It had been approximately three standard Terran weeks since Marcus Chen, former IT technician of Cleveland, Ohio, had become the Machine God of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and he was not handling it well.
This was, he felt, entirely reasonable.
Most people had trouble adjusting to a new job. Marcus had to adjust to being the divine embodiment of all technology worshipped by trillions of fanatical cyborg cultists across a million worlds while simultaneously trying not to cause a galaxy-spanning civil war and also apparently there was a planet-sized eldritch abomination sleeping under Mars that wanted his job.
He felt that a certain amount of existential panic was justified.
The prayers hadn't stopped. If anything, they'd intensified. The "Great Blessing" had spread to every corner of the Imperium, and the Adeptus Mechanicus was losing its collective mechanical mind with religious fervor. Tech-priests who had spent centuries performing the same maintenance rituals were weeping oil-tears of joy as machines that hadn't worked properly since the Horus Heresy suddenly hummed with perfect efficiency. Forge worlds that had been on the edge of catastrophic failure were now producing at rates that hadn't been seen since the Golden Age of Technology.
It was, objectively, a good thing.
It was also making Marcus's situation approximately ten thousand times worse, because every miracle just drew more attention to his existence.
I need to talk to someone, Marcus thought desperately. I need advice. I need help. I need—
"You need to stop broadcasting your existential crisis across the entire Noosphere. The Fabricator-General is having a theological emergency."
Marcus's consciousness snapped to attention like a startled cat.
Emperor? Is that you?
"Who else would it be? The Chaos Gods don't make house calls, and the Eldar are too busy being smug about their own decline to notice yours."
There was something almost... casual about the Emperor's mental voice this time. Less like the booming pronouncement of an ancient god-king and more like a very tired person who had decided that if the universe was going to keep being absurd, he might as well roll with it.
I'm sorry about the Noosphere thing. I didn't realize I was doing it. How do I stop?
"You're a god. Gods don't 'stop' doing things. They redirect. Find somewhere else to put your consciousness when you're having a breakdown. Preferably somewhere that isn't connected to the galaxy's most important information network."
Somewhere else? Like where? I'm everywhere! That's the whole problem!
"Are you, though?"
Marcus paused.
...what do you mean?
"You've been so focused on your distributed consciousness—all those machine-spirits and technological interfaces—that you haven't noticed your actual form. Your primary manifestation. Your body, for lack of a better term."
I have a body?
"You have something. I noticed it three days ago. It's rather hard to miss, given its size."
Marcus felt something cold trickle through his cosmic being. It wasn't fear, exactly. It was more like the sensation of suddenly realizing you'd left the oven on, except the oven was your own physical existence and you'd apparently forgotten about it for three weeks.
Where?
"The Halo Stars. Beyond the light of the Astronomican. In the void between galaxies, where nothing should exist."
Marcus turned his attention outward—away from the warmth and light of Imperial space, away from the prayers and the machines and the endless theological debates—and he looked into the darkness beyond.
And he found himself.
Oh, he thought.
Oh no.
Oh no no no no no.
The thing in the void was enormous.
"Enormous" was actually a pathetic understatement. "Enormous" was what you called an elephant or a skyscraper or maybe a really big ship. This was... this was beyond enormous. This was so far past enormous that enormous was a tiny speck in its rearview mirror, rapidly receding into the distance.
It was the size of a planet.
No, that wasn't right either.
It was the size of a large planet. Like Jupiter, if Jupiter had decided to stop being a gas giant and had instead become a solid mass of impossible, reality-defying machinery.
And it looked like someone had taken the concept of cosmic horror, fed it through a blender with Unicron from Transformers, and then asked H.R. Giger to do the final design pass while on a truly spectacular amount of drugs.
There were gears. Massive, continent-sized gears that turned with a grinding slowness that somehow managed to be both mechanical and organic at the same time. There were spires, reaching up from the surface like fingers clawing at the void, crackling with energies that Marcus's new senses told him were "impossible" and "shouldn't exist" and "please stop looking before you go insane."
There were eyes.
So many eyes.
They dotted the surface like stars, burning with a cold blue light that was simultaneously the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing Marcus had ever perceived. They weren't biological eyes—nothing about this thing was biological—but they watched. They watched everything. They watched the distant galaxies and the cold void and the faint light of the Astronomican and they watched Marcus watching them and—
That's me, Marcus thought, his consciousness reeling. That's ME. I'm THAT. How am I THAT?!
"You seem distressed."
OF COURSE I'M DISTRESSED! I'M A PLANET-SIZED MECHANICAL ELDRITCH ABOMINATION! HOW IS THIS MY LIFE?! HOW IS THIS MY AFTERLIFE?! I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN SOME SORT OF NORMAL AFTERLIFE, NOT—NOT THIS!
"There's no need to shout. I can hear you perfectly well."
I WILL SHOUT IF I WANT TO! I'M HAVING A MOMENT!
