Order consulted her mental clock as she took brisk steps away from Chaos’s hole in the ground. The first lesser God would arrive at the arranged location soon, so it would be best if she could pick up the pace. Plus, she wanted to drown out the recent meeting with Chaos with what she knew and loved best: updating records.

She returned to the Central Plaza (ignoring the light blue lawn for now) and made a right turn towards the staircase leading down towards the Sea of Stars. Reaching the bottom where the last step ended, she hopped off it and onto the Dimensional Wall.

The view was spectacular. At least, if you were a visitor who hadn’t lived in the divine realm for hundreds of years. After all, one would look to be suspended in space, multi-colored celestial bodies glimmering and sparkling beneath your feet, an otherworldly display that any mortal would kill to experience.

But, as Order was not one of those mortals, she simply marched across the transparent surface of the Wall towards the meeting place that was agreed upon. The Wall was, in her opinion, the most ideal spot to conduct these interviews.

It was the entry point for all lesser Gods returning to the heavenly plane, for one, so there would be no time wasted. Plus, it was a solid surface for Order as an Original Existence. No need to set up a table. Another advantage. Last but not least, the invisible nature of the Wall meant that there would be no way that the interviewee would miss her. No need to go through the hassle of providing them with confusing directions that they might misinterpret.

Order sat down cross-legged at the meeting spot. She could already spy the first lesser God floating up from below to meet her. The God of Slumber, according to her initial notes. A semi-transparent, pint-sized girl equipped with both nightcap and nightgown and clutching a soft bolster that was as big as she was, Slumber finally arrived in front of Order.

“Auuhh…” Slumber yawned. “Nice to meet you, miss Order…” “Likewise, God of Slumber. It is an honor to be in your presence. Shall we begin?”

The dialogue was carried out as such: As the lesser Gods would slip through the “floor” without external aid, Order would maintain physical contact with their skin for the entire duration of the exchange, often by grasping one of their hands or looping one of her arms around their shoulders. With her ability, she was able to temporarily expand her personal perception and understanding of the lesser God to the limited area around them, tricking reality into recognising them as true Gods for as long as they were in contact with Order by transmitting a constant flow of information into the fabric of the realm.

This method was only possible due to Order’s command over knowledge, something that other Gods were unlikely to be able to imitate. Other than Truth, of course, whose ability to show the true nature of all things could be similarly focused to achieve the same effect.

The consumption rate of divine energy however, even taking into account the other characteristic of her power to fully understand any target she touched and limiting it as much as possible, was a couple notches above what Order normally used - in essence, there was a time limit for every interview, which she had to factor in based on the age and vocation of the interviewee. And well, yes, she could continue the discussion while the lesser God was incorporeal, but it wouldn’t be good manners if she was the only one in a comfortable seating position.

“What would your divine ability be, if you had to describe it?” Order inquired. Best to cut to the chase. Time was ticking.

“Ohh, err… I can, uh, bring mortals into the land of dreams at will…” Slumber paused to yawn again. “As in… I can make them sleep for as long as I want… and at any time I want. Depending on… auuh… their constitution, of course. Some organisms don’t actually sleep, so I can’t really do anything to them…”

“Have you accomplished anything in the mortal realm that would be of interest to the divine realms? Specifically, with what the God of Life and Creation has tasked you with?”

This question was more to gauge the progress of Life’s experiment, to see if the lesser Gods were performing their implicit duties of infusion and enrichment.

“Um, I helped a looot of people get a good rest… I guess… I dunno if they lived longer… but they probably felt… better?” Slumber replied drowsily. “It feels good to let your mind just… drift away… after all…”

Order wrote down, “Inconclusive, subject did not follow up”. She queried further. “It seems that at this point in time, even awake, your state of consciousness hardly qualifies as being alert. Would this be a result of lacking divine energy reserves?”

“Ohh… uhh… no, actually. I think mister Life mentioned it to me before… it’s something to do with leaking? I have the capacity, but… it’s like there’s a hole in the bottom of the container… so it keeps coming out…” Order noted this down.

