The power of the human soul

"Oh yes, the complex is entirely self-sufficient. Food, water treatment, electricity, we handle it all ourselves. Right here in this very building, as a matter of fact"

"Is that so? How exactly do you manage that?"

"Well, we harness the power of the human soul.This structure is the result of years of hard work, of research, of trial and error. I've lost track of how many designs I tried until I settled on this one, but it's paid off, let me tell you. It's the largest, most efficient soul distillery in the world!"

"Soul... distillery?"

"Of course, the process has little to do with distillation in the technical sense, but the name has stuck. That large tower in the middle houses an aether vortex of billions of souls, which are progressively run through a series of subsystems which ultimately provide all we need to subsist."

"What?! How?"

"The main product of the process is a sort of nutritious sludge, obtained from the deepest essence of the souls. The necessary steps are mostly a series of filters inscribed in runes of ancient power and a centrifuge and some, um, other steps, but anyway, in the end we get our main food source. It has some wonderful properties, it's healthy, and filling, and has some curious side-effects at the, uh, higher concentrations some of us take"

"I'm sorry, you're telling me you eat souls-"

"Not just eat, no, like I said earlier, the sludge's just one of the products of the system. The vortex functions as a turbine, too, that's how we power the complex, and there are other byproducts of the refining of the soul we take advantage of for various purposes. Fertilizers for what little farming we do, building materials, disinfectants, some other things..."

"But, I... you mentioned billions of souls, right? How does that even work, where do the souls come from?"

"Oh, that was my biggest problem in the early stages. My first soul processing system was designed for harvesting them one at a time, can you believe that? Sure, it worked as a proof-of-concept and for the early research, but if I wanted any significant volume? The logistics issues alone gave me nightmares. Fortunately I didn't give up, I had many other ideas. The aether vortex, for example! In the initial designs, it was supposed to suck in all the recently deceased souls floating around, which would in turn power up the vortex even more, so it would cover a wider area, and so on and so forth."

"In the initial designs."

"Right. Eventually it became apparent that there simply wasn't anywhere on the planet with enough population density to power the system like that, and the problems with even getting it running where just too many. Frankly, the sheer numbers involved would have doomed any scheme I or anyone else tried. A single soul produces at best a few millilitres of anything useful, and I simply didn't have a large enough source available. That is, until I thought of wanking"

"...come again?"

"Wanking. Turns out sperm have souls, too! Well, half-souls, really, the other half is in the ovum. Not terribly well developed, either, only a fraction as juicy as that of a developed human being, but at a couple hundred million per ejaculation, it doesn't really matter. I could power the entire thing myself if necessary!"

"..."

"I don't, if that's what you're wondering. No, most of the male elders do their part. We engage in certain practices that, uh, ensure we have the highest quality spiritual children, so to speak"

"So... the basis of the entire community... is the semen of the elders..."

"The condensed essence of the proto-souls contained in the semen of the elders, yes."

"You know, when I write about this, I'm gonna tell them 'the power of the human soul' is a metaphor for solidarity and working as a group"

"Seems like it would be wise."



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Sometimes I just need to write things.