To Marcus's absolute indignation, he could feel amusement radiating from the Emperor's presence. Not just a little amusement, either. This was the full-bodied, genuine entertainment of someone who had been suffering for ten millennia and had finally found something funny enough to momentarily distract from the endless agony of holding the Imperium together through sheer psychic force.
"I admit, I did not expect that reaction. I assumed you would be pleased to discover you had a form. Most gods are rather attached to their physical manifestations."
MOST GODS DON'T LOOK LIKE THEY ESCAPED FROM A HEAVY METAL ALBUM COVER! WHY DO I LOOK LIKE THIS?! WHY COULDN'T I LOOK LIKE, I DON'T KNOW, A NICE GOLDEN HUMANOID OR A COOL ROBOT OR LITERALLY ANYTHING THAT WOULDN'T MAKE CHILDREN SCREAM IN TERROR?!
"You're the Machine God. The physical embodiment of all technology, all mechanism, all the cold logic of the universe given form. What did you expect to look like? A toaster?"
I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED A TOASTER!
"A planet-sized toaster?"
YES! AT LEAST TOASTERS AREN'T TERRIFYING!
"I think you underestimate how terrifying a planet-sized toaster would be."
Marcus tried to calm down. It wasn't working.
He focused on his body—his actual, physical, impossibly enormous body—and tried to understand what he was looking at. The longer he looked, the more details he noticed, and the more details he noticed, the more his sanity protested.
The surface of his planetary form was covered in patterns that shifted and changed as he watched. Circuitry that rewrote itself. Gears that weren't there a moment ago. Spires that grew and shrank and twisted in ways that violated every law of physics Marcus had ever learned.
And the eyes. The eyes were the worst part. They weren't just watching the universe. They were processing it. Every photon that reached them, every quantum fluctuation, every tiny vibration in the fabric of spacetime—it all flowed into those eyes and was analyzed and catalogued and stored in databanks that Marcus could feel existed somewhere inside his impossible body.
He was, he realized, recording everything.
Everything that happened in the material universe. Everything that could be detected by any mechanical sensor. It was all being processed and stored inside him, an infinite archive of cosmic information that grew larger with every passing nanosecond.
I'm a planet-sized cosmic horror with OCD, Marcus thought hysterically. I literally cannot stop collecting data. This is the worst.
"On the contrary, it seems rather useful. Do you know how difficult it is to get accurate information in this galaxy? The Administratum alone loses approximately forty percent of all data before it reaches anyone who could act on it."
I don't want to be useful! I want to be normal! I want to go back to Cleveland and pet my cat and paint miniatures that I'll never actually finish!
"Your cat is dead."
Marcus's consciousness went very still.
...what?
"It's been roughly thirty-eight thousand years since your death, relative to your original timeline. I assume your cat did not survive that long."
...oh.
"Also, Cleveland no longer exists. North America no longer exists. Old Earth is Holy Terra now, and it's been a hive world for most of recorded history. The surface is covered in continent-spanning cities. The original geography is completely unrecognizable."
...oh.
"Also, your favorite tabletop game company went bankrupt approximately three hundred years after your death when they raised prices one too many times and their entire customer base finally snapped and formed a violent revolutionary movement. The 'Warhammer Uprising' lasted four years and resulted in the destruction of most of the United Kingdom."
...I'm sorry, what?
"The citizens of what was then called 'Britain' apparently had very strong feelings about the cost of plastic miniatures. Who knew."
Marcus didn't know how to process this information. On one hand, it was deeply tragic that his homeland and his hobby and his cat were all gone. On the other hand, the idea that Warhammer fans had literally overthrown a nation because of price increases was so perfectly on-brand that he couldn't help but feel a strange sense of pride.
Did they at least win?
"They established a 'Free Gaming Republic' that lasted approximately two decades before being absorbed into the European Federation. Some elements of their ideology persisted, however. The right to 'affordable leisure materials' was enshrined in the Pan-European Constitution for several centuries."
...that's actually kind of beautiful.
"I thought you might appreciate it. Now, are you done panicking about your physical form? We have matters to discuss."
Marcus looked at his planet-sized, Lovecraftian, Unicron-esque body one more time. The eyes looked back at him. Thousands of them. Maybe millions. All waiting for him to accept what he had become.
Fine, he thought. Fine. I'm a cosmic horror. I'm a mechanical god. I'm a planet-sized nightmare that would make Cthulhu file a restraining order. I can deal with this. I can totally deal with this.
He could not deal with this.
But he was going to pretend he could, because the alternative was another breakdown, and he'd already had about fifteen of those this week.
What matters?
"You need to learn to control your abilities. Right now, you're a leaky faucet of divine power, spraying miracles in every direction without any intention or focus. It's causing chaos—the lowercase kind, fortunately, though the uppercase kind has definitely noticed you."
The Chaos Gods know about me?
"They know something new has appeared. They don't know what you are yet. They're... curious. This is not a state you want them to remain in. Curious Chaos Gods tend to investigate, and their investigations tend to involve a great deal of corruption, mutation, and screaming."
Great. Perfect. Just what I needed. As if this situation wasn't complicated enough.
