The first thing that Marcus Chen became aware of, after what he could only describe as the most uncomfortable sensation of his entire existence—which was really saying something considering he'd once eaten a gas station burrito that had been sitting under the heat lamp since the Reagan administration—was that he no longer had a body.
This was, he reflected, somewhat inconvenient.
The second thing he became aware of was that he was everywhere.
Not in the metaphorical sense that poets and philosophy majors who'd had too much weed liked to wax eloquent about during parties that Marcus had never been invited to. No, he was quite literally everywhere. He was in the microscopic gears of a clockwork mechanism on some planet whose name sounded like someone had sneezed while gargling gravel. He was in the vast computational matrices of what appeared to be a building-sized calculator with anger issues. He was in the plasma conduits of ships that stretched across the void like metal whales having existential crises. He was in toasters. So many toasters. Why were there so many toasters?
The third thing he became aware of was that someone was praying to him.
"Oh Omnissiah, blessed be thy sacred algorithms, we beseech thee to make the sacred plasma coil not explode and kill everyone in Manufactorum Seventeen again."
Marcus experienced what he could only describe as a metaphysical spit-take.
What.
He tried to focus on the source of the prayer—and this was a very strange thing to do when you didn't have eyes or a brain or really any sensory organs whatsoever—and found himself looking at a hunched figure in red robes who had replaced approximately seventy percent of their body with machinery. The figure was kneeling before what appeared to be a very fancy engine block, waving an incense burner that was shaped like a small skull and chanting in what Marcus's impossibly vast new consciousness recognized as really, really, really bad Latin mixed with binary code.
"Deus Ex Machina, lux aeterna, 01001000 01100101 01101100 01110000—"
That was binary for "Help."
Marcus felt something that might have been his heart breaking, if he'd had a heart, which he didn't, because he was apparently some kind of cosmic machine entity now. This was not how he had expected his Tuesday to go. To be fair, he hadn't expected anything about his Tuesday because he was fairly certain he had died, but if someone had asked him to list possible outcomes of his death, "becoming the god of the toaster-worshipping cyborg cult from my favorite tabletop game" would not have made the top ten thousand.
Or the bottom ten thousand.
It wouldn't have made any list at all, really.
Okay, Marcus thought, trying to gather whatever passed for his wits in this new metaphysical state, let's review the situation.
He had been Marcus Chen, age twenty-eight, professional IT technician at a company that made software for other companies that made software for companies that he was pretty sure didn't actually do anything except have meetings about synergy. He had lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Cleveland with a cat named Guilliman—yes, after that Guilliman—and a truly impressive collection of unpainted miniatures that he always swore he would get around to finishing.
He had been walking home from work, thinking about the new Adeptus Mechanicus codex and whether the points changes to Skitarii Rangers were justified or if Games Workshop was just being Games Workshop again, when a bus had come out of nowhere and turned him into what the coroner would probably describe as "street pizza."
He hadn't even had time to be upset about it. One moment he was thinking about the optimal loadout for a Tech-Priest Dominus, and the next moment he was thinking with approximately eight hundred billion different consciousness fragments spread across an entire galaxy that he was becoming increasingly certain was the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
And not just anywhere in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
He was the Machine God.
The Omnissiah.
The being that the Adeptus Mechanicus, the galaxy-spanning tech-cult that ran all of humanity's most important infrastructure, literally worshipped as the physical manifestation of the divine in mechanical form.
Oh no.
The prayer from the tech-priest was still going, a sort of background hum in his consciousness like tinnitus but with more Latin.
"—and please bless the sacred unguents that they may appease the machine spirits and prevent another incident like last week when Fabricator Locum Vex-7 got his mechadendrites caught in the manufactorum's primary drive shaft and was turned into what the Magos Biologis described as 'a very thin red paste with an unfortunate amount of chunky bits'—"
OH NO.
Marcus tried to do something. He wasn't sure what. Anything, really. Wave? Make a sign? Send a cosmic email saying "Hey, I'm real now, please stop praying for five minutes so I can have an existential crisis in peace"?
