#the steam turbine did start spinning after I cut the video!

[lizzies-gameblr]

Messing around trying to learn nuclear reactors in Stormworks

Going well!

[goldlockingterritories]

Obvious

A transhuman god is upset at the departure of her children, and is at odds with her partner.

Natalia peered over the scene before her: A parade, climbing along a street wedged between shiny black glass skyscrapers and polished concrete apartment buildings. Her view stood above it all, showing her all of the city; an urban sprawl, clustering in the middle, a suburb of lawn sprinklers and freshly cut grass to the west, oakwood docks and caramel colored beaches to the east. Further down west past the suburbs are all rural deserts and forests, full of buggy driving rednecks, tobacco growing hermits and cocaine hauling gangsters in speedos. All neatly nested within the small, lonely island.

She wasn’t going to tell the city government any of what she saw far west; they were the ones who made the decision to leave her. 

She returned to the real world: grey rocky landscape, and sleek black spires in the distance, spewing out pillars of smoke into the sky, joining the dark, electrified clouds.

The clouds weren’t normal; she could almost see the ocean of micro and nano machines swirling around on their pinwheel joints, connecting their long flagella wires, pushing atmosphere and delivering energy and messages all around the planet. A circulatory, respiratory, and nervous system all rolled into one big blanket for the whole world...

A large black seed shaped object hovered in the sky, the sharper end pointed upwards. It was obvious to Natalia what would happen; the clouds would synthesize the fuel, load it onto the rocket, and launch Natalia’s children past the sky and into space, where it would blossom, unfurling it’s sails and carry off riding the light of the stars. 

Everything was obvious to Natalia now. 

If she wanted to understand circuitry and rocket science, she did. If she wanted to understand chemistry and biology, she did. If she wanted to know how to create life, control the weather, travel the cosmos, she did.

And it was obvious why she could; she wasn’t human anymore. Her name hadn’t always been Natalia, but she had burned through so many at this point. She supposed that she picked that quality up from her partner.

“Leaving?” Speak of the devil, and you shall receive them.

They had many names and faces throughout their life; Carried in by wings that should’ve been invisible to Natalia, had it not been obvious, was Jules. An azure blue dress shirt hugged them underneath a black, floral patterned waistcoat and matching black jeans with gilded zipper pockets.

“Not me,” She began, knowing Jules already knew the answer, “My yggdrasil children.”

Yug-Drasil, the pronunciation rolled off her tongue as if she was fluent in the language (she was, obviously), and she couldn’t tell whether or not she read that somewhere, or if it was a signal plopped in her head by their new brain.

The world trees dotted the continent; branches composed of centimeter by centimeter metallic cubes, each holding the equivalent of entire human brains, billions of molecular neurons packed into something that could fit in the palm of a hand. Each mind was attached to a shared computer simulation, a virtual environment, either randomly generated or designed by Natalia, or Jules. Whole countries could be fitted in the space of a medium sized farmhouse, 30 souls a foot.

Natalia had reared an entire society in one, fully aware of the outside world. And they wanted to leave.

“I fixed it, by the way,” Natalia’s pause barely covered a microsecond when Jules spoke.

She didn’t bother asking for an answer she already knew. “My sabotage,” She said.

A special colony of micromachines, activated by sunlight, designed to devour Mylar, the material used on a solar sail. Jules must have picked them out, like a baboon picking out ticks from a mate’s fur coat and eating them, when the rocket went through the clouds.

“You bastard,” A smile infected her face, reaching her eyes. She used to have a volatile competitive streak; now she loved it when someone outsmarted her.

Jules regarded her with a drab expression, a soft smile touching their lips, but never their eyes. 

She wouldn’t have hurted them, only keep them stuck in orbit. If she could have her way now, she would’ve made it so that none of her children could leave. But that was the deal their older faces made long ago, when the trees were first thought of; let life go on. It’s only natural for Jules to uphold it. 

She hated them and she loved them, so she walked up and planted a kiss on their lips, and pulled them in. 

