"Are you better now Walker?" Virgil asked after looking him over.

"No. No, not even close. But I'll-I'll get there."

"Well, that is all that I can ask." The large squirrel said. "In the good news department, I have not seen another Creator's world destroyed in some time. Perhaps one of them learned how to contain The Slicer."

Walker looked up from the grass, "That is good news. Maybe they found a way to manage it."

"We can only hope. Now, are you ready to get started?"

"I may as well." He looked at his timer and saw that he had 97+ hours remaining. "We only have so much time to fix all of this before we're fucked."

"Indeed. I suggest you go into the World Editor and try to fix things as best as you can. There are still a few Muys left. I will need to create a localized event so they can sustain themselves and not perish."

"Okay."

Walker clicked on the World Editor and his overlay lit up.

 

Welcome to the World Editor!

...Upgrade detected...

As you have upgraded your World Editor, you can now add and modify land directly. You will not be able to add direct landmass, but you can make minor changes to your world. To begin, please name your world.

 

"Woops."

"What?" Virgil asked as he watched the pieces of their small planet floating in space.

"I named the second landmass Symphony, now the World Editor is asking me to name the planet."

"That is actually not a problem. There are many worlds that have continents, cities, and entire planets sharing the same name. You are not the only one who has trouble with naming things."

"Do you mean like Blitzburg7 and how it never changed its identity?"

"No, that is actually a cultural choice. The Blitzburgs are populous throughout the universe due to their high intelligence and aptitude for magic. They take pride in how many are selected in the alpha protocol, and leave their numbers as identifiers of such."

"Strange."

"Walker", Virgil said with emphasis. "Many cultures would consider Earth and your fellow humans as the strange ones. Your need for individuality, especially in your newest generations....it is prolific."

"Yeah yeah, we're all special snowflakes. Nothing new there by the way. The real question is, why do they know about the Alpha Protocol and Earth doesn't?"

"Because they have a member on the council and have been a part of the protocol since the first initialization. You would almost call them....tuned, to the protocol."

"So they're guaranteed to succeed whereas I blew up my planet?" Walker asked, standing up and feeling some of his heartache shift to resentment.

"Not any more than you. The protocol disallows sharing the exact ways that a Creator successfully completed it as one of its exit programs. The most they can do is let their worlds have an idea of what they went through. When you gain the Disciple subsystem, you will be able to speak directly with a few chosen entities, and become a form of guide. But you cannot tell them the specifics of the Creator wars, or give them any hints about the protocol. To them, you must seem as if a God."

"So I'll be making a religion. That seems fucked up if I'm honest. I'm above average intelligence, but I'm not omniscient or omnipotent or any other omni-thing. I'm a failed teacher and friend. Plus, as you know, my planet has a history of religion and planetary warfare going hand and hand. I'm not so sure that developing a Walker religion is the best idea"

"Technically it would likely be a Dante religion as that is how they will know you, but I understand your point. However, your entities will see land connect to their world, see themselves evolve, and new species arriving often out of nowhere. To think that they would not form some kind of belief system or organization centered around this phenomenon is naive at best, and dangerous at worst. You need to plan for this, and if possible, harness it."

"So lean into the God complex. Stop caring about how others feel and live, but whatever is best for my goals, my aspirations, is what matters most."

"Your morality will see you fail."

"My morality is what makes me a better person than those who would kill for their ambitions."

"Yes, but you are also the creator of their world, and thus you have a responsibility to that same world as a whole and not just to a few individuals who live upon it. What is the quote you have often said, have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. Your favorite food is meat-lovers pizza, did you say a prayer for the cow who became your sausage, or the chicken? They're all degrees of the benefits of killing."

"Fair enough., but we are not done with this conversation."

Virgil nodded, so after a moment of thought he moved back into the World Editor to take a big step.

 

World: Symphony is named.

Congratulations Dante! You've named your world!

The World Editor will now allow you to remove resources you no longer need and store them in your resources section for future use. There are no limits for how much may be taken away, nor how much may be stored.

Due to your upgrade, you can now add resources from your resources section directly to your world, and modify them to a certain extent.

Modification is limited to the use of adding standard resources, combining resources, and shaping resources.

Further upgradeable.

Current status: Splintered

Please reconnect the broken sections of your world before you can add new landmass.

 

Once Walker read through the text, he clicked back to the main screen and saw the landmass system was greyed out. He clicked on World Editor again and a small 3d projection of Symphony appeared and depressed him even further. There were SO MANY PIECES.....EVERYWHERE!

"How in the hell am I going to do this?" He asked the air.

"One step at a time." Virgil said over his shoulder.

