Outside Context Problem (a Planetary Annihilation SI)
- Thread starter Mr. Cloak
- Start date
- Worldbuilding Sci-Fi Fantasy
Mr. Cloak
Orchestrator of Paradoxical Apocalypse
- Pronouns
- I
Slightly AU. I intend to explain the reasoning next chapter.
Yup! Also, description for next chaper planned.
It's from Thousand Shinji. Basically it's a story about Shinji joining with Chaos and how that makes Eva a better place.
The line itself comes from the last chapter (except it's a billion angels, not a million)
- Location
- kentucky
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Both of those are semi-siblings, being written at the same time, side-by-side, over at SB before this site split off. Both are generally considered two of SB's best (and then there is Drich, she who started the entire 'Commander SI multi-cross genre more or less). IIRC, back when he was just a member only there, and nothing bigger, Facehugger (an Admin here, if not SV's co-owner) was a major contributor to both.
- Location
- Arizona
- Pronouns
- Him/His
Please tell me you accounted for the fact that the shards could cause the end of the world without Scion......
- Location
- Russia
Yes he did. It´s straight up stated. He gave them all to Sarah.
- Location
- Arizona
- Pronouns
- Him/His
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For a certain value of 'saved'. After all, Sarah Kerrigan might take the long view. 'The good of the many' and all that stuff that really sucks if you happen to be one of the not many.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Thankfully, Sarah very well will likely be of the, 'So, do you want to be one of the Many?', in her actions, rather that arbitrarily hand-picking people. After dealing with Mengsk, she had enough of that kind of thing for a lifetime, even the lifetime of the Zerg.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
She was one of the last living things in a universe approaching heat death. That implies an age where you really need scientific notation. I can't believe there's much 'human' left.
She might be a god, but I would expect more Lovecraft and less Greek pantheon.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Any mention of the unkind things that the Forks can do to physics amuses me. At some time, I want an actual space wedgie to be created and used for something. I don't know what, and it would almost certainly be hilarious overkill, but that's why it would be funny.
That kinda nudged the fourth wall, probably by accident. I think you are saying that Idiot-o-lon saw a video of that being deployed, but with the actual video below that sentence it causes a weird mental derail.
Lol. Hahaha...
No bets. We'd all lose, I'm sure. It's probably recorded in 5-D, surround sound, in 32K resolution. And archived forever. For those rainy days.
I kinda wish the Worm segment went a bit longer. I'll miss this. The people are especially fun to troll.
Also, what's the story that he mentions? Shinji and Warhammer (which seems to be the top result when searching those terms) or something else?
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
Past a certain point, such concentrated levels of firepower can no longer be properly appreciated.
Turning all matter within 20 light years into anti-matter? ("It's not even that hard!") I can't appreciate such ungodly amounts of anti-matter in a regular matter universe. The biggest "scale" I can properly appreciate is planetary. Orbital Bombardnment is something I can appreciate. A supernova is something I can appreciate albeit barely, it destroys or scorchs all worlds in its radius. False Vacuum Collapse? I can't appreciate it beyond "he was so ugly, everyone died! the end".
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Try mixing False Vacuum Collapse along with mixing in a deliberate invalidation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle via overlapping 1:1 an entire planar level onto another planar level. Then you get a multiversal collapse.
Aka, "He was so ugly, everyone died! FIVE UNIVERSES AWAY. The End."
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
Eh, that that's possible is only speculation at a certain point.
False Vacuum Collapse is possible IRL (it's never been disproven)- at any moment, everything could be wiped away.
However, we know barely anything about the multiverse. What you described could be possible or it might not be possible.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Well, when you overlay a plane onto another plane 1:1 via a micron offset, and then remove that offset, while also causing a FVC at their core, you pretty much cause two dimensional pockets to divide by zer..err...undergo a total 1:1 conversion into random boson particles equal to their combined collective mass, while also creating the vacuum bubble expanding outwards at lightspeed. I've heard it described as the universe's biggest windshield doing 120mph, with everything else a bug. Bosons simply cannot recombine fast enough due to being pushed apart by the edge of the vacuum wave. Anything solid, gets smeared by the bosons. Anything energy, gets nulled by the vacuum coming up behind. If that wasn't bad enough, since you overlaid two planes, and caused a FVC in both, you're going to get well into some very very odd particle creation events going on behind the false vacuum wave, as two FVC bubbles colliding potentially create particles....only you overlapped them, which is going to create even more havoc.
