Neophyte World Builder

CROWN

“Welcome back.”

I opened my eyes to find myself in my sanctuary, as planned. One more day gone by in the life of my mortal self. That fact gave these little interludes a lot more weight, and I appreciated Artemis greeting me like that. She was a lot more friendly to me than Orpheus had been… or perhaps just expressed it more easily.

Sitting up, I rubbed my head and took stock of the small command center. “Any crises I should know about?” I hadn’t set the acceleration up high when I was mortal this time… it didn’t benefit me at all, and it made it far more difficult for Grem to handle any situations that might pop up.

“Nothing this time,” Grem answered lazily, nudging a pawn forward on the board. He’d introduced Artemis to chess at some point, and now the two played games occasionally. I didn’t ask who was winning… I’d never been very great at chess, though I enjoyed it, and Artemis being basically a newborn wouldn’t know it either, even if she had Orpheus’s memories. If she was beating my Terminal I could never live it down.

Or… exist it down? I was still unsure if my life actually counted as living, but even if I liked pondering philosophy that one was probably beyond my level. I learned and grew so I should probably just treat it like I was alive.

Artemis glanced up briefly before she spoke again. “I’m looking forward to seeing how this affects energy soon. Nobody has ever taken this risk before… all the other administrators just assume that it won’t give much, but you have a very particular setup here. It’s much more complicated than what is usually done.”

I stretched my arms over my head while she chattered, raising an eyebrow. I was in my human shape again, after a long time without, and she’d mirrored me by sticking with her own human look. “What’s complicated? I’m pretty sure I won’t get too much… if Reese is starting the religion, that’s a direct action from an incarnation, so that won’t generate anything as I understand it.”

With a push back from the table, Artemis turned away from her game and faced me directly. “That’s mostly true, but there are ways for them to indirectly cause energy growth… mostly through the effects of others influencing them. Since Sena is down there as a mortal and guiding your incarnation, she’s influencing everything he does. The complication is that what she is wanting to do is also something you told her you want, so that may not work. On the other hand, she chose to help you and even suggested this course of action… but she did it while on another world, not this one she’s on now. It’s gotten all tangled up.”

Grem snickered, “Yeah, boss tends to just mess up all those careful guidances, huh? I’m pretty sure your own boss got frustrated by that all the time, didn’t she?”

Artemis spread her hands with a shrug. “Sometimes. I don’t think Orpheus knew quite what to think of you. You frustrated her because you were unpredictable, but that’s also what she wanted from you. I think she was more confused because what you did usually worked. I know you made some mistakes, but fewer than most. And now you’re deliberately making one. This Versus world is the kind that would have caused a new administrator to fail.”

I already knew that, but decided to keep quiet on that. A new administrator couldn’t even do half the things I’d done to make Versus viable… something that still bothered me. The tutorial mode I’d gone through had kept me from doing things I’d wanted, but hadn’t possessed the means to execute. Then again, it would have been easy to spend too much doing it… even Versus was going to be net negative for a while.

“Funny how dumping several thousand into creating Versus was done while I was still earning… I’m getting a lot more per cycle now, aren’t I?” I mused to myself aloud.

“Regalia is making far more than it should, and I’m starting to wonder why,” Artemis said. “I can see a lot of the feedback mechanisms giving it so much more energy, but even those shouldn’t be giving this much. You may have stumbled onto some mechanic we aren’t aware of… but if so, you haven’t replicated it in Versus.”

That just made me shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve gotten the general idea of what brings in energy, but sometimes it surprises me as well. That’s why Akasha and Duck were able to hide their activity for so long. I just had no way of knowing if the fluctuations were normal. And bringing Sena into Versus is another mess… though Sara or Nethys or whatever she is going by these days seems to be able to generate energy just fine in Regalia.”

“You explicitly put her soul into the cycle there, boss,” Grem pointed out. “Sena’s something different. In fact I’ve been looking and I’m not sure how to read it. She’s sort of in flux between the two worlds, but until we have a few more cycles of it I’m not sure how we can read it.”

Artemis crossed her arms as the conversation shifted to Sena. “You know, you are High Administrator now. Sena seems to have a very good head for organization, and she understands the rules. Since she’s from your worlds, you can easily preserve her memories if you’d like to make her an administrator. She’d probably make an excellent one.”

To my side, Grem snorted. “Not going to happen. Pretty sure she isn’t interested, and boss would want to ask first. Even if he did yank Sara out without her permission… at least he offered to toss her back in.”

I winced, but the gremlin-Terminal was correct. “Maybe she’d do very well from the old standard, but I’m trying to do things a new way. We’ll see how it works out. Besides, her perspective as a mortal soul is really good for me. I think it helps me make better decisions.”

