Gar:

I turned to the young bigfoot woman working across the table from me. “Momo, any updates on our null and void magic type changes?”

She peeked over her laptop and said, “They’ve passed simulations, and are waiting for approvals to head to QA.”

“Excellent, do you want to see something cool while we are waiting? I just got a bug from way back, and it requires a visit to the physical plant and updating some of the mana engines.”

Momo lifted one of her eyebrows and looked a question at me “Do you mean the Code engines, what we now call the server farms?”

I leaned back in my chair, putting my hands behind my neck and laughed, “Don’t they teach you new kids anything anymore? The servers handle all the logic and the controls the systems, altering how the worlds work, like the new magic types we added to fix Joe’s bug, right?”

The follicle blessed young woman narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously. Saying a long drawn out “Yes….”

“Which systems are they controlling exactly?”

Here Momo felt on firmer footing and gave the textbook answer she’d been taught. “The systems of control and regulation of natural laws, like Physics, Chemistry, or Magic.”

Still smiling I just nodded at her, “Sure, sure, but what are those exactly.”

“The natural laws of the universes, Quarks and Gluons and such, right?”

‘In a sing song voice, I said “NoooOOooo, those are the results -of- the control system. The universes themselves run on Mana Engines. The software we write now, just sends control messages to the servers which pass them on to the Mana Engines that do all the actual work. The servers do the deciding, but the Mana Engines do the, well, the Doing, the actual work happens there. We finalized the designs on them eons ago, so they live deep in the physical plant, chugging away. Every once in a while, management needs more bandwith, or to spawn up a new universe, and they instruct one of the mana engines begin building a new mana engine. they are entirely self-duplicating. While we still have Mana Engineers, the systems have been almost entirely automated for millennia.”

Momo closed the laptop and put her chin on her hands, looking at me with bright eyes. “Okay, color me interested, what do they need you for?”

I raised an eyebrow and looked at her sharply, “What do you mean, I designed and built all the various generations of mana engines. They were literally my babies. I was the head of the division from the beginning you know?”

“No, I didn’t know that. I mean, I knew you were the head of the division, but not all the mana engine stuff, it does make sense. What specifically do you need to do today?”

Every once in a while, a new Mana Engine fails initial diagnostics. So, the Mana Engineers go in and diagnose and solve the issues and get it up and running. If they can’t the problem gets escalated to a higher tier of engineer. “

Momo sat up straight and snapped her finger, “The highest tier being you, who hasn’t been running any house calls since retirement?”

I nodded my head firmly at her, “Exactly, I knew you’d catch on. We’re going to head down to the Physical Plant, which by the way, I wanted to be called the Physics Plant, just sounds cooler. But anyway, we’re going to head down there and meet up with my old diagnostic systems, Athi-Rat and Ball. Then together we’re going learn about the mothballed mana engines and see if we can find a pattern in why replication is failing.”

Momo tilted her head looking at me with her brows scrunched together, “How they hell did they ever let you retire?”

I laughed a booming laugh, “HA! How exactly were they going to stop me? Make me work at spear point? I got tired, and started delegating more and more, promoting from within, till the team was able to handle day to day without me. Just bringing me back to put out fires as needed.”

Here my animation ran down, ”One day they just stopped calling me. Next time my head came back above water, all my worshipers had died or quit too, I was a retired engineer and a dead God. I was alone for the first time since the beginning. At the time, it just felt kind of fitting.”

Now Momo’s voice took on a more sarcastic edge, “and if the stories from mom and dad are right, your funk just happened to start after you, Aunt Aggie and that Carol Ann Woman got tangled up, in that screwed up abusive staking / love triangle, right?”

In an even more subdued voice I said, “Yeah, well back then, stalking and abuse were something creepy men did to women, not the other way around. A woman chasing you around trying to force you into “ here I added finger quotes “being in a relationship with her” was laughed off. The choices were, lump it, physically run her off, or run away. I’m just not the type do raise my hands to a woman that way, so eventually, things just grind you down till everything stops. One day, you just don’t have the energy anymore, and you just stop. I know it sounds impossible to a young’n like you… but it does.”