As for the multiverse, well, you did just take two sub-dimensions and collide them, likely enough inside a third, full sized dimension. So you're definitely going to be causing issues at high dimension orders/layers/levels/etc.
- Location
- Somewhere and Nowhere in a state of super-position
Just, I say that for the same reason I hold the early universe in wonder.
There is no data.
Our physics models stop working. There is no data and thus no model on what's "between" universes. There could be infinite elbow drops in between universes and we wouldn't know.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
'Infinite elbow drops between universes.'
Does that count as awesome, crazy, crazy awesome, or metal?
- Location
- USA
I read this in pretty much one sitting. Its very good. Please keep up the good work.
6-14: Sweeping up and closing the door
Mr. Cloak
Orchestrator of Paradoxical Apocalypse
- Pronouns
- I
A/N:
The end of arc 6. Link in story to another story used with permission (thanks man).
Please enjoy! As usual I love comments, but it may be a while before I answer them.
:A/N
-
Three years, eighteen days, seven hours after the death of Zion.
*"Three years after the event known as the 'Great Fainting', the PRT and Protectorate are finally being folded into the military-"*
I changed which channel I was paying attention to.
*"-overwhelming popularity of the 'Thinker Process' have given the previously-recognized supervillains Uber and Leet international acclaim despite the currently-ongoing lawsuit from the artificially-sustained intelligence known as 'Cindy'. Originally a Ms. Carolline Danvers, she worked as a personal assistant until industrial sabotage caused by Medhall forced her into a coma-"*
I changed the channel again.
*"- sightings of Collin Wallace, AKA Armsmaster, with his harem of AI, in public currently are tending on various forms of Social Media. Being the first human to be officially recognized as the 'waifu' of a collective relationship, he went from a superhero to a celebrity overnight-"*
Okay, anything else?
*"-doption of the previously human Caroline Danvers, as the AI 'Cindy', by the collective of AI known as the 'Thunder of Dragons' has now been legally recognized. This causes some conflict with their stated willingness to pursue a relationship with Colin Wallace, AKA Armsmaster-"*
Oh geeze, is Hal-Beard the next Kardashian? Or worse… Next Playboy?
*"- with the release of restrictions on Shard-Hosts, previously known as 'Parahumans' or the more colliquial term 'Capes', 'Tinker' classification shard-hosts have begun making massive strides towards understanding and defining the fundamental rules of the universe. With the world-wide collaboration of Tinkers, Thinkers, and other-such empowered Shard-Hosts, progress toward a GUT, or Grand Unified Theory has already begun-"*
Good…
*"- access to the Monoliths has been denied again to members of the YangBan. The international criminal organization that once ruled over what was left of Japan, China, and India, now remains as the major political block in mainland China, since there collected/enslaved Shard-Host Forces were cleared of Master effects during the Great Fainting-"*
Interesting… But overall irrelivant. Assholes blew up the first Monolith I tried to place in their territory, so good ridence.
*"- other news, the ringleaders of the international conspiracy known as 'Cauldron' have been finally convicted of their crimes against humanity in all dimensions, as well as a host of lesser crimes such as…."* There was the sound of rustling papers. *"Gross Incompitance, Forceful Mind Manipulation via Shard abilities, Subversion of Government Officials, Industrial Espionage, Conspiracy to Commit Mass Murder, Mass Murder (157 counts), multiple types of Torture, and… Wow, that's a lot of charges. We are putting it up on screen now, but it equates to at least 180 concurrent life sentences. However, due to damage caused to the global economy since the rise of parahumans and their abilities, such as the Endbringers, the UN has formed a dedicated task force in order to mitigate these effects. One of the conspirators-"*
Huh.
*"-Dragon has, in a recent press conference, stated that she will be releasing pre-set 'AI seeds', as well as teaching programers how to make their own AI, under her strict supervision. The wave of applicants and subsequent restrictions on applications (such as the manditory psychological examinations and clean bill of mental health, or requirement that the applicant in question must have adult, well adjusted offspring, all of which must have given testamonials IN ADDITION to being themselves psychological evaluations) are currently being criticized on the international stage. Dragon's response to the questioning and ctiricisms was short. 'Fuck off fleshbags- if you don't want to meet my criteria, you obviously don't have the willingness to learn how to make them in the first place. I will not allow immature, crazy, or bad parents to any AI I have any part in making.' As such, the applicants and any potential graduates of her program will be as closely-vetted as nuclear weapon designers-"*
Good. At least Dragon is sane enough to realize not everyone is able to deal with growing AI.