“Consulting with mortals all the time is a terrible idea,” Artemis said… before smirking. “Keep doing it. So far you’ve done a lot more for the cluster than Orpheus did. You do need some way of figuring out what the effects are though. You should slow down a little to analyze what does and doesn’t work, so you can better optimize your plans.”

The contrast between Orpheus and Artemis still made me twitch now and then. If Akasha and I hadn’t confirmed it by analyzing her, I’d have thought she wasn’t an Orpheus creation at all. She was just too willing to let me do what I wanted, and that seemed dangerous to me. Not that her advice was bad now…

“I’ve just had too much to handle all at once,” I admitted. “We should be able to slow down after Reese… it will take time to propagate, and if all goes to plan I should only need the one incarnation.”

Grem chortled, “Two, if you count the one that died!” He grinned toothily at me as I rolled my eyes. My first attempt at an incarnation had tripped and fallen on his own wooden sword, and somehow ended up fatally wounded. It had been a most embarrassing realization when I popped back into the sanctuary with that life already done.

Artemis abandoned any pretense of gaming with the gremlin and hopped onto a table, the “teenager” sitting cross-legged and peering at me now. “How did that girl from your old world turn out, anyway? Making as many big changes as you’d like?”

I shrugged back at her. “She didn’t break through to the other side like I’d started to hope. I’d envisioned a complete surprise when one side discovered the other, but the connection through dreams makes that unlikely. They’re more like myths of one another, which is fine.”

My nearby Terminal snorted. “She’s still doing a lot more than she thinks,” Grem chuckled. “Causing a lot of trouble for some people, but she’s kind of badass now. I haven’t been keeping close eyes on her, but I noticed because Regalia’s finally going through an expansion event. Several centuries late, but I’d bet that’s because of magic use.”

“Mortal magic use can affect the timing of your expansion events?” Artemis tilted her head. “Have you considered that might be the source of some of your obscene amount of energy generation? Changing the actual cosmology of the universe through their actions would have an astonishing effect.”

I shook my head and sighed, “Maybe, but if so it will probably not keep happening. The system is self-adjusting, and I don’t think any amount of mortals could actually use so much magic that they’d skew the end result that much. It’s more likely they disrupted the node network and the delay was from its readjustment. I’ll take a look after this incarnation is done, it shouldn’t hurt anything long term. Just make sure it doesn’t destroy civilization or something, Grem.”

The little gremlin squinted at me. “You sure about that, boss? Think about it… survivors crawling their way back out of the stone age, arguing with whose fault it was. A few wars, adventures exploring the ruins… reinventing old technologies. You thought the place was generating mad energy before, think about what it’ll spit out if we let that happen!”

Artemis had her eyes on me as I stared at Grem’s grinning face, as if he was so proud of himself. After a moment, I shook my head. That wasn’t an option.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty good idea if you’re in a story… but these are real people, you know my stance on that.” I couldn’t believe I was retreading this ground again with someone who supposedly had been me. “That’s not… I don’t think I can make a call like that. If it happens through accident or something I’ll ride it out and figure a way to benefit, but I’m not going to set them up for that. Why would you even suggest that?”

“It. Is. My. Job.” Grem emphasized each word with a rap on the table with his knuckles. “I didn’t expect you to go for it, but I wanted to point out all the options you’re missing here. And… this young lady probably studies you for how you do things differently. Diamon would probably jump at the chance if he saw what the benefit was. It’s not even a short term versus long term thing. It’s just objectively better all around.”

I looked at Artemis again, but she shook her head.

“Diamon wouldn’t… he’s pragmatic but he keeps himself out of what goes on a lot more than you’d think,” the girl explained. “He gives good advice on how he could intervene, but he’s a very old-style administrator. His worlds don’t generate a lot of energy, but they’ve very stable… he just builds more and more, so even if one starts to fail, all the others absorb the loss.”

Grem snickered, “Quantitative universe administration. That sounds like him, honestly. Doesn’t seem like a real risk-taker.”

Artemis nodded quietly. “Most are not. We do have someone who does exactly what you suggested in their worlds. Alax tends to wipe out his civilizations every few thousand cycles, and it does give him a higher production on average. It’s also very unstable though… sometimes he’s negative, sometimes he’s producing even more than you, because he has so many worlds. It’s hard to predict.”

“Huh.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I absorbed all that. “I should meet the other administrators for longer than a few minutes, too. For now, just make sure it doesn’t collapse, Grem. Keep an eye on Sara, too. I do owe her for her help, and I think she’s pretty cranky with me.”

Grem gave a mock salute. “Will do, boss! Leave it to me, Grem the helper!”

For the four hundredth time I worried about this Terminal.