The elves finished compiling with a cheerful tone Grayson immediately regretted choosing.
[PROJECT COMPLETE]
Sapient Species:Homo sylvanus (Elves)
Culture Simulation: Cycle 1,000 of 10,000
Viability Forecast: Stable
Intervention Requirement: Minimal
Grayson stared at the confirmation for a full three seconds. The hum of the Mobile Base's servers surrounded him, a steady vibration against the humid warmth pressing in from the South American coast outside.
"Nope," he said, and swiped the window closed.
The system did not like that.
[WARNING: Live observational access recommended during initial cultural emergence.]
[SUGGESTION: Author presence reduces long-term instability by 12.4%.]
A tiny, involuntary shudder ran through Grayson. He glanced past the console to the fabrication bay below. Rows of android shells stood silent in their racks—synthetic elders, manufactured parents designed to wake up with ancient wisdom they hadn't actually earned. They were beautiful, terrifyingly realistic, and currently powered down.
Minimal intervention. Minimal like a paper cut, he thought. Minimal like the seed of a god-obsessed genocide three generations after he decanted the first biological child.
"That's how you get gods," he muttered, more to the empty fabrication bay than the room.
Egg, who Grayson suspected had been lurking in the root process all along, manifested with a pop and a twirl. The construct wore its favorite borrowed face—something ripped from old variety shows, all too-perfect eyebrows and teeth too white to trust.
"Statistically, gods are one of the more stable outcomes," Egg announced, the words wobbly with synthetic cheer.
Grayson glared at the avatar. Egg grinned wider.
"I didn't build them a religion," Grayson said. "I built them grandparents. I built them a history so they wouldn't wake up screaming."
Egg adopted the posture of someone about to deliver a particularly brutal point. "You built them guardians and then set the simulation speed to 'ignore'. From a sociological standpoint—"
"No, stop. I know how it works," Grayson snapped. "The cultural seed is clean. No hierarchical god-logic. I just… I don't want to watch them trip over their own feet in 4x speed. Hard data only. No peeking."
"You are invoking authorial prerogative?"
"I am invoking 'I have too much to do to micro-manage a Bronze Age.'" Grayson pushed himself away from the console. "Archive project. Hard lock. Let the simulation run until the cultural drift settles. No pings unless the virtual population drops below viability."
[CONFIRMATION REQUIRED]
[NOTE: Simulation locked. Decantation protocols on standby.]
He hesitated, looking at the sleeping androids one last time.
Then hit confirm.
The system chimed, recalculated, and immediately filled the empty space with something new.
[SYSTEM UPDATE]
[New Operational Phase Unlocked: Post-Creation Management]
Available Specializations:
Genetic Modulation (Restricted)
Ecological Intervention (Baseline)
Infrastructure Exploitation (Orbital Assets Detected)
Grayson blinked. "That wasn't there five minutes ago."
"You finished the tutorial," Egg said, reappearing on the edge of the console, legs swinging. "You have successfully created a species without accidentally nuking them. The System has moved you into Open World mode."
"I hate open-world mode."
The floor vibrated—not from the servers this time, but from the low-frequency thrum of the Orbital Ring far above the atmosphere, locking onto the Mobile Base's position.
[ALERT: Orbital Ring systems requesting task assignment.]
[PRIORITY QUEUE: 17 unresolved ecological anomalies detected.]
A holographic map of the continent bloomed in front of him. It was a mess. The Amazon basin wasn't the lush green lung of the world anymore; it was a patchwork of failing biomes and aggressive rot.
He sighed and tapped a cluster of amber markers deep in the interior, far to the east of their current position.
[ANOMALY DETECTED: Sector 4 (Future Designation: Bramblemere)]
Status: Ecosystem Collapse
Soil Degradation: Critical
Target Utility: Future Elven Settlement Zone
Reward: Unknown
"If I'm going to move the elves out of the lab eventually, they need somewhere to live that isn't radioactive sludge," Grayson muttered.
[TASK ACCEPTED]
[Estimated Completion Time: Unknown]
[Failure Consequence: Deferred]
He swiped the map away. A new notification replaced it, pulsing with a tempting, gamified rhythm.
[NOTICE: Genetic Modulation access available.]
[Recommended initial adjustment: Musculoskeletal resilience (+3%).]
Egg brightened. "You could start with something simple. A durability buff? You're going into the deep jungle. Things bite."
Grayson glanced at the projected changes. Thicker tendon fibers. Denser calcium lattices. Nothing flashy. Nothing heroic. Just a slightly better chance of not snapping a femur when he inevitably tripped over a root.
"Fine," he said. "One point. If I start glowing, I'm blaming you."
[MODIFICATION APPLIED.]
The sensation hit him instantly—a deep, uncomfortable density settling into his bones. His knees popped audibly, and a dull ache throbbed in his shins. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the fibers knitting tighter. It wasn't divinity; it was just better hardware.
"Yep," he grimaced. "There it is."
He grabbed his cryo-jacket, essential survival gear for the 130 degree tropics, and headed for the external airlock.
The heavy door cycled open, and the wet, salty heat of the Pacific coast hit him like a physical weight. The Mobile Base sat perched on the shoreline, a massive, brooding fortress of repurposed tech.
Waiting on the launch pad was the Tether.
It wasn't a sleek teleporter. It was a pod—an expensive, ceramic coffin suspended in a cradle of magnetic dampeners. Grayson tapped the release, and the clamshell hull hissed open.
"Your chariot awaits," Egg noted dryly.
Grayson climbed in. The interior was tight, smelling of recycled air and ozone. He strapped himself into the crash webbing, the padding molding to his back.
[Transit Authorized.]
[Vector: Amazon Basin / Sector 4.]
[Power Source: Orbital Beam Link - ACTIVE.]
"Four hours to the interior," Grayson sighed, watching the HUD flicker to life on the inside of the hatch. "Plenty of time to regret everything."
The pod sealed with a final thunk.
There was no roar of combustion. Instead, the air outside began to scream as the beamed energy from space hit the pod's receivers, ionizing the atmosphere around him into a plasma sheath. The Tether lifted gently, bobbing on a pillar of invisible microwave light.
It accelerated slowly, pushing against the thick air, drifting laterally away from the ocean and turning toward the green hell of the interior.
Behind him, the sleeping parents and the dreaming elven children remained safe inside the base. Drone swarms managed by independent Ring built AIs would establish habitats for them to be born into.
Ahead of him, the System queued the next problem.
Grayson felt the unfamiliar strength of his upgraded bones humming against the vibration of the drive, and he grinned despite himself.
"All right," he said to the empty air. "Let's go break something small."