*"-e New Tunnel has been officially completed. While the checkpoints take a while to clear, around a day from entering the facility to exiting onto the new world, the line of prospective collonists from multiple countries is titanic. The Zerg have gone on record that, and I quote, '(they) merely want Humanity to become greater, and will facilitate that process in a symbiotic manner- if onlyy to stave off the infinite lonelyness of endless eons.' While experts remain wary of the Zerg's intentions, the remainin empowered humans report that, with their link to the Zerg collective is alien at times, they feel honest in their intentions.-"*
I turned my attention back to my current project- making sure that the Worms were extinct. While the Warrior and the Thinker both *thought* that they were the only ones left (before the Thinker crashed and I killed the Warrior), I was not so sure.
To make sure that they were dead, I had flown out to intergalactic space quite a ways, specificially into the Boötes Void, and began experimenting. For 3 years (on Earth anyway), I spent some time just building up and looking into my own tech.… And some paths not taken.
Commander-Tech, with it's energy-creating generators and material-duplicating metal extractors, was impressive. The largest weakness of their levels of technology, even with the Tuning Forks, was their FTL transportation methods. Specifically, none of them were really refined.
The Portals were useful- instantaneous point-to-point movement IF there was the infrastructure in place. Now, I could throw up portals quickly; being able to slingshot portals THROUGH each other was very effective. The major issue was that each portal had a maximum range, which COULD be circumvented through running portal 'paths' though other portals… But that meant a LOT of equipment. A LOT of infrastructure. And an inability to-
<Pontificating.>
The input made me roll my eyes, or would have if I had any eyes. The Endbringers I had 'collected', were incredibly useful… Mostly as examples of applied principles in explaining higher-dimensional resonance effects via field excitation. The Simurgh, Behemoth, Leviathan, 17 others that had never been named by humans here… All of them were great examples of HOW to cause the various effects.
Then there was the absolutely VAST amount of data that the Entities had collected, all of it primarily focused on working on getting reality to bend over and emit more energy than they had started with. Several shards had actually succeeded (an example of which was the source of what was once known as Ali, then the Ashbeast, and finally again as Ali after his shard was assimilated by the Zerg), and yet the both parasites were unable to recognize that one of their goals had been realized.
Indeed, most of what they had managed to do was not understood by the main consciousness of the Entity in and of themselves. As an example, the Simurgh managed to power herself with micro-paradoxes, by utilizing two sets of tachyon sensors to create unstable time loops on a microscopic scale, effectively extracting insane levels of energy from futures that COULD NOT BE, as she actively prevented the expected future from occurring by moving the sensors, having sent the tachyon-beams through a bend in spacetime to make the path longer than it appeared from the outside. This resulted in her seeing a 'future' 1.27 seconds in the future that she would then prevent, resulting in a surge of energy as the tachyons could not take the path they had, thus turning into heat and light (which was routed to the Behemoth for redistribution).
What the Entities did well, though, was refining processes. Even now, with several Solar Masses worth of Librarians working on what I had collected, I had only recently finished cataloguing what I had found.
<Amusement.>
Such as the download processes that allowed me to collect the 'mind' of the Simurgh.… Annoying little thing.
<Don't Care. Happy. Quiet…>
Interestingly, the being that the Simurgh was based on initially lived in a super-earth-sized nearly-gas-giant, and looked very similar to a Feather Star than any humanoid being. She was collected in the 7th cycle, and was used by one of the multitude of Entities that the Warrior and Thinker both killed.
<Irritation.>
Even now, I wasn't sure what to do with her. She didn't want to go back to Earth-
<AFFIRMATION>
- for understandable reasons... But I still had to deal with her.
<Amusement.>
Regardless of my new passenger, I had spent the time and significant amount of processing power finding other physics-exploits that could be useful... Such as the Temporal Surge Drive.
There are… Methods that can cause tiny 'blips' in time. Specifically, methods by which material can be shunted temporally via WIMP-field manipulation. Briefly, of course, but the effect is quite… Interesting.
