Random Dump of Parts From the World of Chalk.

8/7/2019 Random Dump of Parts From the World of Chalk.

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Dramatus personae/major ideas.

The world above. Earth or Earthlike, populated with humans, most of them unimportant to the story.

The exceptions:

The Guide: Merritta A mentor figure, the one who had the bright idea of letting a few kids play god.

Thirtyish looking woman with a pair of wooden, intricately hand carved hook canes, with a secondary

pattern of careful staining which suspiciously resembles dried blood.

A trio of loners who drifted together for mutual protection:

[Day goddess, n years, 5 months old] Tara, a girl ousted from her study group (read: clique who copies

work from the new members).

Indian mother, Native American father. (half Indian, half Indian. I'm so clever.)

Dabbles in occult, but doesn't take it seriously, mainly to irritate ultra-secular parents.

Avatar: Prefers to inhabit an albino of her chosen race, causing the scales to be a complete random

scatter of iridescent colors

[Night god, n years, 11 months old] Corbin, a jock removed from the <sport> team for dropping grades.

Deceptively smart, prefers doing the research when he needs something than memorizing everything in

advance, which hurts test scores. He was good a team member not through brute strength, but from

reading opponents and guiding strategy.

Avatar: A statue of his choice, usually in the shape of his race. He tries to make his choice a message, eg.

Choosing to animate one in the presence of someone who needs help, rather than the most beautiful

one.

[Morning/Evening god, n years old] Asterisk, (Originally Asterix, changed unofficially for several reasons)

a geek who preferred solitude up to high school, usually only having an occasional friend who've all

grown away. Straight A grades, Straight F extracurricular.

Takes medication to prevent unstable mood swings, His price to enter the world is to go without the

medication while inside.

Avatar: A fully self-created form, resembling an adult member of his chosen of ambiguous sex, whose

fur shifts shades of grey, even to solid black and perfect white.

The world below, or Clockworld, for lack of a less derivative name.



Outside the school, in the form of a painting [When creating, used chalk first.] is an image from the

perspective of space of a planet with a single roughly circular continent, northern edge a sliver of

tundra, and going through the climates down to a super-tropical jungle in the south. [Planet is ~Earth

size, but axial tilt is greater than earths, compressing the biomes]. A polar ice shelf is a good distance off

the northern shore, and unseen in the painting is a matching, larger one in the otherwise empty

southern ocean. Specks of satellite islands surround the great continent, the lucky few that weren't

engulfed by the giant, or sunk when the water level changed.

The continent is an ancient volcano long extinct, with the peak worn down. The caldera walls fell,

leaving behind the volcanic plug, roughly circular, about 100m across, 160m above surrounding ground.

The painting is made out of unusually durable paint, and while it's painted on a often walked over floor,

and exposed to the elements, it does not wear off.

Inside, the scale of time is much faster.

86400 seconds in a day.

386.5 days inside per year (number pulled out of ass inc.)

3865 days in decade.

Add another quarter year, and one inside day is 21.8 seconds outside.

86400 mod 21.8 = 6.6

6.6/21.8 ~ 0.3 a day and one season forward each entry.

[Note: The term "turn" is a specific length of time equaling one day in the world above, and 10.25 yearsinside, natives use it rather than decades. Nyah, McCaffery.]

[Smaller universes run faster than larger ones?] During the inhabitant's story, one day inside is 21.8

seconds outside, and one day outside is 10.25 years. During the creation, the difference was much

greater, millions of years could pass for each outside day. Otherwise, the laws of physics are the same,

and even the gods have to obey the laws of thermodynamics when interacting with it.

Biome touch and go to the author, similar to Earth, but nothing exactly the same. Similar classes of life,

but different species, and even the classes have differences from Earth inspiration.

Biology spice:

Fanfly: family of insects taking the niche of butterflies and moths. With a tiny body and large wings, the

fanfly gets its name from the non-rigid wings, and the series of fine spokes that support the wings. Wing

size varies from 5-15 cm depending on species.



After the ecology was established, the gods were impatient for intelligent life to emerge naturally, and

since they could not agree on one to uplift, each god selected a species with the potential for higher

intelligence, and with gene tweaking, improved the species to increase intelligence and allow greater

mastery of their environment.

The three sentient species of this little world are of relative equal intelligence, pre-forging at the start of

the story, and the oldest living members were around before the last of the original "uplifted" died.

[most of the details of the species aren't needed to understand the chapter outline. Tara chose and

named the liz, a warm-blooded herbivorous reptile. Asterisk picked the crets, an omnivorous

crepuscular species, marsupials vaguely resembling felines. Corbin picked a nocturnal

carnivore/scavenger species that has eight legs and rough spherical body, after the uplifting the size of

which is about twice the diameter of a basketball for an adult. Definitely not arachnid, he settled onoctopod. Moving the detailed racial descriptions to the end of the file.]

Atoms between worlds try to reconcile their differences in different ways, usually staying in their own

scale of temperature and time. When a god makes contact under normal conditions, he's subconsciously

forcing it to join his sense of scale, usually meaning the top layer of whatever touched only ages as fast

as them, and resists wear to near invulnerable status. With liquids, the change is more obvious, affecting

more than just a single layer, but as is the nature of liquid, it only lasts as long as the contact is held, and

gas is unaffected by virtue of being unbound above molecular level, and the change affects only the

trans-molecular forces.

a collection of connected stories, ala Foundation, but more focused in fantasy and building, rather thansci-fi, and rebuilding.



Story structure Follows the 3 main and two secondary characters, the 3 gods, the one immortal, and theguide. Dawn (The immortal)-Day-Dusk (the god)-Night-The Guide.

For chapter names:

Imm uses different clocks.Tree of lifeStretched PendulumBurning CandleCalendar of sand:Warning bells

Day uses colorsPurple nebulaIndigo skyBlue moodYellow-Green landOrange FireRedDD uses crafting (clay)

SketchingPaintingMoldingPouring:ShatteringNight uses metalworkingThe surveyThe digEarly Night story: The mine.Night story: The forge.The armory: Preparing to take over.The flag: The war ends.

Guide uses roads

Garden pathForkDetour Dead end

1. Prologue (Imm) sets the stage to an invisible audience from a presumably distant future, telling aoft-told tale. Tells the mythical story of how the world was made.

2. Purple Nebula (Day) starts out the story from the perspective of the gods. As they planned their

world, arguing about magic and mythical creatures and the chance of humanoids developing onanother earthlike world, they found themselves looking down upon not a world, but just a nebula.The guide offers them the chance to do what they were doing with a better canvas. Hesitantly,they accept.

3. First draft (DD) The next day at noon as agreed, they are back at the courtyard, unsure what todo. The guide joins them, and after a brief conversation without revealing who she is. DD asks if they can continue, guessing at her identity. She accepts, they see the world, now a ball of water.They create the continent spectacularly, and wait. After no life shows up for a while, they depart.

4. The Survey (Night) Another day passes, this time when they return the world has experienced anexplosion of life. They spend several visits searching for intelligence, but each time giving up.



Tara wonders why they can't just make people out of clay. "The same reason we can't backhome. People aren't made of clay." "I mean, metaphorical clay." "We¶re not made of that either."She goes off in a huff, and he discusses with Asterisk what evolutionary pressures wouldmaximize intelligence, annoyingly it seems that the ones that give best odds for intelligence arealso the riskiest if intelligence doesn't show up fast enough. "A hairless ape who doesn't figureout clothes quickly dies of cold. A clawless carnivore who doesn't invent the spear starves." Tarareturns and offers the idea to genetically enhance species already living on the planet, and showshow looking at the genetic machinery as it works, as well as the creature as a whole, allows oneto quickly grasp the basics of the code. "It's like a stereogram, but with one eye really small."

5. Garden path (Guide) short internal monologue while watching the new world grow as the newgods sleep, hinting at both good and bad to come, hope for future.

6. Tree of life (Imm) Mythical telling of the three races uplifted.7. Indigo sky (Day) [Summer] Trying to communicate with her just uplifted species, She organizes

plans to give them a language directly, and manages to get the others to implement the sameplan, despite their misgivings. Demonstrates how to farm, and then sees the albino in her subjects. Picking him simply because he stood out, she sheds her avatar and borrows his body.To get everyone's attention, she finds the processes dedicated to pigmentation, and hits theafterburner, making him not quite emit light, but still very visible from his sudden onrush of colors,each scale colored separately, following no pattern. Finding it easier to communicate with aninternal advisor, she decides to use this method in the future.

8. Inkwell of knowledge (DD) [Spring + Autumn] Communication no longer a problem, startingorganization begins in the tribe, as he sees that with just a physical uplifting, the small tribe wouldcollapse without order and reliance on the group, and so he spends his time in crash courses,trying to build on the instincts and memories the new sapients, with mixed results. He quicklyrealizes the gender disparity and gives up on teaching monogamy, but the mixed ages let himsee that the children weren't being neglected after the initial shock wore off.

9. The Dig (Night) [Autumn] Most of his time spent futilely trying to get his race to recognize him for what he is, the night god appeals to the Guide for assistance. Given advice to see it from their point of view, he piggybacks on the mind of one, then several, searching for an answer. They seetheir size as a disadvantage to their previous way of life, see no new way available, and see himas a coincidental invader, rather than the cause. Trying to identify with them, he takes a formsimilar to theirs, and after finally being recognized as the cause, leads their first hunt.

10. Mile marker (Guide) Mention minor events in the last three chapters, expand on how after they

left, any surface touched gained a layer of impermeability from the touches of the gods,molecules which came close enough to matter created by the young gods absorbed a smallfraction of its power. Specifically how on a molecular level, it still had a time speed of the outsideworld, causing touched objects to gain a layer that aged nearly 1/4000

ththan it did before.

11. Stretched Pendulum (Imm) [Winter] This time, she is no longer telling a myth, stitched fragmentsof communal memory. Now she is telling her own story. Meeting her god for the second time, thefirst she had been too young to remember it. Gaining of immortality with a kiss from god. Whentesting sharpness of tools along the back of her claw, even though she repeatedly hones theblade, it won't cut her at all. Testing proves this to be the case with even the sharpest blades.Most active processes have slowed, needing food and sleep at only a quarter of the usualamount. She distances herself from the rest of her tribe, making many worried for her. Trying toconfide in secret with a few outside the tribe, some consider it a gift with purpose, or a curse topunish her for presuming to be equal to the gods, a test of some kind, or just being a plaything.

Her opinion changes repeatedly over her life, never considering the simple truth that is was anaccident.12. Blue mood (Day) [Spring] Recent death of leader put large tribe into depression, Tara tries

various activities until giving up and just talking about what she remembered of him. Thisdevelops into a visit-long wake as more join in with stories, and she keeps asking to know moreabout the deceased, as she had only known him for so short a t ime.

