“Ah, Order and Stories! What an unexpected surprise! Oh, and I see you’ve brought my brother along, too! And… Technology?” Life beamed, peeking through a crack in the door. He ushered the lot of them in, closing the door behind them.
“If all of you are here, then you’ve probably solved it, then?”
“Yeah, I have a general idea on how to deal with the problem.” Order said, her voice steady and even. She had wanted to rattle off the new theory she’d come up with as soon as Life came into view, listing every factor that she’d already thought about twenty times on the journey back to the Cube. But she refrained from the outburst.
There was, of course, still the chance that there was something she’d missed.
“Great!” Life sat down where he stood, amusedly waiting for her to continue while resting his head on a fist. “Right then; where’s this lesser God that’s supposed to make all my work obsolete? Bring him out for me to see.”
“We’ve… dropped that line of research due to… incompatibility with the desired outcome.” She replied hesitantly.
“Oh? So you admit that what I told you before you went on this wild goose chase was correct, then? So much for that whole spiel about “getting around the restrictions” I’d raised.” Life smirked as he teased his daughter.
Naturally, he’d expected her to give up in about a year or two when she’d finally realised that as the creator of all lesser Gods, he’d have personally checked each and every one of his creations for the potential to assist him with his predicament. The fact that he’d not already solved it implied that none of the lesser Gods would have been of any substantial use to her; but it was cute watching her run about and try so hard to beat him, so he let her work on it in her own way. The child was so very uptight, and there was no harm letting her get out a little and breathe some fresh air once in a while.
“Not necessarily; given enough time, I’d have eventually-”
Order caught herself. The point of this presentation wasn’t to get in a debate with Life over whether or not she would have been able to produce a candidate that could carry out the theory she championed; it was to present her latest work on what would become the basis of the solution to the problem that Life was wrestling with. And though she wanted so very much to get into the weeds of the reasons why it was still likely that her way could have yielded results… that wasn’t important right now.
“Disregarding the experiments, do you remember asking the God of Technology and Advancement over here for help before? With the problem?”
“…oh, yes! The Re-trial Thingamabobs, yes. At the time, he told me they didn’t go off, so I wrote them off as just another failed attempt at helping me. What about them?”
“Ahem! Revival Satellites.”
Order carried on, ignoring Technology’s correction. “Well, they did eventually activate and cause a not insignificant amount of trouble for the God of Death and Taxes. To summarize; they were successful in their primary purpose: they allowed for a planet of mortal lifeforms to live beyond their natural lifespans.”
Life sat up, leaning in closer. That was news to him.
“You’re saying that an approach outside of mine… worked?”
“Now hold your horses there, guys,” Technology chimed in. “She still hasn’t answered my questions. Her intentions were to increase the proportions of the Satellites and have them broadcast a wide, far-reaching pulse of the disruption waves from a static position; but it’ll require way too much divine energy, and there’s the whole problem of making sure that the waves don’t make a couple of mortals live longer than their brains can handle.”
“Have them stationed on the Dimensional Wall at equidistant points,” Order began to count off her fingers as she dealt with each query he raised. “The Wall itself draws energy from the God of Life and Creation and should easily handle a few extra drains. Additionally, we can reduce the consumption by refining the dataset the current system works off on. You mentioned that they pick planets with a level of development that would qualify them as intelligent?”
Technology nodded, still a little unsure at where she was heading with this. “I don’t see how you’re going to do that, but yeah, increasing the amount of information fed into the system would allow them to omit planets that don’t meet a certain threshold. How you want me to do that, I have no idea.”
“Scan my Library; while the data within is… outdated, there should still be enough recorded for you to form a general image of what the satellites should focus on.” Order raised her index finger in emphasis.
“Lastly - the mortal lifespans.”
“Yeah, that’s going to be the stumbling block, isn’t it? The pulse is going to be projected outwards at a constant rate, it’s going to continuously shower every single mortal with the Death-obscuring rays. You’d need, I dunno, some person manning the satellites 24/7 to make sure that it selects only the ones that need to stay alive, while allowing the ones past their due date to expire on time.”
Order jabbed a thumb at the now overflowing pile of meatballs in the corner.
“Those things aren’t doing anything at the moment, and hardly exert any will of their own. All they do is lay dormant and do nothing. With my ability, I can reprogram them to function as a filter of sorts for your systems. They’re pseudo-Gods; they have such an absurdly huge battery of divine energy that they’re capable of remaining solid in the divine realm, they don’t need rest or sustenance, and they aren’t likely to mess up with no emotions to get in the way. The perfect fit for our purposes.”
“So,” Order breathed out. “That’s… all of it. Is it viable?”