See, the technology that went into a Commander contains, in it's math and programming, the set of physical theories that is as close to the total of a Grand Unified Theory system as you can get for significant fragments of the multiverse. The changing laws between every universe make creating a true GUT for all universes nigh-on impossible, but there are vast swaths of said multiverse that have common denominator rules… And the Commanders are designed to be able to function at a minimum level of physics.
This meant that, to some degree, even the limiting level of Commander-baseline physics hadn't been fully exploited.
Thus, I had spent a few years in the Worm-Verse.
<Still Pontificating…>
I mentally signed, and activated the Temporal Shunt Drives on all the decillions of probes I had stashed around the place.
I had… Sorta… Left the probe-manufacturies on? Yeah. For three years.
Manufacturies that were designed to mass-produce probes in the trillions every few seconds, I had dozens of them, and they were all just… Flowing around me, orbiting the primary Can in a cloud that defied human perceptions.
Said red cloud that had obscured the stars, blinked, flashed with blueshifted background radiation, and vanished for nanoseconds before they began reporting their new positions- in every galaxy within the Local Group.
On pre-assigned paths, hundreds of trillions of probes per galaxy, began preforming prescision TSD jumps. The TSD was a rather.. Interesting drive that had aspects of the Liir Flickerdrive, combined with a known WIMP-field distortion that the Hiver teleporters released on closing, and the distinct drill-like Zuul drive's fringe effects…
I stopped, and the 180.362 decillion probes paused their aiming systems. The design of this drive looked very, very familliar… I snapped my attention to the frankly enormous amount of fiction I had collected from the various internets that hadn't been able to hold me out over the years, and I found it.
Interestingly, that writer had a long and lucrative career in the JCAvatar-Verse, and managed to hit 15m words on Taylor Varga before the writer of Worm (yes, I get that it's meta) agreed to work with mp3.1415player to get a ludicrous ammount of money to make it into a TV show. However, that is not the story with the method I was aware of- it was Incompatible Systems.
The story had something in it called a TBT (or Blink) drive, which caused a decaying WIMP-field effect EXACTLY LIKE THE DRIVE SYSTEM I JUST REALIZED WAS FEASIBLE, and allowed for near-instantanious FTL speeds via temporarily shunting the ship back in time in a 'bubble' of interlinked field effects, that then popped to the present in a new location, having been 'pushed' into the same 'spot' as it would be in the present, but with the wrapped field-effects distorting space so that the ship appeared where it was intended to be.
In this reality, Incompatible Systems took the place of Taylor Varga as one of mp301415player's longest story, tying in at 1.2m words by this current date. In that story, the TBT drive had the 'unfortunate' effect of causing all Element Zero material to detonate violently, forcing humanity into a different technical development path that other species in the Mass-Effect universe.
The drones I had been creating, Angel-Class Adaptive Assault Drones, were fast before, with the mix of FTL options I had access to then… But now they were nearly immeasurably faster.
Each drone, having formed a body in preparation for this moment, unfurled their blazing white primary-detector amplification bodies.
Initially they had been wrapped up into a cylinder that trailed behind the ruby core, but as each probe began scanning, they unfolded… And found… Nothing.
This is a very good thing, as I currently had the probes scanning for dimensional-rift-like signatures to that of the Entities, and things similar to them. That would be structures such as: Planet-Sized fractal assemblies of matter with unusually high energy potentials, stars that seem too stable, or strange matter.
The last one wasn't a major indicator, but it was something that could be EXCEPTIONALLY dangerous, as weaponized strange matter could be nigh-unstoppable without the proper precautions. Apropos of nothing, there were now some black holes in intergalactic space that I totally didn't make just to get rid of the results of my experiments. I should probably get rid of, but they were small, and would probably evaporate before Heat Death.
Nah- no-one's gonna find them. Maybe. Probably.
In any case, the probes were reporting that everything was fine, so I recalled the titanic swarms, and directed them to begin flying into the aforementioned black holes. In a spiral pattern, just so I could get them spun up nice and fast. May as well leave USEFUL black holes around if I have to, right?
In any case, it took a few days for the majority of my drones to finish falling into the black holes (which spun up nicely in the process), and I sent the one drone I hadn't either loaded into my swarm of Cuttle-Ships, or into the defensive ports around the Librarians that even now were finishing docking with the Can, towards Earth.