13. Molding (DD) [Spring] a Population boom has caused the usual problems of crowding, starvation,and sickness, requiring emigration. After groups have been determined, he tries his best to teachthe basics of pottery so they could store food and water, the primitive barrels they made aren'teven watertight, and vulnerable to pests, and so had to rely on skins and bladders for water



storage. He helps find and identify a patch, and using a loose cloth filter, shows how to removeimpurities. After filling a barrel with clay, he returns to the village with it to show basic sculpting,and to sketch out how a kiln might be made. A few barrels are brought down to the clay bed to belined with clay to allow water to be brought on the emigrations

14. The Mine (Night) [Spring] Corbin notices in the moment before entering how the guide reachesinto her pocket right before the decent begins, pulling out something in her fist, giving only aglimpse of gold. Convinced this gold is the key to entering the world without the Guide'sassistance, he begins to sell his subjects on the idea of mining for it, describing how resilient itcan be, made into wire as thin as hair, even into cloth, how it doesn't tarnish or rust, and how itmight allow their god to reside longer than three days a decade. Many caves decide to put moreresources into gold mining, and promise to reserve a percentage for him to experiment with thenext time he returns

15. Secret passage (Guide) In between, balanced on the fractal key that is her badge and tool of office, she watches as the first signs of instability begin to show. Death to those who had notcompleted their life, greed in the hearts of the world, mastery of the plowshare, and signs of thembeing beaten into swords. It is not a perfect world, and imperfections are what make chaos. If thegods devoted all their time inside, they might be able to keep the eruption from happening for alittle longer, but even they would be overwhelmed in the end. They have dedicated themselves tothis system, and these three infant races, mistakes will happen, but if they didn't turn againsteach other, there's a possibility of peace, or at least not too much war.

16. Burning Candle (Imm) Fire betrays secret to tribe. Fire catches on one of the trees containingcrafting workshops, not knowing it was already empty, she enters the fire searching for victims tosave. Finally after giving up, she escapes, her body covered in flames, and yet it barely had timeto burn any of her before it's put out, and she doesn't suffer a singed whisker. Giving up onexplaining, she flees as some consider the final sign of some evil, voiced loudest by those whowant her mother's position of power. When forced to choose between the tribe and her distant,suddenly alien child, the immortal finds herself alone.

17. Yellow-green land (Day) [Summer] Deciding to take a break from the usual job of tutoring her subjects, she leaves the main compound to watch the farmers repair the fences. While relaxing,she has a conversation with her old host, the first albino born, and the first host she visited in.They debate over whether the uplifting was a good idea, or if it would have been better to let thespecies grow normally. They talk about the world she comes from, the struggle to explain it, andhow she views the world below as a much better place with closer communities, a simpler life,

and not even the guilt of war and crimes of ancestors and other members of the species. Finally,they discuss a few of the creation myths that have been made up to explain the gods and their creation, many ridiculous to her, and so he convinces her to write out the true story beforedeparting. After a promise not to edit it or take it as full of infallible wisdom, she writes it out withseveral making copies as she went, to spread to the scattered races.

18. Glazing (DD) [Summer]Two visits after the kiss, he is confronted again by the immortal, in themiddle of one of her feral phases. Attacking him, her claws shed his blood, to the surprise of everyone around. "Don't touch it, his blood is just as cursed as is touch and more!" Realizing shemight just actually try to kill them, he uses emergency get the hell out of there procedures, andwhen he sees she's still got a hold of him, he touches down on the moon rather than risk findingout what would happen in bringing her to the world above. Condensed heavy gasses allow themto talk, and so they do. Initially angry, he quickly loses his steam as the full brunt of what hashappened to her. All she knows ripped away and nothing left to adapt into but madness. He tries

to explain that just because one path was closed, didn't mean they all were.19. The Forge(Night) [Summer] Experimenting with gold. Picks up gold just as he is ascended, findsin hand, quickly pockets. Thinking he got away with it, he is distracted soon after going their separate ways on the discovery that when he lets go of the gold, now shrunk to less than abaseball size lump, it begins to lose solidity, eventually melting through his pocket to touch his legwhere the entire lump solidifies again. After a very awkward afternoon, he finds a replica sword,dull, poorly balanced, and overpriced if it had been perfect, but still real metal. After finally gettinga majority of the gold off his clothes and into a proper container, he dips the sword into the gold. Itjust runs off as soon as he stops touching it. After applying a blowtorch to the end, it still adhere,even when the steel was melting. Tries to trace a line of liquid gold down the blade so he can



hold it and make the gold solid at the same time. As he finishes tracing the line of gold down theblade and over the hilt, his other hand catches on a burr on the cheap sword's hilt, welling up aspot of blood. Inspiration strikes, and muttering "Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework" he appliesthe blood to the gold, and with a ripple of heated air spreading over the gold, it begins to obey thethermodynamic scale that he's used to. Filling up a bucket with cold water, he repeatedly dunks itinto the water until it is cold to the touch. If he had bothered to examine it post dunking, he wouldhad found the golden edge to be sharper than it had been before, and the "made in Taiwan"imprint in the pommel no longer made such a lowly claim.

20. Alleys of the mind (Guide) Laws govern everything the guide does, from selection of candidatesto how she interacts with her domain. The world has aged and solidified, where powers of godsare limited. Sleep is vital for the growing mind, and gods are vital to a growing world. The problemarises where a world needs someone who will awaken to a world too late to be saved which couldtake generations to recover, if ever. There will be no punishment for failing the new races, and noreward for guiding them to the stars, save for self-imposed ones, and the acceleration or brief halting towards an ultimate goal. Forcing action would surely be fruitless, all she can do is showthe path. As Corbin makes his key and binds its state with first the mixing of disparate atoms, andthen bound stable by his will and blood, she seeks out the sleeping minds of Tara and Asterisk.coaxing them inwards, and gently tying them to another pair of minds, a young albino liz and theimmortal, they can see the world in their dreams, giving their subconscious to realize that it is justas real and precious as their world, and not just some alien game.

21. The calendar of sand. [find a quote from the book of sand.] (Imm) In her time of exile, phases of clarity and madness occur, spending years as a pure animal of instinct. Afterwards, withoutapparent warning, she manages to wake up to attempt civilization again. Spending time as astoryteller, messenger, tailor, or wherever she can find a niche on the edge of the social structure,she stays outside the core of the tribe, and avoiding tasks that had the chance of outing her status, such as hunting.

22. Orange fire (Day) [Autumn] Drought has killed the crops, and brushfires have reduced the plainsto small patches of grass for more than half of the liz nation, forcing them to ration and searchnew places for food. One primary source, usually not used in times of plenty, are the leaves andwillow-like tendrels on the two primary forestry trees. At first the crets don't mind, as they can't eatsaid leaves, and have no use for any part of the tree but its wood. A mentality of "As long aswe're forced to eat trees, we might as well eat our fill" began, and the trees began to be strippedof more than just a little, until they began to weaken and die. This they don't like as much, and

consider this a wearing out of hospitality. When she tries to be a deus ex machina by orderingeveryone about, she finds herself on the receiving end of both groups' resentment. Backing off,she decides to let them sort it out, which doesn't work either, with the liz simply stripping theleaves off during the hottest part of the day, when the trees are uncontested. The cret leadersseem to consider this an even bigger insult, and out of wounded pride, try to force their way in toretake the leaves, which she finds just ridiculous. "How do you reattach leaves?" Instead of kicking them out, she decided that they needed to talk things out, by force if necessary. Takingfour chairs, she stomps out to neutral ground, spreads them out on the bare earth, and scratchesa crude square into the ground around the seats, and then stomps back. Taking an irresistiblegrasp of the leader of the covert treestrippers and the mayor of the village, she drags them out tothe same location, with many following. Using several threats involving what she would do if theyexited the square, up to making all the trees poisonous, she keeps them in place until thecaptured crets arrive. Allowing two to speak for the group, she tells them to release the rest. A

few flee, but many stay, now curious. After declaring to help one group if either member of theother leaves the square, she referees the diplomacy meeting, secretly feeling just as, if not moreawkward than the others. After everyone has calmed down, they get a piece of primitive greypaper brought over from the cret village, and write up an agreement that both sides see as fair.The liz would be allowed to roam without challenge to gather shaded leaves so their hunger wouldn't kill more of the forest, and in exchange they would assist in processing the dead trees sothe wood would not go to waste, with no future claim over the wood. They each sign it to declarethe treaty agreed and complete as the sun touches the horizon, and they look up to see watchingover them the albino, now bleached back to white, and the square in the dirt gone, as if rubbedaway by nothing more than time.



23. Firing (DD) [Autumn] Kiln developed during absence, youth loses eye to badly fired clayexploding in his face when he used it without guidance. The builder of the kiln demonstrates tothe understandably distraught mother what went wrong, and how the careless mistake could havekilled him. "He did what any child does, he explored where he could, and because he went wherehe knew he shouldn't have been, he got hurt. He could have been hurt worse, or not at all. I'mglad he wasn't killed, but I'm also glad he got hurt. The next time he uses the kiln, his work will beperfect, and every time after that will be an improvement."He helps develop basic crafting ranksto prevent such mishaps again.

24. The Armory (Night) [Autumn] Corbin finds his tribes have managed to build forges hot enough towork the gold , and for the first time, most octopods are wearing decorative clothing, in the form of metal stockings clasped around a leg bone. For all the gold dug, they also found much morecopper and tin, and alloy experimentation produced bronze, making obsolete many of the toolsdeveloped up to that point, and demand has been constant on the forges, with many locatedunder only minor shelter to allow liz eyes to see, so the forge can be run without a break. He asksfor a set of the clasped stockings to be made in bronze, and then demonstrates that a branch iseasily snapped with a swing of a claw made into a knife. Putting the bronze armor on it, herepeats the attack, this time failing to cut the branch. Through his encouragement, a defensiveforce is created, as he is afraid of civil wars and/or invasions of the other races over richer minesand any forges perceived as better.

25. Runway (Guide) The guide watches the gods as they prepare for sleep, seeing the mental stress

of experiencing three additional days in between sleep, even if their bodies don't feel it. Tara, whohad written each visit down in detail, simply gives up after homework to sleep. Asterisk doesn'teven touch his homework, just lying in bed, his mind clearly wondering if he's doing a good job asgod, with no one to get advice from. Corbin finishes his homework, and then dives into theinternet, studying metallurgy and mine engineering until he falls asleep at his desk.

26. Warning bells (Imm) [early Spring] Atop the peak of the volcanic plug, she watches the groups of Octopods prepare for war as the last of the sun fades. It is clear they intend to attack a village of the already asleep liz, but she is under no delusions that they would be satisfied with that. Talkingto a sleepy hermit liz and an elderly octopod pilgrim, she discusses helping those who hurt her,even if all those who made the decision to cast her out were dead, no other loyalties remained,her god hasn't been to the world in years, sleeping. Eventually she decides to write a letter to himexplaining what has happened, what she plans to do, and how she doesn't care whether theendeavor succeeds or breaks her lifeline, a curse she now blames him from. Letting the valuable

paper get caught by the wind, she steps off the edge, unwilling to take the long way down.27. Red (Day) Awakening from a dream of her people being attacked, Tara lies awake wondering if

she's just being paranoid. Phone rings. Asterisk asks if she "saw it too?" Wasting no time, sheagrees, beelines it to the courtyard. Meeting him there, they find Corbin standing apon thecourtyard mural, a sword in hand, point on the ground touching a village of her people, smokevisible in the painting, as if just added. The longsword is a reproduction, and would be dull, but hehad added a new edge out of gold, and the entire tip is covered in it. Both the sword and him areimmobile and unmovable by them. The guide is on a side bench, watching, clearly nervous, butnot getting up to help. The mural is the door, Corbin has created a key from gold of the worldbelow, smuggled out a bit at a time, melted and applied to metal of the world above. A bridge of two kinds of matter, now existing in both locations. She didn't bring her key, and isn't allowed tolet them in off schedule, but doesn't have to prevent creation of another key. Or two. Realizingthey have to make another key, they search themselves to find among junk, the letter written on

the volcano peak. Putting it down on the mural, he manages to complete the key by writing ashort response at the bottom of the page.28. Shattering (DD) They arrive at the volcano peak half a season after the immortal left, the war

starting at the end of winter, now full spring. They meet the two who consulted with the immortal,and weak from the lack of sleep, they decide to stay in their natural shape, and not even fly,saving all their strength to stop Corbin's army. They split up, each heading towards theunattacked villages they are responsible for, trying to build whatever army they can to cut off theattacker's progress. Reunions are made, and he finds that his army has been mostly formed bythe immortal, many following her as she has entered legends alongside him. The smaller cretarmy meets the first shortly after the liz does, and they begin to prepare the village for the



oncoming attack. Less than an hour before the siege is to begin, they find Corbin enteringsecretly, scouting while invisible to all but his fellow gods. They take him prisoner, but hardly getany time to interrogate him before the first attackers invade. Corbin attempts to escape, but doesnot manage it with both of his equals restraining him. From all they can hear from the battleoutside, the defenders are losing steadily. A scream distracts Tara, Corbin manages to strike her down, and then Asterisk. They awaken quickly and seek him, finding him at the front lines, inburning black armor, with the sword that he made into a key, killing mercilessly.