Life stared at her dumbfounded for a few seconds, before going into a deep thought, thinking over what Order had come up with. Order watched on nervously as he muttered to himself in contemplation. She was rather confident of the new theory herself; it had splendidly bypassed the three initial barriers that Life had raised at the beginning while sounding possible to achieve with the resources at hand. But there might have been something more that had eluded her; something that he was about to bring up to shatter her idea to pieces.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Only when Life looked up at her, his face a mixture of surprise and delight, did she permit the corner of her lips to curl upwards.
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The rest was a bit of a blur, as Technology went about to implement the ideas that she’d come up with.
The digitisation of the Library of Records took about an hour (which prompted Technology to question her on why she’d kept it from him all this time when this treasure trove of information could have helped him with so many other endeavours), and the grid of Satellites were up and fully functional by day three, the lumps of God meat wired in and given the new calling of sorting through specific mortals to help or deny.
There were some minor hiccups with the execution of the vision as all roll-outs tend to encounter, but none of them in particular prevented the bulk of the system from being realized. There was, after all, nothing that couldn’t be achieved by the correct application of Godly force.
“I can’t believe it.”
Life looked out in awe at the rows of satellites, Order accompanying him as he witnessed the fruits of their labour lying before him. After three centuries, he had finally made his dream a reality. No mortal would die without reaching a long, healthy age ever again.
This was his utopia.
“Go on,” Order tapped Life on his shoulder, prompting him to turn around. “You should go check on your children. You’ve earned it after all this time.”
Life’s eyes met hers. It was a nervous glance, as if he was still in disbelief at the unfolding of the events thus far. Even now he was unsure at whether or not this was a dream. He had been so certain, so confident that he’d have to devote the rest of his immortal existence in this plane of reality to creating new Gods as proxies for his feelings for the mortals he cherished.
Never able to interact with them again.
Then, steeling himself, Life formed a divine avatar, and entered the last world he ever stepped foot on.
====================================================
The first thing the God of Life and Creation felt was the warmth of the sunlight shining down on him.
He raised an arm to shield his eyes, walking purposefully towards a village in the distance. In three hundred years the place had hardly changed; the vermillion trees still stood tall, their leaves carpeting the soft clay ground. The quaint wooden dwellings evoked sharp pangs of nostalgia in Life as he took the sights in.
They were constructed rather simply, if one compared them to the standards of other more advanced civilisations. A mere combination of tree trunks and the application of ingenious craftsmanship that involved interlocking the timber with one another via the carving of slots in the wood, and sliding the logs in one by one. Life knew how they were made, naturally. He’d been the one to guide the earliest of the settlers on what needed to be done, after all.
There was the faint smell of vanilla permeating the air, the aroma of freshly baked bread accompanying it. The old ways had been passed down even after the passing of the ones that Life had taught them to, from generation to generation – the torch’s flame burning as brightly as the day it was lit.
It was just as he remembered all those years ago.
“Thank you, Order.” Life whispered under his breath, the grateful words going unheard by their intended recipient.
He meant every word.
Finally, the old God mustered up his courage, then walked towards the group of mortals, ready to introduce himself to them once more.
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“I suppose this is it, then.” Stories said. “The end of the dynamic duo. The splitting of the atom. The separation of husband and wife.”
“We were never a duo, fool.” Order retorted. “And if you ever dare imply again I’d be willing to have romantic relations with you in the future, I’ll sever your limbs and pin your helpless torso to the first mortal planet in range of an interplanetary missile.”
“Message received, geez,” Stories backed away. “But really though; what are you going to do after all this? Go back to your boring life as a librarian and spend all your time shelving records?”
Order smiled wryly. She’d come up with a smattering of ideas from her time spent engaging with Life’s problem and was raring to give them a go. And that didn’t even take into account her other plans that would have been kneecapped by a nosy Life inquiring into what she needed so much divine energy for. Now that he was off chasing the insignificant mortals again, she could carry them all out, one by one. There had also been the issue of her frankly disappointing divine energy reserves, but the solution to Life’s dilemma was also the one to her energy obstacle.
He had, after all, given her full, unrestricted access to unthinking, unfeeling terminals that would allow her to siphon off divine energy directly from the Dimensional Wall. Lumps of meat that wouldn’t question why she’d need to tap into their personal batteries at such a frequent pace.
“I have my plans.”
“Hey - yeah! We still have to come up with a name for all this, don’t we?” Stories gestured to the rows of machinery attached to the Dimensional Wall. “Revival Satellites just seems a little bit… tacky. No offense to Technology.”
Order ruminated over his utterance. Indeed, the title for the system hadn’t been proposed by her, but by the one that had prematurely abandoned the concept; and she could even be argued to be the one to ensure its eventual success! Surely the honour of naming the invention should go to her? She went to work, her mind racing through the countless combinations of words that could succinctly describe the creation; one that would fully provide the listener with a solid mental image while describing as best as possible her valuable contribution to the final product.
“How about… the Grid of Discovery?”
Stories mulled the name over, frowning as he mouthed the words quietly to himself, sounding the name out.
Then he spoke.
“Nah, that’s not a great name either. Keep going.”