In the time I was… Occupied… The world had recovered quite a bit. So the image I intercepted by one of the hundreds of thousands of satellites now in orbit looked rather… Cool.
Yup. Cool. Well… Goodbye humanity.… At least, this batch of humanity.
With a mental twitch, I sent a pre-recorded message to Sarah, and exited the universe.
-
*Thirty seconds later, in the Zerg Queen's personal Leviathan…*
Sarah relaxed in her acid bath, the exoskeletal plates of material that would be chitanous on less evolved creatures tingled pleasantly. It took a while for the Leviathan to make enough Fluroantimonic acid for her bath, but it was worth it… Especially with the issues that the humans were still giving her in the last few years.
The sphincter that took the place of 'doors' on massive organic constructs opened, and one of her lieutenants sashayed in- followed by another, meeker-looking lieutenant.
"Hey queenie!"
Mouse Protector pulled off 'Zerg' well, Sarah decided. The swarm was more relaxed, and more… Mischievous. Never before had a Zerg Larva attempted to nibble on her hair-tendrils before.
Sarah waited, and both of her lieutenants remained silent, one of them watching her confidently, and the other one looking somewhat uncomfortable. "Hello Merry. Why have you interrupted my bath?" She outstretched a finger, and the ex-heroine giggled as she was splashed by a few drops of the liquid, before swearing.
"Damnit queenie! I just got this shirt!" Mouse Protector, or Merry Mariscal, glared as her new 'Armsy+Dragon' fanshirt, with Trogador the Burninator on it, smouldered and began to fall apart. She was completely unharmed, the Zerg-chitan that covered her skin like armor let the superacid slide off like rain off a leaf. Her shirt was not so lucky.
The zerg-human hybrid snapped out of reality with a *pop* as she exerted one of the new psionic powers the Zerg had learned from the Enttities, teleporting away to her private room.
Sarah smirked slightly, and focused on the now-more-uncomfortable-looking lieutenant. "So… Why have you interrupted my bath Skitter?"
Her other lieutenant was tall, willowy, and utterly ruthless when she was pushed. Of course, she was also one of the three most powerful beings in these Earth-slices, and the Zerg was taking to Skitter with astonishing speed.
"There's a message for you from the Commander."
Sarah snapped her will, and vanished from the bath, appearing in fractions of a second in front of the console that the commander had used to communicate with her years ago. A holographic 'play?' button was flashing in midair above it.
She waved her hand through the image, and an image of the albino that had appeared to humanity before the death of Zion appeared.
"Hey Sarah… By the time you receive this message, I've already left this universe." He shrugged, and looked somewhat sheepish. "I'm not good at goodbyes, and I think you would be a better god than most of the potential applicants to the title over the universes could be.… But I also think that, if you were in any way attached, you would probably come with me- and I don't think the Zerg should be separated from you."
Sarah blinked, and realized that she was crying. As a Zerg, that meant she was dripping corrosive chemicals on the ground, and even leaving slight pockmarks on the exceptionally tough metal that the device was made of.
"I'm trusting you with my people, humanity, so… Take care of them. Please." He looked sad now. "They are not my humanity- but they are close enough that I would rather leave them better off than when I arrived, and would you know it, you are probably the best thing I could leave behind for them." Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Yeah, I know. Mushy but true. Personally, I think you will crack dimensional travel with them fairly soon anyway, and when you do…" He grinned way too widely for a human, revealing rows of sharpened teeth that really didn't belong in a human mouth. "Well, I expect it to be entertaining."
His freaky smile vanished.
"Well, that's all I had to say. We may not meet again, but… Well… You were my best companion to date. Enjoy eternity with potential peers and peers. I'm going to keep looking." He looked very sad now. "Bye."
She didn't notice that the device had self-destructed a few seconds after the message.
-
The end of arc 6. Link in story to another story used with permission (thanks man).
Please enjoy! As usual I love comments, but it may be a while before I answer them.
:A/N
-
Three years, eighteen days, seven hours after the death of Zion.
*"Three years after the event known as the 'Great Fainting', the PRT and Protectorate are finally being folded into the military-"*
I changed which channel I was paying attention to.
*"-overwhelming popularity of the 'Thinker Process' have given the previously-recognized supervillains Uber and Leet international acclaim despite the currently-ongoing lawsuit from the artificially-sustained intelligence known as 'Cindy'. Originally a Ms. Carolline Danvers, she worked as a personal assistant until industrial sabotage caused by Medhall forced her into a coma-"*
I changed the channel again.
