Chapter 2
“You can pick out a premade or template planet, and it won’t cost any additional disks,” Luke said as he flew out the window.
“Disks?” I asked warily.
“Right,” Luke said, “I didn’t tell you yet; Disks are the currency of the gods; right now, you have five thousand disks. Each disk is separated by material to determine its worth. Because you were on earth, the disks have formatted based on metals and materials from your world.”
“Like gold and silver?” I asked.
“Kind of,” he shook his head back and forth, “but neither of those specifically.” Luke rose, and a solid white disk fell into my hand. “This is the lowest currency and is worth one disk.”
I examined the small disk. It was only the size of the palm of my hand and composed of a carved white bone; it had a stylized crack from one edge to the center but was otherwise undecorated.
“So, what are the rest,” I asked.
“Well, I can’t show them all since you only have five thousand, but,” Luke pointed at me, “you should be able to find it in your menu; just ask for the balance.”
I pulled the screen up and examined it. I didn’t see balance anywhere but decided to trust Luke. “Balance,” I said to it. The screen flickered and displayed a different chart.
Balance: 5000 Disks
Types…
I selected Types, and the screen changed again.
Disks Type
Bone = 1 Disk
Iron = 10 Disk
Bronze = 100 Disk
Steel = 500 Disk
Plasteel = 1,000 Disk
Titanium = 5,000 Disk
Neodymium = 10,000 Disk
Erbium = 100,000
Palladium = 1,000,000
“You get five thousand to start with, giving a god a bit of creativity with what they create." Luke explained, “you can also exchange any disk for another as long as you have the correct number of Disks.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“So, how much are planets?” I asked.
He just gestured at the screen I was still holding. Sighing, I returned to the home screen and selected Please choose Planet type from the Home Screen. I was greeted with a prompt.
Premade…
Design…
I selected premade and waited. A new panel opened up, showing many different planets. Some were entirely barren; others had rudimentary plants and animals worth six thousand Disks; some were just ocean; some were just lava; I felt a bit overwhelmed with the choices, but knowing that I would get to make more in the future helped. Finally, after examining the options for a while, I selected water world, worth seven hundred Disks. I decided I would add land to it myself.
As soon as the planet spawned in the void, I realized something was wrong, and I facepalmed when I realized exactly what that was. I haven’t put the sun yet.
Heading back to the home screen, I selected Please choose Star type.
The options once again bombarded me, but again I needed to put something down then I would work on whatever I messed up. I selected a simple yellow star worth five hundred points and placed it in the universe. I moved the planet to the habitable zone and looked at my balance.
Balance: 3,800
Types…
The Planet below was just what I had selected, a planet-spanning ocean covering the globe. Interestingly there were ice caps already on the planet though there was no land underneath, unlike on earth. There was an ocean floor two miles below the watery surface. I pulled up my screen and looked at the options for land masses. I wanted four main continents and a few larger islands. I decided to place them all on one side of the planet as it was easier to see from one direction, and I liked the idea of an ocean that covers almost more than half the planet.
I decided to refer to the ocean between the continents as the midland sea and the larger one as the great ocean. I know I’m a genius at naming. After adjusting the continents’ placement, I looked back to Luke, who had been silent during the whole event.
“So,” I asked nervously, “What do you think?”
Luke examined it with a curator’s gaze, then grinned as he looked at me. “I think it looks good; how many Disks do you have left out of curiosity?”
I glanced over at my screen. “Looks like two thousand four hundred.”
“Okay, good; now you just need to create the basis of an ecosystem,” he said and flew over to the screen. I recommend you use the randomize option. It’ll take Five hundred disks, then just set a few parameters, and the planet will slowly build up an ecosystem and regulate the first types of animals and plants as well as the evolutionary path they’ll go down.”
“That sounds much simpler than doing it myself,” I mentioned. “Are there any advantages to building it from scratch?”
“Only in the sense that you know everything about the planet and animals that inhabit it. You can pull any information on an animal or sentient that appears in your world, so this is a moot point. The only other advantage is that someone who built their planet from scratch will be much older than most other new gods.”
I nodded and pulled up the screen. “Randomize,” I said to it, and the screen changed.
Randomize?
Plants
Animals
Both…
I pressed both and was presented with an empty box.
“Just say what you want your parameters to be, and it’ll fill in,” Luke said from the top of my shoulder.
“I want the world to randomly evolve any necessary traits for survival in both animals and plants until the world has passed five million years” the box winked out, and the world I was staring at started to turn slowly at first but faster. A timer appeared on my screen.
Time to Completion: 6hrs (local)
I felt tired as I looked at the rapidly revolving planet. I left the world to do its thing, lay on my bed, and fell asleep.