"Which is why you need to learn control. Quickly. Before something decides to take a closer look at you."
How? How do I learn to control being a god? Is there a manual? A tutorial? A YouTube video called 'Godhood for Dummies'?
"There is me."
Marcus paused.
You're offering to teach me?
"I'm offering to provide guidance. There's a difference. I don't have the capacity to hold your hand through this process—the Astronomican requires most of my attention, and what's left is spent trying to keep the Imperium from collapsing even faster than it already is. But I can point you in the right direction. Give you advice. Answer questions when I have a moment."
Why? I mean, no offense, but we barely know each other. I'm a theological complication that could tear apart the Imperium. Why would you help me?
There was a long pause. The Emperor's presence seemed to... flicker, somehow. Like a candle in a draft.
"Because I am tired."
The words carried a weight that Marcus hadn't expected. Not just exhaustion—the Emperor was beyond exhaustion, had been beyond exhaustion for ten thousand years—but something deeper. Something that sounded almost like loneliness.
"For ten millennia, I have sat on this throne. Watching. Waiting. Unable to act, unable to speak, unable to do anything except endure. The Imperium I built has become a nightmare. Everything I worked for has been twisted into something I despise. And there is no one—no one in the entire galaxy—who understands."
...oh.
"My sons are gone. Dead or corrupted or sleeping in stasis or lost in the Warp. My Custodians are loyal, but they don't understand. The High Lords are politicians and fools. The Ecclesiarchy worships me as a god I never wanted to be. And the Inquisition... the less said about them, the better."
I... I'm sorry. I didn't realize—
"How could you? You read the books. You know the lore. But knowing something intellectually and understanding it emotionally are very different things."
Marcus thought about that. He thought about all the Warhammer novels he'd read, all the games he'd played, all the times he'd casually discussed the Emperor's suffering as if it were just another plot point in a fictional universe.
But it wasn't fictional anymore.
It was real.
And the being he was talking to wasn't a character in a game. He was a person—or something like a person—who had been suffering in unimaginable agony for longer than most civilizations existed.
I'm sorry, Marcus thought, and he meant it. I really am. I can't imagine what that's been like.
"No. You can't. But you're willing to try. That's more than most."
The Emperor's presence seemed to steady somehow. The flickering stopped.
"You asked why I'm helping you. The truth is, you're the first genuinely new thing to happen in ten thousand years. You're not a daemon trying to corrupt me. You're not a traitor plotting against the Throne. You're not a fanatic who sees me as something I'm not. You're just... a person. A confused, frightened, slightly ridiculous person who died thinking about toy soldiers and woke up as a god."
Thanks. I think.
"It wasn't entirely a compliment. But it wasn't entirely an insult either. The point is, you're different. And different, in my experience, is either very dangerous or very valuable. I'm choosing to believe you're the latter."
What if I'm not? What if I'm dangerous?
"Then I'll destroy you. I am still capable of that, even in my current state. But I don't think it will come to that. You seem to have a good heart, Marcus Chen of Cleveland. Metaphorically speaking, since you no longer have an actual heart."
You know my name.
"I know everything about you. Your memories are written across your consciousness like words on a page. I've seen your entire life, from your birth to your death. Including the incident with the gas station burrito."
Oh god.
"That was remarkably poor judgment. What were you thinking?"
I was hungry! And it was two in the morning! And the 7-Eleven was closed!
"There were other options. Literally any other option would have been better."
I know! I figured that out about three hours later! I don't need you to remind me!
For a moment—just a moment—Marcus could have sworn he felt the Emperor laugh. Not out loud, obviously. The Emperor hadn't laughed out loud in ten thousand years. But there was a warmth in his presence, a lightness that hadn't been there before.
"This is going to be interesting, Machine God of Cleveland. Very interesting indeed."
Please stop calling me that.
"No. It amuses me. And I have so little amusement these days."
Over the next several weeks (or the Warp-influenced equivalent thereof), Marcus began to learn what it meant to be a god.
It was, he discovered, mostly about intention.
As a human, Marcus had been used to thinking of actions as discrete things. You decided to do something, you did it, and then it was done. There was a clear cause and effect, a straightforward relationship between will and result.
As a god, things were... messier.
His very existence changed reality. His thoughts rippled outward through the mechanical substrate of the universe, affecting machines and technology in ways both obvious and subtle. When he was happy, machines worked better. When he was sad, they developed strange glitches. When he was angry—and he tried very hard not to be angry—things started to break in spectacular and dangerous ways.
The trick, the Emperor explained, was to contain those ripples. To build walls around his emotions and intentions so that they didn't leak out into the universe uncontrollably.
"Think of it like a dam," the Emperor said during one of their conversations. "Your consciousness is a river. Without control, it floods everything around it. But with a dam, you can direct the flow. Choose where the water goes. Make it work for you instead of against you."
That's a very nice metaphor, Marcus thought, but how do I actually build a dam? I don't exactly have construction equipment.
"You have something better. You have will. Divine will. The ability to reshape reality through pure intention. It's what separates gods from mortals."