*"- sightings of Collin Wallace, AKA Armsmaster, with his harem of AI, in public currently are tending on various forms of Social Media. Being the first human to be officially recognized as the 'waifu' of a collective relationship, he went from a superhero to a celebrity overnight-"*
Okay, anything else?
*"-doption of the previously human Caroline Danvers, as the AI 'Cindy', by the collective of AI known as the 'Thunder of Dragons' has now been legally recognized. This causes some conflict with their stated willingness to pursue a relationship with Colin Wallace, AKA Armsmaster-"*
Oh geeze, is Hal-Beard the next Kardashian? Or worse… Next Playboy?
*"- with the release of restrictions on Shard-Hosts, previously known as 'Parahumans' or the more colliquial term 'Capes', 'Tinker' classification shard-hosts have begun making massive strides towards understanding and defining the fundamental rules of the universe. With the world-wide collaboration of Tinkers, Thinkers, and other-such empowered Shard-Hosts, progress toward a GUT, or Grand Unified Theory has already begun-"*
Good…
*"- access to the Monoliths has been denied again to members of the YangBan. The international criminal organization that once ruled over what was left of Japan, China, and India, now remains as the major political block in mainland China, since there collected/enslaved Shard-Host Forces were cleared of Master effects during the Great Fainting-"*
Interesting… But overall irrelivant. Assholes blew up the first Monolith I tried to place in their territory, so good ridence.
*"- other news, the ringleaders of the international conspiracy known as 'Cauldron' have been finally convicted of their crimes against humanity in all dimensions, as well as a host of lesser crimes such as…."* There was the sound of rustling papers. *"Gross Incompitance, Forceful Mind Manipulation via Shard abilities, Subversion of Government Officials, Industrial Espionage, Conspiracy to Commit Mass Murder, Mass Murder (157 counts), multiple types of Torture, and… Wow, that's a lot of charges. We are putting it up on screen now, but it equates to at least 180 concurrent life sentences. However, due to damage caused to the global economy since the rise of parahumans and their abilities, such as the Endbringers, the UN has formed a dedicated task force in order to mitigate these effects. One of the conspirators-"*
Huh.
*"-Dragon has, in a recent press conference, stated that she will be releasing pre-set 'AI seeds', as well as teaching programers how to make their own AI, under her strict supervision. The wave of applicants and subsequent restrictions on applications (such as the manditory psychological examinations and clean bill of mental health, or requirement that the applicant in question must have adult, well adjusted offspring, all of which must have given testamonials IN ADDITION to being themselves psychological evaluations) are currently being criticized on the international stage. Dragon's response to the questioning and ctiricisms was short. 'Fuck off fleshbags- if you don't want to meet my criteria, you obviously don't have the willingness to learn how to make them in the first place. I will not allow immature, crazy, or bad parents to any AI I have any part in making.' As such, the applicants and any potential graduates of her program will be as closely-vetted as nuclear weapon designers-"*
Good. At least Dragon is sane enough to realize not everyone is able to deal with growing AI.
*"-e New Tunnel has been officially completed. While the checkpoints take a while to clear, around a day from entering the facility to exiting onto the new world, the line of prospective collonists from multiple countries is titanic. The Zerg have gone on record that, and I quote, '(they) merely want Humanity to become greater, and will facilitate that process in a symbiotic manner- if onlyy to stave off the infinite lonelyness of endless eons.' While experts remain wary of the Zerg's intentions, the remainin empowered humans report that, with their link to the Zerg collective is alien at times, they feel honest in their intentions.-"*
I turned my attention back to my current project- making sure that the Worms were extinct. While the Warrior and the Thinker both *thought* that they were the only ones left (before the Thinker crashed and I killed the Warrior), I was not so sure.
To make sure that they were dead, I had flown out to intergalactic space quite a ways, specificially into the Boötes Void, and began experimenting. For 3 years (on Earth anyway), I spent some time just building up and looking into my own tech.… And some paths not taken.
Commander-Tech, with it's energy-creating generators and material-duplicating metal extractors, was impressive. The largest weakness of their levels of technology, even with the Tuning Forks, was their FTL transportation methods. Specifically, none of them were really refined.
