Gods for the Machines

By Morpheus

A not-quite-an-angel has been overseeing her home city for longer than she can remember. Always watching, avoiding interacting with the locals, and dealing with malicious spirits when they arise. A new issue though is a bit beyond her abilities, mortals are now contacting directly with the supernatural and her existence is on the verge of being revealed as her city teeters on disaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781387300853

Book preview

Chapter 1: Watcher

The watcher knelt atop a balcony overlooking her city, looking a bit like a living gargoyle next to the other ones carved from stone.  The tower was a bit anachronistically gothic for the modern day and age, but the watcher hardly concerned herself with what the mortals thought was is good taste, what mattered is that it gave her a good view of the pulse of the city’s soul.

The watcher wasn’t sure how long she had been a watcher.  She could remember a day when this city was mere farmland and she was still a watcher, but she couldn’t remember much before that.  Her memories got more and more hazy the farther back she looked in her mind.  Perhaps she had always been here, but memories decayed like almost everything else.  Her body however didn’t decay, she persisted in this place and saw no reason that that would or even could change.

She stood up on the ledge and let the wind blow over her body.  Her arms spread and her wings unfurled as she enjoyed its caress over her.  Her body was young and strong, well not young in any objective sense but still apparently young.  Tight muscles flexed under her skin and sapphire blue fur, raptor like golden claws tapped on the ledge beneath her feet.  By way of clothing she ‘wore’ shimmering golden accents that could move and shift about her body like water at a thought as if they were made of cold molten metal that could shape and harden when needed.  She didn’t’ really think about them as things she wore, they were more a part of her like any other limb.  In that sense she wore nothing, she had no sense of modesty to speak of though, the mortals couldn’t see her even if she stood right in front of them so there was little point in bothering to cover up though the golden liquid metal could probably accomplish that task if she wished it.  Right now though she flowed the metal  across her chest forming it into a bra of sorts; it was a purely practical decision as her rather annoyingly ample ‘assets’ could be a bouncing annoyance when she flew, then she simply stepped off the ledge.

Flying was relaxing, especially over the freeways, the heat generated produced thermal updrafts that kept her aloft with minimal effort.  As she surveyed the city below her keeping a sense open for any feeling of pain it might have, she thought back to when this land was just farms, and the mortals were so few.

She did fly back then, but never high up, there was no reason to go much higher once you were above the trees, and thermals didn’t exist in as abundant a number as one found in the city.  Back then she had little to do.  Many mortals believed that spirits lived in and tended to the needs of forests and other natural areas.  The watcher wasn’t sure if she was the spirit they were talking about, or not, but she hadn’t seen any spirits in the forest and in fact the forest hardly seemed to need any.  Damaged trees would keep growing, even if half fallen, anything that died was eaten, either by other animals or by bugs and mold, and any damage could simply be grown over or around.  The forest could even grow out of its own ashes after a fire, like a verdant phoenix.  It hardly needed her to do anything, the forest had solutions to its own problems.

The mortals and their constructions seemed more in need of ‘tending’ at least from where she was sitting, and increasingly more so as time went on.  The farmers she remembered weren’t that different from the forest.  When a problem occurred, like a broken tool or the like, they had a method of fixing it, could do so quickly most of the time and have everything back to normal soon enough.  The largest thing she could remember doing in her role, self appointed role? divinely mandated role? she could not remember; what mattered is that she had noticed a blight spreading through the farmer’s crops.  The farmers didn’t notice it, but she had felt it, she could sense things like this sooner than the mortals could; she figured it came with her being a watcher.

She had torched the field in question, set the blighted crops alight and let them burn.  The farmers thought the fire was a disaster that hurt their crop substantially.  They never knew how much worse it would have been had the watcher not done it, and that was mostly fine with her, after all the mortals couldn’t see her in the first place so it wasn’t surprising that they wouldn’t know of her actions or reasons for them.  That was how she operated for as long as her memories remained, keeping an eye on things and nudging problems when she saw them, or directly confronting them when they were a bit more of a ‘spiritual’ sort of problem.

When the city started to rise, she wondered if it would mean less for her to do, but it didn’t. The city was constantly in some need or another.  Of course, it did have its own reactions to problems, systems set up and designed by mortals to keep the city running, repair crews and emergency response teams, all things the farmers had never had a need for now were running around everywhere just to keep the city limping along, and for the most part it worked, then things got weird.

