P. Duck

“Yes, yes. Everybody wants something. I’m glad my job’s gotten less demanding, in this modern age. Don’t have to tolerate as many prayers. Though, some gods see that as a negative. But I see prayers as giving man false power. If you want to empower a human—to give him real potential—you teach him the Arts. You give him power he can control. Like Alchemy. People’ve forgotten my hand in Alchemy. Now they always relate me to volcanos and blacksmiths. I’m more.” He took the towels from Dorian, to toss them. “Am I not an Arch-chemic, Dori?”
― B.L.A., The Automation

“We thought Alpha had been extinguished when the soul-flame of the temple girl died. They were bound. They were supposed to be bound. In most ways they were. But when the temple girl’s flame was blown out…the flame of Alpha’s wasn’t.”

Maurice smoothed down his frazzled mustache. “Zee girl is dead, Gwen. So is
Alpha. Thousands of years have passed. A soul needs a body. A vessel. Hers died. End uv story.”
― B.L.A., The Pre-programming

“Maud waved a hand. ‘Take Prometheus, for example. His limited-yet-significant role in man’s creation story begins with clay—no matter if it was the Neanderthal, Denisovan, or Homo Sapien creation. Whatever. He shaped “man” from the ground—a clod of dirt, as the myth goes. Long story short, from dirt man was made and to dirt he shall
return. The god that created man was part of the capital-G God. The gods make up God—all that crap.”
― B.L.A., The Automation

“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses