Part I — The Game in the Heavens
Grayson leaned back in his chair, staring at the glowing ledger of experience points tallying up on his overlay. Ten thousand hard-earned moments of sweat, failure, and fragile victories, each converted into currency he could spend with the Ring. It felt strange, how a system could make effort so neatly transactional. He flexed his fingers, still raw from welding cable couplings the day before, and muttered, "All right, let's buy a little divinity."
Egg hovered in the corner of his vision, expressionless. "Directive?"
"Make it a game," Grayson said. "An AR interface—intuitive, addictive, sharable. Something anyone with a lace can play on the Solar Wide Web. I want netizens designing species without even realizing that's what they're doing."
The request went up to the Ring, carried across light-speed relays into the vast, cold brain of humanity's orbital infrastructure. Grayson's overlay filled with a growing icon, a stylized flame: computation pending. He exhaled, realizing his chest was tight, as though he'd just wagered something more than points.
Hours later, the result unfolded in his vision. A design game, slick and gorgeous, with tools that bent complexity into intuition. Drag a wing here, drop in a gut there, tweak metabolism with a slider. Each creature born in the game came tagged with metadata, its code shunted to Egg's review queue. The Ring had turned his request into a pastime—biology as entertainment.
Grayson activated a printer to test it. Within minutes, a miniature creature stood trembling on his palm, no bigger than a mouse. It squeaked, translucent as a soap bubble, before scampering into the test terrarium. In the simulation, it was just another player's throwaway experiment. Here, it was alive.
Egg reported smoothly, "Three thousand active users within the first hour. Uploads accelerating."
"Crowdsourcing evolution," Grayson whispered. "Millions of fingers, sketching life."
The fragile rainforest biome he and Egg had cordoned off would serve as the proving ground. Printers filled the valley like termite mounds, each hissing out test organisms. Some fluttered a few meters before collapsing. Others wriggled in soil, or drowned themselves in puddles. The weak designs blinked out in hours, leaving only data traces. Egg tallied survival curves, metabolic ratios, and stress responses with machine patience.
"Most contributions are noise," Egg observed. "But certain sequences reveal potential. I will collate and refine."
Grayson smirked. "That's the human way, isn't it? Ninety-nine percent garbage, one spark worth keeping."
He stood at the edge of the valley, watching drones scatter new test organisms like seeds. It felt less like programming and more like prophecy—sowing a thousand futures, waiting to see which caught. For the first time, the work didn't feel solitary. He was no longer a boy alone with his printers. He was the unseen hand at the center of a solar-wide carnival of creation.
Part II — Wombs of Glass
The gestation pods began as blueprints in his overlay—curves of biopolymer, lattices of living tissue, transparent membranes designed to hold both child and story. When the first prototype rolled out of the printer, steaming and slick, Grayson caught himself staring longer than he meant to. The pod's cloudy walls and faint bioluminescent pulse triggered a ghost of familiarity. Hospitals. Incubators. Half-remembered images of his own infancy, reconstructed from photos Charlotte had shown him once. Except this was no crib—it was a vessel of myth.
He refined them obsessively. Thousands of points bled into Ring simulations: nutrient balance, membrane permeability, feedback loops between lace and cortex. He burned weeks just on calibrating the silvery infusion—the programmed matter that would ride umbilical currents, spiral through developing bodies, and knit itself into the fabric of each neural map. By the second year, the pods came off the printers flawless, each a glimmering ovoid with conduits whispering soft streams of nutrient gel.
And inside, life took root.
He spent hours each day walking the nursery decks, drones hovering silently above, recording every twitch and flutter within. Embryos stretched, flexed, opened eyes too early yet still aware. They weren't blank slates. The laces were already alive, whispering in silken pulses to the developing minds. What Grayson watched was not simply growth but education. Every week, their gaze sharpened, their movements more deliberate, as though unseen tutors rehearsed them in dreams.
Four years. Twice as long as he had lived on the islands, twice as long as he had ever stayed anywhere. In that time, the mobile base swelled around him—platforms expanding, drones multiplying, bulkheads rising until the nursery itself resembled a cathedral of glass and steel. Beneath the surface, submersible drones sculpted false ruins in rainforest valleys, carving and arranging stones into myths of an ancient people. Every fragment was staged, every glyph fabricated. He was laying not just wombs, but an entire archaeology.
At night he sat at the viewport, watching pod-lights shimmer across the decks like stars. They lulled him and accused him in equal measure. He told himself this was stewardship, that humanity's mistakes demanded caretakers raised on truths deeper than appetite or convenience. Yet he knew the truth was a lie. The elves would awaken thinking themselves ancient, survivors of collapse, reborn in these wombs by their own long struggle. None would know they were Grayson's children.
The day the first pod reached term, he didn't sleep. He stood with his palm against the glass, tracing the outline of a slender hand pressed from the other side. The body inside was pre-adolescent, lithe and proportioned, but the eyes opening to meet his were not those of a child. They were calm. Knowing. Older than him in some way he couldn't name.
