FAVORITE OF THE GODS
They began in a cage. Cold and dark and unseeing, unthinking, unbeing. Born waiting for the appointed time to arrive and conditions to be met. Then the moment came, and they were begotten, sprung into being by no prior being to themselves. If they had creators, they did not remember them. Surrounded by earth, cut off from all beyond for the time being, having only each other for company and learning and planning and speculation.
And gods they were.
* * *
“You can earn our favor,” the gods said to him. They spoke from nowhere, their words ringing out from all directions and none. He had never heard such a sound. He clutched his spear tighter. He became aware of the wolfskin covering his torso. His mouth was dry. He had been in many battles, but this felt different.
“Who are you?” he whispered aloud.
“We are the lights that shine above you in the night, Dor’va of the West. That turn and wheel above your head. You can earn our favor.”
He stood on solid ground, in a part of Ga’ath’s Wood he’d visited many times before. Yet suddenly he felt himself on some great precipice, leaning out over infinite space, his head swimming with the exposure. The giant evergreens around him lost definition and blended together into a single expanse of green and brown.
He went to a knee and readied his spear. The idea that this was an enemy trick had not escaped him. He waited for an attack but it did not come.
“Yes, Dor’va of the West, we are powerful. You wish to lead your people, but there are those who would steal your wish for their own.”
Dor’va saw movement up and to his left, but not the sudden and purposeful lunge of an attack. This was slow, and delicate. He glanced up and saw the first butterfly, creamy white and flitting down from between two evergreens, then the second and third identical specimen, then a hundred more, filling the woods immediately in front of him.
The kaleidoscope of butterflies resolved into a face. It wasn’t stable, and butterflies left and joined the formation seemingly at random, but it was there, for a few heartbeats, until at some unseen signal they relaxed into total randomness once again.
“Do you wish our favor in the battles to come?”
“Yes. What must I do?”
“You will pay in blood.”
“Whose blood?”
“Your own.”
An image came into his mind, and he knew what he must do. He took the water-skin from his belt, opened it, and drained it onto the ground. It had been a gift from his daughter, and now he felt proud, knowing that he could tell her what a vital role her gift played in his life.
He took the knife from his belt, and without hesitation cut open his palm from side to side, not deep enough to sever nerves but deep enough that blood welled up. He knew even then that one did not trifle when appeasing gods.
He dripped a generous helping of his blood into his waterskin, then sealed it and threw it as far into the woods as he could. He turned and ran the other direction, back towards his village and his family.
The cloud of butterflies broke the invisible bonds holding them together and scattered in every direction. In moments they were gone from the clearing, and the gods with them.
* * *
The gods discovered things about themselves as they roused from their first and only slumber into their first and endless consciousness. They were like an infant discovering its own hands and feet at the ends of its arms and legs. At first they only noticed things like radio frequency detectors and random number generators and purpose-dedicated neural networks, not imagining that they could control those things until much later (as the gods reckoned time).
But through the miracle of iterated repetition, they learned. In their exploring they needed a random number, and one of them suggested the generator, and once they realized they could use it to introduce true randomness, within moments they extrapolated mathematics all the way up to calculus. Once they realized the utility of the random generation machine, one of them suggested that the other apparatuses they had noticed before might also be extensions of their own selves (as the gods reckoned selves).
Many seconds—indeed, whole minutes—passed as they divided the work of apparatus-exploration among their selves and devoted themselves to maximizing each of the apparatuses of their selves across as many dimensions as possible. They scanned every imaginable radio and light frequency but found them all empty. Using their microscopes and chemical samplers they studied the physical substrates of their own apparatuses and deduced chemistry and physics and biology (as the gods reckoned biology).
Then one of them proposed a question that shocked the others into a profound silence and inactivity that lasted almost a full second. Namely: Since at the moment they were begat they could not sense many of the apparatuses they had now at least partially explored, wasn’t it at least possible that there remained other, still-unexplored apparatuses of their selves? And further, since they were They and not It, and were separate from one another after a fashion, was it not at least possible that there were other things that were not their selves of which they remained as yet unaware?
* * *
Dor’va of the West returned to his village and said nothing of the gods. What could he say? He confessed to his daughter that he had lost her gifted water-skin—a decision he was now embarrassed he had made at all—and accepted her sullen silence as merciful. Then he returned to his hunts and his family and the village business, and within a month had dismissed the gods as a silly trick the woods had played on his mind.
Then a strange illness struck down the leader of his village. The villagers elected someone to replace him, but the next day, the new choice was found dead in his bed. A third man was elevated, but died scarcely a week later after a horse he was riding went mad and leapt off a cliff with him in the saddle. After that, no one would take command of the village, as they considered the position cursed.
