The First Contractor
God.
The weight of that name is never a light one. It means a being so immeasurably superior as to stand within reach of omnipotence, or near enough to pass for it — or else those Transcendents who wield an absolute authority beyond a Mortal's understanding, and so become objects of worship.
Even among the celebrated Transcendents of G.A.L.L.E.R.Y., existences worthy of being called gods are vanishingly rare. And even when one is called a god, that is all it amounts to: being called one. As far as I know, nothing in this universe has reached a height sublime enough to be named a true god.
What the hell is he on about all of a sudden?
If it hadn't been the Head Administrator saying it, I would have assumed he was messing with me and blocked him on the spot. And why wouldn't I? In this place, the existence farthest from omnipotence was me. I was nothing but a brain in a jar.
But the words had come from the Head Administrator himself — administrator of G.A.L.L.E.R.Y., that playground of Transcendents; the one who had hauled my soul up out of endless dark and taken me in as one of their own; and, more than anyone else here, a Transcendent of mild temperament who pursued the order of the universe. He was not the sort to talk nonsense.
Half believing, half doubting, I kept the conversation going.
The reply that came back only left me more bewildered.
A faint cognitive dissonance set in. A god was not some crew chief sweating grunts on a backwater industrial planet. Listening to the nuance, it did seem less like becoming an omnipotent deity and more like playing god among Mortals — but even so, could this possibly be right?
While I was still turning it over, the Head Administrator went on.
He sounded as if he meant to speak in earnest, so I didn't bother answering. I simply listened.
Ooooh...!
In answer to the will of a great being, the whole of the Astral Realm trembled, faintly. The Astral Realm is a place swayed, at its root, by spiritual phenomena and metaphor — a realm where laws utterly unlike those of the material world hold sway. Among Transcendents, the mighty can affect the dimension itself merely by revealing a fragment of their rank.
Riding the Æther, the emotion the Head Administrator felt came through to me unaltered. Keen interest. Delight.
Whoa. He's actually serious.
A startling piece of insight. True to the name Observer, the Head Administrator's unseen gaze had pierced straight through to the essence of what I was. Could this truly be the same Head Administrator the gallery regulars treated like an unpaid slave, mocked to their hearts' content, left screaming on the inside while malicious users griefed him without end?
The regulars must have felt his psychic wave as well. All at once, the flood of refreshed posts swelled until it was impossible to miss.
A thought occurred to me then. A being who, merely by exerting his will with the lightest touch, could set countless Transcendents trembling in alarm — wasn't a being like that the one who ought to be called a god? If anything, the sight cleared my doubts. A existence infinitely close to godhood was telling me that playing god seemed to suit my nature. He would hardly say so without a reason.
I swept a quick look over the gallery, thrown into chaos by the Head Administrator's psychic wave, and answered.
The chat broke off for a moment. It was, in truth, no more than an instant — less a real gap between one remark and the next than a deliberate conveyance, through will, that he was choosing his words with care. By the standards of the material universe it would sound like nonsense, but that is simply how things are in the Astral Realm.
It was rough for me too, when I first arrived.
In fact, a place like the gallery existed for precisely this reason. Even Transcendents, within the space of the Astral Realm, must spend an absurd amount of effort merely to speak with another being. Out of everyone's need, a forum had been made where a measure of order and common sense still applied. A kind of social contract, if you like.
Anyway.
His explanation was patient.
I listened the way an eager student would, slipping questions and reactions in between his lines.
The process was simpler than I had expected.
It was so simple that suspicion almost set in.
I understood at once.
Isn't this just how you become a Hogam-gonik?
Put in the terms of humanity — my most recent past life — it was like a celebrity fresh off their debut, or a restaurant that had just opened its doors, running this way and that to make themselves known. Or a fisherman with a line in the water, scattering chum and waiting for something to bite.
I let the thought slip, half on purpose and without a filter, and a thoroughly amused reply came back from the Head Administrator.
The talk was getting serious again, so I tried a self-deprecating joke.
He had taken a nothing joke far more heavily than I'd expected, and the embarrassment landed on me instead. The mood had gone a little sour besides. We seemed to have said what there was to say, so I decided to close the conversation out around there.
At any rate, I understood what had to be done. The method of becoming a god was so simple I almost wondered why I had never tried it. By some means or other, you advertise to the Mortals that a new god has appeared, then grant their wishes and stack a record. Repeat the process, grow famous, and when fame and achievement reach a singularity, you become a god. Not an omnipotent one, perhaps. Beings of that sort are what people call a Divinity.
So every Divinity ascended like this.
The scale of their influence varied beyond measure, but as a rule they stood fairly high even among Transcendents. Which meant that once I became a Divinity, I too could join one of G.A.L.L.E.R.Y.'s ancient Gald Cups — the Material Universe Prestige Tour — and make a proper scene of it.
Oh...
It had been something I needed to do regardless. Now I had one more reason worth calling motivation.
All right. Shall we begin?
The edge of the universe.
A small spacecraft slipped into orbit around a planet that had once flowered with a civilization brilliant even by the Empire's measure, and that no one sought out anymore. It was a dead world now, designated a Class-1 restricted zone. Entry into its orbit was strictly controlled, and approach was permitted only in the narrowest sense — a swing-by, and only for an emergency evacuation.
The ship eased toward it.
Krrrk—!
No. Crash was the more honest word. Space debris and interstellar matter ringing the planet ground its thin energy shield away in an instant. The outer armor, laid bare, caught the atmosphere and burned a furious red, and wreathed in flame it dropped at a speed little short of free fall. It looked, for all the world, like a meteor.
Shwoooom... boom!
And then a man stepped out of the tattered craft and began to walk, slowly, toward the remnants of an old civilization.
"Hardly a place where one would expect to find a god. A prison would be closer to the mark."