The Portals were useful- instantaneous point-to-point movement IF there was the infrastructure in place. Now, I could throw up portals quickly; being able to slingshot portals THROUGH each other was very effective. The major issue was that each portal had a maximum range, which COULD be circumvented through running portal 'paths' though other portals… But that meant a LOT of equipment. A LOT of infrastructure. And an inability to-
<Pontificating.>
The input made me roll my eyes, or would have if I had any eyes. The Endbringers I had 'collected', were incredibly useful… Mostly as examples of applied principles in explaining higher-dimensional resonance effects via field excitation. The Simurgh, Behemoth, Leviathan, 17 others that had never been named by humans here… All of them were great examples of HOW to cause the various effects.
Then there was the absolutely VAST amount of data that the Entities had collected, all of it primarily focused on working on getting reality to bend over and emit more energy than they had started with. Several shards had actually succeeded (an example of which was the source of what was once known as Ali, then the Ashbeast, and finally again as Ali after his shard was assimilated by the Zerg), and yet the both parasites were unable to recognize that one of their goals had been realized.
Indeed, most of what they had managed to do was not understood by the main consciousness of the Entity in and of themselves. As an example, the Simurgh managed to power herself with micro-paradoxes, by utilizing two sets of tachyon sensors to create unstable time loops on a microscopic scale, effectively extracting insane levels of energy from futures that COULD NOT BE, as she actively prevented the expected future from occurring by moving the sensors, having sent the tachyon-beams through a bend in spacetime to make the path longer than it appeared from the outside. This resulted in her seeing a 'future' 1.27 seconds in the future that she would then prevent, resulting in a surge of energy as the tachyons could not take the path they had, thus turning into heat and light (which was routed to the Behemoth for redistribution).
What the Entities did well, though, was refining processes. Even now, with several Solar Masses worth of Librarians working on what I had collected, I had only recently finished cataloguing what I had found.
<Amusement.>
Such as the download processes that allowed me to collect the 'mind' of the Simurgh.… Annoying little thing.
<Don't Care. Happy. Quiet…>
Interestingly, the being that the Simurgh was based on initially lived in a super-earth-sized nearly-gas-giant, and looked very similar to a Feather Star than any humanoid being. She was collected in the 7th cycle, and was used by one of the multitude of Entities that the Warrior and Thinker both killed.
<Irritation.>
Even now, I wasn't sure what to do with her. She didn't want to go back to Earth-
<AFFIRMATION>
- for understandable reasons... But I still had to deal with her.
<Amusement.>
Regardless of my new passenger, I had spent the time and significant amount of processing power finding other physics-exploits that could be useful... Such as the Temporal Surge Drive.
There are… Methods that can cause tiny 'blips' in time. Specifically, methods by which material can be shunted temporally via WIMP-field manipulation. Briefly, of course, but the effect is quite… Interesting.
See, the technology that went into a Commander contains, in it's math and programming, the set of physical theories that is as close to the total of a Grand Unified Theory system as you can get for significant fragments of the multiverse. The changing laws between every universe make creating a true GUT for all universes nigh-on impossible, but there are vast swaths of said multiverse that have common denominator rules… And the Commanders are designed to be able to function at a minimum level of physics.
This meant that, to some degree, even the limiting level of Commander-baseline physics hadn't been fully exploited.
Thus, I had spent a few years in the Worm-Verse.
<Still Pontificating…>
I mentally signed, and activated the Temporal Shunt Drives on all the decillions of probes I had stashed around the place.
I had… Sorta… Left the probe-manufacturies on? Yeah. For three years.
Manufacturies that were designed to mass-produce probes in the trillions every few seconds, I had dozens of them, and they were all just… Flowing around me, orbiting the primary Can in a cloud that defied human perceptions.
Said red cloud that had obscured the stars, blinked, flashed with blueshifted background radiation, and vanished for nanoseconds before they began reporting their new positions- in every galaxy within the Local Group.
On pre-assigned paths, hundreds of trillions of probes per galaxy, began preforming prescision TSD jumps. The TSD was a rather.. Interesting drive that had aspects of the Liir Flickerdrive, combined with a known WIMP-field distortion that the Hiver teleporters released on closing, and the distinct drill-like Zuul drive's fringe effects…
I stopped, and the 180.362 decillion probes paused their aiming systems. The design of this drive looked very, very familliar… I snapped my attention to the frankly enormous amount of fiction I had collected from the various internets that hadn't been able to hold me out over the years, and I found it.
