AnnouncementI’m well ahead of what I’m posting, but when I hit the 40s, chapters are beginning to take much longer to write. The enthusiasm is there, but the details and plot threads to track are getting to be a cognitive load that slows down writing. In addition, chapters are getting longer... the most recent one I wrote is 2400 words, compared to the average of 1500 for earlier chapters.

  This means I’m going to be cutting back to 5 updates per week to avoid burnout. No chapters Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

  Chapter 35: Min/Max

  For a long while, I just considered the notification and what it might mean. I rubbed the bridge of my nose again and then sighed, realizing that I still knew nothing about that system.

  The words conveyed meaning… probably because everything here was transted. I hadn’t thought about that in a while, but it was unlikely that Orpheus spoke English. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I was speaking English. I knew that was the nguage my former self had been fluent in, but I still didn’t remember where I was from.

  That thought drifted into considering my former life. From the range of knowledge I had, I figured I must have been from an English-speaking country… probably the United States, though Canada was a possibility. I only thought that because I seemed to know a lot more about the history of that country than any of the others. Presumably, that meant that was where I was from.

  I shook my head. It didn’t matter anymore. Whoever I was then, I was something else now. I still had habits, though, so perhaps something of the self remained in the soul… or maybe they just couldn’t eliminate everything when they’d tried to preserve my knowledge.

  Was it even they? Was Orpheus the one who had done all this to me?

  Too many questions, not enough activity.

  I had low energy generation, but it was still positive. By all accounts, if not for eighty percent of it being pulled away all the time by the combination of tithe and debt, I would actually have been sitting pretty. I could see my maintenance cost going up slowly, though I wasn’t sure what caused that… but it seemed to be increasing faster than my energy generation.

  The gap was wide enough that I had several thousand years of buffer, at least, unless one or the other accelerated. That gave me some time.

  I gnced at the interface and found that the symbols had been spreading, and now writing was actually coming into being. My dwarves had started creating symbols as well, but the Aravel elves still remained isotionist, and none of the Aravel communities I scanned used any sort of writing, or even symbols.

  More concerning was that almost all of them were isotionist, though after over an hour of searching, I did find one mixed community. They had somehow ended up on a small isnd with wildly variable mana, so they had to band together to survive. The actual result of a pregnancy there was unpredictable, meaning the vast majority of that community were Sylen elves, but they had members of the other two kinds as well.

  That one was worth watching, since it differed from the norm.

  I wondered how many different nguages had evolved while I’d been pondering all this.

  Things were moving quickly. The writing system was spreading quite fast, although it still occupied a retively small area of my world. I’d made it so much bigger than Earth that – even with the elves only having access to half – it took them a long time to spread.

  Even so, it had only been a few thousand years since the symbols had been discovered, and now they had writing… and multiple kinds of writing, from what I could tell. That seemed fast to me. The spread of knowledge was frighteningly quick, and while I didn’t know as much about Earth history, especially ancient history, as I knew about other topics, I did know that it took quite some time to develop certain technologies and for them to spread – and often they didn’t spread beyond the local area.

  Anyway, it was a little hard to tell exactly how things operated from this high a vantage. I supposed that was why I had the avatar… or at least the ability to make one. That had been a tab on my interface since I started, but it had been grayed out until this point.

  I selected it now, and of course it was a complex series of menus, but everything was couched under three menus. These were my three broad options, and I looked over them carefully.

  Constructed AvatarAvatar body will be constructed from unrealized potential in the world. This body will maintain almost all Administrator abilities while active. It may not interact with the host world directly. This construct has a prohibitively high cost to maintain in the world and should only be used for important investigations or external universe incursions.I paused when I read that. The first construct offering sounded expensive, but I had no idea what prohibitively high cost meant. I could delve into the menus and try to put one together to see how much it might cost, but I could already tell that this wasn’t what I wanted right now. If it was that expensive, it seemed like a waste… especially if I couldn’t interact.

  The thing that caught my eye was the mention of external universe incursions. That could happen? Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. Orpheus had made no mention of hostile forces. From what she had said, the whole community was rather friendly. So where would an external incursion come from?