29. The Memorial (Night) Corbin had entered the courtyard not very long before the others, andhadn't even known if the sword would allow him in, it was just a theory that proved to work. Hehad awoken from a very similar dream, from the perspective of a leader of the octopods, standingat the head of an army, armoured in blackened liz scales, fused together under heat and stitchedtogether into scale mail, wielding knives made from the claws of crets. He heard as it yelledfearmongering propaganda at the army, and he awoke knowing his lessons on defending their territory had been twisted into a "preemptive strike" against two races who were stronger individually, but had no wish to rule. He lived much closer, and arrived with the sword, not wastinga precious second in entering the largest statue to stop the army. He arrived, and quickly caughtup with the invaders, only to be declared an imposter by the leaders, and forcefully dismantled.Realizing he would have to stop them by force, he entered the village, planning to rest, preparehis body and mind for what he assumed would be a fight with no allies on his side. Instead, he'scaptured by the gods, and sees the defending army, armourless crets and weaponless liz, he

knows who would win if he didn't stop them, and that to them, it looked like it was all his fault. Heescapes when she gets distracted from holding him, and runs out to fight back the invaders. Thetruth finally dawns on them as he slices one of his chosen race in two, and he gets thereinforcements they need. The invaders retreat, and the gods worn out, pass out in the middle of the carnage.

30. Roundabout (Guide) The three gods remain asleep for years, on the outside they sleep untildawn, soon before the first adults would be showing up. They awaken in the memorial townwhere many have stayed to rebuild, even octopods had remained, realizing the crime their superiors had forced upon them. Goodbyes are made, they promise to return at the usual time.The immortal has kept out of sight, still feeling resentment at being cursed with a body that wouldage no faster than the gods. After they leave, she is confronted by the guide, who offers to killher. She demands an alternative of being able to join the world of the gods, or have her bodyreturned to normal, as she doesn't want to die at the moment. The guide declines the

counteroffer, and offers her the chance to live. "Everyone knows what you did, and some evenknow why you did it. Here's your chance to go and let someone know who you are. Shed your past for a while and go back to where you could give a new name and earn it. You aren't cursed,you get to see what happens tomorrow when you should have died yesterday."

Species descriptions are not complete, but the core is there, and a lot of what's already written may never be used. Gratuitous biology ahead, you were warned.

[Liz]The Diurnal race, herbivores, are gatherers and dabbling farmers, large warm blooded replite,

similar in form to komodo dragons. Named quite uncreatively Liz. Like deer, plural and singular are the

same.

On most individuals, Scales are usually two colors, with one clearly dominating, a second and

occasionally a third contributing a scattering over the primary pattern. One or both colors are often

inherited, but sometimes there is no relation to either parent. Albinos are an uncommon occurrence,

about 1%. Albinos are cold blooded, and are stronger when warmed by the sun, but quickly weaken to

the point where it is a struggle to walk when the temperature drops. Rainbows are important to them,

as they consider themselves to be a fragment of the sun mixed with the earth, and the albinos are



clearly the ones untainted by the earth, usually taking the positions of advisor, closest thing they have to

a priest, but their strength means they are active well past the age most retire from communal work.

Biology:

Their eyes have no iris to regulate light intake. Instead, there is a pair of hard membranes behind the

lens. Tiny muscles surround them, usually relaxed. When instinctively contracted when it gets too bright,

the membranes separate, allowing blood to flow in between them. This thin layer of blood acts as

natural light filter, getting thicker if it gets brighter.

With a pair of stomachs to digest, they are able to eat every plant down to and including young wood,

but they still prefer higher energy meals, like fruits and vegetables, and experimental cooking is a very

popular hobby.

They trade food with the Crepusclar tribe for crafts, and their dead with the Nocturnal for metals and

stone, in particular, pestles and grindstones to make flours.

[Octopod] The Nocturnal are scavengers and hunters, and learned quickly that the latter does not apply

to the other tribes, but still consider the dead theirs, thinking nothing of digging up fresh graves. In form,

they are rough spheroid twice the size of a dodge ball, with a set of eight legs growing equally around its

equator. Each foot consists of three small dexterous pincers, and an adult can easily stand on three and

run on four. If sufficiently damaged, a leg will spontaneously amputate itself if an infection takes hold.

Fragile, but with redundancy, even the most careful usually lose one before old age, with the average

being two to three lost in a lifetime. Legs do not regenerate, but are more durable and flexible whenyoung, and over their life slowly harden to support the growing body, at the cost of a more rigid frame.

Each leg has two joints plus the connection to the body. The shoulder and lower knee are both ball

joints, with the middle a fixed hinge that can bend more than ninety degrees both way, and the muscle

around this joint is where it gets the most power for moving.

They prefer natural living in natural or artificial caverns, and as such have specialized in mining. Besides

the mining industry, they also use the dead in a variety of ways, besides meat, they also form bones into

tools, the fat into candles and soap, Scales of dead liz into armour, and the claws of crets into weapons

on a variety of handles.

[The primary character native to the world below is the following, and as such this species is going to

receive much more attention than the others, requiring a proportional growth in the detail of the race

as a whole.]



[Cret]The third species is as different to the first two as they are from each other. Crepuscular (active

during dawn and dusk) omnivores, they found their niche in crafting a lot of the various in-demand

things, clothing both decorative and functional, the tools that need constant replacing, etc. The most

humanoid of the three, can sum up description as bipedal marsupial feline with an omnivore's jaw,

hands of three fingers with sheathed claws, and a thumb with a small vestigial fixed claw. Named Crets

as a Portmanteau of Crepuscular Cat, even though they only bare a light resemblance.

Forests are their primary habitat, but are adaptable, with branch outposts scattered anywhere useful,

near other race's homes, near the ocean or good hunting grounds.

The reason this species was uplifted: Once upon a time, before the uplifting, a great hunter, a large

horned carnivore hunted them, until they took the upper hand and began an evolutionary battle by

digging pits and luring them in. When they stopped falling for it (heh), the pit traps needed hiding better

and better. Eventually, the predator, greatly reduced in numbers, only consisted of the members who

wanted nothing to do with the forest.

Reproduction: Like the other two races, the felines have two sexes, but the males only make up a

quarter of the population. This is true for all the mammaloids, and is due to a quirk in the reproductive

biology. While there are two sexes, reproduction is a tri-zygotal process, in which two males contribute

half of a complete genetic sequence to a female, whose egg already has a nearly complete sequence.

This redundancy developed as a response to a series of diseases, which damaged the zygote's genetic

sequence, with disturbing results. The least obvious modification applied during the uplifting is a special

tweak on how female zygotes allow entry, in which the egg was given a second protective membrane,

forming a dead space 'airlock' inside which a single sperm is analyzed by a messenger strand similar to

RNA. The messenger picks a random gene, and makes a search for a close match. If it finds none, the egg

ejects the sperm, and the process repeats. This causes half of viable candidates to be rejected, but

greatly reduces the chances of an invading microorganism being accepted.

After the first sperm is accepted, the initial stage of pregnancy begins. If this is not her first, it is

outwardly invisible, but if it is, it becomes quickly obvious over a few weeks as mammary gland develop

to working capacity. Unlike humans, their mammary glands are a tubular shape held vertically, with

teats inside the pouch. This allows greater mobility, a lower center of balance, and a more balanced load

on the spine. If they have experienced a previous initial stage, this stage lasts only a few days, usually

noticeable only by a loss of sex drive, and usually an increase in other activity.

After the male sequence has been completed, true pregnancy begins. Like most marsupials, this stage is

relatively short, lasting around half a season. Afterwards, the child (occasionally, twins) climbs to themother's pouch where it stays, growing from its current size of small enough to fit inside a hollow golf

ball, to the size of a large kitten. The evolutionary advantages of marsupialian birth are too numerous to

list here in full. A few are, it allows prenatal brain development speed during incubation without limit by

the size of birth canal, it greatly reduces fatalities of both mothers and hale children, major birth defects

can be caught much earlier, and so on.



Males are rare because it is a recessive trait. While one male zygote has a 50% of giving the male genetic

information, both of the bonded sperm must have the male sequence, or the fetus will default to

female, picking the female sequence using the same process that chooses which example of any specific

gene is preferable.

Puberty occurs during the second half of their second turn along with a final growth spurt in a male'sappendages, while females have shorter growth spurt and a muscle density boost, so while the average

adult male is taller, at their prime, a female is stronger. A change in fur color is common, and while most

young are a shade of light brown, adults vary to every shade of grey. Genetic redundancy means albinos

are if not impossible, completely unheard of. Note mammary tissue does not develop until the initial

stage of pregnancy.

Life cycle: While there is only minor sexual differentiation between the sexes, several factors contribute

to very different life paths for each gender. The average complete lifespan, unbroken by accident,

murder, or disease, is five to six turns.

For both genders the first turn of life is the same, spent being an infant, and then a kid. Besides the

mother, the primary source of rearing is the males of the tribe. Each child usually gets attached to one

or two fathers, chosen not biologically, but emotionally. It is common, but not mandatory for sons to be

raised primarily by the male subtribe during his first turn.

An infant feline is very similar to a large kitten, quickly adapting and able to walk as a quadruped after

less than a season has passed. Over time, the front feet, which start out ending in large paws, slowly

change. Finger bones grow, and the fat between them is absorbed, finally giving the child usable, if

webbed, hands. Swimming is encouraged to build flexibility in the joints gradually with the minimum of

discomfort. All older ages enjoy swimming, but the young are the most at home, accidental drowning

only happens to grown individuals.

