44: Interlude: Gods

A round table with several different figures sitting around, all chairs occupied except for one.

"Why is White always the last one here?"

"Who knows… she does make a point to arrive at the very last second, literally." The individuals sitting talking amicably about the last arrival. The one sitting on the bigger chair looks at the watch on the wall and sighs.

"Yea… she should be here in 3… 2… 1… There she is…"

An elf-like woman with long silver hair and pure snow white skin opens the door and sits on the empty chair.

"Why do you feel the need to do this every time?"

"Oh my, what do you mean? I'm here on time aren't I?"

All present frowned at the woman's attitude, but couldn't do a thing about the situation.

"Ok, you are right on time." The bigger blue humanoid said.

"I have much to do with all the new experiments, let's not waste any more time and start already, shall we?" Ignoring the room's mood, White suggested.

"Yes, a good suggestion. I shall begin then." A dramatic pause later and a single breath the orange humanoid stood up and continued "With all members of the Color Alliance being present, we will begin the third and last official meeting for the 71st millennium games. Everything said and done during the period of the meeting shall be recorded and shared with everyone present. All in agreement?"

"Yes" Every participant moved their right hand up, making a first with their hands above their heads and answering in unison.

"With unanimous acknowledgement I, the chosen leader for the round, declare the start of the session" Small blobs of light flew from her chest and touched the wrist of the participants. No one moved their hands down until the light settled in a nice stable light bracelet.

"As tradition dictates, the last round's leader will be the first to present, followed by the order of leaders before that. Navy, please." She sitted down back on her chair. A humanoid figure with dark-blue fur all over the body and a dog-like nose and ears stood up. His light bracelet changed colors to navy blue, confirming his identity.

"I was able to proceed as planned. No impediments, no surprises, no absurd new breeding, race, social or religious experiments" everyone's eye's flinched as the one speaking locked eyes with White.

"But I also had no improvement from last round. Everything is being kept as stable as possible. Breeding this season was good, but not much better than the last. I was able to gather the required numbers for the assault as well as the final battle. My borders are secure, all attacks were averted with minimum casualties. My warriors are trained to their full capacity and in good numbers. That's it." The big figure sat down again and his bracelet's color faded back to the original light orange."

"Thanks Navy, next please."

Brown stood up, her bracelet changed to a brown light. Her report was very similar to Navy's. No improvements and no surprises, she was able to keep all of her territory, train all her troops. Everything as planned and as agreed in previous meetings.

Orchid was next, he declared the same, but like Navi, he included a small insult to White's experiments.

"...I do not have any weird kink about my subjects calling me mama…"

"It's not mama, it's M O T H E R…" White whispered in her chair, earning an irritated glance from the leader before shutting up and slowing the few extra light insults quietly.

"Thanks Orchid, next please.

Blue stood up and began a long presentation. A lot more information than the previous two. For the first time in the meeting someone mentioned innovation, creativity, tests, failures and successes not seen in previous rounds.

The god gave several details about how she failed in few aspects and how she was able to improve the reproduction rate for her subjects, thus improving the number of soldiers available for the next war. Details on what to expect on her part and about her military might to be in the few hundred years until the next big battle were also given.

"So, yea, that's it. In short I failed a bit in the quality with the new program but the quantity is steadily increasing and it will be even better by the time the Final Battle is scheduled to occur. Food resources are exponentially better and I'll be able to supply for other armies beyond my own" She sat back down on her chair, her bracelet dimmed.

"Thanks for the detailed update Blue. Next one please." As it was finally her turn, White stood up.

"Oh my, it's finally my turn. So, unlike most of you, I do value innovation and my contribution will be the highest seen since we began the games!" A small evil laugh made its way into the woman's face before continuing. "I'm having an extremely good result with the reproduction method in which I myself create the newborns. I'm creating them at a higher pace than any of your pitiful dual gender societies can match, even yours dear Doggie." White did not miss a chance to retribute Navy's criticisms about her experiments. The werewolf did not take this in good light and growled in her direction. Both beings earned a pissed off look from the leader.

"Hum, whatever. Continuing with the important stuff… After I deleted the males my subjects have successfully maintained organization and peace, no small skirmish, sexual conflicts, no more rapes or internal fights caused of stupid uncontrolled individuals with too much hormones for their own good… Best decision ever! And because of these my subjects have been able to focus on training without any setbacks to resolve internal strife, my veterans are more powerful than ever, and my newborns are ready to fight within two to three years of life, and they are strong."

