Chapter 4: On the Difficulty of Becoming a Tech-Priest
"You... by the Omnissiah's grace... never mind," Magos Laust sighed, cutting himself off. "You can have this brief respite from your duties. Take Omega to his quarters. Give him a tour of the temple so he can learn the layout. For the time being, he'll be with the other aspirants."
"Of course, Father," Rhea replied cheerfully.
She happily led Omega away from the data-hub, which was already buzzing with activity again. After navigating a maze of corridors, they arrived at a room that looked suspiciously like a laboratory.
Well, you were reborn as a cog-head, Omega told himself. Were you expecting a private hab-villa? You've already choked down a couple of corpse-starch bars on the road. What more could you possibly expect?
"Alright, little Omega," Rhea said with a bright smile. "Off with your clothes."
My, what predatory words! Omega's mind screeched to a halt. I'm just a child! This is the Warhammer universe, not some degenerate pict-show! Could it be...
While Omega's brain was rebooting, Priestess Rhea had already produced a syringe.
"Hurry now," she urged. "We need to draw your blood before we go to your room."
Oh, a blood test! You could have led with that... wait a minute. The syringe was as thick as his wrist. How much are you planning to take? Are you sure you're not trying to bleed me dry?
"Magos-Sister Rhea," Omega began cautiously, "may I ask the purpose of this blood draw? I've just traveled a long way and haven't replenished my energy. My blood sugar is currently low, which might affect the data."
(Within the Adeptus Mechanicus, any member can be called a "Tech-Priest" as a general term. "Magos" is a term of respect you can use for any Tech-Priest of higher rank or greater knowledge. The title of "Archmagos" requires, at a minimum, command of one's own Ark Mechanicus.)
Hearing Omega's technically-minded excuse, Rhea's eyes lit up. "No problem at all!" she chirped. "We'll take one sample now, and another after you've eaten. It will be a perfect comparative study!"
"Err..."
"I want to test Father's theory about your body's resistance to high levels of radiation," she explained, her eyes gleaming with scientific curiosity.
She's a true cog-girl, through and through, Omega thought with a sinking feeling. This is not a support pillar I can lean on. My optimism was premature!
The less said about the procedure, the better. Suffice it to say, it took a full half-month before Omega's pale little face finally regained some color.
During that time, Omega slowly became familiar with the people and places within the temple. His relationship with the senior Tech-Priests was professional; they were perpetually busy, including Magos Laust and Rhea. For now, Omega simply learned which priest was responsible for which duties and what their technical specializations were.
His relationship with the aspirants, however, was much better. Omega clearly remembered the morning of his second day. When he appeared in the aspirants' scriptorium dressed in his red robes, the eyes of the other hopefuls—both young and old—were filled with a mixture of fear, reverence, and envy. (His power axe and mechadendrite harness were left in his room; they were too heavy and interfered with his already short stature.)
On the third day, after he donned his full gear and allowed the aspirants to touch and even offer prayers before his power axe, the atmosphere warmed considerably.
The Omnissiah loves all who seek knowledge. The Cult Mechanicus never turns away a student. Of course, that doesn't mean you should expect anyone to teach you like a classroom instructor. The doors to the temple's library were open to all, where anyone could feel the wisdom and greatness of the Machine God within the holy texts.
Omega considered this to be, in no uncertain terms, complete and utter scrap-code.
Why?
To understand, one must look at the scriptures of the Mechanicus, the training methods for aspirants, the content of the final examination to become a Tech-Priest, and finally, the most crucial factor of all: the average daily working hours for a living person on a Forge World.
To summarize it in one sentence: If you are not a genius among geniuses, do not even present yourself before the Omnissiah.
Consider this example, the life of a boy born on a Forge World:
You are born. Your parents are indentured laborers. By the grace of the Omnissiah, you are born without the extra fingers or other mutations common to children in your hab-block. After a genetic scan, the temple priest finds no deviation and tells your parents, "This child is blessed by the Omnissiah."
Your parents are overjoyed. From the moment you can understand, they speak to you only in the few words of High Gothic they know. They volunteer for extra work shifts in exchange for the factory foreman teaching you High Gothic for one hour a week. The sixteen-plus hour workdays grind your parents down, aging them twenty years in the span of a few.
Compared to the other children in your block, you feel your childhood is unhappy. Your parents don't seem to love you like the parents you see outside your window. They are always busy, their speech clipped and hesitant, relying on gestures to express themselves. They come home only to sleep and wake only to work. They forbid you from playing outside with others. The only gifts they bring you are tattered pieces of vellum inscribed with praises to the Machine God and the Omnissiah.
