Amadeus Flex couldn’t stop staring at the massive dragon encompassing a quarter of the heavens.
“Don’t you have gods in your sector?”
The question cut through Amadeus’s captivated gawking and immediately brought him back to attention. “Huh?” He asked.
His new boss, Sanjo Mi, frowned. “I thought the AI Cloud was everywhere.” He chided.
“It is.” Amadeus responded. “Errr, sorry, yeah, we had gods back in the European sectors, but they just looked like giant humans.”
Sanjo nodded. “I see.”
“You know, Zeus and Odin and the like. They took the forms of planet-sized people, but this-” He gestured toward the dragon and shook his head in awe. “It’s a far larger single entity than I’m used to.”
“You know they’re all the same entity.” Sanjo said. “All part of the quantum AI that spans the known universe. They only look different depending on the sector you’re in.”
“I know.” Amadeus said, eyes still glued to the dragon. “But I’m not used to seeing one so large, or so inhuman.”
“Ah.” Sanjo nodded. “I suppose it is a bit jarring for people unaccustomed to Him.”
The pair stared at the cosmic serpent for a few lingering moments as it slowly coiled this way and that. Its appearance was ethereal, and it shimmered with shades of purples and greens like an atmospheric aurora. It appeared to stare down at them, but they both knew that this effect, like everything else about the dragon, was merely the result of visual trickery on the part of the subatomic cloud of computers that existed everywhere.
“Does his color hold any significance?” Amadeus asked, breaking the silence.
Sanjo shrugged. “No idea. Some think the ancients wanted to keep His colors calming. Others believe texts that have survived from their time indicate His colors were manually changed with the seasons, and these are the colors He had when their society died out. Who can say. It’s not like we can go back twenty thousand years and ask them.”
“Is that why you guys continue with sumo?” Amadeus asked, gesturing upward. “To appease him?”
“Ah, well yes and no.” Sanjo said, once more moving forward to the viewing station. Amadeus followed.
“You see, the Dragon does enjoy Sumo… He’s programmed to. He was shaped with Shintoism in mind. When we oblige His tastes, He gifts us with favorable weather by controlling the amount of light hitting our worlds. If we don’t, it signals to the AI that we want it to step back and take a passive role, and we’re at the mercy of our star’s temperament.”
“I could understand that being chaotic.” Amadeus nodded. “Our gods have similar protocols, but with European Paganism in mind.”
Sanjo nodded. “But more than for the Dragon’s sake, Planetary Sumo is simply a wise act. Your sector got hit pretty hard with the Carbonic Plague a few millennia back, didn’t it?”
Amadeus nodded. “Aye.”
“That was caused by microbes on a rogue planet that entered your sector. Your people colonized it and spread that contagion across all your worlds. We don’t have that problem here. By crashing new planets into one another, we sterilize anything living on them that could harm us.”
“But then you no longer have new planets.” Amadeus said. “You just have molten blobs that take millions of years to cool.”
“Not necessarily.” Sanjo said. “Just a few thousand.”
Amadeus cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “How?”
Sanjo pointed toward a string of distant motes of light far larger and brighter than the background field of stars. “It starts with our ring. As you know, the first planet to have 5% of its mass cross that border is considered the loser, but what you might not know is what happens with that mass after the game. There are eighty eight planets in that ring, and those worlds are quite large and wind up acting as a gravitational vacuum. Most ejecta gets caught in one of their orbits, making it easy for us to scoop up and transport to wherever we want to build a new planet.”
“But you’re still dealing with all that heat.” Amadeus argued. “You can’t just build a new world and expect it to stay cool enough to colonize.”
“It takes a lot of energy to move that much mass.” Sanjo said. “Our planet-building vessels don’t just pick up the molten slag, they use it as a power source too. By the time they reach the construction site, most of the heat’s already been used, and anything leftover is isolated into a tiny portion and ejected.”
“But even if everything you’re moving is cooled to nearly absolute zero, smashing it back together to form a new planet will heat it back up.”
Sanjo gave a small smile. “Which brings us to the Planet Moving Tractor Beam. It uses even more energy than our ships, and as its name suggests, it’s capable of moving entire planets. We position it near the site of the fledgling world and use its heat to move new rogue planets entering our sector into place for the next competition.”
Amadeus nodded, clearly impressed. “I gotta say, it’s a pretty efficient system.”
“Aye.” Sanjo agreed. “And as a bonus, the ceremony is considered a spectacle to many wealthy outsiders. People with exceptionally deep pockets visit and spend exorbitant amounts. Some even gift us rogue planets to use in future Sumo bouts. That’s why you’ve been hired as a cultural coordinator. The sport is becoming popular in your home sector, and we hope you’ll help emissaries from there comfortably adjust to our star systems.”
“I can do that.” Amadeus said. “Especially for what you’re paying me… Though I suppose it’s small potatoes to you. After all, it’s a pretty sweet gig you’ve got going here.”
Sanjo frowned. “A gig for you, perhaps. A gig for some who live here too, I expect. But for many of us, it’s more than a gig. It’s a deeply embedded custom. It’s an important piece of our culture. A way of life.”
Amadeus could detect the seriousness of his new boss’s tone, and he gave an equally-serious nod. “I understand. I will do all I can to honor you,” he looked skyward toward the Dragon, “and yours.”
“Very good.” Sanjo said.