《Goddess of Computation》 chapter15.h

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"I should reset my watch," Ada sighed to herself as she looked at her watch.

Ada realized she has purposely avoided looking at the accursed device which had teleported her to this world. The touchscreen display glowed with a light tap of her finger. The time revealed 4:37AM. The Shift option on the watch appeared to have disappeared with only the mundane Vibrate option remaining. Clearly, God didn't want to leave her too soon before her role here was complete. She wasn't sure whether there was a defined success criterion. Even if there was, God had made no promises of sending Ada back to Earth. She felt a pang in her heart when she thought of her family and friends left behind. She wondered if time was progressing at the same rate on Earth or whether it was a scenario like in Narnia where no time passes by on Earth when she's here.

Even if time was passing, she doubted anyone has noticed her absence. Give it a few more days and someone would know soon that she was missing. Then what? There was nothing anyone on Earth could do. The police would be no help in tracking her across universes. They would look for a human kidnapper when the real culprit was God. What can mortal humans do to God? Nothing. These thoughts were getting to be quite depressing. Too much thought on this was leading to the dark path of melancholy. Ada shook her head to shake off the thoughts as if she was shaking off tar. One day in the future she might reflect on what she could do to send a message to her loved ones there but for now these thoughts were not helpful.

Ada decided to walk the few steps to on Leanne. In the silent night, she found it eerie that her footsteps made no sound at all. She wasn't wearing heavy boots or high heels but even flats should make some sound. Likewise, her gray velvet cloak on top of her simple white robe made no sound at all as well. Ada thought this was strange but thought this perfectly silent movement was just attribution of divinity. On another note, Ada's mind drifted to the thought that she had always seen herself as a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl. Unfortunately, neither of those existed in the standard library and she had arrived in this world dressed the way God decided. For some reason, the seemingly trivial matter of not being able to choose what clothes she was wearing bothered Ada. She would like to find a tailor soon.

Checking up on Leanne, Ada heard the girl's gentle snoring before she saw the girl. Leanne was sleeping on her side with half her face pressed against the soft silken pillow. According to what Ada had read, 15% of people sleep on their side and such a posture was the best choice for people with sleep apnea. Whether or not Leanne had sleep apnea was unknown to Ada. Leanne had a rough day which in some ways were similar to Ada's -- plucked out of familiar comforts and dropped in a strange environment. In Leanne's case, her life was changed by a deity as well where Ada was admittedly the culprit.

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"Sorry for completely disrupting your life," Ada whispered softly. "I'll make sure that you'll enjoy this life more than what you've left behind."

Not wishing to disturb her further and to clear her own mind, Ada walked outside and gasped. In an era with no pollution and with her view unblocked by any clouds, she saw a night sky filled with countless stars. There was the equivalent of the milky way crossing the middle of the sky. This galaxy probably had a different name but the features were similar. Ada recognized one of the stars which was so bright that it was recognizable even before the sun fully set. That one was probably a planet. If she was a poet, this sight would have set words on fire within her. Ada was not a poet. She merely speculated.

"I wonder if the locals here have a closer connection to the divine because they're able to see every day that's not cloudy," Ada mused. "In ancient times, astrology was huge and the stars as well as planets were given the names of gods. Probably this would be true here as well. But does that mean those stars or planets really have anything to do with these gods? On Earth, the answer would be clearly no but this world works differently. Does each god have a private star or planet? Hmm, I don't so since I just seem to have a cloud. Also, where's the moon? It looks like Urth doesn't have a moon or maybe it is a new moon. A question to ask Leanne on whether there is a moon and if so, who lives up there?"

Ada laid down on a flat portion of her cloud and looked up. She felt calm and relaxed as she just gazed at what was overhead. Her mind quieted for a moment and she wished that would last. Unfortunately, her mind tended to jump on other topics of interest without warning. Ada suddenly wanted to know how long a day was here. There was a bright blue star directly overhead. Could she figure out the length of an Urth day based this information? From what she recalled, the sidereal day was the time it takes for the planet to rotate about its axis so a star would appear in the same position in the sky. This would require her to count the amount of time it takes for that star to appear directly overhead tomorrow night. She looked at the currently displayed time on her smartwatch which read 4:51AM and stored it in her memory automatically. Tomorrow, she would check the time display when that star was directly overhead. This should give her the equivalent Earth hours and minutes for a day here. With the tech level in this world, Ada doubted that any of the mortals would have a better estimate of a day's length.

