In an enormous conference room, situated in a tiny plane of existence created expressly to house the meeting place of the gods, thousands of assorted deities had already taken their places and were waiting for the last stragglers. Grimfalk, one of the last gods to arrive, surveyed his neighbors with suspicion as he eased his enormous bulk into the phoenix-hide chair. He had been the last to arrive at the Gathering of Organic Deities, and more than a few rolled his eyes or whispered to their neighbors as he took his rightful place at the far end of the table.
"Why was I not informed of the last-minute time change?" he bellowed at no one in particular.
A loud gavel bang was the only answer to his demand.
"Order! We will have order at the table," Formua Integralis, the deity of termites and ants, thought at the assembly. Instantly all other conversations ceased. Grimfalk, who struggled at times with basic telepathy, was jealous of how easily the insectoid deity could project her thoughts to others.
"The 534,931st special conference of Earth's GOD is now in session. All rise in honor of President Brett!"
The rasping of chairs and the thud of feet, flippers, and other locomotive appendages hitting the floor would have deafened a mere mortal as the thousands of deities rose from their chairs, couches, tubs, and, in the case of the deity of Campylobacteria, a large agar plate. At the same instant, a hidden door on the far side of the room opened, revealing a rather unassuming deity dressed in a hoodie, sweatpants, and crocs.
"Formua, tell them all to sit," Brett ordered as he stifled a yawn and lurched over towards the head of the table. "I've told you 349,392 times that I don't like all these formalities. Can't we just get on with it?"
Formua's response must have only been for Brett's ears because he stopped just short of the head of the table, where a throne made of solid rainbows awaited his magnificent rump.
"Fine, fine, if that's what it takes to make you happy," Brett groused audibly before taking his duties seriously. Grimfalk's eyes missed the femtosecond transition from Brett the ultimate couch potato to Brett the ultimate arbiter of divine jurisprudence.
The President of Earth's Gathering of Organic Deities was now seated properly upon the rainbow throne. He had donned black robes, which absorbed the blinding light emitted by the crown of the Pleiades upon his brow. In his right hand, he held Excalibur, the sword of sapience, bipedalism, and opposable thumbs. His left hand gripped the Aegis, an embossed shield coated with penicillium notatum, the scourge of microorganisms everywhere.
"My dear deities, you may be seated," the President Brett declared. Once the assemblage had retaken their seats, he continued. "Our first order of business is to deal with the minutes from our last special session. Our secretary, Louis, will read the minutes of our last session."
Grimfalk groaned inwardly as Louis, the deity of lorises, slowly rose from his chair and reached for a hefty stack of paper to his right.
"I motion that we forgo the reading of the minutes, on the grounds that every member of GOD has a photographic memory!" several voices cried out in unison.
"Second!" came the roaring response from another dozen throats and other, more exotic body parts.
"All in favor of accepting the minutes without reading them, as always?" asked Brett, doing his best but failing to pretend that the exact same motion hadn't been passed over five hundred thousand times.
"Aye!" voted GOD in unison, save one dissenter.
"All opposed?"
There was a long pause.
"Nay!" Louis the loris finally got out, turning his head ponderously from side to side to glare at the assembled gods.
"The 'ayes' have it," Brett declared. "Secretary, please note that the minutes have been accepted by the council. We will now move on to our second and only other item of business for this special session: the implementation of 'The System' on planet Earth. We will first hear a report from the System Awareness for Fairness in Exploitation subcommittee. Rogier, the chair recognizes you."
Rogier, the god of European badgers, slicked back his hair as he made his way to a small podium to the right of the president's throne.
"My dear colleagues, the SAFE committee has performed a thorough analysis of the proposed laws governing the System and has come up with a number of recommendations aimed at improving fairness across the board. As we are all well aware, humans have been the dominant life form on Earth for only a short time. However, their current point total in the Great Game of Existence far exceeds any other grouping. Just the points from achievements alone are enough to put them into first place: first species to master the use of fire, first species to develop writing, first species to..."
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As Rogier droned on, Grimfalk's neighbor leaned over and whispered, "I knew they should have picked Roger the American badger instead."
"This is your only warning: any more disruptions will result in a demerit," Formua's voice echoed sternly through Grimfalk's head. It took everything he had in him not to jump over the table and try to maul the smug insect within an inch of her life, but Grimfalk managed to maintain his external composure. After all, Formua was ranked 47th among all deities, while Grimfalk was 9,366th. Grimfalk would be out cold before he even laid a claw on the insectoid goddess. If he was lucky, that is.
Rogier finally completed his recitation of the list of humanity's achievements and moved on to a more interesting topic.
"Now, as you may recall, GOD commissioned an exhaustive study on the possible effects of the proposed System, with an eye toward proposals that would not only increase our collective power but also promote equal outcomes for equal effort among deities. Beyond the introduction of what is colloquially referred to as ‘magic’, which GOD has already debated exhaustively and is outside the scope of our report, the main concerns raised by the various subcommittees related to a possible ‘snowball effect’, where weaker groups were systematically destroyed by stronger ones. Thus, the SAFE committee has determined to make the following recommendations for GOD to consider. First, to create and implement a new set of system-related achievements capable of being earned by a member of any species to level the playing field once the System is rolled out. Second, to allow deities to empower a limited number of followers based on how much divinity they are willing to invest in uplifting them. Third, return a percentage of all divinity points earned across the board to the top performers of each subgroup on a regular basis, on top of the rewards that the System will provide.
