Leanne dashed over to the unmoving girl and checked her pulse. The girl looked paler than usual. Ada asked, "Is she alright?"

Leanne nodded after a few seconds. "She is still breathing. I believe that she will recover."

"Phew, that's good. Any idea how long that will take?"

Leanne met her eyes. "I am sorry but I am not a healer," she said softly.

Ada shook her head. "Well, that's alright. There's only so much we can do. The only thing we can do is wait."

Leanne arose and they gazed at the scene in front of them in silence. Ada and Leanne were still standing on the same platform that they were back at Ayula's temple. What technology was used to transport them here? There must be an explanation behind this exotic method of transportation. Aha, exotic matter! A light bulb went off in Ada's head. Perhaps the goddess used an Alcubierre drive to take them here. Proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, this was a faster-than-light (FTL) travel method where a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (in other words, negative mass) could be created. A spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective FTL. Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime but the Alcubierre drive skirts that by literally manipulating spacetime itself.

"Hmm, back on Earth, there were many physicists who claimed this idea could never be reality since exotic matter wasn't shown to exist but what if it did? What if a goddess who has the timespan of at least a few million years and the resources of what looked like an entire planet?" Ada mused aloud.

Ada turned back to the scene in front of her. There was a heavy fog bathed in blue light with a cool wind blowing. Leanne shuddered. It must be cold to her, Ada thought. She sniffed and smelled a faint scent of the ocean. A poignant beautiful world but also grim and ugly too. There were no trees or grass. The platform was nestled between several gigantic rocks which jutted out of an ocean that stretched out into the horizon. The ocean, which looked like a blend of green and violet, was perfectly still with no waves. Upon closer inspection, Ada saw that it had small swimming living creatures unlike anything that she has seen before. Estimated at the size of a frog, the creature has no head but did have a mouth with sharp fangs and five fin-like appendages.

Aside from the ocean, what drew Ada's attention was myriad of pulsating floating pods all around them. Densely packed, these opaque green pods had offshoots of thick vines which frequently glowed. None of them were attached to the surface; they simply levitated there. A pod was static until the vines it was attached to glowed. Then, it would pulsate furiously until the glow is sent into different directions to other pods. These pods were all approximately egg-shaped but they varied greatly in size and the number of vines attached to them. The smaller pods were about the size of chihuahuas whereas the larger pods were the size of tanks. The vines were all approximately the same diameter though their lengths varied significantly depending on the distance between the pods.

An overwhelmingly loud feminine voice with the sound pressure akin to that of a jet engine taking off suddenly emanated from everywhere at once, "IF I WERE CALLED IN TO CONSTRUCT A RELIGION I SHOULD MAKE USE OF WATER."

Ada was a little startled but otherwise felt fine. She looked over at Leanne and saw that the girl was in a much worse shape. Her seer has collapsed on the floor clutching her head in pain. Blood was coming out of her ears and nose. Ada cleared her throat. "I'm guessing you're Ayula, the goddess of life. If you're not going to the goddess of death here, would you kindly lower your voice? That must have been at least 165 decibels. Give me one moment."

...

...

...

...

...

Leanne shook her as if to clear any lingering disorientation. Ada reached out her hand to Leanne. "Here, take my hand."

"Are you sure? For a goddess to touch a mortal..."

Ada interrupted. "Oh, for heaven's sake, we have gone through enough by now where this shouldn't bother you."

Leanne nodded and grasped Ada's hand. Gingerly, Ada pulled the girl to a standing position. It still feels awkward that my follower is taller than me, Ada thought. She wondered if there was a possibility that she could grow taller or change her form? Most gods from mythology were capable of doing that so why shouldn't she? These were definitely questions for another time and place. Ada looked at Ruciella and saw that the unconscious girl now also had blood coming out of her orifices. She was quite concerned. "Ayula, Ruciella here is not one of my followers and I can do nothing for her. As the goddess of life, if you can heal her now, that would be greatly appreciated."

A silent moment passed. Then, a quiet groan came from Ruciella. She yawned and slowly stood up. "What happened and why is there blood?"

Ada explained. "You were knocked out by the trip and then knocked out again with burst eardrums from Ayula's voice."

For once, Ruciella did not have much to say. She rubbed her eyes and jumped in the air upon seeing the visage in front of her. "Holy mackerel!"

"That was my response as well minus the holy mackerel and jumping part," Ada chuckled.

Ruciella stared with wide eyes. "So where's the pretty dryad or the giant tree? This isn't what I expected at all for the Goddess of Life."

Ada shrugged her shoulders. "Same here. I guess our usual mythological biases just flew out the window."

"Hmm, that's a pretty funny Divine Tongue expression. Is it a fish or a bird that flew out the window? I think I'm going to steal it."

Suddenly, a firm voice resonated in Ada's mind. The voice did not sound entirely human but it did have a feminine undertone to it.

Ruciella still stood there in awe while Leanne stared at Ada waiting for something to happen. Clearly, they haven't received the thought speak. Divine Protection? Ada decided that it's best not to reveal her complete ignorance here in possibly basic deity capabilities. "Thoughtspeak again? Sorry but I forgot about that. Can you just do your thought speak thing with everyone instead of just me?"