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"I also wonder how long a year here is. If I observe the stars for enough nights, I should be able to notice the seasonal shifts in star positions and from there calculate the duration of an Urth year. Speaking of which, I don't even know what season it is. One more thing to ask Leanne once she's awake. What are the holidays here? Do the gods make appearances to mortals on certain holidays? For polytheistic religions, every god would have its own holiday. When the time is right, I'll declare my day of arrival as a holiday."

At that last thought, Ada smiled in amusement. She thought of how people would celebrate Ada Day. Ada Day wouldn't be a day of solemn worship. Definitely no sacrifices of any kind. Maybe it could be run like a hackathon except at a more primitive tech level. Computers were possible before electronics. The first computers were purely mechanical. Could mechanical computers be created to develop software? Certainly not at the versatility level that electronic computers could but perhaps to a degree, they could. The ancient Greeks and Chinese had created sophisticated automatons out of basic materials. Could not there be geniuses here who could do the same?"

Would she consider herself a genius? This thought arose in Ada’s mind naturally. She has always considered herself quite intelligent but not to the level of genius. She still didn’t feel like she was a genius but Ada was impressed with herself for writing 23 scripts within the last four hours.

"Ah, it'll be good to create some help pages for my followers if any of them can use these scripts. I'll have to see if they can. This would be the equivalent of spells. All these commands have optional inputs for altering volumetric dimensions, quantities and locations. I can't create any biological objects but at least most of the inanimate objects are in the standard library. I also can't create pure energy so I can't blast someone with gamma rays. I have a good list so far and I'll edit and edit more as time goes by:

1. acid creates sulfuric acid. I'll only use this if I really don't like someone.

2. altar creates an altar to me. Yes, the design can still use some work but it's a good start. I can use this script to create the perfect altar rapidly.

3. attractmen creates cylindrical lodestones. This has proven useful already.

4. bed creates the perfect comfortable bed.

5. book creates a book that is an encyclopedia. It is mostly blank right now but I am filling in information as I learn it.

6. box creates a steel box.

7. fireball creates a hydrogen and oxygen mixture with a torch that's lit which would combust.

8. fog creates a fog.

9. ice creates ice.

10. icicle creates icicles.

11. ladder creates a ladder.

12. lookimpressive creates shiny spherical mirrors wrapped in clouds which can be useful to dazzle mere mortals if the sun is shining.

13. paperclip creates a paper clip. Extremely unuseful except as an exercise to see if I can make an object just by manipulating the locations of copper objects which are then combined together.

14. papermap creates a paper map of the world. This one took me forever to make.

15. quicksand creates quicksand.

16. repeat runs other scripts x number of times.

17. rope create a rope.

18. sodium creates sodium balls floating on clouds. This was originally part of lookimpressive.

19. sword creates an impressive looking sword.

20. table creates a table of several possible configurations as well as accompanying chairs that complement the table. Furniture takes forever to customize so this will be a time saver.

21. torch creates lit torches. Since there is no fire class, creating torch objects with the state of being lit on works.

22. wall creates a stone wall.

23. water creates water.

"

The scripts were helpful in their own right and could also be a workaround in creating certain objects of Ada's liking. With her capabilities, Ada could definitely destroy a city if not the world by just creating something that was massive enough which reacts with either the atmosphere or the ground. Or she could just delete objects and release energy equivalent to nuclear bombs. She has not yet tried creating antimatter yet but if the standard library allowed her to create all natural physical objects, that would be another route of creating a weapon of mass destruction. She shivered as she realized how ridiculously overpowered her capabilities truly are.

"I wonder what God would say if I accidentally blew up this world," she thought aloud. "Probably wouldn't be a good idea to test it."

Ada checked her watch and sighed, "Almost 6AM now. I wonder when the sun will rise here. I haven't realized until now how much sleep creates a natural boundary between days."

As if on cue, the first glow of the morning sun peeked over the horizon.

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