Rex Salazar: The Omnissiah Chapter 01 (Early Preview) (Patreon)

Chapter 01: He is the Omnissiah!

Rex woke up with a dull ache in his head, blinking away the fog of unfamiliar surroundings. The air felt strange. He pushed himself up, realizing he lay on cold metal ground. He’d never smelled anything quite like it, and wherever he was, it sure wasn’t like any city he’d seen before.

Taking in his surroundings, he realized he was in a dimly lit alleyway made entirely of metal, filled with piping and strange conduits running along every surface. 

This was not Providence, and definitely not anywhere he’d seen on Earth. As his senses sharpened, he realized he was in the middle of a city, and the rust-red skies over his head told him one thing: he was not in America.

He stood and, seeing no immediate danger, ventured out onto the main path. He hoped to find someone who could tell him where he’d landed.

As he stepped out, he was greeted by a larger view of the city. The architecture seemed to have a steampunk aesthetic with its intricate clockwork-like designs, heavy use of gears.

Some of the People—or what looked like people— were dressed in robes of red and gold, some with multiple mechanical limbs and faces obscured by strange apparatuses. They murmured to each other in bursts of static and clicks, a strange language that Rex could barely process. Still, his nanites attempted to interpret the binary-like snippets of language. 

As he walked, a few robed figures glanced his way, their mechanical eyes scanning him curiously. A few of the figures glanced in his direction, but seeing nothing overtly hostile about him, most dismissed him with an indifference

Rex wandered further. Eventually, he noticed a gathering of robed figures surrounding a large transport vehicle. Rex blinked at the sight, doing a double-take as he realized they were praying—to the vehicle’s thrusters, of all things. They held candles and vials of oil, which they carefully poured into small recesses on the metal exterior, as though anointing it.

Rex tilted his head. “Are they…praying to the engine?”

Rex’s brow furrowed, but he watched as one of the Tech-Priests, dressed in elaborate robes and trailing small metallic sensors, approached the vehicle’s engine. 

One of the priests stepped forward, poking around the thruster with a spanner in hand. He twisted a bolt, and suddenly, the entire engine began to sputter and emit thick black smoke. Sparks danced along the machinery, and a high-pitched whine grew from within the engine.

“Oh, great.” Rex could tell things were about to go south fast. Without hesitation, he dashed forward, summoning his Block Party as he ran. His arms transformed, covered in navy-blue metallic gauntlets. He slammed his fists together, creating a dome of highly energized particles around himself and the tech-priests just as the thruster erupted in a blinding burst of plasma.

The dome of highly energized atoms absorbed the blast, and when the smoke cleared, the Tech-Priests stared at him, their mechanical eyes widened in unison. Rex lowered the shield and let the gauntlets dissipate as he looked around at the stunned priests. Rex turned to one of the robed figures who had been closest to the explosion. 

The man—if he could even be called that, given the tubes and metal augmentations coming out of his face—looked utterly stunned.

Rex, with a casual grin, patted the figure on the shoulder. “You good there?” 

The tech-priest didn’t respond immediately. Something strange happened as his hand made contact. 

Blue circuitry patterns flared across Rex’s skin, glowing with the cables and implants in the Tech-Priest’s body. Rex felt a strange tingling as his nanites began interfacing with the tech-priest’s systems, sparking a link between them.

Immediately, his nanites seamlessly translated his words into Lingua-technis.

The priest’s voice came out in the same binary-like tone, stuttering but filled with awe that this seemingly organic human could communicate in their holy tongue. “Who…who are you?”

To his surprise, Rex understood it perfectly. “I’m, uh…Rex Salazar,” he answered, stumbling over his own words. “Just, you know, passing through." Rex turned back to the damaged hover transport, now fully aware of the tense silence around him. "Let me help you guys out." The robed figures were watching his every move. Rex figured he needed to make a gesture of goodwill—if these people thought he was some kind of threat, things might get messy. “Alright,” Rex muttered to himself, rolling his shoulders. “Let’s see what I can do.”

He touched the vehicle's scorched hull, and his nanites sprang to life. Immediately, his mind was flooded with information about the transport. The engine was fusion-powered, and the nanites eagerly translated its structure and function into something he could understand. Broken metal sections started to liquefy and fuse back together, wires reconnected and aligned themselves, and the engine's warped components straightened into perfect form. Rex optimized the connections as he worked, almost instinctively improving its efficiency far beyond its original design.

Finally, his nanites sent a power surge into the system, jumpstarting the engine. The transport floated back off the ground with a smooth hum.. Rex stepped back and wiped his hands, admiring his handiwork.

“Good as new.” He flashed a grin as he turned to face the group. He hoped that fixing their vehicle might help smooth things over, maybe even earn him a chance to figure out where exactly he was and how to get back to… wherever he came from. “So, uh, now that that’s sorted, anyone wanna explain where I—”

The same tech-priest from before prostrated himself. "It is true! I could feel it from his very touch! He commands and communes with the machine spirits. He appears as man, but is the purest synthesis of man and machine! He has risen!"

One by one, the robed figures around him dropped to their knees. Their heads bowed, their hands raised in reverence, and the static-filled whispers from before swelled into a strange, melodic chant. Some clutched sacred-looking tools and devices, holding them like relics. Others placed their hands on the ground or pressed their foreheads to the floor.

“THE OMNISSIAH LIVES!”

Rex blinked, holding up his hands. “Whoa, hold on! I’m not—what’s an Omnissiah?!”

The chanting only grew louder. They swarmed closer. One of the Tech-Priests stepped forward. “You have restored the sacred machine… perfected its form. Only the Omnissiah can perform such miracles! Praise be!”

“Miracles? No, no, it’s just—”

"Hail the Omnissiah! He is the God in the Machine, the Source of All Knowledge."

"The source of all— Wait!"

Another voice rose from the crowd. “The Omnissiah has blessed us with his presence! He walks among us, flesh and machine united!”

"He bears the colors of the Holy Order!"

Rex looked down at his jacked and compared the red and orange to their robes. "Oh... "

"Even now, he still speaks the Holy Tongue!"

Indeed, Rex's nanites continued to communicate with the people around him in their native language. After connecting with the cybernetics of the Tech Priests, the nanites even began to feel out the Noosphere.

Rex stepped back, hands raised in surrender. “Okay, cool that you guys are happy, but I think there’s been a mix-up.”

The chanting continued unabated with a thunderous harmony of praise.

“THE OMNISSIAH LIVES!”

"Inform the Fabricator-General and the Archmagos. Our savior has descended onto us!"

'This is gonna be one of those days, isn’t it?' Rex breathed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“HE IS THE OMNISSIAH!”