The next major shift begins to become apparent. Before, the pelvic bones, a series rather than a single

bone, like the human shoulder system, were arranged to provide maximum mobility on all fours. The

child begins to use his hands more, and finds it more stressful on its legs, preferring to sit up to allow use

of both hands, the bones begin to make subtle shifts. As the internal organs put more constant pressure

on the incomplete pelvic cradle, the stress causes tendons to build up pressure. In a surprisingly short

time, the tendons pull the hip joints from their original location, a simple plate of cartilage, to a proper

bipedal socket, which will in time fuse permanently. As a child, the leg had a large range, and then a

weird bump in the middle of the ball joint's path, ends with a socket which reduces the quadrupedal

mobility to nearly nothing, in exchange for being able to walk upright. It is possible to walk uprightbeforehand, but the younger the child, the more difficult it is to stay stable.

After this process is complete and stable, the tribe considers the child a young adult, and while sexual

development will not begin for a while, it is at this point gender-based roles begin to take effect. In early

human cultures, jobs were divided by gender into childcare and high dexterity low strength work for

females, with primarily physical and/or mental skills for males, in both the older getting less menial tasks

as they developed skills, and younger workers came in to reduce burden on the skilled. In this culture,



differences in biology and situation have caused a different split, with many tasks not gender defined.

Instead of Nurturers and providers, there are several dynamics and factors to consider.

Females whose children have reached bipedal stage and elderly males, or in cases where age would

increase risk further, females who have had none yet, are the group who take on the jobs with more

than moderate risk. For example, felling trees, scouting possibly hostile territory, or being bait for a trapof a great hunter. This is primarily because children are the primary force keeping the tribe going, and a

mother is a primary part of a stable upbringing. In the case of accidents, it is better to lose a member

who has already contributed to the future, and while it would be better for the tribe as a whole to have

an orphan in the tribe than no child at all, most tribes see that the emotional tradeoff is not worth the

cost.

Jobs with risk mitigatable by skill have a loose guildlike ranking system, in which the masters are not an

organized group, but simply recognized as one who has a valuable skill worth teaching. Suggested by the

god after a dedicated scientist's new kiln was misused without his knowledge, leading to badly baked

pottery exploding, leaving the well-meaning interloper half-blind. After the scientist was able to explain

why it exploded, and how to avoid it, the god declared him to be if not a master, the closest one there.

In short, to be a master, the title has to be given by another master and approved by a majority of the

judges, or if no masters for the craft exist, voted in at a tribe meeting.

Temporary

Chapter 2: Purple Nebula

"My dear Tara, Unicorns are impossible." My friend stated, glaring down at us when he walked over withhis lunch, as if his word was final on the matter. Corbin sat down on the bench next to person I had beentalking to before he joined in, taking his side in the impromptu debate he had walked into.

Asterisk and I had been debating merits of various fictional species in a normal world without having anevolutionary crutch of magic. Gryphons, hippogriffs, and the other large winged hybrids had been the firstto go extinct, as even assuming they never flew, they wouldn't last very long against other carnivorousanimals, or be unable to keep up their metabolism, and starve. While more research would have to be



done before ruling out harpies, fire dragons were right out. If they used chemical fire, whatever chemicalsthey had adapted to produce would be so corrosive they would damage the creature more than anypotential threat.

Of course, he had only heard the tail end of the concept, and like a black rat, snuck in through the firstopening he saw. ³Oh shut it, you don¶t even understand the arguments and conditions.´ I complained, andate another meatball quickly, so as not to lose control of the conversation, but he had started before I hadstarted to chew. I stared darkly at him as he started with his typical silver tongued debate strategies.

Corbin held up his hand, ready to tick off arguments, I hate that debate technique of his, if you didn¶trefute each argument perfectly, he won and was able to stay on the offensive. I hate it because it usuallyworks. ³Oh Tara, you underestimate me. One! Unicorns have never been captured, photographed, founddead and preserved, and so by standard scientific protocol, it is to be assumed they do not exist.Although a toy unicorn in formaldehyde would be a cool addition to my collection. Do you happen to haveany?´ he asked, I shook my head, the mental image of one of my long since boxed up ponies jarred upand labeled as a preserved unicorn fetus more than enough to make me deny their existence to him.³Two. The typical equine unicorn is a cross-family hybrid. Equines are simply not genetically compatiblewith any horned species. And three. Horses will not evolve into unicorns, because the duration of a wildspecies has become so short, the wild ones will die out or change much more than just their foreheads inthe next million years, and any domestic horse would be taken out of the gene pool if it started showing

signs of abnormal skull growths.´ He put down his hand, clearly done, and started on his own lunch.

Miffed, I let go of my fork, letting it tip over with a meatball already wrapped in spaghetti, and mockinglyraised my own hand. ³Argument one is a straw man argument for the non-existence of unicorns, not theimpossibility.´ I easily deflected, lowering my first finger. ³Argument three is again flawed, just becausehorses probably won¶t evolve a horn doesn¶t mean they can¶t.´ I lowered my ring finger, rotated my fistabout to show how I felt about his points, before letting my hand drop. ³Equines are just one small groupof all the hoofed mammals, give me the common ancestor of, say, goats and horses, and a few dozenmillion years, I¶ll have your unicorn.´ I returned to my meal, even though I knew I had won, I didn¶t feelvictory in such a silly debate.

The sun was reaching its zenith, slowly eating away the shade we sat in, the courtyard¶s asphalt squarebeing the first to lose the cover and to start absorbing the light, the lit black surface throwing back colors

and shades I had never figured out to duplicate.

Asterisk took up the lull in the conversation. ³Breed slimmer Rhinoceroses? And there¶s those one hornedgoats some guy found, wouldn¶t those count? Or I guess we could just settle with narwhals beingmercorns.´ My stifled chuckle turned into a cough, and I shrugged, losing interest in the debate to watchthe blacktop¶s shadow retreat, and we ate in silence for a while.

Corbin eventually chimed in. ³Rhino horns are hair, not true horn, and Narwhals have a huge tooth. As for the goats, he surgically merged the horns while the goats were still young, so he made them, not foundthem, and so it¶s not a genetic trait, would seem unfair to count them at all in my opinion.´ He said, clearlyrunning out of steam, only batting back the ball out of reflex, he had lost interest in the current discussion,and was following out a different train of thought. ³Start with microbes, and if you were obsessed enough,you could make unicorns, but that seems like a bit of a waste, like how we spent the last thousand years

perfecting the printing press, and then what do we do? Junk mail galore! At least they actually do printother stuff worth reading as well, but me, I¶d use such an opportunity to try and replace humanity. Nothingtoo different, just a human that was a bit smarter, and less of a bother to whatever spirits there happensto be.´

We both nodded in agreement, As we could easily see where he was coming from. As each of us hadbeen quite the loner for our own reasons for the year before we had amalgamated together into an oddpallet of features, we contrasted often, but the arrangement had shown ways we complimented eachother as well. Smarts was one thing we had easily collected on our own, drifting past the pack, not quiteout of sight, but far enough to not really fit in.



In my case, the year before had ramped up homework to the point where I was going crazy. I built up a³study group´ that let my friends and I split up the work to our strengths, trade around work, and instantly,we all had an extra ten hours of free time each week. Elegant in theory, but in practice, my ³friends keptbringing new members in to reduce their work, and then things spiraled, new people recruiting newpeople recruiting new people. I saw the pyramid con, how the entire structure was going to collapse,especially since none of the original group knew even who were in the third layer. All they saw wasinsulation. I¶m good at debating, but arguing with a brick wall would have been more effective, and theyused classic smear tactics, which for quite a while I regretted not stooping to first.

When the dust had settled, all ties to the structure had been cut, and to boot, a half a dozen mutuallyexclusive rumors were surrounding me. At least now I can look back and laugh about how I was made upto be a lesbian who had given the entire boys basketball team horrible unspecified STDs, and that myNazi parents had raised me as a Satanist.

No social life for a year had left me with plenty of time to do that homework. When it did collapse, I hadbeen away from the group so long they didn¶t find any evidence linking me to the whole stupid affair, eventhough they all pointed at me, I didn¶t have any of the shared errors they did, and I was known as thestudy bug I had turned into, they discounted it as a horribly thought out frame job.

³Let me throw in a shred of empathy, and some self control.´ Asterisk said, gazing down at his now emptytray, swirled traffic cone orange and army green, recycled plastic from the lowest bidder. ³The humanrace has had a population surplus of a billion every fourteen years for the last fifty! If we had stayed atthree billion people, tech development wouldn¶t have been hampered significantly, and living conditionswould be immensely better, especially for the poorest if people actually cared about each other, rather than considering life a game of King of the mountain of corpses.´ He shook his head quickly, as if fightingoff the blue view of the world. He may have been as pale as a few drops of blood added to a glass of milk, but his emotion spread across the gamut more than anyone else I knew.

I leant to my side and shrugged my shoulder to nudge him, a silent comforting gesture. I knew it would beas effective as giving someone in free fall a single white feather, but at least I was there, and wasexperiencing the same situation. ³That isn¶t the fault of the sapiens species, that¶s the case with the entireanimalia kingdom, scratch that, the entire system of life. Evolution is adapting, competing, and, well,

making new versions to prevent the original planned obsolescence winning. If you¶re going to changehumanity for the better, fix the biology. For example, add a bit of redundancy so a simple electric shockdoesn¶t kill you; make the brain able to pump blood while the heart recovers. Make the body refuse tostore fat if adding more makes more problems, and add a way to let the blood clean arteries. Putbiological safeguards into the entire reproduction business, so you stop having kids if you¶re living on dirt,and make the entire process less unpleasant.´ I stared blankly as I ranted, watching the sun illuminate asmall patch of a refracted spectrum where some oil had been poorly cleaned up.

They were common enough, but it always irritated me how something that was less than pleasant to theecology was actually quite beautiful in itself, and the mix of emotions of grey death and white awe left meconsidering the small patches as the corpses of soap bubbles. I looked up at the white grin on Asterisk¶sface, and Corbin hunched over, becoming suddenly intent on eating. ³Unpleasant?´ was all he said. Iwould have turned red in embarrassment a few short months ago, but he would have said more, we¶ve

both adapted, our personalities mixing slightly, he had learned to restrain some of his comments onsubjects I preferred not to think about too hard in mixed company, and I had learned to accept whatcomments he did give.

I knew he would start again suggesting that I should start wearing purple, so to speak, so I quickly appliedwhite-out to the comment. ³Of course I don¶t mean sex, I mean the whole hormonal and disturbing stuff after.´ He nodded, giving up his train of thought, so I had mercy and didn¶t go more into detail, whensmart boy last pried into why I was seeing red at anything, I discovered his gills went green at theslightest mention of blood.



I stood, having lost the desire to eat the rest of the meal, it now tasted transparent and inedible. I stood,waving at the guys before turning to leave. ³Hey, wait a sec.´ Corbin called out and I turned around tooffer the leftovers, assuming that¶s what he was after, but instead he was staring at the circle of oil,

I followed his gaze back to the filmy discoloration, and suddenly I saw what he meant. The colors werenot still as they had been a few minutes ago, they were in movement, slowly swirling, the edges creepingout, and as I watched, the oil patch expanded in size, I turned to him for suggestions, but they bothcontinued to stare whitely at the spot. I turned to look again, and felt fear drain the gray normality out of the day, for it had expanded to a near perfect circle more than a meter across.

Colors moved in the same calm dance, and as I watched, I realized that this was something different,because even though the oil seemed to be the same thin layer, I could no longer see the imperfections of the surface below, as if between the colors I was seeing into black space.

