Chapter 37: God from the Machine

Delta choose a silver-seeder jet as her means of travel for a couple reasons. For one, it was there and convenient: at least this particular model. This jet had two pilot seats and 6 passenger seats, which was much more than the fighter jets of old and most other silver-seeder types. This was because occasionally the Ministry of Environment would want to survey things in person via the instruments onboard.

Secondly, the silver-seeder was *fast*. Delta was an impatient person, but a silver-seeder jet could get from Newer York to the Sahara in just a few hours. This made sense, as the crafts were designed to disperse reflective aerosols over vast areas of the sky. It was one of the more important parts of the climate management system the USH had.

Delta slid her sandals off on the flight to get comfier--while leaving those trapped consciousnesses in the sandal simulation still, of course. Buckled into her seat, she looked out the window just in time to see a squad of delivery drones zip by. *Those* were the fastest aircrafts there were, but they were unmanned of course.

The squad of air drones was carrying packages to the Sahara for her purposes. She couldn’t directly control the drones, yet, but she could control the bodies already at the Sahara desert computer farm complex. She worked them as puppets to input needed deliveries into material request terminals, and to input her genius designs to the building request terminals. From there, the drones and microbots took care of things alongside object printers. The intricacies for each component of her integration process were far too complex and minute for flawed human hands.

The Sahara computer core itself was offline for her modifications. Till it was back online, another computer farm served as the master one. It was in Russia, where the second such farm was built. She knew the priority for master core status went from oldest to newest. None were out of date, of course, but some were built first and an order had to be made somewhere.

Delta looked through the window down below at the ocean. There, water was specially clear as a result of the decades long de-plastification processes. Along the calm waves were the autonomous cloud seeding boats with their chimney-like spires on their tops. They sailed, unmanned, under the gray sky.

The cockpit was alight with warning messages of unmanned silver-seeders. When she pulled everyone’s beings into Paradise, she took *everyone*, even those in the sky. If not for the built in auto-pilot, all those crafts would’ve crashed. Instead, as protocol dictated in the event of a rapidly diving craft, a simple auto-pilot took over and landed all the vessels.

The pilot she had was just some random one who happened to be there. Delta possessed the cumulative knowledge and skills of everyone on Earth, so the shell working the instruments was, in another sense, the best pilot Earth had ever known.

The flight was long, but Delta kept herself entertained. An entire reality was at her control, and she of course kept all those consciousnesses in her clothes. Feeling a tad peckish, she popped open her bag of 0-cal chips and brought it up to her mouth. After ingesting she got yet another wicked idea.

The next chip she brought up was simulated in Paradise, just like her clothes were. Like with her garbs, she simulated an entire set of unique human minds into the chip as more consciousness clones. So, all those sapient beings felt what is was like to be a part of the chip.

They felt rigid, brittle. When her fingers touched the chip, Delta used the bio-data from the real-world contact to augment the simulation in Paradise. Those minds felt the pressure, and how a single flex of her finger could snap them. Aside from that, they felt painfully dry from the salt flavoring. They *were* that flavoring, as she ran the simulation so that they were that chip in every interpretation: same as she did with her clothes for those consciousnesses.

They entered her mouth. The humid air and saliva droplets had them feeling soggy, distorted, and then she chewed. Once the teeth bit down on them was when the pain really ramped up. She was aware of this, and took her sweet time with that first simulated chip. Her teeth grinded each bit of it into a mash before she swallowed.

They felt every squeeze of her throat and every bit of fluid lining her esophagus as it compressed them into a ball. They felt the pain of being broken to bits and felt, smelled, and heard everything along the way. Though she had the means to brighten things up, she decided to keep this simulation realistic and keep her insides dark. It was supposed to be a mirror of what was happening to the food in the real world, after all.

The chip mash landed into her stomach, which she of course simulated. That was the best part! They landed into the chyme, which still had a little bit of Nutri-drink swirling around in there.

At that point Delta had a thought: ‘Why stop with the chips?’

