“Look, President Bonfils. I honestly, don’t know why you’re calling ‘me’ of all people. I can’t really help you. No one in my family can. We’re just regular business folk. All that we’re involved with is supplying supernatural goods to the market, and running a few little mom and pop stands on the side...This situation sounds like a problem for your UN-Rep. If you want the world government to hear you out, it would be better if you started there…” said Carter Seth. Doing his level best to sound empathetic and helpless while deftly denying the other speaker’s demands.

Eventually, the President of the relatively new nation of Lapine gave up, and hung up in a huff. Lapine was a nation that formed during the ENE in the new regions that appeared off of the coasts of a much expanded France.

Since France had its hands full dealing with the millions of miles of new monster-infested territory located within its borders, it hadn’t had much time to care about the Lapine when the people there declared their sovereignty. Things likely would have been fine had the French politicians, military officers, and businessmen, who founded the government of Lapine, not taken a great deal of France’s dwindling resources as they left to found their new country.

Unfortunately, for Lapine, unlike many of the other new nations that had risen during the ENE, the small democratic state was unable to stand on its own two feet. Even worse, when they turned to France for aid, the French Republic was stronger than ever after surviving the trials and tribulations of the ENE.

Thus Lapine had been forced to bend the knee again to their parent-country, France, rather than negotiating as equals as they no doubt would have preferred. France helped Lapine, but it had done so in a fashion that kept them insidiously under France’s economic and political control.

Carter sighed as he placed the phone on its stand. He genuinely felt a little bad about the fact he’d been unable to help the man. Unfortunately, whether they defacto ruled the world or not, the Seth family had a public policy on staying out of the affairs of the world government. It was an optics thing. The best way to rule the world was to do so at a distance and hide the fact you were doing so. The Cat Sith Company couldn’t be the invisible hand guiding human progress if they openly dipped their toes into the world’s politics.

Worse yet, for Lapine, now that its President had made the call, he would likely have to be replaced. France would likely jump all over that and use their sway over Lapine’s political landscape to place puppet a President in charge of Lapine.

“....Mh...That’s some bad business. Let’s just send a text to a few folk to make sure the President of Lapine at least survives his little faux pas, yeah…” muttered Carter. His brow furrowing as he remembered that the President of Lapine had several grandchildren who would miss him were he to suddenly and unexpectedly die of any of the myriad maladies that the various world leaders, who’d similarly happened to step affoul off the rules of the new world order, had suffered.

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Carter Seth was the world’s greatest hero. Beloved by the Earth and favoured by the will universe. He was gifted with a keen mind, a stalwart heart, a superhuman physique, and potent fae magics.

He’d fought men, he’d fought monsters, he’d fought rival fae, he’d even fought devils and gods. He was willing to fight anyone and anything if it was for the sake of the world or the sake of his family.

He was like many in the Seth family’s line of heroes. Born from the half-scoundrel, half-saint lineage founded by the legendary Lady Puss and the equally legendary Jack the Mighty. Gifted with talent, good hearts, and phenomenal luck.

“Sir...It seems there’s a call from your, from our,...friends upstairs?” said Carter’s new secretary. A stern-faced, bespectacled, brown-haired man.

The man was a new hire that Carter’s grandfather, Felix, had sent over from the Seth family’s private army, after learning that his grandson had gone and “ pulled the dragon’s whisker” yet again, after the family had so painstakingly brokered a piece with a certain unfathomable cosmic entity.

“Nh?...Er, I’ve got it…” said Carter. Sighing. Wishing the old-timers in the family hadn’t left dealing with the House of Antipodes and its representatives to him and him alone.

Carter got up. To answer a phone call from the House, he had to go into another room, which held a door, which led to an alternate dimension, which held...yet another room. Inside this room, there was a phone both. A phone both that looked like something straight out of the 1940s. Inside the phone, both was a red phone with black, white, and gray dialling buttons.

The phone was ringing. Carter steeled himself as he prepared to answer it. Then he stepped inside the phone, and with all the confidence and authority as the secret ruler and protector of the earth, he picked up the phone.

“H-, Hello?” said Carter. His voice, embarrassingly, cracking just a little.

“We see that Project Uhrwerk has been completed. The Artificial World is now Online. The House is Impressed. Rewards have been dispensed….” said a toneless and steady voice on the end of the line. The voice of one of the three heads of the House of Antipodes. Though, for the life of him, Carter had never been able to tell which voice belonged to Mister Black, Mister White, or Mister Gray.

The call ended. Carter left the room. He left the space and returned to normal reality. Then he re-entered his office, sat down, rested his chin on his steepled fingers and tried to make sense of exactly what he’d just been told.

Just to be sure, Carter pulled a dice-shaped stone out of his pocket. This stone wasn’t just a stone, it a charm belonging to the Immortal Seer Vanessa Thane. A close personal friend of his, and a frequent compatriot in his crusade to protect, support, and promote the Earth’s well-being.

He rubbed the stone till it felt warm, then he placed it next to his ear. A breathy voice came through.

“Yes....?”

“Uhrwerk...Did they really finish building it already? Is it true it’s online already?” said Carter. Aware that the Seer was one of the few beings who could truly navigate and parse the grand and endless archive that was the akashic plane.