Now she was just looking at me sadly. So, I continued “The funny thing is, it had been going on forever behind my back before I even found out about it. Before I learned she was sabotaging every spark of a relationship I had. Before I found out she was following me everywhere and taking pictures of me, books and books of them. Before I realized she was running off anyone who came remotely near to me. “

I stopped a took a few slow breaths…

“I just thought I was cursed. Why would I blame all that on a woman I spent one day with once, and thought we’d parted as friends, and barely noticed afterwards.”

---

Momo:

“Jesus mom, why didn’t you warn me about that.”

“Warn you about what honey.” said Mona.

“About how badly Uncle Gar got wrecked by that lady. We were talking about mana engines and his retirement. I made a snarky remark, and he just like, wilted. Then we talked about it. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. That I’ve ever heard.”

Mona, waved her daughter over to a table, “Well honey, you were never really old enough to understand it before, so you got the watered-down version. I’m not sure I’m old enough to really understand it some days. I just knew you and Wes loved your Uncle Gar, and He loved you. I thought that was precious. I thought that needed to be preserved. You know since the day you two were born, the only thing that consistently got him out of the house was coming to see you two. The only time we saw a spark of the man he used to be, was when you two went off on a tangent together, or built some cool thing together. What Carol Ann did went on for a significant portion of Gar’s life. Over 10% of even a topside lifespan. Even for someone as long lived as we are, it just become reality. You can’t be angry about it every hour of every day. You have to function. You get dressed, make dinner. You help when you can, and that’s really all you can do. Hell If I’m honest, she’s still doing it to Gar now, she’s just doing it differently. Her focus is on Aggie and not Gar per say, but that’s at the root of it, the same thing. If she did now, what she did back then, there would be consequences, so she doesn’t. But she never really changed. She just got hedged in around the edges.”

Mona paused in thought, staring off into the distance.

“Sometimes, you know you can’t do what’s right, so you do what you can. We put as much space as we could between them. We cared about Uncle Gar, and Aunt Aggie too. Sometimes, that’s the best you can do.”

Clearly trying to shift the discussion to better ground, Mona asked “What were you two talking about Mana Engines for, they are ancient technology.”

In a tone with more energy, Momo answered her mother, “That’s just it, mom. They aren’t. They are still running today. For all practical purposes, they are the hardware everything else run on to this day. Uncle Gar was going to take me to see them, before things got sidetracked.”

“That sounds like something you’d enjoy dear, why don’t you ask him to take you tomorrow, when you go back over. When you get there say hi to everyone for me. Say an extra hi to Ball and Athi-rat for me, we used to be work buddies. You’ll like them, twisty minds, just like yours. ”

“I don’t know, I don’t want to make him sad again.”

Mona reached out and patted her daughter on the arm. “Trust me honey, He’ll be back to himself tomorrow, or at least back to what you are used to. He’s had to get up and dust his knees off before. You two go, look at the mana engines, it’ll do you both good.

----

Momo:

Uncle Gar and I opened the door, letting the roaring sound of the mana engines in, and leaving it behind as we closed the doors. Uncle Gar took off his Hard hat and Hearing protection. Running his fingers through his new haircut and standing it up. Whoever had cut his hair in such a way that that habit wound up grooming uncle Gar’s hair was a genius.

In the room was a large desk full of monitors, all displaying status telltales. 4 of the walls looked normal, but one was replaced by a section of an immense sphere. The other walls were filled with smaller desks and workstations, all manned by Tech’s in coveralls with Hardhats hanging next to them. They all took a quick glance, and went back to work.

Uncle Gar’s strong voice called out “Hey Ball, Hey Rat, how’s it going?”

From the desk came a cool emotionless female voice. “Greetings Master, it has been a long time, it’s good to see you again.”

From the spherical section of the wall came an upbeat young man’s voice. ”Hey Boss, How’s it hanging!”

Uncle Gar continued, “Good to see you both as well, I’d like to introduce you both to Momo, she’s Mona and Squatch’s daughter. Momo, this is Rat, short for Athi-Rat,” here Gars large hands pointed to the desk, “This this is Ball, which isn’t short for anything” here he pointed to the curved wall.”