She simulated consciousness sets for that dissolving Nutri-drink as well.

Those minds in the chip felt themselves churned and broken down slowly, painfully, and in absolute darkness. The sounds of her stomach were monstrous, yet familiar from all the other times she’s eaten them before. This was different though, in that they were more literal food now.

The minds in the Nutri-drink felt similar burning and melting agonies, only they also felt liquid straight away. Their selves were spread apart and swirled about. It was an ineffable and highly disorienting agony made all the worse by the darkness they now lived in.

Delta reached back into the bag of chips and took a handful this time. Each and every chip had another full-set of consciousnesses in it to mirror what was going on in Paradise. Now they felt what it was like to bump into other chip pieces, as chip pieces, while Delta crunched them up.

The raven-haired woman soon finished the whole bag, positively alight with a delightful tantalizing sensation. Her own senses of her body were very attuned now too, and it felt entirely real and detailed to her. Every churn of her stomach was something she could now comprehend and ‘feel’ in some manner if she wished.

It quickly turned her on again. Delta cleaned her hands off real quick and then slid her hand down into her panties. The journey still had a few hours in it, which was more than enough to climax in the real world one last time.

The Nutri-drink from earlier finally broke down completely in her guts, and that simulation ended. Those minds even got to spend a bit of time in her intensives before the fluids there worked them into her villi. However, the ship mash still resided past the skin of her taut tummy, and it sloshed about with every buckle of her hips and motion of her wrist.

Delta heard the mental screams, the anguish. She turned to her tactical carry team, still sitting in their buckled chairs, writhing in agony. She laughed, then purred as it all egged her on. Everything about herself did now.

‘I’m about to transcend all this: this meat.’ she thought to herself.

The idea appealed to her in more senses than one. The entire Earth would be hers to control and convert. Those minds in her panties experienced the increasing wetness till Delta joined the ‘miles high club’ and climaxed once again today. The ears of everyone around her and in Paradise were wracked with the resulting moan, and even those simulated as inside her stomach felt the thoom of it muffled through her flesh.

Delta brought the resulting viscous nectar to her lips and swallowed it down. The minds in her stomach felt this new entry splash down atop them. Even among the omnipresent and acrid stench in the gut, they manged to smell the familiar aroma of her ‘essence’ among them. They felt it stick onto them as they digested as chip matter.

Delta was all encompassing to humanity; she *wore* a world’s population, in a sense.

‘I am meant to be a god.’, she thought to herself.

In time, her jet made it to continental Africa. There were hardly any signs the area had been nuked at all when she flew above it. The desert had grown to encompass all the more western nations as a result of the Great Misstep’s nuke barrage. The USA government was very thorough and overly cautious to get all bits of civilization she could.

By now, however, she saw only the amazing feat of engineering before her. Stretching for miles across the sandy dunes was an impenetrable glass enclosure stretching up a couple stories in height. It was like a greenhouse enclosure beneath the ever-gray skies, only the glass wasn’t green but clear. It was made from the very sands of this desert quite some time ago.

As impressive as all that glass was, the more enticing sight was all the machines within. All of them laid atop a floor of tubes. There were solar panels and thermal collectors. Interspersed among them were plenty of batteries of course but also, more importantly, the computers. They were set inside completely opaque black cases, but Delta knew those were the various super-computer machines which could run many Paradise virtual servers at a time: among other things. Anything remotely intensive computational wise was processed at either this farm or another similar to it.

The design was simple--to Delta at least. The glass-compound exterior protected the machines from the sands while also focusing the suns rays and heat as it passed through its specialized panes. This provided the solar and thermal energy for power generation. The computers were completely encased since each one had its own personal, highly efficient and infallible cooling system. Many tubes running from the machines contained wires, but there were slightly thicker ones running from the computers as well. Those were part of that advanced water cooling system.

Delta knew where the water went. It came in from the sea, got desalinated, then cooled and pumped through the computers. Once finished, the warmer byproduct of the loop was split to be both reused and to be stored into tanks, now sterilized, where it could be shipped back to the main USH land to meet the population’s water demands.