There was a pause and then the thought resonated in Ada's mind again. Both Leanne and Ruciella jumped in surprise upon hearing the words in their heads.

"Well, that's just fine. What did you say about water?"

"Never heard of him. Well, technically, water doesn't have to be the only medium for life. What about liquid methane like what's on the moon Titan? Anyway, so you've been to the divine realm?"

A loud chuckle rang in her mind. Though it was not vocal, to her brain it still sounded like the sound of a blizzard whooshing past an open window. Ruciella and Leanne noticeably winced.

Ada was lost for words. She didn't anticipate this goddess to just reveal the secret of Ada's origin to two mortals. "Uh..."

There was a loud chuckle again. Though Leanne and Ruciella tried to be prepared, they still winced in pain.

Ada glanced over and saw that Ruciella was about to say 'holy mackerel' but she shut her mouth before the words came out. Well, the cat is fully out of the bag now, Ada sighed internally. "So back to the topic at hand...have you been to Earth?"

Ada's eyes grew wide. "I have not. She's from Earth?"

Ada nodded. "I'll ask about her later. For now, I can see that there isn't any secrets here. Since you seem to know a lot about my background, I would expect you to reciprocate in being open and honest."

Ruciella jumped in. Ada smiled. She was wondering when the fiery little girl was going to speak up. "Yeah! So first off, what are you and where are we? I was expecting a cloud palace with a giant tree. Are these weird bulbous seed pods and vines actually you? And what is up with this weird ocean?"

Another chuckle. Leanne clutched her head and Ruciella winced.

"Cool. Can you tone down the laughing though? Better yet, stop with it altogether. I hate to admit this but we mortals have fragile minds."

Ada spoke. "Ayula, before you give a full exposé, I would like to venture a guess on your entity."

"You are a biological computer. A computer is a machine that manipulates information. It is also Turing complete in that it's proven any computable process can be implemented on these machines but I wonder if that means you are. I mean you might be one more layer above Turing complete since I know some have argued that biological processors like our brains can solve problems which Turing machines can never solve.

Any way, back on topic, these vines and pods we see are like neurons similar to our brains. On Earth, we will call it wetware. On Earth, some researchers in England have come up a slime computer which is capable of solving problems that are very difficult for conventional computers. Conventional computers in my original world meant a complex arrangement of minerals animated by electricity and language. Smart rocks essentially. From a software perspective, conventional computers work by programming the most basic form of data, bits. Bits are binary, meaning they can either be 0 or 1. A combination of bits is used to represent more complicated pieces of data. Transistors combine to form logic gates, which then connect to develop modules that can carry out simple operations, such as adding two numbers. These basic computations are combined to do more complicated ones. For instance, multiplication is simply repeated addition. "

"That is all I have right now. Admittedly, my knowledge is limited. We have yet to reach full artificial intelligence on Earth. I'll read up on some papers when I get back."

The woman's voice answered, sounding mildly amused.

"Tatiana?"

Ada shrugged. "Sorry, that I won't know about. I mean, all life is self-organized entities. Originating from the primordial pool of disorganized inorganic matter, the basis of life was able to self-organize. It formed the capability to manipulate and store data with the most fundamental building blocks of data as DNA. We have yet to learn how to do that ourselves though with artificial brains."

Ada imagined the goddess nodding sagely.

"Hmm, the Scharf Cronin equation I see. I wonder what the calculated probability is. You say 100% but I'm not sure I agree with that."

Ruciella tapped her graceful forehead. Ada saw that she was shivering. "Uh, this is all very interesting but I'm feeling really cold. I'm still wondering where we are and when we can get out of here."

Ruciella's eyes were the size of dishes. "Are all the gods capable of this?"

"What about the ocean?" Ruciella asked.

"The ocean is packed with microorganisms and organic molecules which provide nourishment for me. The creatures you see were created by me to consume the waste materials that I eject. An utterly integrated, self-contained system.>

"I'm guessing this ecology follows the logistic equation?" Ada wondered aloud.

Ada sensed confusion in Ayula's words.

"Yeah, it's a mathematical model of population growth governed by the differential equation where dN/dt = rN(K-N)/K where N is the population, r is rate of max population growth, K is carrying capacity and dN/dt is rate of population growth. The solution to it is the sigmoid function."

"Ah, never mind. I just thought that you as a deity could understand some math."

"A role which I will gladly fulfill," Ada said and then she added. "So you know anything about the System?"

Ada heard confusion once again.

Perhaps God gave only her the knowledge that a System even exists? Ada shook her head. If that was true, then perhaps she did have an advantage over these other gods. Leanne has been quiet the entire time but finally spoke. "Since you're in this 'subspace', are you trapped here? Is this why you need our assistance?"

"I was about to say holy mackerel but there's been too many mackerels. So what in the nine seas is this artifact? That's why we're here right?" Ruciella asked.

"Why would any god or goddess want to take your roots?" Ruciella muttered.

"I hypothesize that these roots cannot be used by other deities. The motive is clear. Someone wants to remove them to weaken your powers on Urth."

Ada imagined another nod from Ayula.