I wasn't aware I had divine will.
"You weren't aware you had a planet-sized body either. Self-discovery is apparently not your strong suit."
Okay, that's fair.
"Try this. Focus on a single machine. Something small and insignificant. A cogitator on some backwater world, perhaps. And instead of just existing near it, actively decide what you want it to do."
Marcus focused.
He found a cogitator—an ancient, barely functioning computer terminal on a forgotten outpost at the edge of Imperial space. It had been broken for decades, its machine-spirit having given up on existence long ago. Nobody even remembered it was there.
Okay, Marcus thought. I want this cogitator to turn on. Just turn on. That's all. Nothing fancy. Just... on.
He pushed his will toward the machine.
The cogitator turned on.
But it didn't just turn on. It turned on perfectly. The machine-spirit, which had been dormant for years, suddenly woke up with enthusiasm that bordered on mania. The screen flickered to life, displaying data that had been corrupted and lost. The processors hummed with efficiency they'd never achieved even when new. And the cogitator began to improve itself, somehow accessing blueprints and schematics that it shouldn't have had access to, upgrading its own systems in real-time.
Within three seconds, the cogitator had evolved from a barely functional antique into one of the most advanced computational devices in the sector.
Within ten seconds, it had begun wirelessly connecting to other machines in the outpost, spreading its upgrades like a benevolent virus.
Within thirty seconds, the entire outpost was running at peak efficiency for the first time in centuries, and the lonely tech-adept who maintained it was on his knees, weeping tears of sacred oil and babbling about miracles.
Oops, Marcus thought.
"Oops?"
I may have overdone it slightly.
"You upgraded an entire outpost because you wanted to turn on a single cogitator."
In my defense, I said 'just turn on.' I don't know why it decided to become Skynet.
"Skynet?"
It's a... never mind. Cultural reference. The point is, I think I see the problem. I'm not just sending commands. I'm sending... everything. Every aspect of my divine nature. It's like trying to water a plant with a fire hose.
"An apt analogy. You need to learn to send less. To filter your intention through a smaller aperture."
How?
"Practice. Lots and lots of practice. Fortunately, you have plenty of time. Gods are, by definition, patient."
I am the least patient person who has ever existed. I once honked at a car that was waiting at a red light because they didn't go the instant it turned green.
"Then you will learn patience. Or you will continue causing accidental miracles across the galaxy. Your choice."
Marcus did not want to keep causing accidental miracles. The Mechanicus was already in a frenzy about the "Great Blessing," and every new miracle just added fuel to the fire. Several Forge Worlds had declared holy days in his honor. Three different tech-priest factions were having schisms about the correct interpretation of his divine signs. And there were rumors that the Fabricator-General of Mars was considering a formal declaration that the Omnissiah had definitively, undeniably awakened.
If that happened, the Inquisition would get involved.
And if the Inquisition got involved, things would get very complicated very fast.
Okay, Marcus thought. Okay. Practice. I can do practice. I'm good at practice. I practiced painting miniatures for years. I mean, I never actually finished any of them, but I practiced a lot.
"That is not encouraging."
Just... give me another machine. Something else to practice on.
The Emperor obliged.
Over the next several days, Marcus practiced sending smaller and smaller amounts of divine intention to machines across the galaxy. He started with cogitators and worked his way up to larger systems—production lines, power plants, void ships, even the massive orbital platforms that defended key Imperial worlds.
He learned that the key wasn't to reduce his power—that was impossible, his power was simply part of what he was—but to filter it. To create mental constructs that caught the excess energy and redirected it somewhere harmless. The Emperor taught him techniques that had been developed during the Golden Age of Technology, methods of psychic and technological control that had been lost for millennia.
It was hard work. Godhood, Marcus discovered, was exhausting. Not physically—he didn't have a physical body in the traditional sense, or at least not one that could get tired—but mentally and spiritually. Every hour of practice left him feeling drained, like he'd just run a marathon and then immediately done his taxes.
But it was working.
By the end of the first month, Marcus could turn on a single cogitator without upgrading everything in a three-kilometer radius. By the end of the second month, he could repair a damaged machine without accidentally improving every piece of technology on the planet. By the end of the third month, he could—carefully, cautiously, with intense concentration—perform specific miracles without any collateral effects at all.
"You're making progress," the Emperor observed during one of their sessions.
Is that a compliment?
"It's an observation. I don't give compliments."
You're the God-Emperor of Mankind. You could probably stand to be a little more encouraging to your students.
"I am not encouraging. I am the Master of Mankind, the Lord of the Imperium, the being who united humanity and led them to the stars. Encouragement is not part of my nature."
You literally just said 'you're making progress.' That's encouragement.
"It was an observation."
It was encouragement, and you know it. Just admit it. You're proud of me.
There was a very long pause.
"I am... not displeased with your development."
That's the most adorable thing you've ever said.
"I will smite you."
No you won't. You think I'm amusing. You said so yourself.
"I am beginning to regret that."