Well not weird as far as mortals were concerned, but weird for the watcher.  She could feel the living creatures she watched over, feel when they were in pain and needed assistance.  That’s how she knew about the blight in the old farmers lands after all, the crops were in a sort of ‘pain’ and she felt it.  She was very used to being able to sense and react to these sort of signals from the mortals and form crops and trees, and animals, but it took her aback more than a little when she first felt the city in pain.

She spent some time, days? years? trying to figure out just what the heck she was feeling.  The city was not alive, the buildings were rock and wire, nothing more, or so she had thought at first.  The circulatory system, arteries and veins in iron tubes, pumping vital fluids around; food brought in through the highways, serving as both an esophagus and limbic system, to and from the guts and intestines that was the industrial sector, and back out again through ships and trains and more roads; the nervous system of impulses and signals tracking up and down copper and aluminum wires to and from multiple centralized or decentralized brains build of servers to monitor the operation of the city.  At some point she had started to feel it like she felt the other organisms that inhabited this land, it had developed a soul of sorts, not quite a mind, at least not yet, but to her it was becoming alive, and it always needed help.

It didn’t take her too long to figure out why it was so needy, it was woefully incomplete and incapable of looking out for itself.  While the forest had existed for times immemorial and had any manor of ways to deal with its issues, the city could only send and bounce signals that the mortals thought of.  It couldn’t react to anything that could go wrong, but onto to what its designers knew could go wrong, and even then it was often only after something was already broken that they’d be notified, not when it was merely hurting.

The watcher glided over the location where she felt the most recent twinge of pain.  She was guided to a train station, a loading and onloading point for the oft overloaded limbic system that helped clear out the bustle of mortal traffic at the end of each day.  She landed and her golden metal bra deconstructed itself and spread back out across her body, ready to react to her next commands.  She waited for a gap in the crowds of mortal bodies.  They couldn’t see her, wouldn’t have known she was there unless they plowed right into her, and even then, they might brush it off as a slip or a jostle with another mortal.  Even so she didn’t like the idea of forcing her way through a crowd, even if for the most part it wouldn’t’ matter, some mortals would notice and there would be ‘ghost’ rumors popping up, again.

She had been startled once in the past by an excited group of young mortals pushing their way through an alley she was hiding in as a shortcut on their way so some concert or whatever.  The watcher had found herself almost bowled over and then pressed to a wall by their force.  They had noticed the impact of course and some had gotten curious and tried to reach out to touch the nothing they had hit.  If she had let them touch and feel her up, they were have known beyond a doubt that something was there, so she had reacted with a swing of her wing to blow them back a bit then rushed out of there before they could react.  The ‘haunted alley’ was still an urban legend to this day.

She watched numerous travelers of all different species and ages coming and going through the station doors while she waited for her chance.  She found herself wondering what each one was doing, going to, coming from? friends? lovers? jobs? She was a bit curious she had to admit.  The watcher had studied the mortals and their culture so she was aware of most of it, but never a part of it, she wondered what it was like for them, what it would be like for her if there was more than one watcher.

But there wasn’t anything else like her.

Eventually she saw her chance when one of the mortals, a somewhat overweight tiger, opened the door extra wide and there wasn’t anyone immediately behind him.  She scooted in through the gap in the doors before they closed, the tip of her tail managing to JUST get inside before getting shut in by the closing door.

The hallways in the station weren’t huge, this wasn’t a main hub, but she still strolled straight through the middle of it.  Experience told her it was easier to avoid running in to someone by walking down the middle rather than the sides.  The mortals tend to spilt into two paths moving each way and she likes to walk along the walls, plus there was more dodging options in the middle than along the edges.  She kept an eye on the mortals so she could dodge around them while also glancing at the walls.  Inside the walls were the various cables and pipes, the nerves and vessels, that fed this part of the city.  The pain signal seemed to be coming along the electrical wiring, it was straining on something, but she wasn’t sure what, yet.

She found the issue when she got to the station floor, jumping the turnstile wasn’t exactly allowed, but no one could see her anyway and it’s not like she planned on riding the trolly, then it was just a quick stair climb to the station floor and there was the issue.  The source of the city’s pain today was an overloaded power delivery cable feeding the overhead lines for the trolly.  The insulation on its surface was inflating a bit, indicating that the inner layers had started to boil.  It would hold for now, but eventually there would be an exposed hotline somewhere it shouldn’t be.  Shorts and power loss was the least of the potential issues.  The only question remained was how she would handle the situation.

