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[Gigalith]

Name: Izretal [just some sounds pseudo-randomly generated by my mind]
Portfolio:Crystal, information, calculation, reflexion...
Stake:All emotions except empathy

Izretal wins.

"Izretal?" squeaks the balloon animal. "Never heard of him. Of course you mortals are constantly changing your legends, anyway. When you awake, your devkit will be at your door."

The dream fades...

Chapter Zero: Tutorial of the Gods

No celestial heralds wake you from your divine slumber, nor do ten thousand servants await your rise from your blessed bed. You are woken, in fact, by the tweeting of your alarm clock. You don't even know why you haven't disabled the inefficient device, it's not as if you need to go anywhere since you were fi--
 
Wait. Halt. Consider.

You feel no stress. No concern. No anger at your previous employer. You feel no surprise or fear at this, nor happiness. You do not even find it interesting.

The only thing you feel is empathy towards yourself, because you feel nothing else.

The logical conclusion registers. Your dream was reality. You have paid your price and received your reward. Which, if the Messenger spoke in veracity, will be at your door.

As you throw off your blankets and walk downstairs to the door, you stub your toe on a wall. You feel the the sensation of pain, but it does not upset you, only bringing self-empathy. You note this phenomenon for further investigation.

The "devkit" appears to be a large white cardboard box, lying on your doormat. You retrieve it. It is heavy, but you feel emotion except empathy for your muscles over this fact. It appears sensations do not count as emotions.

Opening the box, you find:

One (1) heavy, sleek black box with a coiled USB cord attached.
Six (6) small diskcases containing disks. The disks read "DRIVERS", "STANDARD", "CRYSTAL", "INFORMATION", "CALCULATION" and "REFLECTION"
One (1) sheet, titled in bold red letter TUTORIAL/QUICKSTART/READ ME FIRST/HELP

Spoiler: It reads... (click to show/hide)

TUTORIAL/QUICKSTART/READ ME FIRST/HELP

Or: I joined a battle between immense, inconceivably powerful forces of which I know nothing, and gave up one of my most precious possessions to ensure my loyalty to my new masters, and all I got was this lousy divkit.

Congratulations. You hold within your grasp the API of the Gods. Condolences.

What's going on!? I thought I was going to become a god! Where's my adoring worshipers? My Jacuzzi of the Heavens? My superpowers?

If you listened to the Messenger carefully, you would have noticed he said that they would make you as a god. Yeah, I know, talk about fine print.

In order, why no adoring worshipers? Not necessary. They don't give you any more Power or anything.

Why no jacuzzi, or heaven? See, they used to give every new godling a mini-universe to play around in, but then someone realized all they needed to do was hook into CreateUniverse(), filter for small universes, and blast them unless they gave the proper password. So they stopped doing that. Believe me, you're not missing much. After the sixth time your plane of existence is invaded while you're in the jacuzzi, you start looking for more spartan digs.

Why no superpowers? You've probably noticed you're still apparently mortal. You are still mortal. This is FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION. Supernatural humans stick out like a sore thumb with a neon sign, on fire. So yeah, no aura of darkness and flames just yet.

What you do have is your divine devkit, or divkit. Plug that baby into your computer, install the disks, and you can write programs that have supernatural powers. Like, turn lead into gold, shoot black holes from your fingertips, make FTL drives, etc. Pretty neat, huh?

Great. So what's the catch?

You aren't omnipotent. For one, you've gotten only a fraction of a full divkit. You'll only have access to libraries of your initial portfolio. There's nothing stopping you from writing your own libraries, but it will take a while. How do you describe fire, using only reference to fermions?

Secondly, you need Power.

How do I get it?

There's three forms: Natural, Pure, and Mixed.

Pure Power is not something you can generate, but you have access to it. It's equally good at doing anything. Your divkit can access interdimensional Power streams coded to your side. You need Power to access them, but you get about twice as much back. Yes, it's exponential, and no, it's not limited, at least within the amount you'll be accessing. However, using it is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! Your access can be detected at exponential distances by mere passive sensors. So be careful!