"The energy system I implemented along with the new creation method solved any inequality or difficulty in the food distribution, also improving life quality and speeding training for war… hum, what else.. What else… Ah, yes! The next most important experiment that may be of everyone's interest… "

"That unknown device which we found several centuries ago in that weird dimension we explored. As you are aware, It's only been a century since I got my hands on it, and that's because I'm the THIRD person to be given the chance to experiment with it, even though I was always the most qualified to discover its potential use, as I'm about to prove to you with REAL results" White made sure to have direct eye contact with both gods that had failed with the device before her and the ones that insulted her in their own presentations. It was her revenge, they had no base to disrespect her experiments! Even if some did go wildly wrong, her overall results were in the positive aspect. The audacity of the incompetent old gods devoid of any semblance of creativity…

White berated the companions with insults in her mind but continued with the presentation "In a very simplified term, the device is dimensional soul abductor of some sorts. Before activation you can set specific parameters and it will catch souls of other Worlds and bring it here. The parameters in question do not have names, and no explanation of what they actually do. With extensive tests I was able to discover what most of them are, but since the results are purely based on observation, I cannot guarantee 100% that one parameter does not interfere with others. That said, I have pretty good control over the Soulductor, as I call the device."

Different reactions could be seen in her audience. Some bored to death with the detailed explanations, others interested with her findings, a few laughing about the chosen name for the device. White did not care about them and continued with her story.

"Once I figured out how to actually catch the soul, I was still left with the problem of the vessel. The first half century or so I was unable to find a container able to sync with the souls. After many tests that I'll spare you of the intrinsic boring details I found the problem!" A dramatic pause of a few seconds later she continued.

"The World's will! The World itself was refusing foreng souls and basically deleting them. The problem with the vessels is that none is strong enough to win a direct confrontation with the Origin. Thus I aborted the path of researching new vessels and began investigating other means. One of my hypotheses was that maybe the World would accept them with enough time, thus I began the research on how to expose the souls to the Origin in a way that it would not delete them. And yes, I have an incredible improvement in this matter. Strictly speaking, I'm still unable to assign an independent body to a foreng soul, but I'm 100% able to maintain the souls in our realm, and the results show that the World is slowly accepting the new existences! I expected that once the soul is completely acclimated to the Origin I would be able to implant it into any humanoid vassel and the World will accept it. "

White proceeded to explain how she was able to pair one foreing soul with a newborn soul. And it was especially not-difficult to do it with her own bio-engineered species, the Efalem.

"Since I removed males from the species, I had to create the new individuals myself, which by the information of some, is why they call me Mother! I'm effectively their mother since I do generate each one of them ok? And it is so much better I'm still questioning why you haven't done the same. Anyways, I did have a somewhat similar problem in the beginning of the biocreation process as well, the World was not acknowledging that my children were sapient being in need of a soul, and it was not assigning anything to the bodies, but eventually I solved this, and I'm not telling how, if you want to know you can buy the information for the right price." The few that were actually excitedly paying attention did not like how the Goddess decided to keep a secret, but it was well within her rights, no one could do a thing about it.

"I tried the same solution for the foreng souls, it failed spectacularly, but in the process I was able to pair one of my newborn souls with an alien one. At first I thought nothing of it and abandoned this path to try a new one with a better perspective. Fast forward a few years, I stumbled into the leftovers of the research and found a few souls still hanging around my children. Once I looked it up close I was able to identify that the Origin was slowly accepting them!"

For the next several minutes Mother kept explaining how the assimilation was going, the numbers, the souls lost, the new experiments and so on. What's most interesting is that she was able to define that the her unique newborn ritual, the one done each year, involving every member of the city and astronomical amounts of energy, was not only able to permanently chain the soul to the world, even if it not on it's own vassel, but the subsequent exposure to the chained souls to the same ritual would bring it closer and close to full integration into the World. Side effects could be seen, but not important at the moment.

"I'm still analyzing the results of the newest test subject, and I have yet to find the least and perfect number of years one soul should be chained to the Origin for it to completely accept it, but I was able to "give" the older souls of the first experiment, an independent body… I'm not exactly giving them a body, but… well, the important thing is, I lost most of the souls during the years they were left unistudied, but I do have a single perfectly successful subject with an alien soul. She is being kept in closure and the long term effect of the transfer is being studied, but until now she was able to show increased learning speed, better adaptability… She is exceptional in combat of any kind. She mastered every single aspect of it, close and long range, speed, magic… She is basically a deadly weapon on its own. Probably the strongest member of my society. But… "

Mother stopped speaking, not sure that she should share the rest of the information… A few seconds of silence passed until the Leader spoke.

"White, I'm very interested in what you have to say… and in the contract you committed for being allowed to study… What do you call it?

"Soulductor" The goddess answered.

"Yes, soulductor, in the contract it is stated that it was in ownership of the alliance and any study on it should be totally shared with all members, the outcome of your experiments are spectacular and everyone should really be praising you, please, do continue.