  My ck of knowledge on the topic was worrying. Maybe the fifty-percent failure rate wasn’t entirely due to incompetence on the part of new Administrators.

  I shook my head and moved on to the next one.

  Proxy AvatarAvatar body will be constructed from materials in the universe to mimic a living being. Administrator access will be limited while present in-universe. Interaction with intelligent beings will lower the energy production of any actions they take proportionate to the interference the action brought. Administrators in a Proxy Avatar require minimal maintenance for the body, but must return to their Sanctuary for full access. Travel to and from a Sanctuary from a universe requires more significant Reality Points, dependent upon the power and structure of the Avatar. Proxy Avatars may be inhabited within a Sanctuary.This looked more like what I was expecting. I delved further into the menu, and it appeared to be a biological body that I could create and live in. If I then went into the universe itself, I could walk around… but anything I did would “spoil” the energy, presumably because it interfered with free will and the choices of the beings there.

  I could see cases where it might be worth it, such as saving an important being’s life or something simir. I would lose out on their energy, but it could let me direct the development of a culture or event.

  Apparently, travel to and from the universe was expensive, though, and while there, I couldn’t do much. That was concerning.

  I briefly looked at how commands were restricted, and time dition was the obvious one I couldn’t use while in-universe. Quite a few other restrictions kept me from messing with natural ws or making rge-scale adjustments.

  I’d also have to decide what species I’d want to mimic. I hadn’t made any humans, and a lot of the creatures I had made were a little alien for me. That could be interesting to live as, but I wanted something I could comfortably use for a long time. That left elf… or possibly one of the core-eaters from Downside.

  It was probably worth it, but I decided to at least take a look at the third option before I hopped in with a new skin. I moved on to the final selection while thinking that over.

  Incarnate AvatarThe Administrator’s soul will be extracted and pced within an immature vessel in the universe, or upon creation of a new being by natural processes, taking the pce of the soul that would naturally occur. All access to Administrator abilities and memory will remain in the Sanctuary, tethered to the new Avatar. The Administrator will be unavaible during such time as the intelligent being can act within the world, and will be returned to the Sanctuary upon the death of the Avatar’s physical body, or upon a predetermined time, as chosen by the Administrator. Once inside the Sanctuary, all memories of the Avatar’s life will be avaible. Actions taken by the Avatar will not generate Reality Points, but any interactions taken with other sapient beings in the universe will not affect the energy they generate.Now this one was interesting. It cut me off from my Administrator abilities completely… but only for the lifetime of a single creature. Since I routinely accelerated time so that hundreds of years could pass quickly for me, this didn’t seem so bad. It only meant that I wouldn’t be able to do anything during that time. I wouldn’t even know I was the Administrator while I was there.

  It basically let me live an entire life in my own universe, ignorant of who I was until I returned to being the Administrator upon death.

  It was also the cheapest option. I could see what this was created for – finding issues that were hard to identify from outside the universe – and it seemed the most useful for my immediate problem… though I balked at being completely without my abilities for an entire lifetime.

  The proxy avatar seemed more useful in general, since it would let me guide things while I was down there. This one was more useful for observing what was going on… but I could also do that as a proxy avatar, couldn’t I?

  I settled back in my recliner and drummed my fingers on the armrest. I’d taken a quick gnce at the proxy avatar cost, and while the maintenance wasn’t too bad, the price of popping to and fro was significant with my current reserves.

  The exact cost varied depending on the avatar itself, but I could tell it would easily be a hundred Reality Points or more just to pop in and see what was going on. What’s worse, the limited abilities it had were all more expensive while I was inside the universe. The brief description hadn’t mentioned that.

  Really, for just finding out what was going on, the incarnate option seemed reasonable. I was just wary of it now that I knew external incursions were a thing.

  I browsed through the various options while I considered whether I even wanted to do this.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  Whatever person I’d been before had seemed very interested in systems… that’s why I had been so careful about designing so many things. Now I felt a remnant of what he had been like bubble up inside me as I spotted something very interesting.

  I smiled to myself and chuckled.

  “Exploitable mechanic.”