GODSTAR - a Science Fantasy Civilization Quest

She had given her name as Magda Three-Manifold. Apparently in her culture children were bestowed with a given name, as well as a number based on the day of their birth coupled with a totemic machine part.

Magda Three-Manifold stood a head taller than any of the True People. Her head was shaved, and her face, neck, and chest were tattooed with mechanical designs. She had metal rings in her ears, nose, and lips, which on further inspection were repurposed machine parts as well.

She had been taken captive and, with offers of good treatment, status as a free person, and a continued position as driver, had agreed to teach members of the League to operate their captured vehicles.

"Start with the simplest machine," said one of the Speakers. A group of the League's most prominent Mechanicals, Speakers, and Warriors followed her through the car park, while other captured Machine Soldiers performed maintenance and more Mechanicals and their apprentices crawled over the machines, taking measurements. Historians stood by to memorize the details.

"This is a drone," Magda said, holding in her hands a small boxy machine, capable of flight using four independently articulate propellers.

"What controls it?"

"Like all our machines, it must be controlled by a human…for the most part." She moves on quickly. "In this case, a person with a set of controls can see through its eyes and direct it."

"Yes, but how does it go? What animates it?"

"A motor," she says, using the word in her language, "It runs on…on captured power from the Prime Solar. Your Daystar."

Setting the drone down, she points at the banks of solar panels being arranged to catch sunlight.

"You can build these things?" asks one of the Warriors.

"Yes," she admits, "It is not very difficult."

"And do all of these machines run on this solar power?" asks a Mechanical.

"No, the larger ones are powered by engines, which burn a type of fuel. The fuel is derived from water."

"Water?" the Mechanical asks. He senses a simplification.

"Well. It must be broken down into its base components of-" she begins rattling off technical terms. The Mechanicals frown and glance at each other. Magda sighs and refocuses. "We call it hydrogen fuel. It can be stored in a liquid state."

"And you can show us how to do this as well."

"Yes. I believe those are the two most important methods of obtaining energy."

"I agree," says a Speaker, "But tell us about your war machines."

Magda shows them the motorcycles, two-wheeled craft large enough to carry a single person, used for scouting and swift movement. Then she goes through the larger ones – the multipurpose technicals, four-wheeled devices with a flat bed behind the driver's carriage used for carrying cargo, soldiers, or gun emplacements, the heavily armored war rigs, and finally the treaded tanks for crushing and moving across rough terrain.

"How do you build these things?" asks a Speaker, amazed.

Magda sighs.

"We do not build them. They build themselves."

She takes them to the support vehicles. They are massive, with a large carriage behind the driver's seat full of machinery. Each one's roof is shingled with solar panels.

"We put raw metals into that container, and it processes the raw material into components that it assembles into parts which we use to build new vehicles – or replace old parts."

"Almost like the machines become pregnant and give birth," one of the Speakers says in amazement.

"They are more alive than you think," Magda admits.

"Ah, these machine spirits you told us about," says a Mechanical.

"In good time. First…"

She shows them the 'food truck' with its vats of algae and meat cultures, its bank of solar panels. A Machine Soldier has been so helpful as to demonstrate the field kitchen, cooking meat patties on a flat sheet of heated metal.

"Now, the machine spirits?" presses the Mechanical after a brief lunch. They do not seem very impressed, being used to more flavorful and textured venison.

Magda nods deferentially and takes them to a technical. She points out the finer details they had overlooked or taken for purely aesthetic considerations – the shrine on the dash with its offering bowl and holy symbol, the hood ornament which was really more of a small figurehead. A holy man confirms that there is a spirit within the machine.

"Your holy man has explained to me this theory of emotions being the motivating energy of the spirit," Magda says after a short discussion, "Like fuel of the soul. I believe that it is the emotional importance we place on the machines that we work and live with that animates them, gives them spirits.

In the Machine Armies, we would eat, sleep, and socialize in our vehicles or in close proximity to them. In exchange, they…" she hesitates, knowing she is revealing her close spiritual practices to a foreign people, "They can act with some autonomy. It is not unknown for them to, for example, drive themselves, or speak to us over the radio."

(She explains the radio – a device used for communicating over long distances. The others compare this to magical forms of communication, prompting a debate over their utility compared to magical communication. Eventually, Magda is allowed to continue.)

"They also control their own reproduction. There are 'lineages' of machines, families even, you could say. We leave minor offerings of oil and machine parts, maintain them, they house and protect us."

There is a short discussion while Magda Three-Manifold runs her hands over the wheel of what is still, thankfully, her machine. She has noted that these 'True People' have different spiritual practices, and is already considering what modifications they will make to the machine. There are of course things she did not tell them, but only because she does not have the words to communicate. How can you describe the feeling of being behind the wheel, of sensing the moods and strains of the vehicle as if you were a part of it, knowing instinctively what its strong and weak points are, operating as if you were one being?

The delegation completes their discussion and returns their attention to her.

"We have learned much about these capabilities, and we thank you. The question is, what if we do not merely wish to reproduce these machines? What if we want to find additional applications for what you have shown us?"

Magda lets out a deep breath.

"That…is a difficult question. I believe we would have to begin with disassembling the samples you took as loot and making a full study of their components..."

As Magda explains the process of reverse engineering, her mind turns once again to the Machine Army of All-Under-Heaven, and the war of conquest her people fled. Can these people, intelligent and brave as they are, possibly fight the Commander-in-Chief, born from the line of the Conquerors of the Holy Mountain?