Walker nodded without saying anything and placed his hands on the 3d projection. Once he clicked a small portion of water floating into space, a series of icons appeared next to it. One said remove, another add, and the last one modify. He clicked remove and watched the floating h20 disappear. A floating +200 gallons showed itself in blue with his attributed water icon. He clicked on a small piece of land before Virgil coughed.

"Some people have learned to....take large steps, Walker. A smart Creator would see if there is a remove button outside of clicking on every piece floating in space."

Walker caught on immediately. "A smart Creator would thank their friend."

"Is that what we are now Walker?" Virgil asked with a tilt of his head.

"Only one I have out here." He responded seriously as he moved back to his work. He found the remove button when he clicked on the edge of Symphony and discovered that he could just swipe his hand and delete anything he wanted, except the Muys. It seemed they were destined to slowly float out toward other worlds, not unlike The Slicer. As he was deleting, numbers continued to appear next to what he was working on. Walker looked at his resources and found that he already had a lot of material, and he'd have some work ahead of him to fix what was broken. Carefully, He expanded the size of the 3d image and began to work on just the outside of the landmass. The moment he completed the outside, he expanded the image again and started to clean up the areas in the middle. Anything that wasn't perfectly connected to a large mass was removed.

He committed himself fully to his work, making slow movements that gained precision the longer he progressed, until finally, he finished. According to his timer, it had taken him two hours to clean up all the problems, even with the mass deleting option to remove everything he touched. Walker looked at what he had left. Symphony was broken into four main pieces. One small island was left of the Crater, while another was a portion of the desert. The two large pieces were the remainder of the swamp and snow area that had mostly survived, and the central portion of Symphony was still connected to the beach he'd created.

A thought, a plan really, blew up in his mind. Walker let it percolate in the background of his thoughts as he pulled up his resources. He had a lot of water and granite, as well as a smattering of soil as the mid portion was still fairly well off. But it did have one long hole straight down the middle, and the bottom of the planet fractured from The Slicer's impact. Rather than work with the larger planetary addition system, Walker finely controlled his movements and began to add things back the way they were. When he reached the bottom of the planet, he started by creating edges, so he wouldn't have further problems later on. This would leave the bottom of his planet in more of a square shape, rather than the spherical he had started with. His thought process was simple, it would be easier to add more landmass over time with flat planes. Incrementally, he placed the resources back where they belonged. He left the pass through the mountains that The Slicer had cut away, as now there was no need with The Crater being just another part of Symphony and not a prison for its most volatile citizen. The top of the planet was no longer a perfect disc, as his control wasn't good enough when working on such a large scale, but it was put back together at least. His Landmass system, which had been greyed out and unusable, lit back up as he reconnected the final few pieces of each area. He took his leftover granite and edged all around the top of the world, not wanting his future entities to....basically fall off of the planet. That would be embarrassing, and, frankly horrifying.

"Done" He announced to Virgil who walked over to see it. Walker clicked the monitor button and looked around, finding the Muys placidly unaware of the destruction and swimming around in their habitat. They still had about fifty of them, which Virgil had said was enough for repopulation. It wasn't perfect, but then again nothing ever is. It was, however, a bandaid that would work for now.

"Now what?" Walker asked.

"Well....do you still want to make killer Canadian geese?"

Walker shuddered, "God no, and we need to limit our creations. If we make another high-potential raging monster, it has to die immediately."

Virgil nodded, "I agree. We have time to create a new predator and prey cycle, and we have leftover temporal resources as we have not used much of our stock. That leaves a lot of room for additions and improvement."

"Right. So spitball with me here. I have a plan." He said, checking and making sure he had enough time left before the next battle.

"Go ahead" Virgil said.

"This is what I'm thinking. We have 94 hours plus some change before the next battle. The Muys should still have enough food to maintain themselves... cannibalistically....for a while. I want to straight ignore them. We need some skin in the game, and that means gettin rolling on our entities. We need to finish the entity task, so a new one updates in, and then we can grab whatever the rewards are. I think we need to go for the spirit tree."

Virgil began hopping up and down, "You are ready for the Spirit Tree!"

Walker put his hands up and patted the air until he stopped jumping, "Calm down calm down. Yes, I think we need to get some magic into Symphony, but, I don't want it to evolve."

Virgil tilted his head at that, "Then what do you want it for? Historically, Spirit Trees are used as a building block for great entities. Ones that help push their creators to the finals, no less."

"Be that as it may, I'm worried that one will be born with high potential and just take over all of our other ideas. I want to make one, materialize it, kill it while it's young, then start throwing them into the evolution chamber. This way, we can make it without the ability to evolve. As soon as we have the tree in the right place, we put them all throughout Symphony and modify them for the environment."