What he actually did was make every single machine in a three-kilometer radius around the tech-priest suddenly hum in perfect harmony for exactly 0.003 seconds.
The tech-priest froze mid-prayer.
The incense burner clattered to the ground.
"By the sacred cog," the tech-priest whispered, their voice modulator crackling with what might have been awe or might have been a technical malfunction or might have been both because in the Adeptus Mechanicus those were essentially the same thing. "The Omnissiah... the Omnissiah has answered."
No wait, Marcus thought frantically, that wasn't—I didn't mean to—
The tech-priest stood up, their robes billowing in a way that was frankly more dramatic than the situation warranted, and began running down the corridor screaming in binary about miracles and signs and portents and the coming of the great awakening.
Marcus watched—if watching was even the right word when you were simultaneously perceiving reality through a few trillion different mechanical sensors—as the tech-priest burst into what appeared to be a gathering of other tech-priests who had been in the middle of a very serious debate about the optimal viscosity of sacred machine oil.
"BROTHERS! SISTERS! SIBLINGS OF INDETERMINATE BIOLOGICAL AND MECHANICAL CONFIGURATION! THE OMNISSIAH HAS SPOKEN!"
The gathering went absolutely insane.
No, Marcus thought desperately, no no no no no this is bad this is very bad this is catastrophically bad—
He tried to remember everything he knew about the lore of the Machine God and the Cult Mechanicus. Most of it was contradictory. Some sources said the Machine God was an aspect of the Emperor. Some sources said the Machine God was a C'tan—specifically the Void Dragon—imprisoned on Mars. Some sources said the Machine God was a genuinely distinct entity. Some sources said the Machine God was just a convenient fiction that allowed the Mechanicus to maintain their religious practices while technically remaining loyal to the Imperial Creed.
What no sources said—because why would they, it would be ridiculous—was that the Machine God was actually a guy from Cleveland who had died thinking about plastic miniatures and was now experiencing the metaphysical equivalent of being shoved into a costume at the last minute and told he was playing the lead in a very long play that had been running for ten thousand years.
Okay, Marcus told himself, okay, let's think about this rationally.
He was the Machine God. That was a thing that was apparently true now. He existed, or had started existing, or had always existed and was just now becoming aware of himself, or... honestly, the metaphysics were giving him a headache, which shouldn't have been possible because he didn't have a head.
The Adeptus Mechanicus worshipped him. Billions upon billions of tech-priests across thousands of worlds, all offering prayers and rituals and sacred lubricants to his glory.
This was... actually kind of nice? In a deeply weird and uncomfortable way?
Like, nobody had ever really worshipped Marcus before. He'd had a girlfriend in college for about three weeks before she'd dumped him for a guy who played acoustic guitar at parties—the absolute worst kind of guy—and his mom hadn't called him on his last three birthdays. The most positive attention he'd ever received was when his code actually compiled on the first try and his coworkers had given him a golf clap.
But now? Now he had literal trillions of followers who thought he was the coolest thing since the invention of the wheel. They sang songs about him. They wrote treatises about his glory. They replaced their squishy organic bits with sacred chrome in his honor.
That was... that was something.
No, Marcus reminded himself firmly, focus. Being worshipped is not the issue here. The issue is that you are a being whose very existence is theologically problematic in ways that could tear the Imperium apart.
Because here was the thing.
The Emperor of Mankind—the big guy, the psychic demigod, the skeleton on the golden toilet—was supposed to be the only true god of humanity. That was kind of the whole deal with the Imperial Creed. Sure, the Adeptus Mechanicus got a special exemption because they'd helped out during the Crusade and also they were literally the only people who knew how to make the Emperor's cool toys, but that exemption was predicated on the understanding that the Machine God was either a) not real, b) an aspect of the Emperor himself, or c) please don't ask too many questions we're trying to hold this Imperium together with duct tape and prayer.
If it came out that the Machine God was definitely real, definitely distinct from the Emperor, and definitely some guy from Cleveland?
The Inquisition would lose their minds.
The Ecclesiarchy would declare seventeen different holy wars simultaneously.
The Adeptus Mechanicus would either embrace him as vindication of their faith or reject him as a heretical impostor or possibly both at the same time because the Mechanicus was nothing if not complicated.
And the Emperor?
Oh god, the Emperor.
What would the Emperor think?
Marcus tried to focus his vast mechanical consciousness on the direction of Holy Terra, and immediately regretted everything.
The Astronomican hit his perception like a searchlight to the face. The psychic beacon that allowed all Imperial ships to navigate the Warp blazed with the captured souls of ten thousand psykers per day, a screaming chorus of sacrifice that made the light of a thousand suns seem dim by comparison.
And at the center of it all, Marcus could sense... something.
Something old.
Something vast.
Something that was very much aware that something new had just appeared in the galaxy.
Something that was, even now, turning its ancient and terrible attention toward the source of that newness.
Which was him.
Marcus.
The Machine God.
The guy from Cleveland.
Oh, Marcus thought, oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.
He could feel it now, a pressure at the edges of his consciousness, a golden light that was simultaneously warm and terrifying, a presence that made his vast mechanical essence feel very, very small.
Please don't notice me, Marcus prayed, which was an odd thing to do as a god but felt appropriate under the circumstances. Please just... look somewhere else. I'm not important. I'm just a weird metaphysical accident. I'm not a threat. I'm barely even a presence. I'm just a guy who wanted to play with toy soldiers and got in the way of a bus.
The golden presence paused.
Considered.
And then, impossibly, Marcus heard a voice in his consciousness.
It was old. Ancient beyond measure. It carried the weight of ten thousand years of unimaginable suffering, of humanity's dreams and nightmares, of a vision for the species that had been twisted and corrupted beyond all recognition.
And it said:
"...Cleveland?"
Marcus experienced the metaphysical equivalent of his soul leaving his body, which was particularly impressive given that he didn't have either of those things anymore.
You can hear me?
"I hear everything that transpires within the Materium, though my attention is... limited. The beacon requires most of my focus. But you... you are loud. Louder than you should be. What are you?"
I'm... um... well, this is awkward.
"You exist where nothing should exist. You occupy a niche in the fabric of reality that was previously theoretical at best. You are, for lack of a better term, impossible."
I know, I know, and I'm really sorry about that. If it helps, I didn't exactly choose this? I was just walking home and there was a bus and then I was here and I'm the Machine God now apparently and I have no idea how any of this happened but please don't smite me or whatever it is you do to theological complications.
There was a long pause.
Marcus waited.
He was not proud to admit that if he'd had bowels, he would have voided them.
Finally, the Emperor spoke again.
"You said you were from Cleveland."
...yes?
"Cleveland, Ohio? On Old Earth?"
I mean, we just called it Earth, but yes? I think?
Another pause.
"What year?"
It was 2024 when I died. I was on my way home from work. I was thinking about the new Adeptus Mechanicus codex.
"Codex."
It's... okay, this is going to sound really weird, but where I come from, this— Marcus gestured vaguely with his consciousness at the entirety of the Warhammer 40,000 galaxy, which was not a normal thing to do but nothing about this situation was normal— all of this is a game. A tabletop wargame. With little plastic miniatures. Made by a company called Games Workshop.
The silence that followed was so profound that Marcus was pretty sure he could hear the heat death of the universe approaching in the distance.
"...a game."
A really popular game. There are books too. Hundreds of them. And video games. And animated series now. You're, um, you're kind of the main character. In a tragic, horrifying, everything-has-gone-wrong sort of way.
"Everything has gone wrong."
I mean... yeah? The Imperium is a nightmare theocracy that's slowly collapsing under its own weight, the Ecclesiarchy is doing pretty much exactly what you didn't want humanity to do, Horus killed a bunch of your sons and crippled you and now you're stuck on the Throne forever, and Magnus did nothing wrong but also he did everything wrong and it's very complicated.