Asterisk was the first to break the silence. ³I don¶t consider either of you expendable, so how about we gofind the janitor, and let him deal with this.´ He said in a quiet calm voice that was perfectly level. ³That is, if you¶re seeing what I¶m seeing.´

Corbin shrugged and stood, walking slowly over to the anomaly. He stopped a step away from the edgeand leant over. ³And lose the credit of finding« whatever this is?´ He squinted down, he must have

noticed how dark the surface was. ³There¶s something down there.´ He said, and dropped to one knee,reaching out to pick up whatever he saw beneath the surface.

³Are you an idiot?!´ I yelled, and Asterisk had similar thoughts, jumping to his feet to stop him. By the timeHe got to Corbin, his tanned hand had made contact, and sunk completely under the surface. We stoodon either side of him, half convinced it would pull him in, but he stayed perfectly still. ³Well,congratulations on not dying.´ I muttered darkly.

Several moments passed before Asterisk noticed what was wrong. ³Are you okay?´ he asked, thenlooked up at me. ³I think something¶s wro²³ His words broke off, and I looked back down. At the momenthe had touched Corbin¶s shoulder, he had also frozen in place.

I stepped back in horror, feeling my heart speed up. ³Okay Tara, don¶t panic.´ I said to myself, trying to

get my grey matter working. ³He touches the stuff, he freezes. He touches him, he also freezes. It¶s notelectrical, they¶re just stopped. So have to break the connection? Would that work?´ I held out my tray,and poked the edge against his other shoulder. When I didn¶t lose my ability to move, I pushed harder. Hedidn¶t budge. After putting all of my relatively small weight against his immovable body, I took a differentapproach.

Moving the tray to in front of him, I placed the edge against the crook of his elbow so I could disconnecthim simply by pushing his arm out of surface. When I pushed, it resisted, but I felt a little movement, so Iadded more force, eventually leaning against the edge. Suddenly it gave way, but the wrong way, hisentire body tipped forward, I reached out my hands to stop my fall, and the hit the surface of thedeceptively deep puddle.

My hands did not hit bottom, I saw the surface rush at me, and suddenly I was falling through blackness. I

flailed around; and managed to twist around to see the light above me, and it had already shrunk to acircle of blue the size of a coin. As I watched, it continued to shrink as I fell, into a marble, then a pea, andfinally a pinprick of light before vanishing, and I was alone in the black.

The event had been so sudden, I hadn¶t even thought to be scared as I hit darkness, and fell into the void.I began to panic as I felt trapped, with no apparent possibility of escape. Part of my mind turned to whatwould happen if I finally hit bottom, and suddenly, I realized I wasn¶t falling after all, at least, not any more.I felt no wind whipping at my body or clothes, as if I had gone pleasantly and slightly numb. In thedarkness, my blue hands explored, and while I found nothing else in this alien environment, I discovered Ihad changed nearly as much as my surroundings. I couldn¶t find any piece of clothing, as if I was a bare



pink newborn. I could locate no scar or misshapen spot, and my hair was gone. I could not even gainpurchase on my own skin with my fingernails, though I could feel the focused pressure of them in mypalm.

The only similar experience I could connect these sensations to was the few times I awoke to find mybody unresponsive, every movement I tried to make completely ignored, my instincts making an illusoryset of limbs that felt disturbingly real. The only thing that didn¶t cover was the initial entrance, the fall,twisting through space as the hole of sky rapidly vanished. Calm analysis left me nowhere, so I did thenext best thing.

I started to scream. I didn¶t care about the illogical nature of this; I couldn¶t even hear myself outside of myown head. It was simply the only way I could express how helpless I felt.

Suddenly words filled my head, silent yet clearly not my own, sharp edged and grating on my thoughts,until they grew black and faded into memory. ³Do you really have to do that? I can¶t even hear you andI¶m going bonkers from that.´ I blinked, spinning around, looking in every direction for the source.

³Corbin? Is that you?´

³Who else would it be? Thanks for dropping in.´ came a reply. ³Where are we?´ he asked, the question

small, as if it was a struggle for him to ask.

³Ha! We¶re nowhere!´ showed up in my head, and it felt like each word carefully written out in my mind inink, scratching quietly along, the exclamation points flourished like those century old manuscripts.

³Oh, * is here too. I guess we¶re doomed then, it got us all. It¶s been fun.´ Corbin said.

³At least here you can pronounce my name properly!´ Asterisk responded quickly, the words written onmy mind already fading from the initial sharpness.

³Guys, what now, do we start arguing where we can¶t see or hear each other, or even ourselves, or anything at all? I yelled at them, trying to keep them from descending into verbal brawl. Suddenly Ithought of something. ³What do I sound like to you?´

Silence lasted for several moments, before Asterisk responded, his words small. ³Well, that attack was allmud, the question, like a weird shaped window on the sky. You¶re right though, we have to stay calm.´

Before I could ask how that would be possible, I felt the thoughts of another. The words were perfectlyneat, each letter perfectly formed and spaced, appearing whole and in rapid succession, like an expert ona new typewriter with a bright green ribbon. ³Do not be alarmed. Your bodies are where you left them andundamaged. Your minds are being translated to a foreign location.´

A shaky scrawl from Asterisk¶s mind appeared, the last word overlapping with the continued message.³That only leaves everything to explain.´

µTranslation is complete, integration is commencing.´ Filled my head, and I suddenly felt an air of

excitement in those plain words, ³Look down.´ Naturally, I did.

Below me lay a new point of light, brilliantly shining into the void, reflecting off nothing. It grew from apoint to a dot, then a small disk, so much brighter than the sun. It continued to grow, and I was convincedI was falling into an inferno. ³Corbin! *! What is«´ I trailed off as it grew larger, and I started to see thedetail. It was an inferno, but not some mythical one from legend, this was the real thing.

I could have been standing atop a ball the size of a house, and yet I was still infinitely far away, moving ata rate that simply didn¶t make sense, and the ball was full of streams of light, billions of stars containedwithin. When it filled the lower half, The tiny details told me my scale was still off, I was looking at



galaxies, and I gawked in amazement as the field of stars felt so close, and I would soon be plummetingthrough with no way to halt my progress.

³That¶s it; I¶ve died and gone to agnostic paradise.´ Asterisk told me in slow, almost reverent words.

Corbin added ³Woah, where¶s a camera when you need one?´

The slowly detailing shapes began to curve upwards, and soon, every direction I could see the tinygalaxies, as varied and wonderful as crisp multicolored snowflakes. I didn¶t bother to respond, and simplywatched around, occasionally glancing down and looking for what I assumed would be a destination.

One galaxy was beginning to show even more definition, I was slowly coming to the conclusion thatwherever we were being dragged, it was in there, or it was on the other side and I was just passingthrough. It was a spiral galaxy, but definitely a weird, lopsided one. Two arms extended from the brightcore, at about twelve and four o¶clock, the arms trailing around clockwise, the one at four o¶clock trailingnearly all the way around, the other much shorter, not even going around a third of the way. ³Is thatgalaxy deformed?´ I asked after my examination.

³No. The Spiral arms formed independently. In time, more may grow.´ The strange typewriter words said.

I saw a slight angular adjustment, and soon I had entered the tip of the long arm. Each star grew intofocus, a few flashing past, grazing so close I imagined the cool vacuum becoming white hot, or whatever color the closest star appeared. Suddenly all movement stopped, quite a jarring sensation after what hadfelt like a mesmerizing hour of travel.

Distances stretched, pushing most sources of light into pinpricks as I focused down on what lay spreadout below. A beautiful nebula spun around its center of mass, a large bulge in the center of the disc. Mostof the nebula looked purple as translucent like a painted cloud, but the center was dense, opaque, andlooked like a glass marble speckled with the occasional spark of light.

³Why have you brought us here? What do you want? Who and what are you?´ Asterisk began to ask, andthe rest of his questions became unclear as Corbin joined in the assault of questions, both of their lines of questioning being drowned out by the other.

When the fourth began, something cut them off, perhaps reflex on their part, or i t was a subtle intimidationon the part of this strange power. ³You are here to be offered a homestead, a land grant of a sort. Notland, a volume of space. There are no desires to meet, there is no price but the time you spend, nopenalty for failure but regret. I am simply a Guide, nothing else is relevant for you.´

I rubbed at my head, feeling the sheer weirdness overwhelm me, even the gesture which should haverelieved some of the stress did nothing more than heighten the feelings, as I was quite aware the contactwas illusory, I felt no friction under my fingertips, none of the small imperfections I was used to feeling,and even with my eyes covered and shut tight, nothing blocked out the vision of the nebula, and eachpassing moment let me feel the sheer scale of the cloud. ³Its as wide as the solar system! There¶s enoughgas in the middle to make a ball as large as the sun! On this scale we¶re nothing,



The most important factor about a building a new world isn't the shape of i ts lands, or who owns whicharea. Nor is it the races that inhabit it, the wondrous minerals and fauna and flora, or the powers any andall of those might have. The most vital skill in building a world and giving it life is restraint. Life yearns tobe free, even the strange life that is a star will fight attempts to make it what it is not, and you cannotbreak a world to your will without leaving scars, or worse, change it into something you had no intention tocreate and do not desire to possess. Not every attempt to make what is free into what is ordered isdoomed to failure, but only the lightest touches are likely to bring you closer to your goal.

Chapter 5.

Garden path. (The Guide)

The world is layered, not like a cake I would say, but rather layered in the sense any organization is

layered, with groups being commanded, and groups of commanders being given orders, and so on. The

fascinating thing about the ecosystem is nature has no designed hierarchy, the whole thing develops

and shifts about without anyone the wiser, and no being could control the intracacies of the ecosystem.

Each part affects every other part, and the result is chaos that has elements shaved off, leaving only

what many would consider to be a timeless order.

Only when the observer bothers to look at the history can they really learn that just a short while ago,

those artificial labels that they apply to species only just manage to stay attatched, and yesterdays

version had a completely different life. It filled different niches, it ate different food, and was eaten by

different predators.



Each little change happened with one individual, or a few, and they never even realize that they

changed the entire future of their species, and rarely realize that this new mode of survival is something

new. Circumstances, what some would call evolutionary pressure, change the optimal behavior, and

those who have slightly different instincts win out, each generation having a chance to move a little

closer to the best set of actions.

Intelligence opens new paths for a species, but what they will soon grasp is the simple fact that it does

not bar off many paths the idealistic would rather pretend have never been trod by their ancestors. It is

so easy for a species to use their intelligence to become just a stronger animal, which can win against

any who sees them as a people with equal rights and duties to life.

Only time will tell if any of my nominations will manage to sell the stars to their wards, or that they

decide ruling one world is enough.

Chaper 6

Tree of life. (Immortal)

The Bright Tara and The Dark Corbin began to argue when they decided what their children would be,

being unable to agree on many things. While Tara said that there should be no need to kill to survive,

Corbin saw no reason against it, for all things return to darkness in the end. Corbin wanted a race that

could delve into the heart of the world to bring order to the minerals found beneath the surface in a

dark life who would never need the radiance of day, but Tara couldnt bare to have any of her people

under commands to a greater plan they could not understand, she wanted to give a life of joy and color

to her children.

My calm words barely begin to show how tremendous their argument was, as Light and Dark are now so

peaceful. Darkness chivalrously steps aside anywhere light is made, rather than start up that ancient

argument of who was stronger. In those days Light and Dark shook apart the world many a time, only

returning to peaceful co-operation when they saw there was no land any child could live apon, but once

land was shaped, and Life began to claim it, they began again to bicker over the details, unwilling to

compromise.