Natural Power is Pure Power that's become something. Think electricity, or kinetic energy, or matter. There's not much of it, and it's easily lost in conversion. On the other hand, it's very hard to detect, what with it being all over the place.

Mixed Power is both. You get it from a stream, but it's already coded to something, like heat. It's less detectable, but harder to use because of the conversion factor. You may or may not have it in your divkit.

So how do I use it?

Just write a program as normal, and link into the API of the Gods. Your divkit doubles as a matter printer, so you can use a CAD program to make stuff.

How do I test?

Very carefully. Anything capable of blowing up another god is probably capable of blowing up you. Also, learn your orders of magnitude. I knew a god that made a laser that shot a photon every Planck time. Sounds OK, but for reference, that was about the output of the local sun. He didn't survive the test shot. Nor did his planet.

Be especially sure you aren't detected. 

Why is being detected so bad?

Things, including but not limited to, people, programs, other gods, viruses, trojans, interdimensional invaders, aliens, daemons, titans, wizards and etc,  will attempt to destroy you, or worse. Note "other gods". You are almost certainly not alone.

How do I get a better divkit?

If you aren't going to code a better one, you'll need to find someone else who has a divkit, and copy their libraries. You might find some fellow deities interested in trade, others more interested in ending your life and taking your divkit by force.

Can I create another divkit?

Yes. You can even give them to mortals, if you wish. Be warned, unless you take some kind of Stake from them, there's no guarantee they'll stay loyal to you. There isn't a guarantee they won't turn on you even if you do, but at least you tried.

As the Messenger explained, in so many words, if you give someone a crippled divkit, it will either be so crippled as to be useless (wizards), or powerful enough to uncripple itself.

I've heard of some gods who tried to open source their divkit. Never heard what happened to them after that. What would a whole planet of transmortals even be like?

What should I do, now?

Lie low until you're capable of fighting another god. Find a Natural Power source, and use as little Pure as possible.

In the examples of every divkit are both passive and active Pure sensors. Build both, but DON'T TURN ON THE ACTIVE ONE! The passive will show you wherever Pure Power is being used. The active does the same, showing both Pure and everything else, but its use is easily detected.

Eventually, the Messenger should contact you again with your first mission.

I have a philosophical question about this whole reprogramming reality thing.

Yeah, well, you know this titanic struggle going on? It's over philosophy, basically. Also, I've heard this quickstart thing here has been stolen all over the place, meaning I can't even necessary explain what's going on, because you might be on the other side. So, I all have to say is (ENEMY PROPAGANDA REDACTED)

You feel empathy for the guy, such as it is. You never noticed how much low-lying empathy you had, until you had nothing else.

You attach the divkit to your laptop and begin installation. This could take a while, though you no longer feel boredom. While you wait, perhaps you could think of future plans.

[Gigalith]

DANGIT! But Armok is the best god, discounting Cthulhu.

I knew if I allowed the option, no one would pick anyone else, and what would be the fun in that?

[Armok]

> ok, now 1) check out what the actual API is like, and how much experience you have with the language/technicaly similar mundane APIs. 2) Read through the list of function/class/datastructure/whatever names to get a roguh estimate of what you're working with. And 3) see if you can find and read information from your own brain as a training example, since this will likely be VERY useful for interfaces and is right up your portfolio. Also magically speeding up the computer you're doing this on should be a priority.

[Geen]

Play some god-DF. WITH REAL HAIRY MIDGETS!

[Gigalith]

Play some god-DF. WITH REAL HAIRY MIDGETS!

Why would you do that? You wouldn't have any fun, or unfun for that matter. You'd only feel empathy for the hairy midgets. Besides, that stuff probably isn't even in your portfolio.

> ok, now 1) check out what the actual API is like, and how much experience you have with the language/technicaly similar mundane APIs.

The API of the Gods has bindings for nearly every language you've heard of, and for several you haven't. One of the clearly non-mortal languages, DivineScript, is practically psuedocode.

The API itself is relatively simple. You select objects, and do stuff to them. You can either compile a magical binary, which will do its thing when you run it while the divkit is attached, or directly hook functions into the world itself, such that they are run when a certain event happens (i.e. a sword that bursts into flame whenever it hits an object).