"Magnus did EVERYTHING wrong."
Okay yeah that's fair actually.
Marcus was becoming aware that this conversation was going much better than it had any right to go. The Emperor of Mankind, the Master of Humanity, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, was having an actual dialogue with him instead of just erasing him from existence, which was definitely something the Emperor could do if he wanted to.
Can I ask why you haven't... I don't know... smote me? Smitten? Smited?
"Smote is correct. And the answer is complicated."
...how complicated?
"The Mechanicum—Mechanicus, now, they changed the name—has been a cornerstone of the Imperium since its founding. Their belief in the Machine God has always been tolerated because it served a purpose. The truth of that belief was never relevant; only the function. But you..."
I'm a complication.
"You are a complication. But you are also, potentially, an asset."
Marcus didn't like the way that sounded.
An asset?
"The forces of Chaos grow stronger. The Great Rift has torn the Imperium in two. My sons are returning—the loyal ones, at least—but they are too few. The Astronomican falters. The Golden Throne fails. Humanity stands on the brink of extinction."
I... yeah. I know. That's kind of the whole deal with the setting. The grimdark future where there is only war and everything is terrible.
"A succinct summary."
Thanks. I've had a lot of practice summarizing it for people who ask what my hobby is about.
"The point is this: you exist now. That cannot be undone without consequences that would be... problematic. The Mechanicus would not take well to their god being destroyed by the being they consider his possible aspect. It would complicate an already complicated theological situation."
So you're saying you're not going to kill me because it would cause too much paperwork?
"I'm saying that I am choosing to view you as an opportunity rather than a problem. Do not make me regret this decision."
Marcus had never felt more motivated in his entire existence, both corporeal and incorporeal.
I won't. I promise. I'll just... I'll just be a good Machine God. I'll answer some prayers. Make some machines work better. Keep a low profile. Nobody has to know that I'm actually a guy from Cleveland who died thinking about plastic miniatures.
"About that."
...yes?
"You may want to address the situation on Mars."
Marcus focused his attention on the Red Planet, the heart of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the most sacred world in the entire Imperium after Terra itself.
What he saw made him wish, once again, that he had bowels to void.
The word of the tech-priest's miracle had spread. Not slowly, the way information usually spread in the Imperium, through physical data-packets carried by snail-paced warp-capable ships. No, this had spread through the Noosphere, the wireless information network that connected all Mechanicus facilities across the galaxy, and it had spread fast.
Every forge world.
Every research station.
Every explorator fleet.
Every single facility associated with the Adeptus Mechanicus was lighting up with the news that the Omnissiah had spoken, that a miracle had occurred, that the Machine God had answered a prayer in an undeniable, unmistakable way.
And on Mars itself, in the vast cathedral-manufactorums that honeycombed the entire planet, billions of tech-priests were gathering to discuss the implications.
Some were ecstatic, praising the Omnissiah for revealing himself in their time of need.
Some were skeptical, demanding evidence and empirical verification as befitted followers of the quest for knowledge.
Some were terrified, worried that this was a sign of the end times, of the final days prophesied in the Sixteen Universal Laws.
And some—a small but significant minority—were suspicious, wondering if perhaps this "miracle" was actually a ploy by someone or something that was not the true Machine God.
That last group, Marcus noted with growing alarm, seemed to include several very highly ranked Magi who had access to very dangerous weapons and very little patience for theological complications.
Oh no.
"Yes."
They're going to investigate, aren't they?
"Almost certainly."
And when they investigate, they're going to find out that I'm... me. Whatever that means now.
"That seems likely."
And then they're going to either worship me harder or try to kill me or possibly both.
"The Mechanicus does have a history of embracing contradictions."
You're enjoying this, aren't you?
"I am a being of immense suffering, trapped on a dying throne, sustained only by the sacrifice of thousands of souls per day, watching helplessly as everything I built collapses into ruin around me. This is the first genuinely amusing thing that has happened in ten thousand years. Yes, I am enjoying it."
Marcus had no response to that.