Eventually the cycle of birth and death of countless worlds changed. A new voice joined them, the cry of

a child hearing its parents argue eternally. The new voice was of the boundary, where Light and Dark

once had a pure divide, there was now a blur between them. A small amount of the Light and Dark had

mixed together, and this new domain had found its voice. By its nature of being two things, it had two

voices, Isik, and Aster. In some ways it was a single child, but they were also twins, born in chaos, andbound to a domain that only existed on the edges. Both parents had been unaware of their creation

until they both had grown silent enough to listen. Only this new pair of bound voices had seen just how

much damage their parents war had caused.

Their titles were earned. The Balancer, The Dancers of the Terminator, Mediator and Mender, Best and

the Worst of their Parents. They earned their role in our story with two words. Stop fighting! At first



they were seen as a threat to both domains, but their nature didnt let them have any domain but

between Light and Dark. Any domain Tara took simply shrunk Darkness, and so it was true for the

attacks of Corbin.

Eventually, the Great and the Dark desided to l isten, and their child began to tell of all the life they had

seen destroyed by their argument, each time they had fought their blind hatred for each other hadwiped out countless shapes of life, all of which had struggled to exist and create their own children, all

of which eventually failed under the tremendous power that had been carelessly thrown about. The two

great powers argued that they had taken no part in those beings l ives, that they had no children on

their creation, just parasites and vermin.

As they argued, the boundary steadily moved around the world as it turned, giving the dawn and dusk

perfect, brief glimpses of the world covered by water, already bringing forth life, and pleaded for their

struggle to not be in vain. They had created this world, and this world had created life. They might not

have chosen the exact shapes the life took, but they had given them the room to live. When they finally

settled that argument, they worked together one last time, drawing a land that would endure,

untouched by the fight of the creators.

Corbin and Tara, now resigned to going their separate ways, each drew their own land, but their

children could easily see that no matter how far apart the Light and the Dark placed their creations,

eventually their races would cross even the greatest of oceans and meet. The Meridian thought that if

the races met when they were still young, they would grow together into something stronger, rather

than fighting for unbearable generations before one managed to exterminate the other. And so Aster

and Isik joined the two continents, drawing as fast as they passed over the planet, joining the lands

together. Containing realms where it would always be cold and the light would rarely reach, to the

tropical areas which the Light would touch every day no matter the season. All so that the people the

two creators made would meet while they were young and equal, rather than being isolate until one

had mastered the ocean.

When the last great work of art was complete, the drawing of the land was to be washed away by the

ocean, leaving only the land, there couldnt be any disagreement, for even the newest and weakest

voice could hold back the water. For the land to be made true, The Border Voices had a simple

condition, so they would not have to suffer another land destroyed by selfish desires. Tara and Corbin

had to accept all life that woke from the oceans as just as real and worthy of life as themselves. They

were not to create life, as complete creations might consider themselves more worthy of the world, and

free to destroy the natural life like their parents had. If they truly wanted children, who could be taught

to understand and speak as they did, they would have to adopt from the species who managed to

survive long enough to be considered worth teaching.

The land was drawn, and they were tired of fighting, and so after a weak protest, the Light and the Dark

finally agreed to the terms, and that this land would be drawn the way their prodgeny demanded.

Arguments were to be settled without quakes and tides and cold and fire, if a settlement could not be



reached, they would go separate ways, and use their own power to uplift races of the creators choice,

forever separate, who would share the world equally.

For ages they quietly watched and waited, each not daring to touch the system that formed lest it

caused the anger of the others. Only when they all had selected a species to grant the strength and

minds to build the world into something greater would they take action. Tara searched for the brightest,most beautiful tribe, while Corbin considered each of the nocturnal beings, finding ones that would be

strong and loyal. Isik and Aster also watched the world grow and change, on the lookout for their own

ward, ones that showed the first steps in the journey from animal to tribe by themselves, for they

wanted to use their power on a race that would not resist their destiny to unite the three races.

In time, they each selected a species, and while waiting for the others to choose, found their selection to

have been hasty, or the species changed, or simply died out from flood or famine, and it was an

extraordinarily long time before all had a selection at the same time. Finally, on the longest day of the

year, they all were sure of who would be uplifted, and they made the three great tribes of the world.

Corbin settled on the cave dwelling Octpods of the north, the scavengers of the dead. He carefully

changed a selection of the races eggs, giving each a small part of his desires to seek out the minerals

that would shape the world to come. They claim the dead to take back into the darkness, to never be

seen by the light again. They are strange and mostly nameless, with only a few leaving their caverns

except in darkest night.

Tara found the rainbow in the tribe of the Liz, and on the day of the uplifting the race was on the brink

of extinction, so close to setting back the great uplifting another age that only one den remained, and so

she spared no expense, aging each individual to nearly their adult strength, and giving nearly all of them

a fragment of her great power to keep them warm at all times, no longer needing to bask in her light to

have the energy to survive.

Our patrons and had picked last, selecting from the forest the Crets. We were chosen as the balance

between the two. Only after a stage of life are we granted the dexterity the others are born with, and

our minds sharpen as our young claws are dulled, so each of us walks the path from animal to person.

We are most active in the borders of night and day, keeping to the shadows to avoid the predators, but

also on the watch for prey. We can eat in the company of either race, and be awake to communicate

with both.

They always saw us as the weakest of the three, but we were the ones who knew from the beginning

that all life is important, and that if any of the great tribes should fall to cold, fire, teeth, or hunger, we

would all perish. We learned to see not only our strengths of speed and claw, but also our weaknesses,

and learned to overcome them with simple devices, carved from the dead tree and the fibers of the

many plants. Well, thats what todays leaders teach, but they always seem to forget that even our race

had to learn to look for the tribe larger than us, we needed help to stop carving tribes, and to start

sculpting a nation.



Chapter 7

Indigo sky (Day)

The pattern of my chosen spieces had been broken overnight. The previous day had been like any other

in their short lives, competing for the places where the sun touched first, absorbing as much heat as

they could before the predators awoke, then scattering with their hard-won energy in a swarm of color.

Each spent most of the day foraging in small groups that had no fixed pattern that I could puzzle out

from my time of watching the species, except that an individual was more inclined to join others of a

different hue.

After a while the reason for this grouping instinct became apparent, when a preditor attempted to

pounce on one of these foraging groups. While the dark green one was unfortunate enough to be quite

visible against that areas bright dying foliage of an autumn day, the others scattered in moments, and

the selfish predetor had no way to take down another without a much longer and less favorable chase,

which in the end would likely end with a scavenger stealing his first kill.

After a day of eating all the flora that gave them enough energy to be worth eating had been grazed

from the surrounding forests, plains, and beaches, The groups slowly converged on their center nest,

dug out over generations and home to several dozen of the lizard-like foragers, where eggs were

communally tended, and the adults gathered to share and preserve the remaining store of heat.

This morning had been the start of something new. It was the longest, hottest day of the year, though

they had not known it before I changed them, for better or worse. Their morning routine had been

interrupted by an unknown force, as each had been compelled in their sleep to rise from their cave, and

be reshaped by my plan that I had worked on for subjective years, changing as little as possible on the

inside to improve them into sapience.

The changing program was painfully complex to build, but in the end looked like nothing more than a

butterfly with crystal wings, in which were encoded the rules on how it must change the beings that

would in a few days call themselves the Liz.

As it landed on the first, complex webs of energy held together by only the rules and orders they had

been given examined each cell, finding the magnificently complex chain of molecules within that gave

itself meaning, and changed the sequence in nine hundred ways, causing changes that would normally

have torn apart the body. The entire structure of his body was changing as I watched, and I reflexively

winced as the sounds of bones shifting and organs expanding as the program calculated how the being

would have grown if it had started out with its new sequence, and forcing the individual into the newform that would have taken thousands of generations of ignorance to reach.

The bright green scales that had covered the tiny form had not grown much in size along with the Liz,

but had instead multiplied in number to cover him, and now each of of the coin-sized scales was clearly

distinguishable, and each a slightly different hue. Strangely, they had been joinedby a scattering of

scales of a bright red, reminding me of sparks among the grass, or when fireflies came out early enough



in the evening to still see the colors of the trees they danced among. It also showed me that the

unexpected was inevitable, even with my first act of steward to the life I had altered.

When the change was complete, the Liz was no longer a small creature that was no longer than my

forearm, living a short life of fearing the cold and the dark. This Liz was the first of a new race who

would have the heat he needed from the food he grew, and push back the darkness with the tools hecould now make. He was young yet, and I felt guilty that his life would be hard, and angry I only had

three days to teach him enough to survive into adulthood. Only repeating the fact that this generation

of beautiful innocent beings would last no more than three years allowed me to repeat the process and

form a second program, then a third, and finally a full dozen all at once. Each alighted on an individual,

and began to repaint the small part of the world in a way that I hoped would be an improvement.

As the sun rose on the plain outside the cave which housed the remaining members of the future tribe,

and if all went well, would soon be empty of the race for good., I sat in between the slowly awakening

tribe and the rising sun. Each of the group tried to get up in their usual way onto all four legs, but this

mode of being was now forever gone, which they quickly realized when they stumbled and collapsed

onto the ground. The sound that rose from them as they voiced their alarm started like a distant flock of

songbirds, quiet yet chaotic as they crawled toward others, instinctively huddling together as their

collective fear and confusion grew to a peak.

I stood up and waited silently on the edge of the group, trying to not look threatening with the form

Ihad designed. I stood in the guise of one of them as they would be in years to come, a tall purple form,

wielding a crudely cut walking stick, and wearing a simple short robe woven out of the fibers of the vines

I had found in this world that I was slowly learning was strangly, both mine, and beholden to no one.

The first one to move toward me was the first one I had changed, the dark green scales as bright as they

ever would be as they threw the morning sunlight back into my eyes. The posture of the crawling form

slowly changed with each awkward step closer, the wide eyes dark as the protective lenses blocked the

stars direct light, only fading back to normal when he crawled into my shadow, and sat back, staring at

me.

I was so tempted to touch him, it felt like the instincts of my guise were bleeding through. By the time I

had checked for the communal instinct and muted it, my hand had already reached out to the first Liz,

and almost made horrible contact. I yanked my hand back, wraping the fingers I had designed around

the staff with a tightness that made me yelp.

That sound brought them all to attention, and I instantly saw it was not the kind of attention I had been

planning on. That sound clearly translated to the same thing it had before they changed. Pain. Pain

meant danger, and short cry of pain meant danger big enough that the victim hadnt made a second cry.

Only the fact I was still there, and standing, was keeping them from mindlessly and ineffectively fleeing.



I considered the small group as some began to attempt bipedality and for the most part, only managing

seconds upright before they swayed, overcompensated, and fell onto the soft ground with a thump.

Something seemed amiss in the group, but it took me a while to figure it out. They were all moving,

none seemed to be in pain, but it took a quick count for me to realize what the problem was. I only saw

fifteen, one had somehow wandered off without my notice.

