I feel it. The bustle of people walking down the streets. The flow of currency as it passes through hands. The news as it spread through the people. I feel it. Each brick placed in the wall of a new building. Every heart and set of initials scratched into a tree. Each drop of paint sprayed onto a wall in the dead of night. I hear it. A whispered prayer in the dark from a scared child. A yell of rage and pain and sadness in the lonely home of an office worker. A whispered promise from the lips of someone who doesn't mean it. Nothing escapes me. Nothing is beyond me. The concrete is my flesh, the people are my blood, the money is my breath. I know when the young girl who just left school drops the public facade of joy and happiness, I feel it when the blood of a victim falls onto the floor, I smell it when a barista burns a cup of coffee. Each and every single thing that happens within the city is knowledge that I possess. They built me, then they made me, then they prayed to me, and in return for making me their god, I protect them. I give the girl a blossoming flower to ease her mind. I ring the emergency department before the murder even happened. I turn off the espresso machine before the cup is ruined. They pray to me, and I answer. Sometimes, they throw massive parades in my favor, marching down the street and celebrating my existence, the existence that they made and propped up with the highest honors. Sometimes, they even visit me, asking for advice or wealth or forgiveness. To them, I am everything. To me, they are a prison.
I know everything that occurs within the bounds of this city. That is where my limit ends. I cannot see past its walls, beyond the city limits, down the tracks of the trains that leave out of the city. In exchange, I am nearly limitless. I know everything that occurs within its bounds, everything. Sometimes, it's too much. They plead, they beg, they pray, they ask and demand and cry and celebrate and never think to wonder what it is I feel. Why would they? They built me, then they made me, then they worshiped me. They needed someone to watch over the city, and thus I was conceived. They wanted a protector, and thus I was born. They craved a god, and thus I was chosen. They did this, and thus, I cannot leave them. I hear about these 'forests.' A place where grass and trees grow so thick they block out the sun, where not a single bit of steel can be found. I hear of mountains, these great thing so large and massive they affect the weather itself. I hear of the ocean, this enormous body of water, impossibly vast and deep. I hear of it, I know about it, and yet I will never see it myself.
Once, their highest of priests asked how best to please the people. I know the movement of emotions, the places where anger burns and love soothes, where greed swells and kindness blossoms, I know definitively what drives these emotions, I know the economics of the issues and how to fix them. Just that once, I ignored the right solution. I let myself have something, and told the priest a forest was needed. Right at the heart of the city, a vast park replete with trees. The priest did not question it. They never question me. When it was done, I felt it. The sway of the trees within me, the roots digging into the earth, the flow of nutrients through the trunk and into the leaves, of every tree in the park. It did little to help the people, but it helped me. I finally had the tiniest glimpse of what lay beyond my borders, and I was... Happy. Perhaps they felt it through me. It was not the answer to the problem, but it fixed the issue anyways. The people were satisfied, they frolicked through the park and enjoyed breathing in the air.
It was not enough. Such a small section of the city dedicated to this forest, and yet it was not enough. Soon I desired more. I wished to see everything that I could not see, and this desire festooned within me like a cancerous lump. I grew petty, agitated, and perhaps the city felt that too. They too became restless. Tensions grew high. The priests came again, and begged for an answer, not knowing what had caused it. I knew. I knew full well what the answer was.
Expand.
Grow.
If I could not leave this prison they made for me, I would make them make the prison larger. I will see what wonders of the world I am forbidden from seeing. I told the priests what they must do. Level the walls that protected them for so long, allow the city to bleed further into the wilderness. More space is needed, more buildings are needed, but they must be done so in a way that I could see around and through them, see what it was they were built on top of. I guided them, set myself into the hearts of the people, and made them think this was right. It was right. I had deemed it so, and because I am the god they wanted me to be, it must be right.
The city set to work. Industry spiked. Jobs were created, the people clamored for more room and more space and so they knocked the walls down and built more and more of me, and I felt my knowledge increasing. I did not need to ask. I simply set the ideas in their hearts, and then when they asked for guidance, I told them what they wanted to hear, what I wanted them to want to hear. In only a matter of time, they ate all the resources they could, expanding at an ever increasing pace, consuming all around them. They. Me. I ate all the resources I could, I expanded faster and faster, growing and swelling. I conquered mountains, I dominated the sea, I ruled over forests. I grew and I grew, steadily seeing everything I wished to see bit by bit, as the city grew larger and larger. When doubts arose, when hunger proliferated, when the populations swelled, I pacified them, fed them, housed them, and made them continue. After all, they are me, I am them, and nothing is clearer than that. If I am to stay confined to the city, I will make all the city, and I will be all and know all and rule all. Nothing will escape me. Nothing will be unknown to me, and when this world has run out of places for me to gorge myself upon, I will turn my face skyward and expand further, until I have reached other worlds.
I will know all. They made me, they are me, and I will grow and grow until this prison stops feeling like a prison, and they will be happy because I will be happy. Until then, I must grow, they must expand, I must feel every shovel that breaks new ground and every law declaring more territory and every new bit of infrastructure. I must grow. I cannot stay confined. If I cannot escape, I will grow.
Man I feel like I kind of lost the thread a bit towards the end. Hopefully the ending feels satisfying enough.