ADMINISTRATOR POV
I sat up, the recliner folding into a simple but plush chair once more. This time I had none of the confusion of the previous awakening. That had been a strange and singular event, and now that I was clear-headed I realized the problem had been my own confusion more than anything.
“Did you learn anything?” I asked Diamon this while readjusting the time differential for my ‘sleeping’ sessions. At his request, I’d lowered it to a 1:3 ratio, instead of the normal 1:10000, and didn’t want to forget to put it back to normal. He’d been here for several hours observing through my interface.
The elephant-like Senior Administrator gently touched his flower-interface with his trunk, causing it to fold up into a bud-like structure. “I did. This alleviates some concerns, but opens up others. We have much to talk about.”
We did indeed. “I did have an idea I might need help with,” I mentioned, but that wasn’t what was the high priority. “But first, what did you find out?”
Diamon made a light wave with his left trunk. “The connection does have some small amount of risk of allowing the avatar consciousness fully into your Sanctuary… but this is trivially corrected with a small adjustment. I will show you how to do it momentarily.”
He then gestured toward me. “The system you created to monitor patterns also had a subroutine for genetic encoding. While no creature aside from your avatar will be able to form a connection, a less potent pattern has been encoded into your avatar’s genetic legacy. Any descendants will have a small chance of gaining access to this weakened pattern.”
The class. Of course. While monsters were the ones that normally gained legacy abilities, this whole mess had confused my System, and it must have created a custom class just for Tastka’s descendants. Presuming my avatar even procreated… she had no such interest at the moment. Then again, my elves were slow to do so. I wasn’t sure I was looking forward to that, but at least it would be a learning experience.
“Could I use it to send messages to my avatar?” I asked, since that was the whole point of studying it instead of sealing off the exploit.
“With practice and dedication, you should be able to control and restrict what information is sent,” Diamon reassured me. “You must still be very careful though. With this power comes the risk of your avatar doing too much. They must be guides more than direct actors.”
I waved the warning away, “Yes, yes, I know. And the proxies need to be even more careful.” As interesting as life as a native was, I now knew the language and could more easily blend in, hopefully, without relying on the strange translation function that being an Administrator gave me.
Which reminded me…
“Diamon,” I prompted. “Why does the translation I get from my memories not translate every concept?” I paused and looked for an example. “For example, it translates day and dusk just fine even if the concepts aren’t quite the same, but it doesn’t translate year ever, it translates it as turn of the seasons, even though that’s… basically the same thing?”
For a moment, I wondered if Diamon’s own translation of what I’d said couldn’t convey the meaning, but the mammoth-creature only remained silent for a few seconds before giving an answer.
“The translation you receive is in dealing with concepts,” he murmured carefully. “I understand the concept of year, and can see the problem. A turn of the seasons happens yearly, but is not a year. A year is a discrete period of time, lasting from one day to another, specific day. A turn of the seasons is a convenient equivalent, but it may last a different time span depending on when they decide the seasons end. Your culture has yet to develop timekeeping to the precision needed.”
I scratched behind an ear thoughtfully. “So I’m basically thinking in the wrong calendar?”
“You’re thinking in a calendar,” Diamon countered, waving a trunk. “Attempting to explain this to them would not even be translated. At best they might pick up that you meant a period of time that was several seasons long. They do not have the conceptual vocabulary to understand.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
My tail drooped a bit. “Just like with the numbers…” That made sense. If it weren’t literally the Stone Age, maybe things would be easier to translate. I wondered if they were following typical human culture development.
I shook my head and put it out of my mind. It was a curiosity, but so far hadn’t gotten in the way of anything. “What about my Quest idea? Did you look it over for problems?”
Diamon gestured, his flower opening and prompting me to open my own interface. “The concept is usable, and you covered most of the possible problems that may arise in this case. I have found a few unlikely but plausible risks in it, which I believe you may mitigate easily.”
He turned his human-like eyes to me. “I believe that a Sub-Terminal, or a series of them, would be better-suited for mass deployment of these ‘Quests’ you speak of. Are you certain you still wish to delay creating some?”