The specific objects and actions available, however, are limited by your divkit. Anyone can say, for example, "Move anything in the the three-foot sphere three feet in front of me up two inches", but not necessarily "turn any glass objects within three feet of me into grape juice".

2) Read through the list of function/class/datastructure/whatever names to get a roguh estimate of what you're working with.

Each of the disks is huge. You'd wonder how they fit so much in so little, but you don't feel wonder anymore.

Skimming through the documentation, you make a general list of what you have.

OBJECTS YOU CAN SELECT/REFER TO

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

* GEOMETRIC SHAPES
* PURE POWER
* DIVKITS
* CRYSTALS
* INFORMATION
* CALCULATORS, COMPUTERS, and OTHER SUCH OBJECTS
* ANYTHING WITH A GOOD REFLECTION (You suppose the Messenger was a little literal about it)

You can select these objects by

* SPECIFYING THEIR LOCATION
* REFERRING TO A UNIQUE, INFORMATIONAL, PART.

STUFF YOU CAN DO

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

* CREATE AND DESTROY RAW MATTER (This takes a huge amount of Pure Power)
* ACCESS PURE POWER STREAM
* ACCESS INFORMATION STREAM
* READ, ALTER, OR DELETE INFORMATION
* EVALUATE A MATHEMATICAL STATEMENT
* CREATE, MODIFY AND DESTROY CRYSTALS (of any kind)
* MODIFY THE REFLECTIVE PROPERTIES OF OBJECTS

WHAT THE DIVKIT CAN MAKE/DO

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

* MAKE ANOTHER DIVKIT, AND CONTROL IT
* MAKE CRYSTALS
* BIND PROGRAMS TO CRYSTALS.
* BIND A PROGRAM TO TRIGGER ON:
- ACCESSING A CERTAIN PIECE OF INFORMATION
- SOMETHING REFLECTING OFF A CERTAIN SURFACE
- A CERTAIN CALCULATION BEING PERFORM

There might be more, but you consider that since you no longer feel boredom, there is no "stop" signal telling you that you've read too much, and are no longer processing efficiently.

And 3) see if you can find and read information from your own brain as a training example, since this will likely be VERY useful for interfaces and is right up your portfolio. Also magically speeding up the computer you're doing this on should be a priority.

Under CALCULATION, you find a function to alter the clockspeed of your processor. However, the destruction of information (as modern processors do), produces heat, which would damage the processor.

You could design and create a new computer, perhaps even a quantum processor. However, you estimate this would take considerable time.

Reading information from your own brain is more doable. While you cannot refer specifically to brains, you can search for information in a physical area. You write:

print(first(find(Sphere(0,0, 2m), Information(thought, string))))

You concentrate on "Hello, world!", and run the program.

"Hello, world!" the laptop prints.

[Armok]

ok, I can work with this...

> Do roughly the same thing, but store the specific place where the information was found as "Stream_of_Conciousness.transcript", since it seems to be what you found. Set up a background function to check this about 100 times per second, and if it has challenged record the contents to a new line of thoughlog.txt prefixed by a timestamp.

This way you'll never forget anything, or exactly when it happened. You'll also only need to copy-past things you think up instead of having to type them wich shuld sped things up significantly. (And you can easily hook commands up to t although without further constraints that might lead to undesirably don't-think-of-a-blue-elephant effects.)

You should also test this by thinking various type of things and see if the log records it all correctly, walking out of the two meter sphere and check so it doesn't lose track of you, etc.

> no need to build a physical computer when you have a divkit command for evaluating mathematical expressions which presumably involves Turing complete ones. Just run a virtual machine that's suitably abstract to work in isolation, grab it every clock step or so, magically calculate it's state for a few billion steps, and put the information back in the same place. Try it out on some other computer than the one running your divkit first thou, just in case.