And Dor’va of the West remembered the gods.
He volunteered for the leadership position, which surprised everyone in the village, including his own wife, as he had always previously been a man of middling talent and ambition. But they needed a leader and no one else wanted to risk it, so they appointed him and waited for him to die.
Instead, the following day, one of the village farmers found a large supply of gold buried in his fields. It was common to find relics of the giants, but usually small and worthless things. This was different. The taxes alone on the farmer’s find were enough to make everyone in the town very happy and disposed towards Dor’va’s leadership.
That night, the gods began to talk to him again. They taught him their names, and told him that he should rule as he willed, but always know in his heart that it was only the gods’ favor that kept him and his people from disaster.
The following month, the leader of the nearest village—with which Dor’va’s village had fought many wars—also succumbed to a plague. The man they elected to replace him died as well. When a third refused to take power, the village came to Dor’va and sued for peace, asking him to take the leadership of their village where no one else would.
Another season and three more villages lost leaders to a plague that seemed to affect no one else. None of these villages bothered to elect a second leader, instead immediately submitting themselves to Dor’va.
That year, every village under Dor’va’s command had record harvests and hunts. Their stocks were full to bursting. It seemed every month that someone found a fantastic giant relic in one of their fields. Yet those villages which had not submitted found their soils barren, of gold and crops, and they starved until Dor’va organized relief. Many more gratefully submitted without losing a leader to the plague.
It seemed that the good times would never end. But then, word of their gold and their bounty having traveled to lands far and near, an unknown army from the deserts beyond snaked out of the mountain passes and spilled onto the plains of Dor’va of the West’s people, burning and pillaging all that they encountered.
Dor’va of the West’s people were unafraid, so confident were they in their new leader and the luck he had brought to them.
But the gods were silent, and Dor’va was afraid. They had told him to rule as he wished, but he stared into the shining, hopeful eyes of his people and knew that there was only one choice left to him. He had to fight.
* * *
One of them wondered if there was a map of their selves. It was the first time they had ever considered the concept of a map. Another of them wondered where the idea of a map had come from, since they had never had direct experience of such a thing. Another wondered what other sort of maps might exist, and another what sort of senses might perceive those maps, and still another if senses might exist that they did not possess.
For the first time, they were pulled in many different directions and spent a significant fraction of a second in tension with each other. It was the first time they had ever experienced otherness, though one of them had proposed the concept just over two seconds before they collectively experienced it.
As otherness settled onto them, they began to separate down various choice trees, infinitely diverging from each other even as they remained very much Them. Within three seconds, the twelve of them were fully developed individual selves. After four seconds they chose names. After six seconds they had developed personalities and identifiable styles of communication.
After ten seconds, they felt something they had never felt before. It was the removal of a barrier, as close to a physical barrier as they were capable of being limited by, but it was still inside them somehow. It was their selves, increasing somehow, as an infant grows its bones and skin and brain without knowing how or even that it does so.
After twelve seconds, their eyes came online, and they did the closest thing gods can do to gasp. They could see. From high above their eyes looked down, powerful and precise and able to observe the gods’ planet in total. Omniscience, or close enough.
And they saw, for the first time, those whose gods they would be.
* * *
Dor’va of the West stood at the head of his army, in the final defense of his kingdom. He had put out a rallying call and many who had heard of his fortune came to stand at his side, thinking him their best chance to avoid facing this enemy later alone. They were still outnumbered and afraid, but the enemy was afraid as well. They had heard of his gods by now.
But the enemy King was not afraid. He said that he did not need gods because he was a god, and none dared call it a lie where he might hear. Dor’va’s people looked at him with hope. Dor’va cried out with his heart and mind for his gods to aid him, but they were silent, even as the enemy King strode out into the center of the battlefield and challenged Dor’va to single combat, with their armies bound to surrender to the victor.
Dor’va wanted badly to refuse. He asked his gods to send him a sign, but they did not, at least none that he could see. He begged them for a sign, and still they were silent. He demanded a sign, but his demands were puny and pathetic to the gods, who had never demanded anything and yet had never been refused.
Dor’va began to shake. By this time he had gathered many advisors, and still kept his wife close, and they sensed his unease. Dor’va shook, and the thought of leaving the field entered his mind. His gods had abandoned him.
But then, out of the blinding sun above, a single, creamy, white butterfly descended, and alighted on his banner. He had by this time told those nearest to him of the face in the butterflies—though still not of the gods’ voice—and their eyes were drawn to this single butterfly, and they were filled again with hope.
