The Birth of God
POV
Hisha ArʼSher.
I sat in the corner of the basement and pondered. There were no more tears left, and no one would hear me. It all started when my father went to the Great Fire Mountains and disappeared there. When the fire started coming out of them into the sky, everyone accused my father of having angered the Gods. And as this old stump, whom everyone calls a shaman, always said, "Only the blood of the offender will appease the Gods!" So as my father vanished without a trace, my fate became unenviable. Literally, the day after the Wrath of the Gods, several warriors burst into my house and dragged me to the shaman. He read all this nonsense and pointed out when everyone had to come to the Great Guardian Square for the sacrifice ritual. And they threw me in the basement. So there I sat, waiting for morning to come and drag me to the altar, to the roar of the crowd. And I loved that place so much. I used to walk with my father near the Guardian, and I was always amazed at its peculiarity. My father used to say he was a messenger of the Gods who had come to protect us and always protecting our village. And here I was about to give him my life, though he was supposed to protect me. With another sob and the sound of the hatch opening, I looked at those who had come. Yes. It's for me. Two of the Shaman-fanatic's handmaidens. Now it's time to go the way of the ancestors.
Five minutes later
When they fixed me on the altar, and I heard the shaman sharpening his monstrous sickle, I was so frightened. I wanted to howl, and I began to lash out, and the tears began to stream from my eyes. But all my struggles were in vain. The two fanatics holding me were probably the biggest men in our village. And when the shaman, with the grin of the beast, headed toward me, I knew that I had no more than a few moments to live. Finally, when I decided to look at the Guardian, I froze when I saw the red eyes that he looked at me. I wanted to hide from that look because there was not even a spark of life in them before...
End of POV.
(Pro your requests. Make up the rest yourself :))
(You could say the code)
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Intelligence Report #2344543/34.
A special archive created at the behest of the Supreme.
Description of the Aboriginal race:
The Aborigines are humanoid creatures about two meters tall. In contrast to the prototype Superior, they have a four-toed limb and the continuation of the vertebral segments, passing into a spur. There is also a fairly short layer of hair preserved, most likely due to the warm climate that replaced the old, cold climate. The ears also remained from the feline family, as did the nose. Skin colouration is predominantly white, possibly due to the small amount of sunshine, as the settlements are in an abnormally dense forest. The difference with the sample of Superior is 25.657867%.
A further report is presented as a video.
Return to the assignment.
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The system provides an analysis derived from the Aboriginal data photo:
The analysis shows a 98.7% probability of the Aboriginal data evolving from the big cats still residing in this forest. Compared to the Superior sample have:
- Improved hearing
- Olfaction.
- Possible not yet atrophied claws. (little data)
- Vision, allowing them to detect and see objects in the dark. (Compared to the source material, rather weak)
The other differences are not important and do not represent a significant advantage.
Report #455654 The Flora and Fauna subsection is over.
Continued analysis of the information.
Sergey-Vysshiy
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Yeah. Something didn't quite work out. The native, which I, by my measure, only pushed away, flew five meters and crashed into the crowd. Their stupor lasted a minute. But once it passed, there was such panic! Some fell to their knees and stretched their hands to me; some shouted, ran, and stood pillar to pillar. But the shaman seemed to run away at the speed of a locomotive. Anyway, I'll deal with him later. I lifted the girl with my arm and began looking at her. She was so "cute" curled up in a ball and trembling, looking at me, that I even grinned. But instead of a sound of tenderness, some kind of blender sound came out. Which made her squirm even more, and I think she even cried, if they can (dick knows these Xenos). But I didn't really care for the squeeze. My creators had a rather elaborate scheme for training new citizens. Knowledge was pumped even without physical contact into the brain, and the one to whom it was pumped could perceive this knowledge in peace. But this method also worked in the opposite direction. By the way, it was used during the war to obtain information. It was 100% safe and fast. I wanted to use that now; I needed language and cultural knowledge to communicate with the natives.
It took me two or three minutes, and then I started uploading the language to my module. While it was loading, I decided to look around again. All the natives were already kneeling around me, except for the shaman. The spider bots near the village reported that he had drifted away on the road toward another settlement. Well, to hell with him. Time to make contact.
When I put the girl on the ground, I wanted to start talking, but she started trying to crawl away from me! Stop right there! Since I had no painless way to stop her, I had to yell:
- STOP!
The noise of the scream must have been heard all around. And the girl, shaking even more, raised her weeping eyes to me.
- Stand up.
I ordered. She still obeyed, though she and everyone else still looked on with fear.
- Do you understand me?
- D... yes St... S... Guardian...
- Stop mumbling!
- Yes, Guardian!
The Sentinel? I'm supposed to be the local god to them.
- What did you call me, mortal?
- S... s... p... Guardian, O great one.
- Guardian of what?
- L... of the forest and all of us. Messenger of the gods!
Ah-ah-ah-ah. I get the point. They have mistaken my creators for gods and the bots for their messengers. Hmmm. That's a good one to play on.
- Why were you sacrificing to me?
- My father disturbed the gods, and they are angry with us! They sent fire into the heavens to show their fury! So I must die and give my blood to them, then the gods will forgive us!
Is she talking about volcanoes or something? Yeah. Superstition is harsh, of course.
- It's not your father's fault, mortal; the fire in the sky is not the gods' work. As you see, I stand before you and am not angry.
- YOU ARE GOD?!
I shouldn't have said that. After that, all the villagers started banging their heads on the ground and reaching out to me. I've got to stop with this bullshit. What am I supposed to do with them, though? Well, when you look at it, I don't need their labour; the robots are more than enough. But it's a shame to leave them behind, too. Where else will you find such loyal creatures? Nowhere else. So we'll just have to figure it out. Although I do have some ideas for the future.
- STOP!
Ridiculous, some of them frozen in the positions they were in.
- I came here to take the Sentinel and go to the stars.
- Almighty, are you leaving us?
Now they were almost all howling. How did they howl? Something was obviously from cats, so it sounded like a cat's howl. Some of them were bursting into tears. What kind of people are these people!
- SHUT UP!
Well, that's just the way it works.
- Since the way to the stars is far, I need adepts to help me. In return for their service, they will receive gifts from the Ancient Gods, riches, and immortality!
They all had eyes the size of saucers. They were already big by nature, so I offered them an unconventional "job. I was, in fact, in their opinion, asking them to join the ranks of the gods. Of course, everyone agreed. The noise was so loud that I had to yell five times before even the stones understood that they had to be silent. Leaving that girl in charge and giving me the task of going to the other settlements and finding those willing to work, I began warming up the engine for the crossing to the other place. I wanted to do everything elsewhere first, but since we have such bonuses here, why not build here.
After taking the bot a couple hundred meters into the woods, I left it there. I transported myself back to my cosy module. After checking that everything was going according to plan, and after reading the reports of finding a warehouse with spare parts for the orbital cutters, with a satisfied face, I gave the order to turn production to maximum and to deploy some of the power plants on the surface. Connecting my entire army to all of this. And the moment the legions of builders began digging into the ground and laying the power lines for the new factories. At the same time, the spiders searched for new warehouses and factories. I left some of them to guard the bot and the settlement, and, with a clear conscience, I fell into stasis for a week. There was still a huge amount of work to be done, but what seemed to have fallen many thousands of years ago was reviving and rubbing my hands snidely, looking up at the stars...