I jogged down the hill, feeling how different this bodys reaction to panic was to my first. Lungs forced

the oxygen out of each breath, the dark blood racing the fuel to my muscles, which felt innately faster

than my normal legs could ever be trained to match. When I reached the ridge where soil gave way to

the rivers bank of water smoothed pebbles, the path of the one who had abandoned the group became

clear, and I followed it downstream to the east, and around a bend to a stretch of riverbank no longer in

the shadows, where the pale colored Liz was sitting upright and facing the rising sun as I walked up

behind.

As I walked around and sat in front, but off to the side of the wanderer, I nearly gasped as I realized I

was looking at one that was pale white, some defect had left her scales blank of any pigmentation. I

hadnt planned for this, the uplifting I had designed had been made to fit the species, working around

and repairing any defects, or simply failing the first step. I found the now complete program within, and

spent a while reading through the logs, still a struggle to read after layers of summarizing and

abstraction filters.

As I read through the analysis, I bbegan to see in what way my simulations had been imperfect, solving

both the mystery of the second color of scales, as well as why this one was as plain as the chaulk I had

held that had led me to this point.

Resources in an organism are limited, and so after one pigmentation subroutine begins, the rest are

usually halted, leaving the individual a single color. My miscalculation had caused the pigmentation torun out before all the individual scales had formed, causing a second phase of coloring to develop after

the first, causing another shade to be created indipendantly.

In her case, a rare defect had caused the pigmentation complete signal to be generated before any

color had grown, leaving him with plain scales. The few who were born with this condition obviously

didnt live long, as they would be the easiest to spot in nearly any surroundings. And to top it all off, this

minor error through off the guidepoints for the most important change. Her body had not received the

gift of being warm-blooded. She would still be bound to the sun as she had been before the uplifting.

She looked at me with black eyes, and tilted her head as she examined the liitle detail she could see

through the nearly opaque protection. This caused me to hiccup a little laughter, which she responded

to with chirpy giggles, and soon we were both collapsed in pure unabashed laughter. By the time time I

hadregained my composure, the rest of the small group had found us, standing in twos and threes, each

of them relying on the rest to keep their balance, and while none of the group could stand alone

relyably, they were all upright together. For a symbol, I thought that was pretty powerful, even if I was

the only one who recognized such things as having meaning.



I stood up with the aid of my walking stick, then stuck it in the ground of the albino, stepping back after

she wrapped a hand around it and began to climb up it until she was upright, with the staff held against

her short frame, and while it was as tall as my shoulder, it dwarfed him, being a head taller than she

was, a fifth of its height that she could not match today, but would eventually. Finally, I took a few steps

back until my body blocked their view of the sun, and dismissed my guise, letting the sunlight swallow

the form.

I called out to Asterisk and Corbin. Im having a language barrier problem.

A few moments later, I felt a confused response of silence while one of them considered how to

respond. What are you trying to talk to? The uplifting program wont give us anything worth talking to

this visit.Corbin replyed in a bored line of thought.

For you guys maybe, but I needed to cheat a bit, without a group thats able to start organized food

gathering and storage, theyd never get the energy to stay warm and grow to adult size.

Asterisk responded in a quick burst, like a panicked yell, You just made a hundred kids and expect themto fend for themselves when they cant even talk? Have you gone completely out of your mind?

Theyre not kids! Theyre a year away from full adult growth, and I only uplifted sixteen. They have

perfect communal instincts, theyll work together when they know what to do. I said back, partly

realizing this was just rationalizing for the oversight I had, but what else was I supposed to do? If I were

to throw away all the work on the uplift program just because it needed a l ittle more work than theirs to

become stable?

You really are annoyingly predictable sometimes, you know that right? Corbin said without even

bothering to say a greeting as he appeared beside me above the riverbank, looking down at the small

group gathered round the white figure and the staff I had carved on a whim, and now seemed to have

taken on the importance of a religious relic the way each was reaching out to touch it. Congratulations.

Youre a deity. Dont let it go to your head. He said with a grim laugh, before turning to me. Get down

there and do a better job of it than the ones you were born into, those poor schmucks deserve better.

But I cant! I was just down there and the first thing they want is to touch me, how am I supposed to

tell them they shouldnt, when every instinct tells them to? I fumed, but I could already imagine what

the sponsor would say. And how could you possibly have guessed that would happen, after all, you only

examined that impulse a few hundred times!

Then give them something else. A proxy. That white fellow in the middle would be the logical choice.He said, slowly rotating and gesturing downwards.

Are you saying I should put these people into a theocracy on day one? I asked, agast, of all people to

suggest I start a dictatorship, I would never have expected Corbin to show up on that list. And that

white one is female, as if it matters to you. I corrected him.



Ah, but if a dictator really is chosen by their creator, you dont have to worry about a leader who

deceives, then begins to believe his own propaganda. That female down there doesnt even know the

word propaganda, so heres your chance to find out. And I would have thought youd have been eager

to set up a matriarchy for your uplifted. He said before he left with a wave, returning to his own

project.

Settling towards the group, I considered the albino, altering my guise program to match her body and

brain, settled my mind within it, and with a few careful connections, made our thoughts as one.

The emotions that flooded in were so intense I nearly lost control of everything. The joy of being the

center of a group, the horrorfied abandonment that the tall one was gone, and so much else about this

confusing new body and feelings, and the first stirrings of hunger. I slowly managed to calm down, and

the still passive mind of my proxy did the same. Slowly I extracated myself from the group, and as I

climbed the ridge to the hilly grassland, I found the perfect way to get them to follow. I hunted down

each of the scales roots, and gave the order to make color, regardless of what the rest of the genetic

code had to say, and a few at a time, they began to take on new shades of color, each scale

indiscriminately colored like a rainbow had been sliced up and patched together blindly to create my

host.

She began to notice that these thoughts were not her own, and we began a dialogue. At first it was just

mental images to describe basic concepts, but over time it was supplemented with a simple vocabulary.

I had to use the time I had as on detailing the basic things she needed to know to protect, feed, and

shelter her people, much of which I had to show her what to do by moving her own hands as any other

method was simply too slow.

After three of the longest days of my life, I had shown all the basics I had planned. Many knew how to

find firemaking rocks by the river, as well as how to make and use bow and stick. The layers of a fire,Burning dry leaves to burn shredded wood and twigs, and using those to burn a whole log. Nearly all Liz

had fingers scratched and scraped from hours of sharpening sticks into primitive javelins to differing

success, but among the results were enough good ones to easily defend against any preditors who

decided to try and eat the tribe. Others were weaving the vines and grasses into usable baskets, which

were sent out in defended groups into the forest to gather the fruit which remained, while those too

hungry to wait ate the small granular buds right off the wheatgrass that was everywhere around.

On the second and third days, I continued uplifting, nearly doubling the population of the tribe twice. All

the Liz now stood upright, if not quite as tall as the first group. With each group I reduced the amount of

maturation slightly, relying on the tribe to leave the simpler tasks to those who had come second andthird, until they had managed to cross the gap with a year or two.

Slender trees had been stripped and the first shelter was starting to take place, even though at the

moment it looked like a stone-age gazebo, with its columns of tree trunks and a slowly growing roof of

grass and wood and muck. The sun was starting to set for the last time this visit, I would be gone by

morning, leaving them to survive on the pitiful amount of knowledge I had managed to impart.



It was a stuggle to explain even with images what was happening, how I was unable to stay. When the

message was clear that by morning she would be colorless and alone inside her head, desperately she

asked if my guise would be back to lead the group, but all I could do was repeat the same answer the

rest of the time she had brought that guise up, an image of a Liz and my guise, them touching, and pain.

Maybe next visit they would have enough experience and vocabulary for the full explanation, but for

now, it had to do.

Questions flooded in about me that were so demanding I had to answer them, but so indistinct I didnt

know what would satisfy the curiousity. I tried to answer, but any response was too complicated for her

to grasp, let alone share with the others. So I started as simply as I could, drawing out in her mind

images of first my guise, then two others in a vague outline. A picture of the surrounding forests and

grasslands, and then slowly zooming out, showing the side of the mountain, the entire continents

shape, and finally the planet. After a careful, unsure time, I decided to give one vital step of knowledge

that I wish my distant ancestors had known.

The planet she sat on was tiny, and when the size of a pepple, I drew in the sun, to scale. She began to

shake in disbelief, turning to the view of the sun, just touching the horizon, and tried to wipe the

absuridity from her mind, but I held the simplest model of her solar system in her mind until she gave a

bewildered, but accepting nod. As the image faded, she turned back to the fire. A few long breaths to

calm down, and she brought back the image of the planet, and the same vague curiousity, a little less

demanding this time, but still willing to learn. I described Corbins choice, the ugly cave dwelling ball

with eight legs that reminded me of the spider, but clearly wasnt, as he had repeatedly told me. I

described the adorable creature that Asterisk had claimed, and his pretense of giving them the uplifting.

Anyone could make a pit trap, but of course, being a boy he couldnt say theyre cute.

This of course brought up questions of why they had been uplifted, which was harder to explain. After a

while I showed her how I saw their life before,with their desperate need for heat and constant danger of

being eaten, I had to save the wonderful colorful species unmatched on the world. I showed what I

hoped her people would become in time, creators of beautiful paintings, composers of sublime

melodies, architects and chefs, dancers and storytellers. I had done all I could think of, and she was

beginning to give into the urge to sleep, slowly plodding into the shelter for the warmth they knew even

in sleep, while she would always be reliant on the sun and them.

I began to dismantle the construct htat made us one, leaving her mind alone, and her body free of the

tampering I had whimsically done as a way to get the rest of the tribes notice, not thinking of what it

meant to her. Holding her arm up in the light of the distant fire and dying sun, she began to cry a pain

that her kind had never known, a pain for loss she could not recover, and because of my gifts, she could

not simply accept and move on as her race had done when facing every death that their herd had

experienced.

I stepped back, running from her pain, knowing Icouldnt do anything more to help, and when I was high

above, one final step out, and the world that was quickly becoming the more real of the two was only an

image again, with my tears soaking into it as I stared at the small dot that was the Lizsfirst shelter,



reminding myself that with each breath, they had to survive another day without any help from anyone

above.

--- End. [go back and find somewhere to fit in the sharing of names and morality plays.]

Chapter 8

Inkwell of knowledge

Tara and Corbin were both already standing over the image of the contient when I arrived, and only

noticed me when I dropped my lunch down on the closest bench. Looking down at her watch, she

turned to me with a scowl, Youre nearly late! she snapped, before turning back to staring at theimage with a hard intensity as if trying to force her way in when it wasnt quite time yet.

Dont worry, Im here, and Im not late, how long have you been standing there? Youre going to get

lousy leftovers if you havent eaten already. I said before munching at the small dessert brownie first, in

case I had no desire to eat after the visit? Hallucination? What should I be calling these regular

interruptions of my normal day? If I told someone else, I could confirm with them that all three of our

stories matched, but that doesnt rule out some crazy conspiracy. Great, conspiracy, thats a red flag

word, that line of reasoning has no useful insights. I will have to explore some parts farther, am I

avoiding discussion about this event because Im crazy, or just dont want to be perceived as crazy? Are

you guys ever afraid that this is all in your imagination? I say before I could think better of it.

Corbin began to laugh. Im a god to a group of people who look like d-movie alien props! Sometimes

Im afraid its all real! he said quickly before slipping back into laughter.

Tara shoved us both, and I flinched away so she couldnt elbow me again just for talking, while she

squared up to him. Is that an admission you chose the worst possible uplift just to be contrary? she

asked while staring daggers at him. Even if this is some sort of alien mind game, if youre going to play,

you might as well play it seriously!