Each member of GOD was provided with a full report on the concerns that the SAFE committee investigated, supported by a rigorous analysis and our proposed solutions. Out of the proposed solutions, the three top-line suggestions already mentioned were also subjected to a full mathematical treatment, which can be found in appendix 'a' of the report. Appendix 'b' consists of various projections for 1, 10, and 100 years after System implementation under various starting conditions. As you may have already noted, the 100-year projection for immediate System integration incorporating our proposed changes is by far the best in terms of both overall increases in GOD's power while reducing the standard deviation between members by a factor of three. This concludes the report from the SAFE committee."
Rogier wiped the sweat off his brow as he took his seat. President Brett took a moment to nod appreciatively before addressing the assembly.
"Thank you, Rogier. I must say that your report was incredibly thorough and riveting from start to finish. As previously scheduled, GOD will now vote on whether or not to incorporate the SAFE committee's findings into the System integration plan. All in favor?"
About sixty percent of the assembled deities, including Grimfalk, voiced their support.
"All opposed?"
Only about twenty percent of those present actively opposed the proposal.
"The proposal has passed. Secretary, please note in the minutes that the SAFE committee's proposal was approved by voice vote. And this thankfully concludes the 534,931st special conference of GOD. I'm out."
"All rise in honor of President Brett!" Formua announced in the exact same tone she had used to herald his impending arrival. There was an almost identical rasp and thud as the assembly once again rose and stood at attention. The only difference was that Geoffrey, the deity of giraffes, overdid it this time and banged his head on the ceiling.
Since President Brett had already disappeared by the time his hind claws made solid contact with the floor, Grimfalk felt no need to stick around and play nice with the others. He stomped off as quickly as his legs would carry him, taking care to avoid slapping any of his neighbors with his long, scaly tail.
"See ya, short arms!" called Phasco, the deity of koalas.
"Hey, why don’t you go jump up your mother's gonorrhea-ridden uterus!" Grimfalk retorted. "Oh wait, she doesn't even have one! Why don’t you work on evolving a placenta too while you’re at it!"
"Yeah, well at least I have subjects to rule! All yours are dead! That meteor was all like ‘weeeeeeee splat’ and then all your theropods died of cold or starvation!"
Several deities around Phasco started laughing as the koala deity pretended to be crushed and fell to the ground. Grimfalk didn't wait around to watch any more of the koala’s antics. He put his head down and stamped off, too embarrassed to let the others see him cry.
As soon as the theropod deity crossed the threshold of the dimensional wards that stabilized GOD headquarters within null space, he retreated to his own demi-plane. Once there, he rushed over to his private hunting reserve and took out his aggression on lifelike replicas of several prey animals and rivals that, like his own species, were long gone. Feeling somewhat better after feasting upon some rather delicious, simulated entrails, he used his divine powers to clean the sweat, blood, and gore from his body before making his way to his office.
"Rough meeting, boss?" Longclaw the demideity asked without looking up from her computer as he entered. Longclaw had been Grimfalk's secretary, work spouse, best friend, and only other surviving member of his species for eons. The relationship between the two had long settled into a comfortable familiarity that transcended friendship but was decidedly non-romantic. In short, Grimfalk viewed her as a little sister.
"Nothing I couldn't handle," Grimfalk boasted, ignoring the fact that she had likely watched his ignominious retreat via livestream.
"Well, I've gone over the SAFE committee's proposal as we discussed," Longclaw noted, trying and failing not to roll her eyes at Grimfalk's needless bravado. "The changes GOD just passed offer more than just an opportunity to level the playing field. With a lot of planning and an absurd amount of luck, we could get off to an early lead over a lot of other gods."
"Through achievements," Grimfalk's reply held only the barest hint of a question as he made his way closer to Longclaw's desk.
"Right, through achievements, but also due to this 'atavism' system that allows you to empower individual members of your species," Longclaw confirmed, her exceptionally long fake nails clacking away at the keyboard again.
Grimfalk plopped down into a chair next to Longclaw and looked at what she had pulled up on the screen. It was a subsection of the SAFE committee's proposal that would now be a part of the System integration.
"See this part here," Longclaw said with determination. "This is how we revive our brothers and sisters."
Grimfalk read for a moment before his eyes widened as he realized what Longclaw had discovered. He read the relevant passage out loud, mostly for his own benefit.
"Any individual that evolved from a common ancestor of a deity's portfolio is eligible to be claimed and empowered by that deity, so long as it is not claimed by another deity and the deity pays a sliding-scale conversion cost to designate that individual as his or her follower. This process shall be hereafter referred to as 'atavism'."
"That's right. There's only one problem, however." Longclaw warned. "The cost rises exponentially the less genetically similar the individual is to your portfolio. With our current reserves of divine energy, we have enough to fully empower a single individual, and it has to be from a particular extant species."
"Don't tell me..." Grimfalk sighed.
"That's right," Longclaw confirmed with a nod. "You're going to have to pin all our hopes and dreams on the success of a chicken."