One way was just to write out an anonymous tip and drop it off at the maintenance office.  She would just have to be careful that when she filled out the card she was out of sight so no one would see the magic moving pen and paper.  Security cameras made that even harder to pull off.  Another option would be to fix it herself.  The watcher had a decent skillset, books were left unattended enough to get some reading done, that’s how she learned to read in the first place, but reading about electricity was one thing and being a certified technician was another.  Signing up for a class wasn’t something she’d figured out how to do, nor could she get replacement parts for the system likely, and even if she could it would take a bit longer than she likely had before the wire failed.  That left the third option.

Most of the time the best way to fix a problem was actually to make it worse, specifically to make it worse in a controlled way.  She could break the wire manually, sever the casing and short out the trains, so long as she did it when no one was around the arcs it could produce wouldn’t hurt anyone, and then they’d have to fix it properly before the wire failed with people in the trolly.  That seemed like the most practical option in the situation.  She looked around for a place to wait till the trolly station closed.

Sitting around for 5 hours was not a big problem for the watcher, nor was planting her bare tush on top of a vending machine to do the waiting.  It was a pretty good place to avoid being bumped into, gave her a good view of the station and the machine was pleasantly warm on top, the heat it sucked out to keep the drinks cool has to go somewhere after all.  She waited till the sun started to go down and the crowds cleared, she heard the beeps and the announcement telling the commuters that closing time was upon them and then she got to work.  The only noise now was the soft clicking of her claws that would have been inaudible over the bustle of people, and whirring noise in the distance somewhere, probably an HVAC machine or the like, the city was almost never fully quiet after all.

She commanded her liquid metal accoutrements to move to her hands and feet, spreading out over her fingers and toes like cilia extension grown by fungus.  In this form it would grip the wall much more completely than her own claws could and she simply crawled straight up the wall.  She got the inspiration years ago after sneaking into a movie, or 12, movies were easy to get into, the only downside was she had never figured out how to actually get popcorn without someone noticing something floating about.  She Spiderman-ed her way along the wall then shimmied along an I-beam support to where she had seen the issue.  The whirring noise got louder as she got closer to the source of the pain, she brushed it off and got to work.  She didn’t want to just wreck the thing, that could be hard to fix, she just needed it to be obvious there was an issue.  A golden blade extended from one of her claw tips and started to cut into the already damaged insulation on the wire.  She could have just severed the whole wire but while she was pretty sure she could take being electrocuted, she had never had occasion to try it so decided to, not, do that.  she gingerly picked at the insulation while holding onto the beam by her feet and legs until the bare wired was exposed.  Once she could see the wire she getly touched the opposite side where there was still insulation and after taking a deep breath she pushed it firmly against its own support pillar.

The resulting lightshow was short lived but fairly spectacular, sparks and shocks flew wildly as the powered line arced to the metal rail, arced a little to far in fact and jumped to the pillar then from the pillar to the I-Beam.

AAughTTaaa The watcher made a distorted yell/grunt as she fell the 14 feet to the concrete floor and smashed off it in a heap.  She lay there for a time before rolling onto her back and looking up.  Good news, she could take high voltage if she needed to, better news the circuit had blown, cutting the power and would have to be investigated before business could continue, and best news the wire looked like it melted itself to its support pillar, so some lazy technician couldn’t just rest the breaker without it popping again.

On the other hand the annoying whirring noise was still there, and still louder than ever despite the blown breaker, and she heard steps alongside it.  Leaping to her feet she looked around, ready to dodge whoever came to investigate, the person who did come didn’t look like a maintenance person though. She looked like a kid.

Well not a KID kid, she seemed to have a mature enough body; though the watcher wasn’t the best at determining age since her own was irrelevant.  She was a snow leopard, she wore jeans and a not-leather looking jacket and had a really weird headband on her head holding back her multicolored, black, blue, and white, hair.

Is someone there? The girls asked looking around, I heard a yell, are you hurt?

The girl’s eyes scanned over the watcher seeing nothing as usual.  The watcher stood still and watched her, since they were alone the girl might hear it if the watcher moved, so she stood still.  She did manage to determine the source of the whirring noise though.  Behind the girl, hovering at should level was one of those floaty, spiny, thingies, that the watcher had heard news people complaining about through shop window mounted TVs when she passed by.  She tried to think of the name but couldn’t grasp it right away.  The girl looked around a bit more then pulled the headband down over her eyes,  the watcher thought that was more than a little odd till she saw that it wasn’t so much a headband but a pair of goggles, though one that somehow had no lenses.  The girl poked at what looked like a smartphone with handholds on the sides and the floaty blade, spiny, thingy started to pace about the place.

Just in, viewers, it seems a freak electrical outage has occurred The girl was talking to no one. The watcher was unsure as to her sanity.  The device flew up higher towards the damaged wire, Looks like they don’t exactly do proper maintenance here, do they ‘super-spy-drone-mark-4’?

