here for this earlier, but the God of Stories and Creativity had a bit of a fuss about my choice of testing grounds. All cleared up now, I hope?” Order looked pointedly at Stories, who crossed his arms and turned away in a huff.
“I’ll take your silence as a begrudging consent. If you’d direct your attention here, the target specimen mortals for today’s experiment will be these,” She clicked the remote, revealing an artistic rendering of a diminutive individual with stubby arms and legs. The artist didn’t put much effort into detailing the features of this being, but apparently the scowl was important enough to make it into the final cut.
“Dwarves; I think that’s what they called themselves last I met them.”
“You’ve met them before, then? Did you talk to them?” Stories perked up at that, floating closer to the screen. This was new. As long as Stories had known her (and it wasn’t a particularly long period of time), Order had been shown to be more concerned with maintaining a wide selection of information, but as for the depth of the information she’d collected… that was less of a priority to her. That was evident from how she’d mistakenly assumed the elves would be little more than monkeys in her last test.
“If you’ve picked them, then I’m assuming they’re at least a few rungs above livestock.”
“They’re… how should I explain this succinctly?” Order hesitated. Then her eyes lit up. “Ah! I think this analogy will do. Have you met the God of Greed and Gluttony?”
“Yeah?”
“Like him, but smaller. And more numerous.”
“Ooh. Not great, then.”
Order nodded in response. Yeah, she didn’t much care for these dwarves either. One Greed was bad enough - now imagine that multiplied by a factor of a thousand! Just a swarm of haughty, covetous things, scuttling about and cramming their pockets full of precious gems and valuable knick-knacks as they roamed the planet, babbling incoherently to one another about their new acquisitions.
“Luckily, it isn’t too difficult to get them to cooperate with our purposes. With sufficient compensation, I daresay they’d easily offer up themselves for testing. Maybe even their first-born.”
“It sounds less like you’re describing rational sentient mortals and more like you’re talking about mythical fae. But ok, that’s the question of procurement settled, at least. Tell us more about where they live. Cause if they’re anything like Greed, they aren’t going to be strutting about for us to find. You gotta keep your hoard safe, amirite or amirite?” He nudged Adaptability, who flinched away from the touch.
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“That’s the next slide, actually.” Order tapped the remote again. “My records note that they’re a mostly subterranean race; so sprawling networks of underground tunnels, musty catacombs, confined spaces.”
“Doesn’t sound like you,” Stories frowned. “What, are you telling me that you, little miss Tidy, crawled around on all fours through miles of dank tunnels just for her scoop? I'm not buying it.”
“No, because I didn’t have to. They don’t stay down there all the time, there’s a cluster of them out and about on the surface doing farm work for the collective in exchange for a steady salary of shiny rocks. There’s nothing really different in terms of biology between the two groups, so I’ll settle for one of the surface-dwellers, instead.”
“Hey, yeah, for that matter, how’d you communicate? The elves were one thing, that was our good buddy Greed’s doing, but these mortals only act like him. Unless I’m mistaken, they don’t speak God, right? Are you’re saying Greed visited his would-be doppelgangers? Did ya conduct a lecture on basic literacy or something? Or what, did you get a language lesson from the farmers?”
She raised a slender arm. “You would be correct in assuming that I did not have time to spare deciphering the nuances of dwarven-speak. It’s a collection of grunts and snorts that vaguely indicate what the speaker wants to convey. Luckily, I have a workaround for that.”
“Why do you have to talk in riddles all the time? Do you have a daily quota for confusing people around you? I’m at least 80% sure you know I’m not as smar- oh, you mean your ability! Gotcha.”
Order sighed. At least she’d gotten through the whole briefing without Stories moralizing about how they should re-focus their sights onto a lower life-form. She looked over at the quiet God in the corner, who’d mostly been averting his eyes and twiddling his thumbs as he waited for the presentation to reach its conclusion. Well, silent and still’s better than boisterous and obstructive, she supposed. He’s only the method of delivery, after all. All he has to do is shoot where we tell him to.
“God of Adaptability?”
The mummy jerked up. “Who, me? I was listening!”
“No need to worry; I don’t need you to do anything more than inject a mortal with your divine ability. That doable for you?”
Adaptability bobbed his head up and down. “Anything you need, ma’am. I’m still indebted to you for all this.” He motioned at the full-body weave he was wearing.
“Alright, then.”
Order clicked the projector off, and proceeded to the elevator. “I’ll see you there. You two can go ahead and scout for a suitable holding area. I’ll be there momentarily. Just have to get a few tools from the God of Technology’s place. While you were away, I requested some sturdier restraints that the simple plastic sheet we were using.”
“Sure… just leave me to drag the paranoid bloke around, then! That’ll definitely go well!” Stories called out behind her. “And I know you can’t see these, but I’m miming air quotes around that last bit! It’s called sarcasm!”
“…hey, I’m not going to follow right next to you, they’ll notice me! I’ll… keep a healthy distance from you. A few minutes of distance, at least.”
“LIKE I SAID, WHO’S THEY?!”
Order sighed, stabbing the button for the ground floor.
At least she’d have some time away from the two for now, but if this carried on, she might legitimately consider extracting the vocal chords of the one she’d have to deal with for the next however many years this experiment was going to take.
==========================================
“Yeah, these’ll do fine.” Order ran her fingers over the metal bars of the cage. It wasn’t an outrageously large one, just a medium-ish size, probably able to house two to three humanoids. Or a particularly feral mutant, she thought to herself. “And you mentioned that it folds?”
“Yep! You’ve known me for centuries, Order – all my stuff folds.” Technology flashed a winning grin at the woman. “Just unlatch the front bits, and push down from the roof. After that it’s a matter of rolling it up. Like a sushi roll.” He demonstrated the process thusly, collapsing the contraption in on itself.
Order did meet up with Technology once in a while – mostly to obtain something to assist with recording new information or reading measurements that were hard to pin down by looking at it alone. Sure, she could tap into her ability, but why waste energy when you can use some device to substitute its usage?
And he was happy to oblige; the man liked coming up with new things all the time and Order was his number one customer. Had to do with his calling, she supposed. Couldn’t keep still for a moment.
“My gratitude to you, God of Technology and Advancement. If you need my help with anything in future, just ask.” He waved it off casually. “Order, all I need from you is more requests! I’m already up to my eighty-seventh iteration of my self-driving chopsticks.” He produced a set of thin metal rods from his stained apron, which proceeded to hop out of his hand and lay themselves next to a waiting metal plate.
“Still gotta work out the kinks with the feeding bit; keeps stabbing me in the eye when I present it with a bowl of rice… my point is, I’m running out of things to work on! The cage hardly took any time to come up with!”
“Understood, I’ll spend some time drafting up a list of things that’ll greatly improve my workflow.” Order responded to his desperate pleas with an assurance of more ideas to come and left the workshop. It wasn’t simply a half-hearted statement meant to placate him; she genuinely needed a bunch of stuff to increase her efficiency. They weren’t just words meant to get her away from further interaction with the other God. Cross her heart.
I really need to find another way to distract someone I want to stop talking to other than just agreeing to everything they say, she groaned. Now she was going to spend precious time coming up with a bunch of things for Technology to work on that he hadn’t already invented.
Forming her wings, she took off back into the air, heading for the experimental grounds.
Time to trap herself a dwarf.