> see if you can trace backwards from the stream of conciousness transcript; to the sounds which are what's ACTUALLY in your brain, to the raw concepts which give rise to them before translating into language, to the sensory input they refer to, to memories, down a few levels to the neural networks which are also a kind of information, etc. Basically the more different pieces and interpretations, in the more different formats you can get out of it the better. Don't worry if you can't interpret some of the formats, they may still be useful for later insertion into other/the same brain(s),

> is refraction included within reflection? It's hard to envision a reflection kit that's at all at the level of this other stuff which yet disentangles the concepts seeing as they're basically the same thing in so many cases. If so, you should be able to improve your eyes a bit, by making them more transparent (reducing scattering and absorption of particles) and making the surface behind the retinas reflective (like a cat!), as well as very minor tweaks to the refractive index of the lens. Try on ONE eye first so you don't blind yourself accidentally.

> can you copy an object by rearranging existing matter rather than creating new and thus needing much much less power? if so, what are the matter requirements?

> take an a piece of paper, make a double sided perfect mirror out of it. name the sides A and B. To side B, attach a compiled binary which hook into the information module and acts like a simple interface to treating that side as holographic information storage by tweaking the reflectivity for each and every combination of X and y coordinates, angles, and frequencies. On side A tweak them in a similar way but this time for making an actual legible hologram which can be looked at, based on the information on side B and interpreting it as one huge matrix of voxels. Make a simple interface for navigating the 3d volume as if by tuchscreen by measuring the amount of IR radiation from the heat of your fingers that reflects of the surface which presumably is much more when they're in direct contact. Finally, scan over each cubic centimetre of the earth and store average density and temperature in the voxel matrix. Stop this project if it takes more than 3 hours since it's mainly for practice.

[kaian-a-coel]

Oh god, its too complex for me 
I dont underst...
OH GOD MY MIND IS CRUMBLING!
THE WORLD IS MADE OF 0 AND 1!
AAAAGH!

[Xegeth]

First, if possible, write a program that takes any question and evaluates it as true or false.

Next create a crystal in the shape of a pen and program it to send any written text back to a terminal running on the computer. Maybe also use a password and add a command to disable the pen, just in case.

Finally, make the computer print any output to the terminal directly into your thoughts. This should make sure you always have access to the divkit.

[Gigalith]

> Do roughly the same thing, but store the specific place where the information was found as "Stream_of_Conciousness.transcript", since it seems to be what you found. Set up a background function to check this about 100 times per second, and if it has challenged record the contents to a new line of thoughlog.txt prefixed by a timestamp.

This way you'll never forget anything, or exactly when it happened. You'll also only need to copy-past things you think up instead of having to type them wich shuld sped things up significantly. (And you can easily hook commands up to t although without further constraints that might lead to undesirably don't-think-of-a-blue-elephant effects.)

You should also test this by thinking various type of things and see if the log records it all correctly, walking out of the two meter sphere and check so it doesn't lose track of you, etc.

Next create a crystal in the shape of a pen and program it to send any written text back to a terminal running on the computer. Maybe also use a password and add a command to disable the pen, just in case

Finally, make the computer print any output to the terminal directly into your thoughts. This should make sure you always have access to the divkit.

You create a thought logger, and a terminal-thought broadcaster. In the process, you make two discoveries:

Your consciousness does not distinguish between "input" and "output". Anything you think is logged regardless of the source. You must be careful that you do not create an infinite loop. You'd feel empathy for yourself if you did.

Interaction, presumably of any kind, requires exponentially more Power the greater the distance. Walking around your apartment, the drain is minor, but it quickly increases as you go farther from the divkit.

You also create a crystal-and-paper terminal, password-protected. It works just fine.

First, if possible, write a program that takes any question and evaluates it as true or false.

At first you consider this to be impossible due to the ambiguities in English, but on second thought you could access the information stream mentioned in your divkit. Amazingly, it appears to work, though you haven't tested it with anything beyond trivial questions (Is Pi a rational number? False.)

> no need to build a physical computer when you have a divkit command for evaluating mathematical expressions which presumably involves Turing complete ones. Just run a virtual machine that's suitably abstract to work in isolation, grab it every clock step or so, magically calculate it's state for a few billion steps, and put the information back in the same place. Try it out on some other computer than the one running your divkit first thou, just in case.