You know who the Omnissiah is, of course. You're not a little child anymore. Every seven days, a man comes to teach you new words and concepts. you love spending time with him. He's not like your parents; he speaks fluently and knows so much. When you ask him why, he says his ancestors were something called "nobles." You don't understand what a noble is, only that the man always puffs out his chest when he says it.
You complain to him about your parents, telling him they don't love you. The man only ruffles your hair and says, "You'll understand when you're older."
The day you can fluently speak and write every thought you have in High Gothic, the man stops coming. You are heartbroken for a long time. But your parents start coming home earlier. They can play with you for a short while each day. It's not long, but you can feel their love, and it makes you happy. Still, they won't let you go outside. You cry, you throw tantrums, but all you get is a slap from your parents.
When you turn twelve, you are finally allowed out. Every day, your parents walk you to the gate of the Mechanicus temple, leave you with a corpse-starch bar for the day, and then go to work together.
Here, you meet many new friends. Your stories are all similar. Together, you read every book in the library. You recognize every word, but when strung together into sentences, they make no sense. But you have friends. You guess at the meanings together and ask the older students who have already become aspirants.
That's right. You aren't even an aspirant yet. Only those who show exceptional talent and brilliance have a chance of being chosen by a priest. Becoming an aspirant doesn't grant you any material rewards, only the privilege of attending the lectures on the Omnissiah's wisdom that the priests give in their spare time.
As you grow older, you begin to understand the sacrifices your parents have made for you. You thank the Omnissiah for His grace, your parents for their love, and your good fortune for not having been punished and expelled from the temple for damaging a book during some childhood roughhousing.
Your father's nightly cough grows longer and louder. Your mother's back stoops lower and lower. All of this becomes the fuel for your efforts. You frantically memorize every text, whether you understand it or not. You study from dawn till dusk, and from dusk till dawn.
Fortunately, your efforts are seen by the Omnissiah. A temple priest grants you the status of an aspirant.
The cost of paper and ink for your studies forces your parents to start working longer hours again. You try to be frugal, but there is so much knowledge to record. You hate that you don't have a photographic memory like some of the others. You hate that you can't grasp complex concepts as quickly as they can. But you don't give up. You believe that if you just work a little harder, your diligence and piety will once again earn the Omnissiah's favor.
Unfortunately, years of high-intensity labor finally break your father's body. Your family can no longer afford to support your studies. That night, your father buries his head in your lap and weeps like a child, apologizing to you. All you can do is pat his twisted back and whisper that it's enough, that what he has done for you is more than enough.
A week after you join the factory workforce, your mother comes to you, ecstatic, and tells you that you can return to the temple to continue your studies. Your father has "volunteered" for servitor conversion. He will be welded to an assembly line until he breaks down completely, in exchange for a priest granting you three more years of study time.
Hearing this news, you want to scream, to curse, to demand why. In the end, you just silently pack your things and appear once more before the temple gates. You never ask your mother which factory your father is in. You don't want to know. You don't dare to know.
Effort! You pour every last drop of your being into your studies!
Finally, at the end of the third year, you kneel before the temple's Magos and beg for a chance.
The Magos says, "You are not yet worthy."
You have no words to argue, because you know that many who are more brilliant than you have also failed to become priests. You just remain kneeling in the center of the grand hall. For an hour, two hours, through the day and into the night, until you collapse.
You wake in your mother's arms. She tells you the Magos has relented. You know the Omnissiah has favored you one last time.
But the moment you see the contents of the final examination in the Grand Manufactorum, despair consumes you.
Why?!
Why is it complex geometric patterns?
Why are there formulas for light, for heat, for electricity, for magnetism, for waves, for force?
Why is it cold, ceaseless calculation?
Why! Why is it like this?
The holy texts were filled with religious allegory, philosophical thought, discourses on the Motive Force, the Machine God, and the Omnissiah!
It is only then that you finally understand what the Magos meant when he said you were "not yet worthy."
You can feel it. Every symbol, every character, every number in these formulas and calculations is hidden somewhere in the books you read, memorized, and transcribed. Hidden in a chapter, on a page, within a single sentence, veiled in metaphor.
When you return, you weep and tell your mother, "I can't do it. I'm too stupid. I'm too ignorant."
Your mother just smiles and says, "You're the smartest boy I've ever known. It's alright, it's alright..."
Soon after, another servitor was added to the production line...