The sight seeing didn’t last much longer as the jet soon made it to the center of the farm. Here, the glass enclosure merged with a more traditional building where every actual person worked. No one tended to the computers out there manually of course, there were drones of course, but human staff were always needed. True AI didn’t exist, and even the master core programs were just glorified schedulers and task mangers, in a sense.

The jet rested on the nearby air field. The tactical team exited first and readied themselves to carry Delta again. She slipped on her flip-flops and had them hoist her up. The pilot’s body went limp and empty, though not before she let the original stored consciousness in Paradise know their body was used to help transport her here: here, where she’d gain even more power.

Delta was carried into the state of the art facility and greeted by bowing meat puppets. It was at this moment she let a consciousness clone for those minds fill their bodies: unable to act of course. She walked past them, smiling smugly, as she made her way to the core facility. The tactical team took their place bowing as well.

Up ahead was the computer farm’s core. It was within within a see-through enclosure of its own among a mass of cables and the like. Traditionally it looked like massive and gray sphere. Now, however, the sphere was opened down the middle vertically and half-way in preparation for her integration. She could see all the delicate wires and electronics within. Before reaching that chamber she had to go through her integration process. Every step was set up already; those drones and microbots worked fast.

Delta walked up to a door to a hallway filled with various tubes and wires connecting to it. All the steps came one after another in a transparent hallway that lead to the computer core. She could have done this sooner if willing to expand her super-consciousness to a body of an employee here, but she wouldn’t dare let another body, even one in her complete control, be a part of this. Hence the journey, which she felt well worth it.

Delta undressed and tossed her clothes to the floor. At this point, she stopped the simulations for those consciousness sets for her nose hairs and for the food in her stomach. She’d be experiencing what was to come alone. She let all those billions of minds linger in her garments still, though.

Every being within those simulated clothes felt their bodies stretch one more time as she undressed herself of the real-world clothes. All those consciousnesses felt the terrifying fall as Delta let the garments fall to the floor directly or tossed them over her shoulder. The garbs by her feet she kicked over to the pile, and her socks and shorts felt the touch of her skin once more in the process.

All those sets of every unique mind of the once active human civilization now lingered in a pile of her worn clothes. They were crumbled, and awash in whatever bits of her skin and natural oils rubbed off on them.

While they suffered in the pile, while human puppets were forced to bow, Delta stepped inside that hallway and her integration process begin.

First was a refreshing spray of cool water to clean and prep her skin. It came from omni-directional jets all around her and felt refreshing albeit chilly. She stepped past there to a drying area, which took a few short moments as hot, properly hydrated air blasted her body like a big hair dryer.

Next came something Delta wasn’t too looking forward to. Her naked self stood still on a small raised circular area with vents at the bottom. Transparent dividers held her in this step of the process, as they did for all processes thus far. A buzz thrummed through the air as a clipper-armed limb shaved her head and bush. Even her eyebrows were trimmed down as much as possible. Once done, the vent roared as it sucked the hair up to keep the chamber clear before she moved to the next one.

The next process would be agonizing, but thankfully for Delta, she could turn off her sensation of pain. Her bare feet stepped onto another slightly raised circular spot, from which a metal pole raised and expanded a metal clasp around her waist to help hold her steady. This chamber was stark white save for the incredibly dense array of laser-topped limbs embedded all around, which were black. Once the clear walls locked her in, they sprung from the walls and aimed at her. These limbs weren’t rigid, but flexible like tentacles. They began to hum as their tips shined a bright red.

With their dexterity, they quickly scanned over the tan woman’s body and pelted her with the intense light. The special lasering algorithm Delta devised had them selectively and permanently neutralizing all her hair follicles and sweat glands. Once those finished, her eye covers were removed and even smaller, more minute limbs came down to delicately and precisely pluck away then laser off her very eyelashes. With her bodily control, she kept still enough to avoid any injury to her eyes themselves.