She had figured it was something to do with that, since Slumber as a concept was almost universal: all beings had to recuperate at some point, which meant that she should be on par with Gods of Order’s calibre, being constantly fuelled by the multitudes of mortals falling asleep at any one point in time.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Perhaps the constant trickle of divine energies out from her vessel might be collected in some form and utilized? Order bolded this point and underlined it twice. She’d look into it at some point in time. “Thank you for your input, God of Slumber. That will be all I require at the moment.” Order released Slumber’s hand from her grasp. Almost immediately, her appearance returned to a translucent state as the divine realm once again rejected her form from materialising.

“Ohkaay… you probably want me… to let another God know to meet you… right?” Slumber mumbled as she snuggled up against her body pillow, her right hand paddling through the air as she tried to keep level with Order without phasing through the ground. “Two months… from now…?”

Order nodded. It was an inefficient way of communication, to say the least. Word-of-mouth, that is. But it was effective at grabbing the attention of lesser Gods that were tucked away in some obscure corner of the cosmos. It also helped that lesser Gods were on the same wavelength, being able to recognise one another despite not feeding massive amounts of divine power into the fabric of reality to maintain a material form.

The latest interviewee would ask the next lesser God they came across in the mortal realm to meet Order at this place and time. Or… if it was a God that Order had already met before, they would pass on the task of finding a new interviewee to that God instead, so on and so forth until eventually it reached the ears of someone she had yet to speak with.

Slumber stopped treading imaginary water after confirming as such, and sluggishly waved as she slowly sunk through the floor towards the Sea of Stars. “Byyeee… miss Order…” Order watched for a while, reciprocating the gesture with what she determined to be the minimum length of time to hold the action of waving for it to just about qualify as being polite without being excessive.

As the girl continued to drift away from Order’s position, she returned to her notes in preparation for the next interview.

The interviewees that came up next were much the same as her preliminary expectations: they were mainly fledgling lesser Gods, existing for just under two centuries. Their callings, too, left much to be desired. Swordsmanship, Carpentry and Games? All too reliant on the sustained and continued existence of civilisation, rather than being able to support them entirely. Life had much work to do, Order mused.

It wasn’t that those Gods didn’t have the capacity; they probably had larger divine batteries than Order. But in exchange for prolonged vitality via proximity to their auras, what they received in return from the mortals was far too little. A drop in the ocean. It just wasn’t sustainable to keep giving without any form of replenishment.

What one acolyte would provide over the course of their short lives, would have been consumed in the provision of mere minutes of lifespan to the mortals that these Gods were looking over. Not to mention that these Gods regularly used power for themselves, too. They had to, if they wanted to travel from world to world as Life intended.

Like the other tens of thousands of lesser Gods Order had conversed with in the past, while they had started off initially with great power, enough to extend the lives of millions of mortals tenfold, they soon realized in their first decade or so that any energy spent was gone for good. Any divine miracle they brought about in the mortal realm diminished their aura greatly, quickly cutting down the number of lives they could potentially save.

It was also why these Gods returned to the divine plane once in a while; to replenish their reserves with Life’s assistance. The fifth God though, Order considered. Adventure. He held some promise, to be sure. Anyone who was inspired to try something new, to venture into the unknown, would trickle back divine force to Adventure.

And such ideas were infectious, so they spread quickly from individual to individual, especially if there were some merit or profit to be gained from carrying out that new idea. His energy consumption rates were much lower than other lesser Gods as well, given that the idea of adventure itself was something he didn’t have to influence directly; mortals on every planet were constantly adapting to survive, competing and fighting for resources by growing and changing.

A pity that there would need to be many Gods like him around for there to be any significant impact on the unceasing atrophy of mortal life. Slumber, too. If Life could correct the flaw in her design in future iterations, he might be able to achieve his goal of bringing great and lasting life to the mortal plane.

Finally, Order closed her brown book. Then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, she turned around slowly to face the lesser God that had been floating quietly behind her for the entire day. Who had hid just outside Truth’s domain during their chat. Who had peeked in from a dark corner while she was with Life. She had heard from Truth that he was a bit shy, and “not to make any sudden movements” or she might spook him. Since, apparently, he was rather used to not being seen by his fellow Gods.

“Are you ready for your interview now, God of Stories and Creativity?”