Her mind drifted off, summoning an Eidolon. Several kilometers north of here, at the base of a spire, micromachines sprung up from the ground like a trail of ants climbing along their own backs, climbing along lattice structures made of themselves, all together forming a single grey shape composed of arms, legs, a torso, and a head. The micromachines texturize themselves, forming smooth skin and dangling fabrics, pigment and color spreading across it, revealing Natalia in her short blonde hair, black leather garments and boots. 

The strange flesh and silicone blood Natalia, undressing herself with Jules on top of her, sent abstract commands to her Eidolon as it sent back short term memories. Eidolon Natalia regarded the spire; A power plant, delivering electricity to the machine clouds above, as if solar power wasn’t enough (she knew it wasn’t). This one would be using fusion to vaporize water into steam, spinning a sheet of micro turbines. Electricity would climb to the tip of the spire, where micromachines would distribute it amongst themselves in an invisible network.

Natalia commanded her Eidolon to move elsewhere, so she conjured a set of wings. They attached themselves to the Eidolon’s body, embedding straps to it’s fake skeletal structure, and pulled it off the ground.

The wings didn’t flap; it swirled air below and behind with a cloth made of a million tiny fans. A dust storm formed in the north, one of the only natural threats present on the planet. She knew an invisible wall would be forming around the storm, isolating and neutralizing it. 

Desolate buildings whizzed by below her feet; Skyscrapers, castles, mansions, houses, cabins, and towers. When Jules and Natalia first came here, that was all they had ever done; build and build and build. They stretched their creative abilities, at least when they still had human minds. 

After that, they just lived here. Sometimes together, sometimes isolated. Then the network was created, sinking its roots into the ground below, and Jules and Natalia connected themselves to it. Her name was Jacqueline when that happened, and Jules was Nathaniel.

The lone structures below transitioned into clusters of villages and townships, groupings of decrepit and abandoned housing. Things became obvious for Jack and Than, or rather they started to tap into the bank of knowledge and expertise that was the planet-wide superintelligence. Whenever they sensed or thought something, hundreds of artificial neurons parsed through it, predicted a query, and sent the answer as an electrical pulse that the brain interpreted as knowledge it already had. 

Every science and every byte of knowledge became like common sense to them. Obvious. 

And so, it became obvious what was missing from their- or rather Jack and Than’s - lives: People. So, they took what they knew, and built some people, called Simms. Like that ancient video game.

A patch worked house stood below Natalia. One of Than’s. Castles and junkyard additions erupted from its roof, colorful graffiti all over it. The Simms had breathed life into their world, returning complex relationships, conflict, and an extra pair of creativity. 

Jules pulled their lips from the real Natalia, a smile still present as they looked down at her. “Where are you going?”

Another Eidolon erupted from the ground below, growing to encompass a height of 20 feet, lumbering over the house. It’s body texturized into skin, no clothing, revealing the black haired face of Jules staring up at her. Jules always loved provoking imagery.

“My mind wandered, decided to take a stroll down memory lane,” Natalia and her Eidolon spoke in sync.

“You would have me think that,” A smile stretched across Eidolon Jules face, “wouldn’t you?”

Their belly inflated, rumbling, and something climbed up their throat. They opened their mouth, muffled screams following, and eventually an arm, followed by the blonde haired head of a middle aged man.

“Oh god!” The figure exclaimed in anguish and horror, “Please help me!”

Natalia knew the man; John Yak, third generation of the Yak family, ex-military (or so he thought), strict father of three. He used to live in the patchwork house, and his son was the one who built the castle tower for his kids.

“Please god!” Than designed John to be aggressive, loyal, prideful, and especially arrogant, being the one who stuffed the house with taxidermy and bear carpets from his hunts. He died when he was eaten by a polar bear.

The Eidolon pursed his lips around the Simm, making a slurping sound. John shrieked as he was drawn back down into the Eidolon’s belly.

“That supposed to scare me?” Natalia spoke up to Jules.

“No,” Jules said, and Natalia braced for another cryptic answer, “It’s supposed to scare me.”

“Oh stuff it, would you.” Natalia stretched her head to theirs, embracing Jules again. Eidolon Natalia continued her journey, and the giant naked Jules watched her leave with a smile, until disintegrating into grey fractal dust.