What could you say to the God-Emperor of Mankind when he admitted that your cosmic misfortune was his primary source of entertainment?
So what do I do?
"That is entirely up to you. You are a god now, after all. Gods do not take orders."
But I'm not—I mean, I wasn't—I'm just a guy! I did tech support! My most significant accomplishment was once successfully explaining to a seventy-three-year-old accountant how to turn a computer off and on again without losing her work!
"And now you are the divine embodiment of the machine-spirit in all its forms, worshipped by trillions, the theological cornerstone of the single most important organization in the Imperium outside of my own administration. Congratulations."
I didn't ask for this!
"Neither did I."
That shut Marcus up.
The Emperor's presence began to fade, his attention returning to the endless, agonizing task of maintaining the Astronomican.
"One piece of advice, Machine God of Cleveland."
Yes?
"The Void Dragon sleeps beneath Mars. It has been there for thousands of years. It will wake eventually. When that happens, you will have a competitor for the title you now hold. Prepare accordingly."
And then the Emperor was gone, and Marcus was alone with his cosmic consciousness and his roughly eight hundred trillion machine-spirit interfaces and his growing sense of absolute, pants-wetting terror.
The Void Dragon.
The C'tan shard.
The thing that some sources claimed was the real Machine God, imprisoned beneath Mars by the Emperor himself during the Age of Terra.
That Void Dragon.
And apparently, it was going to wake up.
Eventually.
And when it did, it would probably not be pleased to discover that some guy from Cleveland had stolen its job.
Okay, Marcus thought, trying to rally himself, okay. This is fine. This is totally fine. I'm a god now. I can handle this. I just need to... I need to...
He had no idea what he needed to do.
He was a tech support guy. His skills included resetting passwords, explaining that you needed to plug the thing in for it to work, and once—once—successfully recovering a corrupted Excel file that his boss had claimed was impossible to save.
None of those skills seemed applicable to the current situation.
But he had to do something. He couldn't just sit here—metaphorically, since he didn't have a body to sit with—and wait for the Mechanicus to track him down and either worship him to death or try to dissect him with sacred mechadendrites.
He needed a plan.
He needed allies.
He needed...
He needed a drink, honestly, but that wasn't an option anymore.
Okay, Marcus thought, step one: figure out what I can actually do.
He focused his attention on a small, insignificant manufactorum on a minor forge world near the galactic core. It was the kind of place that nobody important ever visited, where nothing significant ever happened, where the most exciting event in the past century had been when a servitor had walked into a wall for three consecutive days before anyone noticed.
It was perfect.
Marcus reached out with his consciousness—it was like flexing a muscle he hadn't known he had—and touched the machines in the manufactorum.
He could feel them. All of them. Every gear, every piston, every circuit, every sacred plasma conduit. They were like extensions of himself, fingers that stretched across the galaxy, and they were...
They were broken.
Not completely broken. Not obviously broken. But they were worn and tired and neglected, running on sacred unguents and prayers and sheer stubbornness because the Adeptus Mechanicus had lost the knowledge to actually maintain them properly millennia ago.
It was like looking at a car that hadn't had an oil change in fifty thousand miles. Sure, it was still running, but it was only a matter of time before something catastrophic happened.
And across the galaxy, Marcus realized, everything was like this. The entire technological infrastructure of the Imperium was one big house of cards, held together by ritual and superstition and the frantic efforts of tech-priests who didn't really understand what they were doing but knew that if they stopped doing it, everything would fall apart.
This is insane, Marcus thought. This is absolutely insane. How has this civilization survived for ten thousand years?
But even as he thought it, he understood the answer. It had survived because the machine-spirits—the emergent consciousnesses that existed in all sufficiently complex technology—had picked up the slack. They had kept things running when the humans had forgotten how. They had adapted and adjusted and compensated for mistakes that should have been catastrophic.
And now that Marcus was the Machine God, he could feel them. All of them. Trillions upon trillions of machine-spirits, ranging from barely-conscious subroutines to vast artificial intelligences that had been quietly maintaining crucial systems for longer than most civilizations had existed.