DRONE! that’s what they were called, surely named for the irritating droning whirring noises they made.  The watcher was pleased she’d now remember the name and on impulse made an ‘I got it’ motion smacking her fist into her opposite palm, then regretted it.

The girls head snapped back to where the watcher stood and she took the goggle blindfold thing off looking around, Seriously, is someone there? She asked white staring directly at the watcher but only seeing the wall and vending machines behind her, I have mace!

The girl did not appear to be holding a mace, but the watcher knew enough about branding that she figured it was some other self-defense product with a misleading name.  After a minute or two with no further action the girl relaxed again and started flying the drone around doing her strange talking about the world to no-one thing she was doing.  The watcher didn’t know what she was doing but could also just stand there for over a day if she needed to, so she just kept standing and watched the girl as she moved around talking away.  Sure enough eventually she was done and recalled her drone, but by now the drone was on the other side of the room.

The drone rocketed towards its master, MUCH faster than it had moved before, and right towards the watcher herself.  She was bout to dodge out of the way even if it made noise when the drone stopped dead and simply hovered, a couple feet from the watcher with a few new red lights blinking on it.  On the drone there seemed to be a ring like thing with small lights around it, the ones facing directly at the watcher were blinking.  That shouldn’t be possible, she didn’t show up even on cameras, she had tested it thoroughly, nothing could see her, not even technology.  Maybe the lights just happed to be on the front of the device, or were pointing at its owner not the watcher, that would make sense, but wouldn’t explain the annoyance of the girl.

You stupid little bugger, there’s nothing there The girl said and confidently marked towards her drone. ‘shit’ thought the watcher, and looking around quickly realized she had little choice, being as quiet as possible she hopped to the side so the girl wouldn’t walk right into her.  It did make noise though.

The girl’s ears perked up and she looked in the direction of the watcher again, she was starting to look spooked, that was for sure, and the watched started to wonder if the legend of the haunted vending machine alcove would soon be started.  Then the watcher noticed that the blinking red lights on the drone were still pointed at her, the drone hadn’t turned or anything, but the only lights on were still the ones pointed at her, the others were out and new ones had turned on corresponding to her new position.

Now it was the watcher’s turn to feel a little freaked out.  She leaned as far as she could left and right and notice the lights tracked her still, without any other motion or reaction of the drone. ‘can it actually see me?’ she thought, ‘how?!’

The girl apparently was just about done being in the darkened station with the ‘ghost’ so she simply grabbed her drone and took off, locking the exit behind her.  Once she too far away to hear what the watcher was doing she moved after the girl, using her liquid metal to turn onto a lock pick and open the gate she had left through.  There was a small possibility that a security camera would see the gate opening again without anyone there to move it, but they’d likely blame the girl for not properly closing the door if that happened, so for now she didn’t worry about it.  She made after the girl as quickly as she could while remaining silent, which was pretty fast with her raptor legs, and once outside even faster with her wings.  She wasn’t sure exactly where she was being led too, but if there was something that could see her, she needed to know more about it before it was everywhere.

Chapter 2: Mechanist

The watcher was hanging onto the side of a brick apartment building,  she had turned her liquid gold multitool into thousands of little hooks so she could cling to the wall easily to avoid tiring her arms or wings out to stay in this position.  She had gotten the idea from an old superhero movie that she had snuck into, but hey if it works it works.  She peered in through the window into what she assumed was the snow leopard’s apartment; the girl had gone into this building, and seemed to like her drones based on what she was doing on the station so the apartment full of RC toys felt right.  The apartment was tiny, only the one room so far as the watcher could tell aside from a bathroom closet, and she didn’t see a bed.  She did see a cheap looking couch opposite a computer, maybe a futon?  whoever this girl was she lived frugally.

The guess was confirmed when the snow leopard RC pilot opened the door and walked in.  She hung her drone on the wall near some other ones, plopped her headband thing onto the desk and flopped onto the couch.  Now that it was possible to get a closer look at the headband the watcher could tell that it wasn’t just a weird fashion,  the antennas and odd bulges around the front had to do something, presumably it had something to do with the drone, though what?

The snow leopard came to the window to open it and the watcher quickly scooted to the side.  She was almost annoyed at herself.  Both she and her liquid gold multitool/wardrobe were totally invisible, no person or animal, nor any camera, had ever seen her, she couldn’t even get through automatic doors without closely following someone.  It was weird for her to be so concerned that the young girl would see her, but then again one of her toys had, somehow, so maybe caution was warranted.

