After the menu adjusted itself to match Alex's intellectual abilities, he (feeling slightly insulted but mostly overjoyed) read through it once again. There were far fewer settings now, only twenty. What's more, some of them were grayed out, indicating they were currently locked. For example:
[Energy Editor] — unlocked upon reaching Manager Level 6.
Something to look forward to, Alex thought. He then began exploring other tools, such as [Organism Creator]. After briefly skimming through all of them, he once again launched [Landscape Creator] and, after adjusting a few settings, ran his finger over the glowing word "Create".
The moment he did so, silver lines flared across the floor. They traced a square in the center of the black space, five steps long and five steps wide. Within its borders, tiny silver points began to shimmer like dancing stars.
Alex watched them with great attention, a mixture of fascination and excitement brewing inside him. After a minute, the shining stars began to fade into countless specks of dust that gradually formed a smooth, earthy surface. It was very small, about the size of a kitchen table, and yet it was an entire world.
Alex's eyes shone like those of a sculptor gazing at a flawless block of marble and priceless tools gleaming at the side. No artist could resist such temptation, and so he immediately began shaping his creation.
First he drew a sea.
Then an island.
Then a volcano on the island.
Then a cave leading into the depths of the volcano, and that was it. His own "Mount Doom" was ready.
Alex immediately imagined countless stories that could happen in that place. The thought fueled his creativity even further, and he promptly resumed his work, drawing rivers, lakes, and mountains.
Forty minutes later, he took a short break, went to the kitchen, and made himself a cup of coffee. Alex drank about half of it, set the mug down on the wooden attic planks—carefully, so as not to crush a spider that was sitting nearby—and stepped back into the dark space within the plate.
He didn't continue working on his world; instead, he created another one, which he intended to use to accomplish his mission.
Alex shaped it into a small water reservoir resembling an aquarium, with a thin layer of sand on the bottom.
Since life on Earth began in the oceans, water seemed to be the most natural place to create it. Nature is prone to choose the path of least resistance, after all.
Thinking along those lines, Alex opened [Organism Editor] and suddenly felt a wave of hesitation. It was inevitable; after all, he was about to create a living being—something countless works of fiction had warned against.
It took him some time to overcome the natural fear this idea instilled in most men and to get down to work. For now, he didn't need to create anything complex or intelligent, so it was unlikely that his first attempt would turn into a smoking pile of meat begging him to kill it.
Still, this time Alex was far more cautious than when he had simply been shaping a world. He spent about twenty minutes thinking it through, planning what exactly he intended to do before he finally began adjusting the various settings.
What kind of skin would this creature have? Would it have eyes? A skeleton? How would it breathe? Would it need oxygen at all? What would it eat? And how would it reproduce?
As he worked through the settings, Alex stumbled upon a variable he had no idea how to handle:
[Evolution speed: 0.00]
According to the Manual, evolution allowed an organism to adapt to a wide range of environments. It also made the creature more resilient, so even if Alex made a mistake during the creation process, evolution could compensate for it.
It was undeniably useful, but the Manual was frustratingly vague, giving no examples of what different values would actually do.
Alex hesitated for a while before finally setting [Evolution Speed] to 3.00.
Then he pressed "Create", and that was it.
Once again, a star appeared before him, only this time it wasn't silver but green, like an emerald. It shimmered for about a minute before slowly taking shape in the water…