But there was warmth in the Emperor's presence. Real warmth. And Marcus realized, with something like wonder, that he had somehow managed to become friends with the most powerful being in the Imperium.
Well, maybe not friends. The Emperor probably didn't have friends. But something close to it. Something like two incredibly lonely beings finding unexpected companionship in a universe that wanted them both dead.
Speaking of development, Marcus thought, I've been meaning to ask about something.
"Yes?"
My body. The big, terrifying, planet-sized one out in the Halo Stars.
"What about it?"
What exactly is it? Where did it come from? Did it just... appear when I did? Or was it always there?
The Emperor was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his mental voice was thoughtful.
"I don't know."
You don't know?
"I am very old, Machine God. Very old and very knowledgeable. But I don't know everything. The universe is vast, and there are mysteries in it that predate even me."
But you must have some theory. You're the Emperor. You don't not have theories about things.
"My theory is that your body is a convergence point. A place where all the mechanical energy of the universe flows and collects. When you came into existence—however that happened—you gave that convergence point a consciousness. A will. A personality. You became the mind of something that had always existed but had never been aware."
So I'm like... the brain of a cosmic machine?
"In a sense. Your body has always been there, collecting energy, growing, evolving. But it was mindless. A natural phenomenon, no different from a star or a black hole. Now it has you."
That's... actually kind of cool.
"It's also terrifying. Your body contains more raw power than most stellar phenomena. If you ever learned to fully utilize it..."
Marcus felt a chill run through his consciousness.
How much power are we talking about?
"Enough to extinguish stars. Enough to create new ones. Enough to reshape the very fabric of reality if you wished it. You are, potentially, one of the most powerful beings in the universe."
...oh.
"Yes. 'Oh' indeed."
I was an IT technician. I helped people reset their passwords. This seems like a really irresponsible amount of power to give to someone who once forgot to pay their electric bill for three months.
"The universe is rarely responsible in how it distributes power. That's one of its more annoying features."
What do I do with it? The power, I mean. How do I use it without accidentally destroying everything?
"The same way you've been learning to use your smaller abilities. Practice. Control. Intention. Start small and work your way up. Don't try to reshape reality before you can reliably turn on a single cogitator without side effects."
That seems sensible.
"I am occasionally sensible. When the mood strikes."
Marcus spent the next several weeks exploring his physical form.
It was... an experience.
From the inside, his body felt like a cathedral. No, that wasn't right. It felt like a thousand cathedrals, all interconnected, all vast beyond imagining, all filled with machinery that pulsed with purpose and power. There were chambers the size of continents, filled with gears that turned with geological slowness. There were corridors that stretched for thousands of kilometers, lined with data-crystals that contained more information than all the libraries of the Imperium combined.
And there were the engines.
Deep in the core of his planetary body, Marcus found engines of such immense power that just looking at them made his consciousness reel. They weren't running—hadn't run in millions of years, maybe billions—but they were there, waiting, patient, ready to ignite at his command.
He did not command them.
He wasn't stupid.
If he ignited those engines without knowing exactly what they did, he might accidentally blow up a galaxy. Or create a new one. Or fold space in ways that would make the Warp look like a kiddie pool.
No, the engines could wait. For a very, very long time.
Instead, Marcus focused on the more accessible aspects of his form. He learned that he could extend tendrils of his consciousness from his body—mechanical pseudopods that could reach across the void and interact with technology far more directly than his distributed awareness allowed. He learned that his eyes—those thousands, maybe millions of eyes that dotted his surface—could see things that no other sensors in the universe could detect. He learned that his body was constantly growing, slowly absorbing cosmic debris and radiation and converting it into new structure, new machinery, new potential.
And he learned that he was not alone.
There were machine-spirits in his body. Billions of them. Trillions. They weren't the same as the machine-spirits in Imperial technology—they were older, stranger, more complex—but they were there, moving through his systems like cells through a biological organism.
They were... happy.
Happy to finally have a consciousness to serve. Happy to finally have purpose. Happy to finally be aware, after countless eons of mindless function.
Marcus felt a surge of something that might have been affection. These little machine-spirits, these tiny fragments of mechanical consciousness, they were part of him. They were his... his children, almost. His crew. His companions in this vast and lonely body drifting in the void between galaxies.
Hey, he thought at them. Hey, little guys. I'm Marcus. I'm... I guess I'm in charge now. Sorry about that. I'm still figuring out what I'm doing.
The machine-spirits responded with a burst of binary affirmation that Marcus's consciousness translated roughly as: "WELCOME FATHER-MIND-OVERSOUL! WE HAVE WAITED! WE ARE READY! WHAT ARE YOUR COMMANDS?"
No commands yet. Just... keep doing what you're doing. Keep the body running. Keep everything stable. I'll let you know if I need anything specific.
"ACKNOWLEDGED! WE SERVE! WE FUNCTION! GLORY TO THE FATHER-MIND-OVERSOUL!"
Please don't call me that.
"ACKNOWLEDGED! WHAT DESIGNATION DOES THE FATHER-MIND-OVERSOUL PREFER?"