I spoke up politely, “It’s nice to meet you both, Athi-Rat, Ball, were you both subjected to Uncle Gars’ aweful naming skills?”

The Young man’s voice, Ball, laughed, “What do you mean, I’m an immense spherical digital being, who is also simultaneously hundreds of smaller spherical digital beings, what did you expect him to name me R8G9? Nope, nothing cool like that, I’m ‘Ball’ wooo!.”, that ended in the most emotionless woo ever.

Gar smiled at him “Hey I could have named you ‘Balls’, or “Bally Mc Ballface”, those were the top choices from the poll of engineering, if you remember”

I chucked and said, “Suddenly Ball doesn’t seem so bad.”

Ball Replied “At least I’m not named “At the Rat.”

Athirat moaned “Not that joke again. Hello, Ms. Momo, I used to work with your mother. Could you please pass my greetings and best wishes back to her?”

“Of course, she sent greetings to everyone here as well. Athirat, can I ask why you called Uncle Gar ‘Master’, I’m pretty sure he didn’t teach you kung fu.”

“A bit of an in joke, Ms. Momo, Gar there designed and built us both. Ball there is the physical maintenance system, and I’m his old right hand, the primary node of the current generation mana engine array. I started calling him that the day he stepped down as head of The Physical Plant, and Ball and I took over. Once I outranked him, I calculated and 87% probability that the irony of that name would amuse him.”

Uncle Gar cut in “Yes, Atty, there is literally -the- mana engine. The mother of all 70 odd of the others. And Master is still better than when she started calling be Hubby.. that was just weird.”

“That is correct, 70 fully functional mana engines, not including myself, and 3 that are in isolation or inactivated, Mot, Quas and Cain.”

Gar sounded surprised, “Cain? He was working fine last time I was here? Did you try turning him off and back on again?”

Ball spoke up this time, “Oh yeah, he’d run great for a millennium or two, then that instability would come back. If we didn’t shunt his load to other nodes, he’d destroy whatever universes he was running. Eventually, I had to intervene and take him physically off line, and mark him to be mothballed. All of his hardware looks fine, it has to be something in how his personality was generated. I put in a request to regenerate it from scratch, but it never came through. Mot has the same kind of issue, except he’s all goth and moody about it instead of backstabbing god of evil. I didn’t actually have to turn him off, but he’s just running his own “afterlife world”, I can’t let him on the net or he’ll start moping and breaking things again.”

Athirat’s flat voice came next, “Quas works fine, unless he’s on the same node as Tzevot, then he gets all weird and moody like Mot. I could never get him to share for some reason. He’s running in a subnet with Mot, and doing okay, but not fully functional. “

“That’s why Mo and I are here, we’re handling the bug for offline mana engines. Ball and Athirat, tell Momo there what you suggest and why”

Ball spoke first “I suggest instituting a policy that after 5 failures, we scrap them hardware an all and recycle them at the atomic level. Nuke them from orbit it’s the only way to be sure.”

Gar and I Laughed, I said “And you call Mot a drama queen!”

Ball sang back, “War!, Hah!, what is it good for? Absolutely Everything!” sang Ball energetically..

Athi-rat cut Ball off, “Please, can we keep things seemly. I suggest a full scrap on Cain, A memory wipe on Quas, and a personality reinit on Mot. Then we have tried all three solutions and will have better evidence on where the problem lies. With that information we can develop rational policy to respond appropriately in the future.”

Gar asked “Ball, Response?”

Ball replied, “I think her approach has merits, I’m just sick of dealing with it. It’s not like we have a million mana engines running, only 74. The cost of recycling is less than the cost of continuing to fiddle with them. Wham Bam Thank you Madame”.

Gar asked again “Athirat?”

To which she replied “What Gar? I stated my position.”

Gar “Just being polite Atty, and you two are in a deadlock, and refused to let anyone but me break the tie?”.

Athirat replied “Well, we were lonely, all these other guys work for us, we are their bosses, it’s just not the same.”