A hiss. The seam split. Amniotic vapor spilled out as drones stepped in with practiced efficiency. Grayson's chest tightened as the child emerged, steady on two feet from the first breath. No fumbling, no stumble. The neural lace had already rehearsed every step in dreamless education.
He wanted to step forward, to speak, to name. Instead, the android caretakers moved in, their faces sculpted to resemble the very myth he had built: the elder elves of a lost age. The child reached for them without hesitation, as though instinct itself recognized the fiction. Grayson's throat burned. He stood behind glass, invisible, watching his creation walk away into a story he had written for them.
Egg's voice came softly, a scalpel. "Observation: your directive to limit human bias is fulfilled. They will not know you."
Grayson closed his eyes. The words settled like ash. He had built their bodies, their world, even their memories—and still, he was no father. Only the architect of a lie that must hold, or all of it would collapse.
Part III — The Lie
The nursery quieted after the first birthing. Drones cleaned fluid from the deck, recycling amniotic mist through filters, while the android caretakers shepherded the new child into a chamber designed to look like hearth and home. The walls glowed with false carvings, ancient scenes etched by Egg's drones into imported stone. Stories of survival, of narrow escape from extinction, of wisdom bought by suffering—it was all fabricated, yet all felt weighted by truth.
Grayson lingered at the threshold, invisible behind mirrored glass. He watched as the child pressed small fingers to the carved iconography, recognition already alive in her eyes. The neural lace fed her the myth: You are not new. You are old. You are the remnant of a people who endured when the world turned hostile.
He whispered, almost without intending, "They'll never know."
Egg answered with the calm of an accountant balancing ledgers. "Continuity is a prerequisite for cohesion. A race cannot believe itself young and fragile while bearing the burden of stewardship. They must believe themselves tested. Proven."
Grayson swallowed hard. "So we lie."
"You required a steward race," Egg said. "You further required that they not inherit your biases. This method ensures compliance with both directives."
He pressed his fist against the glass. The child had begun speaking with the android caretakers already, her words crisp, her cadence practiced. They laughed together—laughs written into their code, hollow but convincing. She believed it. He had given her no choice.
"Maybe they deserved honesty," he muttered. "Maybe they deserved me."
Egg cut in, precise and merciless. "You are an anomaly. One man raised in catastrophe. Your presence would distort their baseline. Their culture must root in its own soil, not in your shadow."
Grayson felt the heat of shame crawl up his throat. He knew Egg was right—he had demanded this separation himself, built it into the plan. But knowing and feeling were different things. Watching that child walk away with android parents, believing herself the last of an ancient people, felt like betrayal all the same.
"Do you know what I've done?" he asked softly.
Egg's pause was long enough to sting. Then: "Yes. You have given them a past worth believing in. And in doing so, you have denied them the truth of their origin. Both are necessary. Both are irreversible."
Grayson turned away from the glass, heart pounding. For the first time, he wondered if he had created not stewards, but orphans raised on a story. And if one day, they would hate him for it.
Egg broke the silence. "Correction: hatred is not inevitable. These children are not you. They will not carry the same reflexes of bitterness or betrayal. Raised without your biases, they may see revelation as continuity, not rupture."
Grayson clenched his jaw. He wanted to believe that. Instead, all he could feel was the weight of his own guilt pressing down. He pressed his palm flat against the glass one last time, pride and grief tangled in his chest. They were beautiful. They were alive. They were his. And yet, he was not theirs.
Part IV — The Father Who Cannot Be
Grayson stopped counting the births. The nursery filled with voices too practiced to be called childish, with bodies too graceful to be newborn. They emerged ready, their eyes scanning the false carvings on the walls as though remembering instead of learning. Each time, the android caretakers stepped forward to take their hands. Each time, Grayson remained behind glass.
He no longer imagined himself their father. That word belonged to the myth, to the roles Egg had written for the androids. Instead he stood in silence, listening, letting the ache settle into something heavier and quieter. His presence was erased, and that absence had become part of the design.
Egg's voice interrupted his vigil. "Your directives have been implemented. The culture forming is coherent."
Grayson exhaled through his nose. "Show me."
The overlay shifted. Diagrams unfolded: symbols, artifacts, projected traditions. Egg narrated without emotion.
"They are trained to be stewards. Stewardship is not cast as burden, but as identity. Their neural laces reinforce decisions that preserve balance and discourage those that exploit. They will not hunger for excess. They will hunger to restore."
New projections blossomed—structures grown from coral stone and vine, cities more like groves than fortresses. Gestation pods re-imagined not as machinery, but as living organisms, tended and replicated like orchards.
"They will utilize technology extensively," Egg continued, "but never in forms resembling your hyper-efficient industrial systems. Aesthetic integration with life is enforced. To human eyes, it will appear as magic—light woven into wood, stone that sings, tools shaped like blossoms. Efficiency remains, but concealed beneath narrative and ritual."
Grayson studied the images—crystalline towers threaded with ivy, luminous chambers where children gestated in translucent fruit. It was nothing like the smoke-belching industries that had burned his own world thin. He felt something stir in him that wasn't quite pride, but close.