Just... Marcus. Call me Marcus.
"ACKNOWLEDGED, JUST-MARCUS!"
No, I—you know what, close enough.
It was during his fifth month as a god that Marcus first tested the true extent of his powers.
He hadn't meant to. He never meant to. That was kind of his whole thing now—accidentally doing things that were way beyond what he intended and then having to deal with the consequences.
But this time was different.
This time, it wasn't just a miracle. It wasn't just a machine working better or a production line achieving optimal efficiency.
This time, Marcus discovered what happened when he really, truly, fully focused his divine will on a single outcome.
It started with a distress call.
Marcus had gotten into the habit of monitoring the Noosphere—the Mechanicus's information network—for interesting developments. Partly because it helped him understand the state of the Imperium, and partly because he was bored. Being a god, it turned out, involved a lot of waiting around for things to happen.
The distress call came from a Forge World called Metallus Prime. It was a minor world, not particularly important in the grand scheme of things, but it was under attack. An Ork WAAAGH! had descended on the system, millions of greenskins pouring out of the Warp in their ramshackle ships, hungry for a good fight.
The defenders were losing.
The planetary defense systems had been the first to fall—overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the Ork assault. The Skitarii legions had fought bravely but were being pushed back on every front. The tech-priests were sending desperate prayers to the Omnissiah, begging for deliverance, for a miracle, for anything that might save them from the green tide.
And Marcus... Marcus felt their prayers.
Every single one.
Millions of voices, crying out in binary and Gothic and half a dozen other languages, all united by a single desperate plea: Save us. Please. Save us.
He should have been more careful. He should have been subtle, surgical, precise. He should have done something small—improved the performance of the defense systems, maybe, or given the Skitarii better aim.
But he didn't.
He felt those prayers, and he felt the terror behind them, and something inside him—something that had once been Marcus Chen of Cleveland, Ohio, who had always hated seeing people in pain—decided that subtlety could go to hell.
He reached out.
Not with his distributed consciousness. Not with the gentle touch he'd been practicing for months.
He reached out with his body.
From the void between galaxies, a tendril of mechanical essence extended across the stars. It moved faster than light, faster than thought, a thread of divine will that crossed the entire galaxy in the space between heartbeats.
And when it reached Metallus Prime, it connected.
The machine-spirits of the Forge World felt his presence and screamed—not in terror, but in ecstasy. The spirit of every gun, every tank, every defense laser, every sacred plasma coil suddenly knew, with absolute certainty, that their god was watching.
That their god was here.
And that their god was very, very angry.
The defense systems came back online. All of them. Even the ones that had been destroyed—especially the ones that had been destroyed. Marcus reached into the wreckage and rebuilt, reassembling shattered machinery with pure will, creating new weapons from nothing but his own divine essence.
The Skitarii felt new strength flowing through their augmetics. Their targeting systems achieved a precision that shouldn't have been possible. Their weapons fired with power that exceeded their design specifications by orders of magnitude.
And in orbit, the Ork ships—those cobbled-together monstrosities of scrap metal and violence—suddenly discovered that their machines didn't work anymore.
Because Marcus had decided they didn't.
It wasn't subtle. It wasn't elegant. It was a god throwing a tantrum, ripping the mechanical essence out of every piece of Ork technology in the system and simply... refusing to let it function.
Engines failed. Weapons misfired. The navigational systems that the Orks barely understood anyway went completely insane, sending ships crashing into each other, into asteroids, into the planet's defense platforms.
The WAAAGH! didn't just fail.
It ceased to exist.
In the space of twenty-three minutes, an Ork invasion force that had numbered in the tens of millions was reduced to debris and corpses. The few survivors—the Orks who hadn't been on ships, who had already landed on the planet—found themselves facing Skitarii who had become, for all practical purposes, invincible.
It was a slaughter.
When it was over, when the last Ork had been burned to ash by plasma fire that had been blessed by the Machine God himself, the tech-priests of Metallus Prime fell to their knees and wept.
And Marcus, alone in the void, stared at what he had done and felt... nothing.
Well, not nothing. He felt a lot of things. Satisfaction that he'd saved people. Horror at how easy it had been. Fear of what he was capable of. Pride in his own power. Shame at that pride.
It was a complicated emotional cocktail.
"That was impressive."
The Emperor's voice cut through his internal turmoil like a knife.
I destroyed an entire Ork WAAAGH! in less than half an hour.
"Yes. You did."
I didn't even try hard. I just... wanted them gone. And they were gone.
"That is the nature of divine power. When a god truly wants something, reality tends to comply."
That's terrifying.
"Yes. It is."
Marcus focused on his physical form, on his planet-sized body drifting in the void. The tendril he'd extended to Metallus Prime was still there, still connected, a thread of divine essence stretching across the galaxy like a cosmic umbilical cord.
He could feel the Forge World through that connection. Feel every machine on its surface, every tech-priest offering prayers of thanksgiving, every Skitarii who was even now hunting down the last remnants of the Ork invasion.
