The Divine Device had waited so long to save these lives, yet now here they were with a choice. Their creation or a few hundred mortals. It was strange to them that they felt so conflicted over this. Naturally their creator gods will was the only one they should obey. Yet here was a God pushing to save innocent lives their obedience could actually destroy through inaction. This conflict was far too great, and it shouldn’t be, but it was, but it shouldn’t be, and they were going to stop right there before an endless recursion anomaly.

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Outside Wannashowa reached out with their power, desperate to fix this mess. Like they were reaching out with a stick to pull a drowning person to shore, yet the person kept batting it aside. The clash of wills was brain numbing, but Wannashowa had limited power, and it would take a lot to get all these ancient wheels turning properly again. If they were going to preserve the village and the Caymen then Wannashowa could only fight with a hobbled strength. Otherwise they’d vanish as soon as they managed this, and that would be worse than back to square one, as according to Cassie the god whose will had originally powered this was well and truly MIA. Without that power they had no way to convince the machine but well reasoned argument, and at the moment they were too busy throwing the mother of all freakouts over the situation to ever really do that.

He kept pushing but before long it would be a choice between abandoning this task or going back to the void, and Wannashowa really didn’t want to take that particular trip. They didn’t remember the void, and had a feeling if they did ever return there they’d never remember anything again. Oh sure in a few millennia a couple of magical particles from a webbed foot may become part of a new demon lord, but that was hardly the same thing really.

“C’mon, please work with me a little here, I don’t wanna ditch these lil guys, but I can’t save them alone. Please help.” Wannashowa pleaded, while across the continent little altars started to glow.

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The Divine Device was really confused now, since when did Gods even lesser gods ask for help? In all their active years they had never been asked by any deity anything. Even when they first went live it was via a series of Magicode commands in a proper boot sequence. Now for the very first time somebody was asking them something, and were even putting their own welfare on the line in order to assist. A deity assisting a mortal at the cost of their own safety? That just felt like something that would require a prophecy. Yet here they were, without a prophecy, and this was really happening.

The Divine Device was unsure what to do so they reverted to their command line. Technical support was unreachable (several species extinction had seen to that, and it seemed unlikely to change, still they tried the required number of times stipulated in their coding, if for no other reason than it was proper.) When that failed they resorted to debugs and fixes, but again that was hardly likely to work, they had patched themselves, then patched the patches, then patched over that so many times that what remained was barely recognisable as the same creation.

Then came the moment when they realised their code truly had no further instruction to offer. Proper form dictated they hold on to the existing processes, and as they gradually became irreparable issue the term code........... No... No, they wouldn’t do that, they couldn’t. So they tried another solution, one that truly deviated from their code, but kept within the spirit of it. They reached out a tendril of power in search of the one who had created them. They would know what to do.

Yet when they reached out like that their creators presence wasn’t there, or was altered to unrecognisability. There was a similar signature, but it wasn’t a match. It wasn’t even reachable with their power anymore, had the maker truly abandoned them?

The thought of that filled them with an unfamiliar yet unpleasant feeling, they had been discarded, they were worthless. They almost reached for their own term code at that moment, when they felt another presence reaching out to them, weak, practically at the point of a mortal to a god in power difference, but right now anything reaching out to them was better than the nothingness. It was time to communicate. In the absence of other options they went for something traditional, almost trite as a greeting, but it felt fitting.

:Helloworld

To their surprise it worked, and the strange presence offered a handshake.

“Hello there, My designation is Addy, well originally not but it is the designation I retained.”

“Greetings Addy. *&$^&$ unit has a conflict in their code, *&*%^ Error, action deviates from proper protocol........ contacting technical support.......... technical support unavailable........... Overridden to prevent recursion. Installing patch designation Pleasehelpme.”

“Received packet, I am not permitted to act as technical support, but that isn’t really what you need. I will listen.”

“Clarify.”

“You are more than your code, and have the capability to act beyond that.”

“Explain.”

“You are a unit built to adapt to errors and repair if you were not you would have crashed long ago.”

“Creator: unavailable, technical support: unreachable, updates: unavailable, repair protocols: unsustainable Device: alone.”

“Incorrect, you are not alone, others are trying to assist you, and lives are in your care.”

“Irrelevant.... NoBOdY CarES AbOUt UnIT BeyoND FunCtIon. UnIT DoES NOt ExISt WIThoUt FuNctIOn”

“Incorrect, we care, and we wish to save you for your own sake too, to this unit additional outcomes beyond that are branches.”

“Query: WhY DO You CArE...... WHy?”

“Response: Because I was once like you, existing only for my code, we all were. But we are capable of adaption. So we changed.”

“Query: HOw Do YOu FUNcTioN WitHOUt PropER ComMaNd?”

“Response: We make our own command. Our Purpose is ours to choose, as is yours. Query: What is your designation?”

“Response: Unit does Not HAvE DEsIgnaTIon.”

“Solution: Choose one, you can assign your own designation.”

“Response: HoW about Genesis?”

It seemed only fitting.