Of course. You work on upgrading your spare laptop. Several hours later, you have synchronized your computer with a virtual, almost identical model, a billion times faster. There are likely still bugs, however, so you don't transfer your divkit over just yet.

It would be just perfect for playing Dwarf Fortress, but you wouldn't have any fun with it. You empathize with yourself. 

> see if you can trace backwards from the stream of conciousness transcript; to the sounds which are what's ACTUALLY in your brain, to the raw concepts which give rise to them before translating into language, to the sensory input they refer to, to memories, down a few levels to the neural networks which are also a kind of information, etc. Basically the more different pieces and interpretations, in the more different formats you can get out of it the better. Don't worry if you can't interpret some of the formats, they may still be useful for later insertion into other/the same brain(s),

Unfortunately, it appears brains are more complicated than you initially thought. You spend an hour attempting to get beyond your initial success, before you consider further search inefficient.
 

> is refraction included within reflection? It's hard to envision a reflection kit that's at all at the level of this other stuff which yet disentangles the concepts seeing as they're basically the same thing in so many cases. If so, you should be able to improve your eyes a bit, by making them more transparent (reducing scattering and absorption of particles) and making the surface behind the retinas reflective (like a cat!), as well as very minor tweaks to the refractive index of the lens. Try on ONE eye first so you don't blind yourself accidentally.

You recall the tutorial-writer's warning about the detectability of supernatural powers, but how can there be a problem with merely returning yourself to natural powers? In a dim room with a opthamologist's chart, you adjust your eyesight back to the human norm. You no longer need glasses.

You will need to consider further, supernatural, improvements twice before acting on them.

> can you copy an object by rearranging existing matter rather than creating new and thus needing much much less power? if so, what are the matter requirements?

Copying matter is a function in the standard divkit libraries you overlooked. It greatly reduces Power requirements, however, you divkit will already turn nearby atmosphere into whatever you're creating by default.   

> take an a piece of paper, make a double sided perfect mirror out of it. name the sides A and B. To side B, attach a compiled binary which hook into the information module and acts like a simple interface to treating that side as holographic information storage by tweaking the reflectivity for each and every combination of X and y coordinates, angles, and frequencies. On side A tweak them in a similar way but this time for making an actual legible hologram which can be looked at, based on the information on side B and interpreting it as one huge matrix of voxels. Make a simple interface for navigating the 3d volume as if by tuchscreen by measuring the amount of IR radiation from the heat of your fingers that reflects of the surface which presumably is much more when they're in direct contact. Finally, scan over each cubic centimetre of the earth and store average density and temperature in the voxel matrix. Stop this project if it takes more than 3 hours since it's mainly for practice.

Due to the Power requirements of scanning the whole Earth, you find that currently unfeasable. You do, however, create the Holodrive, turning ordinary sheets of paper, or anything else, really, into incredible amounts of memory.

In the examples of every divkit are both passive and active Pure sensors. Build both, but DON'T TURN ON THE ACTIVE ONE! The passive will show you wherever Pure Power is being used. The active does the same, showing both Pure and everything else, but its use is easily detected.

You build the example passive Pure sensor, a small box with yet another USB cord. You are now able only to detect the use or access of Pure Power. Coming with it is a scanning/analysis program.

Pure Power appears to constantly fluctuate in and out of existence, making any scanning inherently probabilistic. It immediately finds several spots which could be just as much time and chance as an actual source. However, there is a large use/access several light minutes away, which appears to be Mars, and another several billion lightyears away, which appears to be the Andromeda galaxy. Considering what you know of how Power works, the second must be enormous.

[Armok]

> introduce a 50 millisecond delay on the though logger to make infinite loops impossible.

> slightly enhanced vision shouldn't be a dangerous supernatural power, since while other humans don't have those things there are plenty of other animals nearby that do. And since it's passive, except for a catlike refection is someone shines a light in your eye that shouldn't be TO hard to explain away as a rare medical condition, it's undetectable.