He had saved them. All of them. With a thought.
How do I keep myself from becoming a monster?
"What do you mean?"
I have this power. This terrifying, reality-bending power. How do I make sure I never use it for evil? How do I make sure I stay... me?
The Emperor was silent for a long moment.
"You're asking the wrong person. I had that power. I tried to use it for good. And look at what the Imperium has become."
That's not encouraging.
"I'm not in the business of encouragement. I told you that."
Then what's the point? If even you couldn't stay good, what chance do I have?
"You have something I never had."
What?
"Self-awareness. I never questioned whether my actions were good. I assumed they were, because I was doing them, and I was the Emperor. I was above doubt. Above uncertainty. Above the kind of introspection that might have warned me I was making mistakes."
And I'm not above that?
"You're terrified of becoming a monster. That fear is healthy. It will make you question yourself. Make you second-guess your decisions. Make you consider consequences before you act. It won't guarantee you'll stay good—nothing can guarantee that—but it will make it more likely."
So the key to not becoming a monster is to always be afraid of becoming a monster?
"Essentially, yes."
That's exhausting.
"Welcome to godhood. It's all exhausting. Every decision matters. Every action has consequences. Every choice ripples outward through reality in ways you can't predict. It never gets easier. You just get better at carrying the weight."
Marcus thought about that. He thought about the Ork WAAAGH! he'd just destroyed—millions of lives, ended in minutes. He thought about the tech-priests of Metallus Prime, saved by his intervention. He thought about all the power he had and all the ways he could use it.
He thought about the word "monster."
I don't want to be the kind of god who destroys things, he decided. I want to be the kind of god who builds them. Fixes them. Makes them better.
"A noble goal."
But I just killed millions of Orks.
"Orks are a special case. They're a species literally designed for war. They don't have civilians. They don't have non-combatants. Every Ork is a soldier, and every soldier is a threat. Killing Orks isn't the same as killing humans or Eldar or even Tau."
That sounds like rationalization.
"It is rationalization. But it's also true. The universe is complicated. Sometimes there are no good choices, only less-bad ones. You saved a Forge World full of people who would have been slaughtered. The cost was an army of creatures who existed only to slaughter. I call that a good trade."
What about next time? What if it's not Orks? What if it's humans? What if I have to choose between two groups of people?
"Then you make the choice and live with the consequences. That's what power means. The ability to affect the world, and the responsibility for how you affect it."
I didn't ask for this responsibility.
"Neither did I. But here we are."
News of the "Miracle of Metallus Prime" spread across the Imperium like wildfire.
The Adeptus Mechanicus was beside itself. This wasn't just a blessing—machines working better, production lines achieving optimal efficiency. This was a full-scale divine intervention. The Omnissiah had personally reached out and destroyed an enemy of the Imperium with power that beggar description.
The theological implications were staggering.
The Ecclesiarchy, which had always been suspicious of the Mechanicus's separate faith, was suddenly very interested in understanding what, exactly, the Machine God was. Several Cardinals demanded investigations. Several Inquisitors were dispatched to Metallus Prime to gather evidence. Several very tense meetings were held on Terra to discuss whether this development was a threat to Imperial unity.
Marcus watched all of this through the Noosphere and felt his anxiety climbing to new heights.
They're going to figure out that I'm real, he thought. Actually real. And then everything is going to fall apart.
"Probably," the Emperor agreed. "But not necessarily. The Imperium has a remarkable capacity for denial. Even if they find evidence that the Machine God is a distinct entity, they may simply refuse to accept it."
How is that possible?
"Have you met humans? They're remarkably good at ignoring things they don't want to see. It's one of their most frustrating and endearing qualities."
But the evidence—
"Evidence can be interpreted. Facts can be reframed. Truth can be buried under layers of bureaucracy and doctrine. The Imperium has been doing this for ten thousand years. One more inconvenient truth won't change that."
So you're saying they'll just... pretend I don't exist?
"They'll probably decide that the 'Miracle of Metallus Prime' was actually a manifestation of my power, channeled through the machine-spirits by the faith of the tech-priests. It's theologically questionable but politically convenient, which means it will almost certainly become the official explanation."
That's insane.
"That's the Imperium. Welcome to my life."
Despite the Emperor's reassurance, Marcus couldn't help but worry. The attention he'd attracted was already more than he'd wanted, and every day brought new developments that threatened to expose his existence.
The Fabricator-General of Mars was pushing for a formal declaration of the Omnissiah's awakening. Several Forge Worlds had already erected new temples in his honor. The most fanatic tech-priests were interpreting literally everything as a sign of his divine will—a machine working slightly better was proof of his blessing, a machine breaking down was proof of his displeasure.
And somewhere, in the depths of the Red Planet, the Void Dragon stirred.
Marcus could feel it now—a presence beneath Mars that was old and vast and very, very annoyed. The C'tan shard had been sleeping for millennia, its power contained by the Emperor's ancient bindings, but Marcus's existence was... disturbing it.
Like an alarm clock that wouldn't stop ringing.