The watcher hung next to the window watching as the girl leaned out and took a deep breath, a small gold nose ring in her nose jingled a bit in the wind, she also had sky blue ear studs, the same color as the blue highlights on her hair.  The watcher found herself wondering what this girl’s natural hair color was, her fur was milk white on the front of her body and gray on the back with darker spots like any other leopard, but was her hair naturally black? white? it likely wasn’t blue naturally, despite having all three colors in her hair.  The watcher’s eyes traced down the girl’s body and ending on the tattoo on her left arm, it was half sleeve up to her elbow made of blue roses with black leaves wrapped around her arm, and the watcher found herself leaning in closer to get a better look when the girl pulled back inside and walked away from the window.

Before she realized how risky it would be the watcher crawled in through the still open window into the studio apartment.  She at least did have the presence of mind to spread her wings, bracing them against the walls and holding herself up against the ceiling to avoid being walked into.  She tried to see if there was any way to clear the room and get to where the drones were charging.  She needed to find out what sort of equipment they had after all, but there was so much stuff in here that moving around would be difficult especially with the risk of brushing against the snow leopard girl in the process.

It was hours before the girl finally moved, in that time the watcher was able to enjoy some of the shows she was watching on her computer while relaxing on the couch.  Most people probably spend too much time in front of a screen, but the watcher found it hard to even get the chance under most situations so she took the opportunity when she could to learn about the world.

She somehow doubted that actual professors shouted bazinga quite so much, but the girl’s attention on the screen make it possible to tip toe past her, her eyes not reacting in the slightest as the watcher moved directly in front of her eyes.  Once she wasn’t pinned to the window side the apartment movement around the small apartment was more unhindered.  She found an ID card of some sort on the desk, while smart enough not to pick it up as that would be noticed, she did take a look and finally had a name for the girl she was spying on: Atasi Demetria

‘What like a winter flower goddess?’ the watcher thought, ‘guess that explains the tattoo. heh interesting name there’

Looking closer at the ID it identified her a college student of Willow Park Institute, with willow park being the name of this particular district of the city.  It was at one point its own town in the distant past that the watcher could hazily remember, along with other towns the merged to form Valborg City named for the mountain it partially encompasses, though the watcher just thought of it as ‘the city’ since she didn’t travel to any other one and felt no need to, this place was her universe as far as she considered it, she never knew why but also was never too bothered by it.

Getting back to the present, the watcher tried to get a good look at the drones on the wall, particularly the one that had seen her, but she didn’t see anything in particular that seemed unusual.  It had batteries and fans and a camera on it, but cameras normally couldn’t’ see her any more than anything else could so that made no sense.  Eventually she came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t be able to learn too much just staring at it, and she couldn’t pick it up with Atasi in the room or the girl would see her drone hovering apparently on its own, she would have to wait.

It took a few weeks, she had to be careful after all and couldn’t just walk through doors, even if they were unlocked, if there was someone to see; and God this school was always full of students.  The annoyances of getting around were slowly overcome bit by bit and the watcher slowly figured out Atasi’s rough class schedule: Differential Equations, Intro to Robotics, Mechatronics, Gender Studies; that last one was a little bit out of place with the rest, but it was quickly clear that this girl was into her machines and robots. 

The watcher had snuck into each room before, or after classes were in session and made a point to dance around in front of each of the strange machines to see if it reacted to her, of course maybe they weren’t running.  She didn’t think it was a good idea trying to put herself in the way of stuff when class was in session, not to mention that there were far to many students in a class to keep track of all of them, if she hung around when they were about it would be so SO easy for one of them to walk into her.  For about the millionth time the watcher wished she could be immaterial, not just invisible.

She had found herself getting more and more interested in watching the students, particularly Atasi, just going about their days.  It was oddly relaxing to watch her fiddle with widgets almost to the point that she had forgotten that she still did not know how that one drone, that had not left its place on the wall, had even seen her in the first place.  She had learned a few things though, one being that the strange visor that Atasi had on her head the first day was a first person view device communicating with the drone; the watcher’s stomach had tightened when she first figured that out, but she calmed a bit when she turned it on, while Atasi was in class, and learned that it only showed the camera feed that couldn’t possibly see her.

She had started getting more and more hands on with Atasi’s stuff while the girl was in class, she had even made a copy of her room key, no she couldn’t just goto the office and get a spare, but she could swipe it for a night and she knew of a hardware store with a, shall we say ‘limited’ security system, and she could get a copy made from the auto-key-copying machine they had using her stolen key and a credit card she... located.