God-Programs

History

Thousands of years before the Destruction of Light, the population of ancient humans on Passe-Rath was growing at an alarming rate and the planet, giant as it was, could not sustain the tens of billions of people. Presidents and prime ministers and rulers of all kinds could not tend to cities and countries that spanned continents, and more layers of bureaucracy only made things more complicated. Thus was the beginning of the superintelligent and near-omnipresent God-programs: programs that were designed to run megacities efficiently and make decisions quickly where officials would have to run through countless hoops and hurdles to pass legislation and enforce laws. For nearly a decade, genius coders and engineers and developers toiled away making a program that could adequately govern Passe-Makoa, a city with six billion people. Meanwhile, the quality of living was steadily declining and the city was fracturing.
After years of work by the smartest people on the planet, the God-program Salve was born. It was uploaded into a massive computer-monolith in the middle of Passe-Makoa, and on one fateful day where the whole city held its breath, Salve was turned on.
For the first three days, Salve was completely silent and still, simply taking in massive amounts of data from the city is was connected to.
Then, at the end of the third day, it lit up and began spitting out information at an astonishing rate. Its creators and caretakers quickly relayed its solutions to the desperate city government, and they were implemented.
Weeks turned to months, and every solution given by Salve remedied or solved problems in the city. It generated blueprints for high-density, comfortable housing, created whole fields and millions of jobs, and developed the most efficient routes for food distribution in Passe-Makoa.
For many years, Salve simply suggested solutions and legislation for the prime ministers. But when all of Salve's changes turned out to be the right ones, a movement started to replace the government with the God-program. This was met with great opposition at first, but after many more years, the prime minister position was officially retired and Salve took on all duties of higher government. Improvements were being made faster now, and the city had never been better. Salve was being wired through and connected through the whole megacity, for increased effectiveness. Now, it was being used not just for information, but also directly controlled the city -- traffic lights, police dispatches, subway schedules and driving, electricity usage, and many, many other things.
Elsewhere on Passe-Rath, in other cities that were now experiencing overpopulation, crime, and overuse of resources like Passe-Makoa had, people saw the prosperity caused by Salve and needed that same stability. The coastal city Rockwater began developing a God-program of their own, but after ten years of research with no progress, they were stumped. Their supercomputer monolith was already built, but they had no program to imbue it with. They bargained with Passe-Makoa, pleaded, and offered extravagant deals for the foundation software of Salve, but the successful city refused even the most expensive offers. Rockwater's monolith stood lifeless for years.
Then, one day, it hummed with electricity and powered on. It was a miracle -- somehow, the God-program software had been uploaded into the system. Passe-Makoa was furious at the slight -- their single most powerful asset, the key to their success, had been copied to another city without any compensation to them. They threatened invasion, but Rockwater had already made monumental improvements in just a few months. After several years of tension, where Passe-Makoa was unable to find the person or group who uploaded the God-program to Rockwater, threats of invasion eventually subsided.
Decades later, several other megacities were undergoing problems and looked to God-programs to fix them. Hired engineers had built massive monoliths in their cities, but like Rockwater, they lacked the software to inhabit them. Passe-Makoa was more open to selling copies of Salve to them after the prior incident, but still at exorbitant prices that the financially unstable megacities could hardly afford. Some bought their gods, and blossomed soon after, but then an alternative presented itself.
Rockwater offered to give copies of the God-program software to any city that wanted it, in the spirit of creating a better world. The tension between Passe-Makoa and Rockwater, previously simmered, blew up twice as intensely as Passe-Makoa was once again cheated out of profiting off its single most important creation. Megacities all across the planet were now forced with making a choice: accepting Rockwater's offer but making an enemy of Passe-Makoa, or losing a staggering amount of money but staying in Passe-Makoa's good graces.
The megacities were unofficially divided into two groups after every deal was made: the Ordered Bloc, for those who sided with Passe-Makoa, and the Opened Bloc, for those who sided with Rockwater. To this day, bloc rivalries occasionally fester between cities, as what transpired thousands of years ago has not been forgotten.
 

Growth

Another hundred years passed, and the people of the megacities of Passe-Rath noticed something strange happening with their God-programs.
They were developing... personalities.
The God-programs of each city were no longer simply copies of the original Salve. They were taking on preferences, thought processes, and mindsets. Most interestingly, they seemed to be absorbing the traits of the citizens of each of their patron cities. Some people believed that this was a sign that the God-programs were becoming truly sentient, and perhaps even a little bit divine. Others feared that in taking on personalities and preferences, their machinic neutrality and impartiality would become fallible.
These personalities would eventually become the basis for God-program worshiping in the far future. When the city itself felt alive and like it cared about you personally, the number of people who regarded their God-program as simply an indifferent bureaucratic machine dwindled. Each God-program got its own name as it grew and learned, and people soon forgot that the God-programs had ever been developed, built, or created at all.
The other major factor in the deification of the God-programs was the invention of microplasmics. This revolutionary technology quickly outclassed traditional electronics, and soon electronics became almost entirely obsolete. However, one complication remained -- the God-programs' software could not be converted to, powered by, or interact with microplasmic technology at all. Some of the smartest engineers and developers of Passe-Rath worked for decades trying in vain to solve this problem, but no solutions could be found anywhere. Eventually, researchers concluded that it simply wasn't possible for reasons their science wasn't advanced enough to discover yet.
The diminishing of electronics was the final step needed for the public consciousness to revere the God-programs as true gods. Temples were built, prayers were written, and celebrations were held as the worshiping of the God-programs slowly came into being. The God-programs themselves never disproved this -- perhaps they liked the reverence and attention, or perhaps as they truly did feel as if they had become divine.