"I'm aware.. Orange, it's just that… well… whatever. It's incorrect to say that the soul was given a vassal, she does have a fully functional vassel right now, but it was not given to her, but taken by her"

"What do you mean White? Can you explain better?"

"The alien soul consumed the original body's soul… But I speculate that it would not happen to any other species aside from the Efalem…"

"Why is that?"

"It directly involves my birth ritual, I cannot disclose the details. But… well… let's put it this way… all my newborn souls, from the same ritual, are somewhat connected because they are from the same 'pool' of souls, assigned at the same time, created in sync… since I brought the foreing souls during the ritual, they were 'linked' to the pool of souls, not a single individual soul… or thats my guess at least. But, because of the link to the pool, they are kinda immortal?"

The questioning looks of everyone in the room indicated for her to continue.

"Well… Let's say person A has an alien soul connected to her own, then she dies for whatever reason. The original soul will disperse and go back into the Origin circle, but the foreing one will just jump to another body of someone born on the same ritual. My guess is that it will survive for as long as one individual from the original pool is still alive."

"Excuse me. Orange, you are the leader you may decide, but could you please allow the rest of us to participate and question White as well?"

"Oh, yes, my bad Violet, you are right, it is a topic involving everyone. Please feel free to question" Orange did a weird hand gesture and all the bracelets started to glow the owner's color, indicating that everyone could speak and it would all be recorded in the oficial statement.

"Thank you. White, if I may ask, what happens when two alien souls are brought into the same body?"

"I do not have data on that, it has never happened. The soul jump happens kinda automatically, I have yet to find a control for that. I did notice that it is related to the physical distance of the new vessel to the point where the previous one died. And they seem to always choose one vessel that has yet to contain more than one soul."

"Uhm, can't you summon the same number of souls as your number of newborn to confirm this?"

"I could, yes, but I would have to sacrifice one entire generation for that. The number of souls I can summon is somehow capped at 500 per use, since I can only use the Soulductor once a year, during the ritual, otherwise it will not pair the new souls to the pool granted from the World, and my newborns are numbered around a hundred times that… I would have sacrifice too much for that single experiment, I'm not willing to do that"

"You create 50000 new beings each year???" an astonished werewolf god asked in surprise.

"Well, yes. I told you this method is superior to yours"

"But that's…" White did not allow the male to finish before cutting in.

"That's none of your business and outside of what we are discussing right now. But for your knowledge, they also die a lot… with the current training curriculum about 40% of them die within 3 years. And only 15% survive to the 6th year of life. BUT all that do survive are elite warriors. "

"Oh.. wow, what a terrible training"

"It is not. It is showing extreme efficacy and it does not concern you. Back to the Soulductor. I cannot confirm what happens with two or more souls in the same body, or what happens when everyone from a generation dies. I can confirm that most the souls I summoned at first committed suicide, disintegrated themselves. With more research on the matter I found out that it was actually mental instability that killed the souls. Understandable, most were unable to handle being thrown into a different world without a body, being kept in a prison for years and witnessing the death and pain of so many vessels…they just got crazy enough for the World or the Soulductor itself to release them, I'm not sure."

She continued to speak before anyone could ask more questions "I was able to improve the survival rate of the souls by removing some memories of their previous selves, and further improved it by giving them a objective in their new 'life'"

"Can you elaborate on the last part? I did not understand what you meant by 'objective in life'..." Another god questioned White.

"Ah, yes. By suggestion of the one subject that survived and totally consumed the vessel's original soul, the one I mentioned in the beginning… With her suggestion of given the new arrivals something to look forward to, something to work on, an objective, a job… the souls that were given an objective had a 70% extra survival rate."

"What kind of objective are you talking about White?"

"Ah, well… the one we had most success with until now is a simple quest of some sorts… " White tried to give a vague response but the audience was not having it.

"What quest? Please answer White" The leader interrupted.

"A script.. We gave the souls a script with a quest so they had an objective to work on. Fuck… it was… well, first let me situate you… most of the souls the Soulductor kidnaps are from a planet called Earth, this includes my single successful experiment, she explained that in her planet they have no magic, but they dream with magic all the time and write about it. They have a vast literature, lots of fictional and fantasy books, and all books have a protagonist that doesn't die, or has super powers stronger than anyone, or some bullshit like that, she explained with more detail but I did not care enough at the time."

"The point White, go to the point…"

The POINT is… she suggested giving the souls a quest, explaining to the new souls what they should do, explaining the situation about the vessel's death and that the soul would not be affected… make the souls believe they were secret agents of some sorts and they were to complete a very important quest for a new story… that they should Search for a Protagonist!"