> huh? you actually CAN get questions answered that way? Well in that case there's one obvious thing to do: Set up automatic detection of questions in the though log, and automatically get an answer from the info stream and implant it immediately afterwards. That way, as soon as you even begin wondering about somehting, anything, you'll already have the answer, and the end result will be very similar to if you had memorized the entire stream since it's about the same ease of access as your own memories. Several aspects of intelligence are also likely to be effectively increased. (make sure to include failsafes for excessive power use or information overload)

> Manipulating the information in your brain is more critical than anything, you can not give up that easily. Try just doing a search for any neural network information within a radius. Try simply trying to implant and retrieve images or sounds from the stream-of-conciousness and hope it handles as gracefully as text. Try looking for various kinds of computations you know take place in the brain. Try searching fot a text which you are not thinking of currently but that is in your memory somwhere. etc.

> if range is an issue, but not resolution, you could scan your brain on a micrometer scale and make a hologram of THAT. Navigable by simple gestures. If it's cheap enough, make it update in realtime.

> by changing reflectivity and measuring reflected IR as before, convert some large unbroken wall (possibly by moving furniture out of the way), into a holographic multituch surface connected to the virtual computer. Keyboard is not needed since you can copy-paste from the though log much faster anyway. Also add a camouflage mode that makes it look like a normal wall triggered by thinking a specific password.

> evaluate the feasibility of carving out some largish room deep underground and teleport everything there so you can do things more easily without being detected through mundane means.

> is it possible to make some kind of crystal that acts as a relay making distance less of a problem? This might qualify as some kind of modified divekit.

> solve the protein folding problem, evaluate P=NP, etc.

> print a pair of contact lenses and see if you can set up a platform for Augmented Reality. Presumably making them entirely out of crystal would hurt your eyes but embedding pieces of crystal in them might work.

> take one of those huge Telephone Directories - You know, the giant bricks with very thin pages you never use - and make it into a ludicrously huge holodrive. Have this be the drive of the virtual computer, so the data on it is not lost should somehting fail. (I ASSUME reflectivity changes alters the actual material structure of things rather than being an active magical effect? You should probably check that.) Hide it somewhere safe but near the divkit to reduce costs.

> What would the power cost be of copying yourself be? Try to find ways to make it cheaper, such as finding suitable materials to re-arrange into the copy, reducing range, maybe using the matter printing functionality, etc. If there are two of you twice as much work could be done in any given time after all, and hopefully you'll find a way to sync memories.

[Xegeth]

I'd say caution would be good idea, at least until you're a bit more powerful. Solving mathematical problems may cause a bit much attention if you tell anyone the answer. It may also be a good idea to hide your newly fixed vision by altering the lenses in your glasses to uncurved glass, and continuing to wear them. On the other hand, gold is a crystal, so be sure to create a few kilos of it.

There is an important question that needs to be answered. Do your abilities work with liquid crystals? If they do, this will unlock quite a few opportunities for you. Maybe start with something simple and create 4-Cyano-4'-pentylbiphenyl, preferably above its melting point. Don't drink it though.

Other things that need doing are checking your current level of power and testing the truth program with a few more questions, such as "Am I human?", "Will I get heads next time I flip a coin?" and maybe even "Are there any other gods within a 5 mile radius?"

[Armok]

I though it was obvious we need to keep everything secret, the answers are for our own use only. And yea do that thing with the glasses. Do not make the gold, there are much more subtle ways we can make money if we need it.

Also i think the crystals mentioned are some SPECIFIC kind of crystal that can carry divine power, not crystals in general. It would probably be easy to set it to make billions of nanoscale crystals and simply suspend them in water or oil thou.

Do the testing of questions after the integration I mentioned, so you can test both at the same time.

[LordSlowpoke]

...

Can't we just go on and infuse ourselves with enough power, fast enough to become one of the more powerful beings in the universe? Just turn this solar system into pure power and eat that up. Or is there some sort of limitation?

[Armok]

um, yea, that we can't use it effectively yet and will get killed by things that can befroe we figure it out if they detect us.

[Supercharazad]

Okay, can we write a program that will make our brain much smaller? (shrink it, not chop bits off ) Then, we could add more to that. We could give ourselves some rather nice abilities with that, giving ourselves an entire brain of 3 to each function that our brain does, like 3 specific brains for language ect.