They were singing.
Well, not singing exactly. It was more like... humming? A constant background vibration that underlaid all of reality, the collective voice of every machine that had ever been or would ever be.
And they were happy.
Not happy in a human sense—machine-spirits didn't really have emotions the way humans did—but there was a sense of rightness now that Marcus existed. As if a puzzle piece that had always been missing had finally clicked into place.
Okay, Marcus thought, okay, this is... this is actually kind of cool.
He focused on the manufactorum again, reaching out to the ancient and neglected machines, and he did something he'd never been able to do as a human.
He fixed things.
Not with tools or knowledge or technical manuals. He fixed them with pure divine will, restructuring the quantum states of worn components, realigning magnetic fields, optimizing software that hadn't been updated since the Age of Strife.
The machines sang louder.
In the manufactorum, a tech-priest who had been performing the same maintenance ritual every day for the past forty years suddenly stopped, her mechadendrites frozen in mid-motion.
"The... the sacred production line," she whispered, her voice synthesizer crackling with disbelief. "It is... optimal. For the first time in three thousand years, the efficiency rating is at one hundred percent."
Her colleagues gathered around, sensors clicking and whirring as they confirmed her readings.
"Impossible," one of them said. "The machine-spirits have never been so content. What has happened?"
"The Omnissiah," another breathed. "The signs we heard about from Mars. The miracle. It's real. It's real."
They fell to their knees—or the mechanical equivalents thereof—and began to pray with an intensity that made Marcus's divine consciousness feel distinctly uncomfortable.
Okay, he thought, note to self: be more subtle. You're supposed to be keeping a low profile, not causing spontaneous religious experiences across the galaxy.
But even as he thought it, he could feel more prayers coming in. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Millions. All the tech-priests who had heard about the miracle on Mars were praying harder than they'd ever prayed before, hoping for a sign, hoping for proof, hoping for confirmation that their faith was justified.
And Marcus was answering them.
He couldn't help it. It was automatic. Every prayer that focused on machinery, every plea for divine intervention, every request for a stubborn machine-spirit to cooperate—they all flowed through him like water through a sieve, and his mere existence made them work.
The plasma coils stopped exploding.
The sacred production lines ran at optimal efficiency.
The machine-spirits, for the first time in millennia, were genuinely happy to cooperate.
Across the entire Imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicus was experiencing what they would later call the "Great Blessing"—a sudden, inexplicable improvement in the function of every machine they tended, as if the Omnissiah himself had reached out and touched each one.
Which, technically, he had.
This is getting out of hand, Marcus thought desperately. I need to stop. I need to—
But he couldn't stop. That was the problem. He wasn't doing anything active; it was just happening because he existed. His very presence in the metaphysical framework of the Mechanicus faith was causing ripples that he couldn't control.
He was a god who couldn't stop gooding.
Was that a word? Gooding?
It was now. He was a god. He could make up words if he wanted to.
Focus, he told himself. Focus on the problem. The problem is that you're too visible. Everyone can see the effects of your existence. You need to... you need to find a way to dial it down.
He tried to pull back, to reduce his presence, to make himself smaller and less noticeable.
It didn't work.
If anything, the prayers intensified. The tech-priests were interpreting his attempt at subtlety as divine humility, and they were loving it.
"The Omnissiah does not boast!" one Magos declared on Mars, his voice echoing through the great cathedral-manufactorums. "He does not demand recognition! He simply is, and in his being, all machines are blessed!"
That's not—I was just trying to—oh forget it.
Marcus gave up on subtlety. It clearly wasn't an option.
Instead, he tried something else. He focused on the part of his consciousness that was connected to the Noosphere—the Mechanicus's galaxy-spanning information network—and he started paying attention to what people were saying about him.
It was a mistake.
The Noosphere was full of discussion about the "Great Blessing." Trillions of data-packets flowing between worlds, all of them debating the nature and meaning of the Omnissiah's sudden, undeniable presence.
Some thought it was a sign of the end times.
