LF Friends, Will Travel

When Gods Sleep

Date: 2426AD

I could see the god lying in front of me, the glass walls that surrounded the figure providing a sense of peacefulness to her visage, as if she was just sleeping in some childlike fairy tail instead of stuck inside the stasis chamber, unable to emerge. I know that she wouldn't like being called a god, but what more accurate term for the human existed?

Even before my uplifting, she controlled the light and darkness, was the bringer of sustenance and master of all domains. Afterwards, when Amander had deemed fit to provide me the gift of thought, true thought, she had been the provider of friendship: Of companionship, of support for anything I wanted to accomplish. She would and did move the world for me if I asked.

My name is Spot, and I started my life as a "Canis lupus familiaris", the sentient species otherwise known as a dog, a black Labrador to be more specific. From this I was uplifted to sapience, genetic modification providing enhanced intelligence, a more bipedal form and opposable digits on my front two paws. Coming to just under 4ft tall, and sporting a simple white lab coat.

What other name apart from god accurately described a being who had such power, the ability to literally impart intelligence where it previously didn't exist? Like all uplifts I owed everything to humans, but personally I owed everything to Amander, the one trapped in the glass stasis chamber in front of me.

I continued my work without complaint or noise, the silence of the laboratory only broken up by machines that slightly whirred as they ran. The room was the pinnacle of biogenetic engineering, no expense had been spared, cutting edge in every instrument and device. Three years ago I would have killed to have been able to learn and work in such a place, but now, now it was a cruel reminder as to what we all had lost.

"Do you believe that this will work, Spot?"

The holographic projector had burst into life, showing the representation of the AI DRAKE as it spoke to me, the 3ft tall black draconian figure "swimming" in the air as it "spoke", looping and swirling around like an old Asian styled dragon. I knew the AI didn't need to actually provide a physical representation in order to talk with me, but was grateful for the ability to "see" who I was talking with nevertheless.

"Theoretically yes, but the god plague has stumped brighter minds than mine and this is my first real attempt."

The god plague. Proof that even gods could bleed.

Humanity has done a great many things, conquered every beast that lay in front of it. Old age, every medical ailment known to man, scarcity, FTL travel. Everything but their own crippling loneliness, the desire to make friends and fill in the gaps they didn't know existed within themselves. AI had been the first of their children, before they had even left the solar system, creating life by tricking rocks to think. Uplifts had been the second: Taking their pets, their animal companions and giving them sapience.

These hadn't been enough though. Humans have explored and colonised 32 systems. Out of those they found... nothing. Not even a single celled organism. The more of the universe we explored the more we came to the single most reasonable conclusion: The universe was empty, we were alone. So humans had done what humans always do: demanded that reality change to fit what they wanted.

It had originally been called the Gaia Project. A fast acting virus with genetic encoding instructions to invoke rapid modification of cells. Evolution was a slow and cruel mistress, going from a single cell to anything "interesting" would take Billions upon Billions of years. The Gaia project aimed to reduce the time it took to less than fifteen. Humanity had seen an empty universe and had decided to take matters into their own hands.