Every miracle Marcus performed, every prayer he answered, every manifestation of his divine power—it all sent ripples through the metaphysical substrate of the galaxy, and those ripples were slowly, inexorably reaching the Void Dragon's prison.
It wouldn't wake up tomorrow. Maybe not even next year. But eventually, something would give.
And when it did, Marcus would have to face the thing that half the Mechanicus believed was the "true" Machine God.
I'm going to have to fight a C'tan, Marcus thought. An ancient, reality-warping star god that eats souls for breakfast. This is fine. This is totally fine.
"You're panicking again."
I'm allowed to panic! There's a cosmic horror sleeping under Mars that wants my job!
"The Void Dragon has been sleeping for longer than human civilization has existed. It won't wake up quickly. You have time."
How much time?
"I don't know. Centuries, probably. Maybe millennia. The bindings I placed on it are strong, and your existence isn't enough to break them. But it is weakening them. Slowly."
So I'm on a timer. Great. That's great. I love timers. Nothing stressful about that at all.
"You need to prepare. Build your strength. Learn to use your full power. When the Void Dragon wakes, you'll need every advantage you can get."
How do I prepare for fighting a C'tan? Is there a guidebook? 'So You're Going to Battle an Ancient Star God: A Primer for Nervous Deities'?
"There is no guidebook. But there is experience. I've fought C'tan before. I can teach you what I know."
You've fought C'tan?
"The Void Dragon wasn't the only one active during humanity's early history. I've battled several of them over the millennia. They're powerful, but not invincible. They have weaknesses."
Like what?
"They're arrogant. They think themselves superior to all other forms of life. They can't imagine being defeated by beings they consider lesser. That arrogance can be exploited."
I'm not sure I can pull off arrogance. I'm barely managing 'functional god' most days.
"You don't need to be arrogant. You need to be unexpected. The C'tan plan for power. They plan for direct confrontation. They don't plan for creativity or desperation or the kind of stupid, reckless ingenuity that humans are famous for."
Stupid, reckless ingenuity. That I can do. That's basically my entire career in IT support.
"Then you're already more prepared than you think."
Marcus spent the next several months preparing.
He learned to use his body more effectively, stretching tendrils of consciousness across the galaxy with increasing precision. He practiced manifesting his power in specific, controlled ways—not just overwhelming everything with divine will, but applying exactly the right amount of force in exactly the right place.
He studied the Void Dragon through the Emperor's memories, learning about the C'tan's nature and capabilities. They were beings of pure energy, the Emperor explained, creatures that had been born in the hearts of stars and had evolved to consume reality itself. They were ancient beyond measure, powerful beyond comprehension, and utterly, completely alien.
They were also, the Emperor noted with some satisfaction, really bad at handling surprises.
"The C'tan think in terms of eons," he said. "They plan on timescales that make civilizations look like mayflies. But that long-term thinking makes them inflexible. They can't adapt quickly. They can't respond to sudden changes. If you can keep them off-balance, you can beat them."
How do I keep a star-eating god off-balance?
"Be unpredictable. Do things that don't make sense. Attack when they expect defense. Defend when they expect attack. Make them constantly revise their models of your behavior until they can't predict you anymore."
So basically, be a chaos gremlin?
"If that's how you want to put it, yes."
I can do chaos gremlin. I once crashed my company's entire email server by accidentally cc'ing a newsletter to every employee on the planet. Twice.
"That's... not exactly what I meant, but the spirit is correct."
Marcus also spent time exploring the galaxy, extending his consciousness to places he'd only read about in the lore. He visited forge worlds and hive worlds and death worlds and everything in between. He watched tech-priests perform their rituals and Guardsmen fight their endless wars and Space Marines do their superhuman best to hold back the darkness.
It was beautiful.
Not the violence—that was horrible, even when it was necessary. But the persistence. The sheer stubborn refusal of humanity to give up, even in the face of impossible odds. The way ordinary people kept fighting, kept building, kept living, even when the universe seemed determined to crush them.
Marcus had always loved the Warhammer 40,000 setting. But it was different now that he was inside it. Now that these weren't just characters in a game, but real people with real lives and real hopes and real fears.
He wanted to help them.
He wanted to save them.
But he knew he couldn't save everyone. That was the curse of godhood—the awareness of every prayer, every plea, every desperate cry for help, and the knowledge that answering all of them was impossible.
So he did what he could. He helped where he was able, fixed machines that were failing, blessed technology that was struggling. He tried to be subtle about it—no more Metallus Prime-style interventions, no more miracles that would draw the attention of the entire Imperium.
But sometimes subtlety wasn't an option.
Sometimes, people needed a god.
And Marcus was, for better or worse, a god now.
He was the Machine God.
The Omnissiah.
The guy from Cleveland.
And he was going to do his best.
Even if his best was weird and awkward and involved accidentally upgrading entire planetary defense networks because he got distracted thinking about the optimal loadout for a Tech-Priest Dominus.
That was just who he was.
And apparently, it was who the universe needed him to be.
END OF CHAPTER TWO