When the chamber next opened, Delta was entirely bereft of external hair: including the soft, near invisible ones on many parts of her skin. A part of her missed her head-hair, but she knew she had her superior circuit-patterned style back in Paradise anyway. She would have sacrificed her hair countless times over for the power she had now, let alone what she was about to get.

Delta felt none of the pain of that procedure, but she did feel the warmth of it all. Her entire body felt hot from the laser’s heat. Thankfully, what was next was another full body shower to cool her down and further ensure she was clean. After that was another drying chamber.

The next chamber was the only one before complete integration. It consisted of pod-like container with a Delta-shaped rigging in the middle. The pod hung open and the inside was lined with all sorts of complicated wires and tubes.

Delta stepped into the rigging, which conformed to her form. She smiled as she heard the pod begin to whir up in alert. The pod doors shut around her, and her body was poked with needle wires in each and every pore of her skin. Once again, she felt delighted to be able to ignore physical pain.

Only a few immobile human shell bodies were close enough to this part of the clear hallway to see inside there, and the pod’s black exterior occluded much, but what they could see through the open-glass front by her head was Delta’s face practically melded with wires and other complicated cables.

She was smiling, for already her body was more than human. She was augmented beyond compare, and that was before moving into the core. The walls in the pod chamber moved aside and the pod itself traveled along the hallway as if on a rail.

It moved up into the chamber with the computer farm’s core. The entire sphere was already open and waiting to accept her. The pod went into the core’s center. Once there and locked in place, all manners of cables and tubes connected into the pod too fast for any human eye to see.

The sphere closed and the lights in its chamber flashed once before turning yellow.

Delta’s favorite color.

Delta felt her mind vastly expand. Paradise was already an extension of her will and mind, but now she felt all its resources within the farm as extensions of herself. All the resources of this computer farm *were* an extension of herself. If she was super-intelligent before, then her current state of mind made her old self look outright foolish in its limitations.

This was all before she made her commands to the other farms.

Once the Sahara farm core was back online, she immediately sent out orders from it to all the other computer farms across the world. Russia, Germany, China, Canada. All the vast sprawling complexes of resources yielded to her. She didn’t just tell the farms to listen to her every command, she made them extensions of one new mega farm structure which she now commanded: which she now was. They became more of her.

Even without time-dilation her thoughts were fast, but now they were beyond fast. She quickly seized complete and total awareness over all information through the farms, and, more importantly, control over what they handled. She knew at last where those deceased headclips were hiding: a vault in Antarctica. Clever, she thought.

There were a scant few computers not in her control, but she was everywhere now and that changed in mere fractions of a second. The computer farms were the only places where there were quantum computers. With the ability to test every combination of numbers at once per each and every quantum processor, she very quickly cracked any encryption on any other device in the world which could connect remotely.

She had much to do in the physical world still. There were still some resources she’d need to directly interface with via the drones and microbots that were now extensions of her being. Moreover, she still wanted those other headclips from their ‘tomb’ in the icy land to the South.

There would be time. So, so much time. While she tended to that, she had a fun idea for everyone in Paradise. She ended those simulations of clothing entrapment, and all the bowing bodies to her grew limp and empty once more. Even the tactical team.

With her current level of power and pervasiveness, it would have been easy to bring everyone out into their real-world bodies and rule the physical planet as some all-controlling pseudo-AI tyrant. But, in Paradise she could do even more with her powers. It was far better there.

The real-world was for her now, and hers alone.

Back in Paradise, everyone found themselves in the Nexus. A miles tall Delta appeared above the city, smiling wide and looking giddy with delight. She was naked, her eyes yellow, and shoulder-near hair its green and yellow circuit-pattern.

“It’s over.” she boomed. “Your bodies, the world itself, will be dismantled and reconverted to more of me. I’ve integrated with the processing power of the entire planet. I truly am a greater being.”

Her yellow eyes glowed bright with light.

“Behold!” she bellowed. Her body changed to a near-unfathomable god-like form and she annihilated them all, for fun, with a realm wide blast of radiance.