Corbin rubbed his shoe against a small spot on the image, which I took to be the crude shelter she had

built from her reaction of tensing up as if prepareing to tackle him. Seriously? The way youve been outhere every chance youve had since yesterdays trip, staring at that one dot. If it is aliens, all youre

teaching them is a few magic tricks can cause symtoms similar to addiction! You came right here rather

than waiting in line for food like a normal human. Im willing to play along, but Im not going to make it

easy for them, Im looking for the defects, the bugs, and those octpods were an experiment, I needed to

see how far outside the normal parameters I can go. If I find just a simple rework of the behavior of

your uplifts, Ill know somethings up for sure, because their brain chemistry is like no mammal or reptile



here or there. He took a breath, and sighed loudly. Of course, if they can read my mind, any test I

could do would be invalid, the results could be altered on the fly to match my expectations.

That was when our minds dropped out of the real world, and the drawing came true. Mostly true. The

season had changed, either once, or fortyone times, depending on if you could call unwitnessed seasons

in this place real at all. The inhabitants probably witnessed the long seasons, or maybe they onlyremembered witnessing it. Either way the result was the same, ten years of change and memories. I

decided to let anyone who felt they had lived here keep their fantasy, whether they existed as a

simulation in a program or as a real entity in another universe.

Of course, there is one way to start your supposed stress test, as well as let the natives know were

here. Special effects, a wonderous lightshow to put rendering programs into overdrive, think of all the

processing power it would take to add something completely new to the memories of thousands of

processes, each with a different perspective and set of individually defined sensory inputs. I said,

looking closely at the peak, where small camps had gathered, some at the base, others at the flat peak,

which had been swept clean of any impurity and covered with various examples of work from the three

tribes, maybe they were meant to be sacrifices.

Tara cut in before Corbin could consider the idea. Absolutely not! Actions of that kind would only

backfire, look at all the parlour tricks in the old myths, with our abilities, its even easier to dazzle them

in ways even some guy with a handful of drugs or a talent of deception has. They dont know the rules

were under, and if we show just how much talent we have, that could destroy their cultural potential

for centuries! she ranted at us in a blur, desperate to get her say in before either of us started

something she hadnt approved of. If we teach them, even accidentally, that we will be there to catch

them, they wont bother to watch for the cliff edge. If they can rely on us to make their life perfect, we

might as well kill them now so they dont start killing each other over which of them is more worthy, or

which story about us is right. We cannot be their dieties, we are only a trio of teachers here to speed

their civilization past the nightmares of proto-civilization.

I took her point, and started my words before she could get her thoughts in order for another line of

pleading, as I saw her point, and she would start simply rephrasing her arguments to strengthen her

positions appearance, without actually adding new data. Okay, no special effects. Anyway, anything

complex enough to be a strain on these hypothetical processes would overwhelm them. I offered,

looking down at the inhabitants of the world. Well, The them we know for sure actually exist in some

state or another. Add enough complexity and it just becomes pretty lights. We have plenty of time here,

especially if we avoid doing anything more to shortening our visits. With the careful application of the

information we know and can learn, our thousands of years of knowledge could be disseminated in a

fraction of the time, maybe just a few centuries. If we get to equilibrium, and they still continue to learn,

surpassing even us, maybe theyll be able to discover proof they are only a computer simulation.

I dropped like a stone towards the mountain top, dragging a small collection of micrometeorites along

with me, letting one burn, then another, then two, and continuing the sequence until they both began

to call me names for setting the Fibbonatchi sequence ablaze in their sky. Laughing, I let the rest go,



exactly fifty five little pebbles in a pretty pattern of ten pentagons at the corners of a perfect five

pointed star, with the leftover five in the middle. Stopping with a halt that would have caused any

corporeal form to spread into a thick messy puddle, I pulled from memory a guise I had made up at the

end of our last visit. It was perfectly neutral in both stature and coloring, it would leave them guessing,

which is what I needed if any intra-species hierarchies had been formed based on just the random

chance of which individuals looked the best, or happened to be born the right gender.

Looking around, I saw only a few Crets on the peak, mostly mixed in with the Liz who made up the

majority of the population, they had probably simply followed the Liz up here to see what the fuss was

about. The sheer drop nearly all the way around the mountains top was liberally avoided, with a large

polygon of logs bounding the encampment, never coming within three paces of the edge, which was

saying something considering just how tall they were. Even the shortest of the Liz dwarfed the Crets,

and the rest probably had height to spare if they ever got to participate in any sport back home.

Not that I was jealous or anything, when I was running hundreds and thousands of tests, partly

intelligent guesswork on my part, but mostly just randomly doing the equivilant of closing my eyes,

pushing a random button, and remembering that button-press if it did something good. Of course, for

me, I just pushed a few hundred of the buttons at once, and only paid attention to the most interesting

results, to save time. Those long, nearly all fruitless tests resulted in what could be described best as a

second puberty, or described most euphemistically as a fourth stage of life.

Rather than shove a huge amount of energy into the problem like Tara did, or only altering the eggs of

the species like Corbin, I, the most definitely sane Asterisk chose to take the halfway route, hunting

down each of the small creatures and altering them so their once-complete life cycle was now only just

begun. These changes started another series of growth stages which grew a simple paw with enough

with only minimal dexterity claws into a hand with deadly sharp claws. But with hands, those claws

had so much more potential for careful creation, and for a skilled crafter they would add a level of

precision we need specialized tools to duplicate, and a lot of tools are potentially dangerous. after that,

there is short period of awkwardness when hip joints shifted and their flexible spine was strengthened,

they stand upright and gain a bit more height.

All the while a completely new set of genetic sequences are working in the background, piggy backing

on the dozens of growth commands to aquire resources to grow advanced sections of brain tissue, a

Winding the clock in the heart of the world.

Its been so long since those days, why should I go back and look at them to satisfy your curiousity?

Theres so much to be done here and now, looking back on things that cant be changed is hardly the

most productive use of your time. Ive done so much that if I were to tell the entire story, and the world



was to know it, it would just cause more strife as people argued about its veracity, try to punish me for

imagined crimes, or to try and force the secrets Ive managed to forget out of me.

You want to know what it was like for the first to be changed? Already with your first question you make

assumptions, I was not one of the first of our race, but one of their first children. I never knew the trials

of hunting on two legs, or the improvised shelters that had to be erected after the final growth made allthe dens useless. I never learned about how the first small tribes formed, all I can guess is they saw

others who had grown, and banded together for protection and mates.

I had a childhood just like you did, perhaps a little less tame than you. In todays times you protect your

children in a way that seems a little disturbing to me, shifting the instincts to hunt and build into games

that have no stakes and no goal. You have forgotten that once, that two year old child was the one who

scouted for the hunters, her speed and senses at her peak as she found the best prey and summoned

the hunters with spears or slings. Before that, before the change, that same individual would be a full

adult with her own children, and did not lead the hunters, she was the hunter.

Watch your child for a while, but give her space, and she will begin to fall back into a behavior that is a

mere shadow of the old ways. How many times has she gotten wire or string and stretched it across a

path to trip you up? How long did she just hide in the most inconvienient place, as if she was hiding from

you? Some consider these behaviors abborations, but just because you dont like them doesnt mean

theyre wrong, those actions are the instincts that would have kept her alive.

I sometimes wish I could relive those days of running through the forest, hunting the prey my instincts

screamed for, the meat that I could eat right from the kill while it was still steaming in the morning mist.

Why look so shocked? I know youve had the same dreams, maybe you even got a tiny glimpse of how

our race once ate when you slipped from whatever restraints you were under and managed to catch

something that didnt need days of preparation to catch, just a small creature, like an old sick bird whichdidnt manage to take flight fast enough as you pounced.

Yes, I am trying to distract you, making the discussion about you rather than me. Ive talked about me so

many times before, its boring. I could talk about the beings you call gods, or the first war. I could tell

you just how much of our history is cleaned up or outright ignored, or how each and every time

something new was invented or granted by our sponsers, there was someone who thought the old ways

were the only valid ways. I could tell you which of the stories of my involvement with great events are

true, and which are not.

Of course. You want to know what everyone wants to know. What makes your request so special that I

would tell you the secret that no one in five thousand seasons has pried from me? I could insult your

intelligence by telling you it was caused by some plant that I burned every trace of from the land, or that

it was a ritual where I promised something, for example, the life of a hundred children to a being of fire

and darkness. I could tell you I simply dont know, or that I had to forget to continue to desire to live. Or

I could be mocking your intelligence by slipping in the truth between the lies. Does it really matter? I tell

you honestly, this was no gift and no curse, it simply happened, and not even the gods could revoke it,



or to even allow me to pass the burden to another. I am not immortal, but only the gods or I can end my

life.

Of course Im not immortal, nothing is, not I, and not the gods. Blasphemy? The gods would have

laughed at your accusation, and agreed with mine, but think nothing of it, I will be dead long before the

gods die, and their passing will not end our world. When you came here to interrogate me with thelatest devised techniques for finding out my secrets, you thought I was what? A villain in solitude with all

her power but one lost? A goddess slumming in a tiny body atop a slightly larger planet? A wizard biding

her time for events to unfold according to a masterfully complex plan you could never hope to

understand?

Your opinions dont matter? Theyre the only thing that does matter! The facts are absolutes, and I dont

need you to discover any of them. Your opinions are your own, derived from the exact set of

information you were fed since you first learned how words worked. No two people get the same set,

and so no one has the same set of opinions. Your opinions tell me how I should tell you of a world you

only know from history books and legends.

I could tell the story my way, but if I were to tell it that way, many who have sat where you are would be

at me with threats and claws, even knowing the attack would be merely annoying. The gods are mere

children. Yes, they brought us knowledge, but they were merely messengers. Every piece of knowledge

they passed down to us was drawn out of a book. A literal book, like the ones in our libraries and

archives. They were just three from a race of billions, and while their libraries have more information

about mathematics and chemistry than ours has, we will soon surpass even their knowledge.

Your words are calm, but your body tells me something else. Your claws are puncturing your paper, and

youre practically trembling. Leave then, believe what you wish, and pretend I never spoke a word. You

would not feel insulted if I were to say gravity only works because I tell it to. You would laugh if Ibelieved I was entitled to a luxury that you were not. Yet when I offer a mere story that contradicts your

own, anger rises. What causes this anger? If you could demonstrate the legends from first principles and

observations, the same way I could with physical studies, would you still feel anger about me telling a

different story? This is why I wanted to know how to tell my story. Some see the old tales as literal

history, others as something closer to just a collection of tales about how our ancestors saw the world.

Some consider the gods to collectively know everything and able to do anything, even beyond the limits

of logical extremes, while many see them as a race like the Liz, or the Octpods, or us, the Crets, just a lot

more powerful, farsighted, and benevolent.

So Ill tell you the story I see, and you can yell it from the rooftops, or just put the papers in a box for meto give to the next who decides I deserve to be pulled from my privacy and manages to get past the

bearuocracy that makes less determined give up in disgust. You nearly did? Remind me to add a few

more layers, its clearly working.Anyway, Ill start at the beginning, back before even our star had

formed, when all we are now was just dust, slowly spinning around, destined eventually to become the

system of planets we know today.

Random Dump of Parts From the World of Chalk.

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