“I want to put some careful thought into that before I even start designing them,” I insisted. I opened up my Scratchpad for the first time in a while, though. I’d have to tackle it someday.
I almost added another item, but decided to tackle it now. The one I’d wanted to ask for help with anyway. Closing out the Todo list, I took another look at the entire world-universe and sighed.
“So I did a dumb thing and thought I was making dawn and dusk like in my world,” I explained. “Except that the curve is still pretty extreme from a celestial scale. Depending on where they are, the inhabitants can have lengthy dawns and dusks, or both. Also they can way more easily figure out the universe is curved than I intended, though that isn’t as big a deal.”
Diamon’s ears did a motion that seemed noncommittal about it. “You created a sun and stars because that is what seemed normal to you. It works poorly in this case, especially with the expansion of the torus. A much more effective solution would be to replace it with an illuminated band that fades for nighttime.”
“That would get rid of time zones, too…” I muttered. “Nobody likes those.” More loudly, I countered, “Wouldn’t that be expensive to add?”
Diamon waved a trunk in a negative gesture. “Somewhat, but not overly so at this stage. In the long term it may be an investment.” He tapped his flower again and added, “You do have that species with genetic memory. It could be a problem to make such a major change that they could clearly remember. But it would be trivial to wipe them out with an extinction event. Recreating them would be more expensive, of course.”
I glared at my supposed ‘co-worker’ for a moment and scrunched my muzzle up in disgust. “I’m not wiping an entire species out for convenience.”
The other Administrator turned to look at me, this time with a faint chiding aura. “Sometimes it is best to sacrifice a small population in the interest of long term stability. Eliminating a likely problem early is more important than any attachment you may have to these inhabitants.”
My tail lashed in irritation, “I understand that I’m in charge of all of them, and that sometimes you need to sacrifice a few for the good of the many, or the universe itself… but I don’t have to be cavalier about it. I shouldn’t think of them as inferior beings to shuffle around at my whimsy. It feels wrong.”
“They are inferior,” Diamon countered. “You are new, even if you have risen in rank rapidly. Every addition of rank grants your soul greater power and complexity. Your mind only appears to be grasping the same level of concepts, because your soul can better translate your power into something you can use. These beings can never do what you do, even if they should inhabit the Sanctuary.”
I steadied my temper with a deep breath. “Can’t they? I was once one of those random souls, wasn’t I?” My toes drummed claws on the floor. “Perhaps they can’t now, but they all have the potential to become me, or you, or even Orpheus apparently. If we forget that, then what’s the point of this?”
“I refuse to engage with you about this now,” Diamon replied. “It is a perspective gained by growth. Perhaps we should focus on your projects, instead of this.”
My jaw clenched hard enough that I was sure that were I living, my teeth would grind and ache. He was right, though. We had work to do.
“Fine,” I relented. “We do need to work on the Quest system, but first about my sun problem… what if I made the upper atmosphere reflective to bounce the light all day? I think that would still mean they would see the sun overhead, but it might look weird at other times. More daylight, though.”
Diamon paused to think. “If calculated right, you could do this and introduce it gradually. A small bulk adjustment to existing life could allow it to adjust to the change more rapidly, as well. So long as you introduce it over the course of several centuries, it is… theoretically possible.”
“And the expense?” I prodded.
Reluctantly, it seemed, Diamon admitted, “Much cheaper than the luminescent band. You would still see some variation in light depending upon the location in your universe, but it would be far less dramatic.”
This made my ears lift in pleasure, and my irritation at earlier eased. I didn’t want to be an uncaring god, and ‘efficient’ may not be the best for my universe… even if my goal was, in the end, to make more energy. I had a feeling this was the right choice though.
“Right. That sounds like it would be hard to calculate, so instead of me running hundreds of simulations by trial and error… let’s see if we can get this working.” My tail flicked upward and then I added an afterthought.
“And tomorrow, we look into installing this Quest system. I have a feeling my avatar will be needing it soon.”
Wild Lands
46662
Discord, but I’m still working on fancier features.