I had an idea. I wasn’t sure exactly how it would work, but it was still an idea –better than no idea. Wasn’t it probably best to check with Orpheus first?
“Okay, Orpheus,” I began, “if I want to make a closed space that is topologically a cylinder, would it be easier to make a torus instead, which would appear to those inside that space to be cylindrical? Do I have that right?”
For the first time, Orpheus fluttered her wings. Even now her voice didn’t seem to have any excitement in it.
“A torus would be far cheaper energy?wise to maintain. You are correct that those living inside the torus would view it as a cylinder, provided its curvature is gentle enough to not be observable. However, unless you maintain some artificial barrier, the illusion of the universe being cylindrical will be lost the moment anyone loops around. The circumference must expand at twice the speed of light to prevent counter-propagating signals from ever meeting”
I nodded and then prompted, “Or I can simply change the rules for light speed, transmission, and how it loops. Information decay is an option?”
Orpheus agreed with a nod. “However, you will need to change your current settings if you wish to implement this option. These changes will be significant and may have side effects that your level of experience is not prepared to deal with.”
“Fine, fine,” I said, waving my hand. “I have another solution, don’t worry.”
She didn’t say anything, which made me wonder if she was really paying much attention, or maybe she’d seen all of this before. I had no idea how many universes and architects and administrators there were out there. Maybe this had already been done frequently. If there were millions of universes, that would make sense. No point in thinking about it now.
For a moment, I balked at the idea of reshaping the entire universe. The current setting was something like a closed ellipsoidal space, labeled “Elliptic” in the menu. I focused on that and saw a drop?down menu… but “Torus” wasn’t one of the listed options.
I selected “Custom” instead, which brought up a blank configuration window.
Using the interface still felt a little awkward, but I was starting to get the hang of directing it with focused thought. With the blank window open, I tried envisioning a torus. Nothing happened at first – just empty space – but when I concentrated harder, picturing the donut shape actually forming, the image began to blossom into view. As the visualization resolved, the system subtly corrected my mental picture, smoothing the curvature and making it more symmetrical.
I accepted the changes. It felt like an error?correction system – or maybe my own mind imagined one, and the interface did the math behind the scenes. Either way, I wasn’t about to argue. Three?dimensional geometry had never been my strong suit… and if I was right, this was technically four?dimensional anyway.
“So how am I doing?” I asked.
Orpheus the fairy laconically answered, “This is an acceptable topology.”
I had sort of been hoping for more than that, but shrugged and disabled the expansion for now. I set the minor radius to 6,000 km and the major radius to 15,000 km. With the other modifiers, this gave a total Reality Point cost of 73.
Absorbing signals at the boundaries of the universe cost an exorbitant amount, with the estimation telling me that it would start out at zero, but within seconds reach a stable state of 140 Reality Points per year. I had no intention of paying that much. Time to see if my planned trick would work.
Out of curiosity, I asked Orpheus, “If I just drop a small planet in here and call it a day, what are my chances?”
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The fairy looked at me, showing some kind of emotion for the first time. She actually frowned.
“This configuration lacks sufficient thermodynamic gradient and stellar density for planetary ecosystems to emerge naturally.”
I nodded. I figured that. I had another idea in mind. I just hoped the system would let me do it.
I spent a few minutes looking through some of the other options… especially the gravity one. I wasn’t sure if my idea would work, but I was glad I spent the time to do this, because I found something in the options menu that popped out to me. It was a simple selection box that didn’t even cost anything.
A quick toggle changed gravity from pulling to the center of mass to perpendicular to the nearest surface. I checked that after going through and removing a lot of the options for planetary formation, which I didn’t need. This interface was useful… even if it was packed full of options.
Checking that toggle resulted in a cascade of warnings and errors, but I was able to quell most of them by adding some options to require a specific amount of contiguous mass and density. It also had an option to require a specific element or compound, and I set that to lead… then it further asked for which isotope, and I felt myself falling out of my depth again. Fortunately, the pop-ups told me which version of lead was the most stable and I just selected that for now. I was going to change this anyway.
It was pretty easy to make the change I wanted, but I was having a hard time figuring out what the effect of these changes would be. I glanced over at Orpheus, but she didn’t say anything to what I’d just said. I prompted her with a verbal nudge.
“Is this normal?”
That got a response, and the fairy nodded her head instead of bobbing this time.
“I will be able to warn you before initialization if your configuration is inviable,” she reassured. “However, I am unable to tell you what the likely results beyond that are. The entire point of putting inexperienced administrators in charge is to try unusual things that the experienced administrators never would have attempted.”
I frowned. “I know you can’t give me the exact statistics, but can you tell me how often new administrators are retired before the Fourth Epoch?”
Orpheus paused and then replied, “I cannot give an exact number, you are correct. The odds are unfavorable. Fewer than half survive to the Fourth Epoch before their World Seeds are requisitioned and another soul is selected.”
Yikes, I thought. That’s not a good success rate at all. Maybe I shouldn’t be trying something weird.
I thought about it a little more, then shook my head. I was almost certain to fail if I tried something like my old universe. I really didn’t have a choice but to do something different.
I took a deep breath and checked over the settings one more time. After a little thought, I glanced over at Orpheus and asked, “Given how big my original universe was, were there multiple worlds within it that had different species, and if so, how common is this?”
The golden fairy reminded me, “Exact statistics cannot be provided at your current rank. To answer your question, multiple species is extremely common in any universe. I presume you meant multiple intelligent species? That is also common. Usually, universes are not quite as large as your home universe. I cannot say more than that.”
I shrugged, but that was pretty much the answer I had expected. Orpheus had implied a couple of times now that my home universe was a little unusual. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
I searched through the menus until I found the setting I wanted and clicked it, allowing me to expand the universe under certain conditions instead of at a constant rate.
When I considered all of this, two mental buttons appeared – one for Apply and one for Initialize. I mentally focused on Apply.
I blinked. “Rank One already?” I asked Orpheus. “How long does it take to get to Rank Seven, then?”
“The first four ranks are quickly reached by any successful Administrator who creates an intelligent species,” she answered. “Ranks beyond that are progressively more difficult. A Rank Seven Administrator has successfully managed an intelligent species for long enough to have a net positive, stable energy flow while leaving their creation unattended for extensive periods of time.”
She paused to consider.
“While exact parameters vary, a Rank Seven Administrator can commonly leave their universe unattended for several thousand of your years, with a very low likelihood of any significant drop in energy production.”
I nodded as I listened to the answer and watched my interface populate with two more tabs. The first one was labeled Matter/Energy Creation. I had expected something like that.
The second one, to my delight, was labeled Sanctuary. Maybe I could make this place more comfortable sooner than I thought.