185 A God At Work (1/2)
The world of Htrae fascinated Althos. He was from a world that didn't have space travel, instantaneous communication outside of magic or exceptionally rare psychic abilities, or even germ theory, and Htrae, despite its lack of magic, had all of these things. Htrae was a world of technology, where planes flew across continents, and where instantaneous communication could be achieved quite easily with ”cellphones”, technology so small it could fit in one's pant pocket.
During the god's first week in Htrae, he focused on building a base of followers and a stable home. He had carefully constructed his underwater temple, and painstakingly staffed it with fine, fanatical servants and worshipers. He had also carefully built his community, modeling it a bit off of military bases in the world but above all else working to ensure that it was safe. During this time he didn't think all that hard about the actual world. It was only on the dawn of his eighth day that he finally truly turned his mind to the world he found himself in.
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This world is... so much fun! I thought, in the safety of the impenetrable fortress that was my mind. From here I was safe to plot and scheme all I wanted.
I was currently standing in the subterranean cavern which I had taken to calling ”The Garden”. This cavern was perpetually illuminated by what amounted to sunlight though it was actually light created and maintained by me and not illuminated by sunlight. All around me flowers of every sort grew in supernatural amounts. That was one consequence of being an area I frequented, and whenever I was here even if I was underwater I had a plethora of ”Divine presence” effects on at once, all of them pleasant.
The cavern was only a few kilometers wide, and while it was utterly gigantic given the relatively few non-plant lifeforms that lived here, I was quite satisfied with the spacious chamber. I liked having big spaces like these to run however I wished, that was perhaps a consequence of my first true home being my floating island, and my tower before that.
At one end of the cavern existed an enormous, castle-sized hive inhabited by fierce bees and even fiercer hornets. This was the one settlement in this cavern that was above-water. Everything else of interest, aside from the enormous garden of perhaps millions of flowers, was underwater.
In my hand rested my cellphone. Normally the thing wouldn't work underground, which was something I had discovered the first time I had taken time out of my day to try and operate it. That said, that was something I fixed quite easily. Being a god, I could alter devices and I had freely done so with the phone in my hand, days ago. That said, as I spent a fair amount of time underwater I typically stored the thing in my inventory, an ability that I was only truly beginning to appreciate here, in Htrae.
Without meaning too I had given myself a super cell-phone, one that perfectly did its job and could be used anywhere. I quite liked that, especially since I had lifetimes of memories within me from people who were raised in the age before cellphones, and judging from their memories that wasn't the most fun time to be around.
The cellphone in my hand was a simple one, I hadn't splurged on anything fancy. It was a simple, green, rectangular piece of technology that allowed me to communicate with people in a rather mundane way. I knew that normal cellphones were only designed to work for calls made to people in the same country as the cellphone making the call, though there were a number of ways around that particular design flaw.
That said I didn't particularly need anything anymore fancy than that. And I would never need such technology since I possessed a far more handy means of communicating with people that worked across the universe. My cellphone was a device I possessed exclusively for the sake of maintaining appearances and for the sake of looking normal. I knew from the memories I had locked away within me that such a device was essential for life within New Sol, and living without one would be odd even for hermits like Geoffrey.
I began to toy with the device as I began to experiment with some of my powers, and as I questioned the domains and subdomains lurking within me.
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”So I have a question, and I am posing it to everyone.” I told the countless entities that dwelled within me. And as I did, my mind fell silent which was highly unusual.
My mind was the ”home” of countless domains and subdomains. Idly, even if I was being silent and wasn't thinking about anything, in particular, I heard countless voices and the fragments of all sorts of conversations going on deep within my mind. For there to be a silence was incredibly rare, and even during my exchange with Morehammer, one of the tensest moments of my entire life, I could still hear them chattering away in my head. I was quietly grateful for the silence.
”I am interested in experimenting with some of my powers. One of the powers I am the most fascinated by is 'Symbol manipulation' power I've gained through the subdomain of art. With it can I create symbols for cults?” I asked the countless voices in my head.
At first I was met with silence. And then the silence was shattered, by someone laughing. The sound of the laughter was musical, and it was one of the first bits of music that I had ever heard that I actually enjoyed. It took a moment before the source of the laughter stopped laughing and began to speak.
”Is that all you want with that power? Of course! That's totally possible!” The voice confirmed, speaking happily. It took me a moment to realize that the speaker was almost certainly the very subdomain whose power I was referring too, the subdomain of art.