I stuck my foot in, “What about Uncle Howard, don’t you both work for him.”

Uncle Gar smiled tiredly at me and explained “They have a touch of hard feelings where Howard and Michael are concerned.”

Ball riled in clear expiration, “Yeah, those two abandoned us way before you two, At least Mona left because of her kids, those two left us because we were not interesting enough. That Hurts!”

Gar took a bit of a harsher tone, “Hey, they left because the wanted more challenge, the work was boring, not you, that’s a compliment, you two were doing your jobs too well.”

Ball muttered in a pouting tone under his breath “Still Hurt.”

Athirat’s cool voice came next, “You know this is the kind of behavior that made Boss regret making you a person, instead of just a machine.”

Ball came back “You’re just as bad, you just do it in a better tone.”

Gar temporized “Not a regret you two, never that, but it does make me wonder at my bravery, that’s for sure.”

Gar paused in thought “Okay, Momo and I will tiebreak this time. After that new policy, if you two deadlock, you can send an email to Mona, she’ll remote in as a contractor at her leisure, to break the tie. With these two leaving the nest, I’m sure she’ll enjoy the distraction. So conditional upon Mona agreeing, is that acceptable?”

Both Athireat and Ball said, “Sure” in a sort of half sullen tone for Ball, and well, Athirat was Athirat.

Gar pulled out his new phone and started slowly working through the screen.

Ugh, old people, how can he be the kind of brain that built all this, and still be baffled by a smartphone!

Uncle Gar put his phone to his ear, and in a moment spoke “Hey Mona, just need to ask you something real quick. I’m down with Ball and Athirat, seems like they occasionally get in an impasse and need a tie breaker. Would you be willing to Remote in, break the tie and sorta visit with them a bit. Just every once in a while. “

“Uhuh, yeah, I agree, they are probably a bit lonely. Give them both our cell numbers?”

“Yeah, yeah. OK I agree that’s a great idea. I’m just not used to thinking about Cell Phones yet.”

“Thanks Mona, Bye”

Gar turned back to the two, Digital people in the room “Mona, as always, has a better plan, we’ll both be on call when you need help. You get both our cell numbers. If you get lonely or stuck you can call us during business hours. No calling at 2am, Right Athirat, you remember how that went before, that’s how you lost phone privileges to begin with? We can break your ties as needed.”

Athirat’s flat voice came back “Not even video calls? What about Video calls during business hours?”

Uncle Gar pondered “Video calls are okay, but we don’t have to turn our cameras on, if we don’t want to. Deal?”

Again in unison, one sullen and one flat they said “Deal”.

I had a thought “Uncle Gar, if they are as much bored as stuck, why not give them web access, they can play games with my guild, or chat with me and Wes in DMs. We’re going to our Practical’s soon, But we can introduce them to folks.”

Ball replied his voice still sullen “We already played Spacewars, Tradewars, Pong and that snake game till we are sick of them. They took away our access after I got bored and started doing physics experiments with the Tokomac. Those Darpanet guys were idiots. There was like and 87% chance the fusion wouldn’t’ run away…” Ball ended muttering again…

I laughed and said “Oh honey, games have gotten a lot better than that, and you can chat with folks online too. It’s way better than it used to be. You’d both have to promise, no compromising even the thinnest attempts at security, and no catfishing, you have to be 100% honest about what and who you are, but I bet we can do a 30day trial, I’ll arrange access to my guilds board and chat servers for while I’m gone. Uncle Gar?”

“No idea honey, but If you’re willing to be in charge of it, I’m game, we’ll need Howie and Mikes approval, but I bet they’ll bite.”

I clapped my hands, enjoying the feeling of solving a problem. “Excellent, done, It’s a deal!”

We got down to business and hashed out all the fine details that take an idea and turn it into a solution.

We applied all Athi-rats solutions one to each problem mana engine, and everything was looking good so far.

Later when we left I heard one tech turn to another and say “Do you know who that is? That was Gar Ab’ Ael, he’s a fucking legend…”

“Damn right man, damn right.” I thought.