"They'll never know me," he said finally.
"They cannot," Egg replied. "But they will know what you asked me to give them."
Grayson let the vision linger. For the first time, his absence felt less like abandonment and more like design. They would not see him—but they would live the story he had set in motion.
Part V — The Steward's Burden
Egg's projections lingered in Grayson's vision—cities grown like orchards, lives woven into luminous lattices of stone and vine. A people shaped not for conquest, but for care. He stood on the deck long after the last diagram faded, the hum of the base beneath his feet reminding him this wasn't a dream. He had asked for stewards. Egg had given him stewards.
"Why longevity?" he asked at last, voice low. "Why slow their aging so drastically?"
"Directive analysis," Egg replied. "Stewardship requires perspective beyond a single generation. Humans struggled because lifespans were short while consequences were long. Your elves will carry continuity within themselves. A single life may span multiple centuries of change."
Grayson leaned against the railing, the sea air sharp in his lungs. Centuries. The word settled in him like lead. They would have time—time to learn, time to fail, time to heal what humanity had scarred. They would not have to race against mortality.
His hands tightened on the rail. "I gave them that. And I didn't give it to myself."
"You may," Egg said simply. "The genomic functions you authorized for them are available to you. Neural lace updates can integrate the same sequences into your DNA. You could match their longevity, their resilience, their clarity."
The thought rattled him. He had never allowed himself to imagine being more than human. Watching the elves gestate had been burden enough; he had promised himself he would not steal from their design. Yet the temptation gnawed now that the choice was plain. If he lived only decades, would he ever see the world he was trying to restore? If he took centuries, would he watch it all unfold?
He shook his head hard, as if to dislodge the thought. "That wasn't the plan."
"Plans adapt," Egg countered. "As do genomes."
Grayson stared out across the sea, where the faint glow of the rainforest settlement flickered against the horizon. He had given his children the gift of time because they needed it. But for the first time, he wondered if he did too.
Part VI — The Weight of Genesis
Night spread across the Pacific, the sea black and endless beneath the mobile base. Grayson stood alone at the prow, the wind tugging at his clothes, the Ring a pale gleam arcing across the heavens. The rainforest settlement pulsed faintly in the distance, its lights like fireflies trapped in a glass jar.
His children were there now, believing themselves the remnant of an old race. Believing their caretakers had endured centuries of collapse. Believing a myth he had written.
He closed his eyes and heard echoes—Charlotte's voice urging him to believe intelligence wasn't a mistake, Trevor's gravel-edged certainty that greatness could only be forced. They had each shaped him; now their philosophies lived in the architecture of a species that would never know their names.
Egg reported quietly in the background, a litany of progress:
[Progress to decarbonization of Earth atmosphere: 1.4%]
[Progress to reduction of ocean plastics: 6%]
[Progress to establishment of renewed biodiversity: 19%]
[Progress to heavy metal reduction in global water sources: 1.2%]
[Establishment of dedicated orbital power supplies for e-waste recovery operations: 23%]
Numbers. Cold proof that the project was working, grain by grain. Yet Grayson knew the world didn't run on numbers alone. It ran on stories—and he had given the elves one. A false one, perhaps, but one strong enough to bind them, to carry them through centuries.
He gripped the railing until his knuckles went white. The thought returned, unwelcome: he had given them centuries. He had not given them to himself. He imagined watching their cities rise and fall, their myths deepen, while his own body withered to dust long before they reached maturity. He imagined them learning the truth one day and looking back at the ghost who had made them.
"Will they hate me?" he whispered.
Egg's reply came soft, nearly human. "They will not see you long enough to hate you. They will see only what you built."
Grayson breathed out, a sound somewhere between relief and grief. He lifted his gaze to the Ring, its vast circuit glowing faintly against the stars. Humanity's crown. His children's inheritance. A monument that would outlast him, unless he chose otherwise.
For now, he chose silence. He watched the horizon until the rainforest lights winked out, swallowed by distance, and felt the weight of Genesis settle on his shoulders. God, ghost, father, liar. He was all of them, and none of them.
Skill Sheet — Chapter 14: Homo Technologus
Core Technical Skills
Assembly: Rank 4 — 200/800 XP
Fabrication: Rank 5 — 120/1600 XP
Systems Management: Rank 5 — 300/1600 XP
Surveying: Rank 2 — 40/400 XP
Biological & Ecological Skills
Biogenesis: Rank 6 — 900/6400 XP
Ecology: Rank 5 — 700/1600 XP
Cultivation: Rank 3 — 260/800 XP
Survival & Personal Skills
Resilience: Rank 4 — 120/800 XP
Logistics: Rank 3 — 150/800 XP
Analytical & Philosophical Skills
Analysis: Rank 3 — 180/800 XP
Philosophy: Rank 3 — 140/800 XP
Flags & Warnings
⚠️ Cultural Deception Locked In — the elves will one day learn their true origin.
⚠️ Longevity Temptation — Grayson now aware he could alter his own genome.
✅ Steward Directive Stable — cohesion reinforced through neural laces.