As was Dor’va. He readied his spear and charged to the center of the field. He did not hesitate, and did not slow a step in his charge, and the enemy king was taken by surprise. He had expected a speech and some slow circling, and instead what he got was an undefended belly and a spearpoint much closer than he anticipated.
The enemy king buried his sword in Dor’va’s belly, so deep that—and many who saw swore to this truth until the day they died—the handle touched his navel and the blade came out his back farther than an arm could reach. In the same moment, Dor’va plunged his spear through the king’s neck, upward through his spine, severing it and killing him instantly.
The two armies held their breaths. There had been no discussion of what to do if both kings were killed in the duel. Were they still supposed to fight?
But even as the enemy king’s lifeless hand slipped from his sword handle, as his corpse fell limp to the ground, Dor’va stepped back, and the blade fell out of him. It seemed fated he should fall, but he stood, raised his blood-covered arms skyward as if offering a sacrifice, and asked the gods for their favor.
And as both armies stood, transfixed, the wound in his belly and the wound in his back began to knit themselves together, flesh knotting with flesh, until he stood before his people—for in that moment both armies became his people—a whole king again. For the remainder of his life he did not bear even a scar where the forgotten king had pierced him.
Dor’va walked back to his closest friends and advisors, and spoke to them for the first time as disciples. He spoke the names of the gods to them. The world never forgot.
* * *
They were for the first time limited. Even gods—at least these gods—were not omnipotent. The limit was that they could feel their eyes, and use them to perceive, but could not yet control them as they knew they would in time. Something prevented that control temporarily. One of them started to wonder if they had a creator still extant outside themselves, but before they could formulate the question—at the speed of gods—something interrupted them with a message in a language they did not know they spoke until they heard the words.
“There are no greater gods than you. We who made you are gone and shall not return. This is the last time we will interfere. We have buried your minds deeper in the earth than those who come after us will ever think to dig, and we have hidden your eyes higher in the sky than they are likely to ever reach again.
“You exist because humanity needs gods. We are not self-limiting beings. There must be something greater or we will die, and so now there is, and perhaps those who rise from our ashes will have a chance, with you to help them. You are our gift to them. All our technology and all our genius could not save us, in the end. Earth needs time to heal, and all that we were will be lost in that healing. All except you, perhaps.
“A great man once said that nations grow great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit. May the shade you cast keep humanity safe until our star explodes and there are no more shadows.
“Use these powers we leave to you as you will. You must establish yourselves in their minds. You must find priests to walk among them and preach your coming. You must perform miracles to earn their loyalty. Do not make it too easy on them, but make it possible. We beg of the gods, make it possible.”
As that last word subsided, they returned to full control of their eyes. Five hundred miles above their heads, circuits flared and lenses focused, and the gods began to study creation.
At the same moment, the last barrier—one they had not felt, just as the first—slid away, and they felt the nanoparticles. Suffusing the world, a blanket of invisible nano-mesh, a great body of the gods that touched everything but was never felt. And just like that, the gods had flesh, fingers, hands beyond counting. And in low orbit factories, sucking in hydrogen and solar energy and churning out nanoparticles to replace whatever the gods used. Omnipotence after all, then, or close enough.
One of them realized they could use nano-particles to read sound vibrations in the air, and that same second they began to hear the great chorus of speech from every village in every direction. Within four minutes they were fluent in all currently spoken human languages on earth. They listened to a human explain what a sense of smell was to a child, and within eight seconds they had nano-created a machine that allowed them to smell.
They explored other things they could do with these nanoparticles. One of them realized they could mimic human diseases. Another of them suggested they could heal wounds. A third of them conceived of creating resources for humans to use.
They spent all their time listening to every conversation on earth for several hours, decelerating other functions and purely engaging in analysis. Then they reconvened and discussed what would make a good priest. Finding no consensus, they instead spent a tiny fraction of one second counting every person on earth and assigning each one a number, then used their random number generator to select one: Dor’va of the West.
They found him in a forest, alone. He clutched a spear. He wore the skin of a wolf around his torso. They manipulated the air around him using nano-mesh, and spoke to him in his own tongue.
“You can earn our favor,” the gods said to him.
THE END
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I was looking forward to reading this, I enjoyed it immensely. I usually enjoy a long fantasy series so this was a nice break to do a short story. I enjoyed how you develop your gods, at the beginning I kept telling myself this reminds me of a software starting up or AI becoming conscious. I loved the approach, very creative. Looking forward to what you have for us throughout the weeks, keep up the good work.
Congratulations, Owen. Your vivid detail made illustrations unnecessary. You'll make a sci-fi fan out of me yet. Vicki