“...Yes.” said Vanessa.

“Okay...Thank you...Er, do you still want to go to dinner at eight?” said Carter.

“....Sure,” said Vanessa.

“Cool….Thanks, again…” said Carter. His voice oddly toneless to his own ear.

The connection dropped and the spell ended. Carter put away the stone as it grew cold in his hand. He picked up his cell and called his grandfather to let him know the good news. Then he made a few other calls to various officials within the UN World Government and the Players League and Heroes’ Guild, because they too would need to know.

It was only hours later, after all the phone calls were made, that the situation finally felt real in Carter’s head. It was only after he’d finished sharing the same message over and over that Carter finally was able to accept what he’d been repeating over and over.

Uhrwerk, the artificial universe made to hold the data, energy, and laws of millions of other universes, had been completed. This was a fictive universe, or natural universe mildly edited with console code. This was a full-fledged universe, made from scratch. Something that had been done before, but only with minimal success.

Project Uhrwerk was supposed to be something of a longshot. A barely feasible band-aid of a solution, meant to keep the more slow-moving threat to the universe at bay, while the DPAA and the House of Antipodes dealt with more present threats.

Carter had gone and done his best to drag ‘that guy’ in believing that he’d somehow be able to do something and make something worthwhile happen. However, Carter had never in his wildest imagination imagined something like this.

In the terms of ordinary men, this would be like the leader of any country in Earth’s early 2000s, half-heartedly grabbing a random citizen and ordering them to do something about global warming.

Despite its lofty ambitions, Uhrwerk was never meant to be more than a vault for the broken detritus that the House of Antipodes was wary of directly throwing away. No one ever expected Uhrwerk to be completed in full. This expectation was so fundamental and universal that rather than having plans for the project’s completion, there were countless plans for what the future generations should do once the vault could no longer hold back the tide of corrupted data, energy, and laws.

For Carter, hearing that Uhrwerk had actually been fully completed and constructed into a full-fledged, universe, was akin to an angel or saint descending from the heavens and randomly informing the aforementioned world leader, that the random citizen had actually fixed global warming and cleaned up the world’s polluted oceans while he was at it.

It was wonderful news in the objective, but it was also terrifying because the sheer amount of capability that implied was far beyond anything Carter was prepared to contend with. He suspected it might even be a little beyond what the fellows upstairs, in the House of Antipodes, were prepared to contend with. Otherwise, they would have just dealt with the issue themselves, or they would have given Terminus-Earth a toolkit that would allow the world government to handle the issue.

Carter felt himself growing just a little bit faint. If he hadn’t been sitting already he would have had to pull up a chair. He’d been worried before when the world whispered of a presence that was beyond its kin and outside its means to control or fully detect. Investigating further and discovering a nightmare-like entity that put myriad demons, dark fae, and fallen gods he’d fought against during his youth had left Carter shaken.

Now Carter found himself filled with even more trepidation. It took more power and skill to create, than to destroy. Killing a man just took a swing of a blade, or a pull of the trigger. Birthing a man, raising a man, took so much more. An atom bomb might wipe out a city, but even more power would have gone into creating the civilization advanced enough to make the bomb in the first place. That was just the way of things.

The same was true for worlds. Even mortals could destroy a planet or two, yet it took the power of the transcendentals and immortal administrators to construct the worlds.

There was a reason that every eldritch baddy with their name in an ancient book, had tried their hands at dabbling with the laws of life and nature. There was a reason there were so many “twisted mockeries of life” running around the cosmos.

It was because everyone in the cosmos already knew, that there was something simply leagues more impressive about making something that could stand the test of time, compared to knocking over that was already around.

Carter Seth had been raised knowing this. It had been drilled into him to keep the young man from going mad with power and to keep him from getting too large a head as his abilities started showing up. Breakers were a dime a dozen, Builders were the rarity in the cosmos.

It had been one thing to know that the strange entity known as the Reverser of Causality and the Eater of Fates was just wandering around, capable of ending his universe at a whim. That creature that pretended to be a man, was now instantly, infinitely more frightening, now that Carter knew that it was capable of creating as well as destroying.

Suddenly, the very concept of going against the being calling itself Montgomery Kaylan seemed a whole lot more worrisome, than it had felt before. Suddenly the tongue lashing his grandfather Felix gave him for his actions in regards to Mr. Monty Kaylan, seemed a lot more deserved.

“….Okay, let’s calm down. No need to panic. This is actually good news isn’t it?!” said Carter. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Running his hands over his face as he tried to think of what would come next.

He reminded himself that he hadn’t antagonized the creature that called itself Montgomery Kaylan during the last time they’d met. He reminded himself that his grandfather had brokered a peace. The entity might not have seemed particularly fond of him, but Carter had been careful to give it no new reasons to dislike him.

After a few more minutes, Carter pulled himself together and decided to make a few more calls. His mood took a turn, as he decided that this wasn’t bad news, it was good news. Shocking, but still good. This was something that the Seth family could make use of. Carter just needed to be smart about it. Carter picked up the phone on his desk and prepared to make a series of calls.

It’d take some time, but he suspected that if he played his hand right, the fates of the earth and its mother universe would be more assured and secure, than ever before.