"To what end?" Virgil asked.

"I want them to be magical batteries. Magic has to exist inside of the creature for it to use it, correct?"

"Very much so. Magic is a catalyst for, of course, magical evolution. The moment The Slicer gained its advanced adaptive properties, which is a form of magical evolution catalyzed from killing the Spirit Tree, it gained access to magic and thus could do amazing things....like blow up Symphony."

"Yah, less happy ending there with its-" Walker made air quotes, "-amazing things. But think about this. We place the trees throughout Symphony, create a world that is filled with magic so heavy it can be found in the atmosphere, thennnnn, we build a system that harnesses the magic and allows the entities who use it to have controlled evolutions."

"So you want to create entities that do not allow for evolution, fill the world with the spark for magical evolution, then control how it is allowed to interact on Symphony."

"Exactly!" Walker said, giving Virgil two thumbs up. "You nailed it. What do you think? I know we're going to have to make a lot of entities, then kill them...but I feel like this is the only way we keep from having another Slicer incident."

"The Slicer" Virgil reminded him, "It unintentionally changed its own name."

"Whatever".

Virgil thought on that a moment before saying, "That is very much possible with the System Designer Walker, but also a bit dark for your morality. You said you were not a murderer, but that seems like it would be murder. Spirit trees, for example, are living creatures."

"Do they think for themselves?"

"Well no, but when they evolve.....ah. I see your point."

"Look...it...I feel like I'm going to have to...kill things here." Walker stuttered as his plan now started to sink in. He hadn't been sure if it was possible, but now that it was, the consequences of it shook him. "It's just....I'm not saying I haven't killed before." Walker had fought in Operation Enduring Freedom, but that was under orders and in defense of himself or others. If he made a creature, dropped it in, and it died, even without any of his input.....that was still a form of murder as he was the one who created it and placed it there. He wasn't sure about how to bridge the divide between the need to control things and make sure Symphony didn't spiral out of control, and the idea of murdering breathing lifeforms that he created.

"I'm going to have to kill things." He said in realization.

"Oh my, yes."

Walker shook his head, hard. Not in denial of Virgil agreeing with him, but in denial of his own self-image. Sure, he wasn't the best boyfriend, friend, or at times person. The world was a grey watercolor painting, constantly mixing, and nothing was ever truly clean. But he wasn't a murderer.

The more he thought about it, the more inevitable it seemed. In order for his plan to work, he was going to have to kill things....to murder things. What would that do to him? What would he become? If he succeeded in the protocol, he would be not only a murderer but an immortal murderer. But what was the alternative? Let Virgil die, go back to Earth, and not have the chance to make his world? No. No way. He would have to crack a few eggs. Walker finally said what they both knew, "I'm not going to have a choice here, am I."

Virgil put both of his hands up as if balancing a scale, "Somewhat. When you consider that most of creation is done immediately after destruction, you begin to see the cycle. Your famous pianist, Elton John, sang a song about it. It is a circle Walker, only the difference is, you will have direct input into how and why that circle will work. You removed the floating landmass and gained materials back for your world. You seed an alpha predator with high evolutionary potential, and you get a cosmic destroyer. There is a form of balance within the protocol, of fairness for give and take, and you are attempting to make Symphony with a similar framework."

"Does that make me evil?"

"Does being human make you evil?" Virgil countered. "You are working within the confines of your limitations, and as far as ideas go, I believe this to be a winner." He gave Walker his two thumbs back.

"Okay, so we have a plan." Walker said, pressing the bottom of his fist into his other hand. "First, we make the tree, then I find a way to kill it. After that, we modify them for no evolutionary potential....just simple dumb space magic trees. No more modifying on the whiteboard unless it's a landmass."

"Yes"

"Then, we get into the ecology and make sure the atmosphere is balanced out, which will be your focus the moment the first trees are done."

"I will be on it" Virgil said, being a good hype man.

"Indeed." Walker replied with the first smile he'd shown since The Slicer's flaming hit-and-run.

"You are not as funny as you think you are, Walker." Virgil said with a serious face.

"Whatever. As soon as the atmosphere can support it, we start the predator-prey cycle, basic stuff, and start our monsters right after."

"I am not sure if we have enough time for that Walker."

"We'll make time. We can recover from this, we can get through the protocol. We just need to put in the time, literally, and work together. You with me!" Walker finished, throwing his hands in the air.

"I do not have a choice."

"I'll take that as a hell yes. Now, where the fuck do I find the Spirit Tree in the entity system, because I have no idea."

"You ruined it."