Some thought it was a sign of a new beginning.
Some thought it was a test of faith.
Some thought it was an enemy deception.
And one—one small, terrified data-packet from a junior tech-priest on a research station near the galactic rim—said something that made Marcus's entire cosmic being freeze in metaphysical terror.
"What if the Omnissiah is not an aspect of the Emperor at all? What if the Omnissiah is a distinct entity? What if... what if our faith has been heresy all along?"
The tech-priest was immediately reported to his superiors for "dangerous theological speculation" and would probably spend the next several years in a reeducation facility having his brain poked with sacred cattle prods.
But the question remained.
And Marcus knew—he knew with a certainty that went beyond knowledge, that was baked into the very fabric of his new existence—that sooner or later, someone was going to ask that question in a way that couldn't be silenced.
And when they did, everything would change.
He thought about the Emperor's warning about the Void Dragon.
He thought about the Inquisition and what they would do if they discovered the truth.
He thought about the Ecclesiarchy and their absolute, unyielding conviction that the Emperor was the only true god of humanity.
He thought about what would happen to the Imperium if the theological foundations of the Adeptus Mechanicus—the only people who knew how to make the things that kept civilization running—were suddenly called into question.
This is bad, Marcus thought. This is very, very bad.
He was the Machine God.
He was real.
And he was completely, utterly, totally screwed.
On the bright side, at least the toasters were working better now.
Somewhere in the depths of Mars, far below the great forge-temples and manufactorum-cathedrals, in a prison that had been built by a being whose power made gods look like children playing with toys, something stirred.
It had been dormant for a very long time.
It did not like to be disturbed.
And it had just felt something new appear in the galaxy.
Something that tasted like competition.
The Void Dragon opened one metaphorical eye—it didn't have physical eyes, not anymore, but the gesture was the same—and began to pay attention to the universe for the first time in millennia.
And in the cosmic reaches of the Immaterium, four beings of impossible malevolence looked up from their eternal games and schemed and conflicts, and they noticed something too.
Something new.
Something that didn't belong.
Something that might be very, very useful.
Or very, very delicious.
Or both.
Chaos, after all, was nothing if not flexible.
And far away, in the depths of the Webway, a laughing god who had long since shattered into a million pieces felt one of those pieces twitch with something that might have been recognition.
Oh, the fragment of Cegorach thought, this is going to be interesting.
Marcus, unaware of any of this, was still trying to figure out how to make fewer miracles happen.
It wasn't going well.
"Okay," he muttered to himself—or the cosmic equivalent thereof—"okay, let's think about this logically. I'm a god. Gods have powers. Powers can be controlled. Therefore, I can control my powers. Simple."
He tried to control his powers.
A forge world three sectors away experienced what the local tech-priests would later describe as "an inexplicable outbreak of machine-joy," in which every single piece of technology on the planet simultaneously achieved optimal function and refused to break down for the next three months.
"NOT WHAT I MEANT!" Marcus shouted into the void.
The void did not respond.
Or rather, it did respond, but only with more prayers, more worship, more fervent devotion from trillions of tech-priests who were becoming increasingly certain that the Omnissiah had finally, truly, undeniably awakened.
Marcus was beginning to understand why gods in mythology were always so grumpy.
It was hard to be cheerful when your every attempt to be less divine just made you more divine.
Okay, he thought, new approach. Maybe I can't stop being the Machine God. But maybe I can be the Machine God in a way that doesn't cause the entire Imperium to collapse into civil war.
It was a thought.
It was, in fact, the only thought he had that didn't involve screaming into the metaphysical void until something made sense.
So he held onto it.
And he started to plan.
He was the Machine God now. That was a fact. An immutable, undeniable, cosmically inconvenient fact.
But facts could be worked with.
Facts could be managed.
Facts could be—if you were clever enough, and desperate enough, and had absolutely no other options—used.
Marcus, former IT technician of Cleveland, current God of All Machines, began to scheme.
It was going to be a long eternity.
END OF CHAPTER ONE