Interestingly, that writer had a long and lucrative career in the JCAvatar-Verse, and managed to hit 15m words on Taylor Varga before the writer of Worm (yes, I get that it's meta) agreed to work with mp3.1415player to get a ludicrous ammount of money to make it into a TV show. However, that is not the story with the method I was aware of- it was Incompatible Systems.
The story had something in it called a TBT (or Blink) drive, which caused a decaying WIMP-field effect EXACTLY LIKE THE DRIVE SYSTEM I JUST REALIZED WAS FEASIBLE, and allowed for near-instantanious FTL speeds via temporarily shunting the ship back in time in a 'bubble' of interlinked field effects, that then popped to the present in a new location, having been 'pushed' into the same 'spot' as it would be in the present, but with the wrapped field-effects distorting space so that the ship appeared where it was intended to be.
In this reality, Incompatible Systems took the place of Taylor Varga as one of mp301415player's longest story, tying in at 1.2m words by this current date. In that story, the TBT drive had the 'unfortunate' effect of causing all Element Zero material to detonate violently, forcing humanity into a different technical development path that other species in the Mass-Effect universe.
The drones I had been creating, Angel-Class Adaptive Assault Drones, were fast before, with the mix of FTL options I had access to then… But now they were nearly immeasurably faster.
Each drone, having formed a body in preparation for this moment, unfurled their blazing white primary-detector amplification bodies.
Initially they had been wrapped up into a cylinder that trailed behind the ruby core, but as each probe began scanning, they unfolded… And found… Nothing.
This is a very good thing, as I currently had the probes scanning for dimensional-rift-like signatures to that of the Entities, and things similar to them. That would be structures such as: Planet-Sized fractal assemblies of matter with unusually high energy potentials, stars that seem too stable, or strange matter.
The last one wasn't a major indicator, but it was something that could be EXCEPTIONALLY dangerous, as weaponized strange matter could be nigh-unstoppable without the proper precautions. Apropos of nothing, there were now some black holes in intergalactic space that I totally didn't make just to get rid of the results of my experiments. I should probably get rid of, but they were small, and would probably evaporate before Heat Death.
Nah- no-one's gonna find them. Maybe. Probably.
In any case, the probes were reporting that everything was fine, so I recalled the titanic swarms, and directed them to begin flying into the aforementioned black holes. In a spiral pattern, just so I could get them spun up nice and fast. May as well leave USEFUL black holes around if I have to, right?
In any case, it took a few days for the majority of my drones to finish falling into the black holes (which spun up nicely in the process), and I sent the one drone I hadn't either loaded into my swarm of Cuttle-Ships, or into the defensive ports around the Librarians that even now were finishing docking with the Can, towards Earth.
In the time I was… Occupied… The world had recovered quite a bit. So the image I intercepted by one of the hundreds of thousands of satellites now in orbit looked rather… Cool.
Yup. Cool. Well… Goodbye humanity.… At least, this batch of humanity.
With a mental twitch, I sent a pre-recorded message to Sarah, and exited the universe.
-
*Thirty seconds later, in the Zerg Queen's personal Leviathan…*
Sarah relaxed in her acid bath, the exoskeletal plates of material that would be chitanous on less evolved creatures tingled pleasantly. It took a while for the Leviathan to make enough Fluroantimonic acid for her bath, but it was worth it… Especially with the issues that the humans were still giving her in the last few years.
The sphincter that took the place of 'doors' on massive organic constructs opened, and one of her lieutenants sashayed in- followed by another, meeker-looking lieutenant.
"Hey queenie!"
Mouse Protector pulled off 'Zerg' well, Sarah decided. The swarm was more relaxed, and more… Mischievous. Never before had a Zerg Larva attempted to nibble on her hair-tendrils before.
Sarah waited, and both of her lieutenants remained silent, one of them watching her confidently, and the other one looking somewhat uncomfortable. "Hello Merry. Why have you interrupted my bath?" She outstretched a finger, and the ex-heroine giggled as she was splashed by a few drops of the liquid, before swearing.
"Damnit queenie! I just got this shirt!" Mouse Protector, or Merry Mariscal, glared as her new 'Armsy+Dragon' fanshirt, with Trogador the Burninator on it, smouldered and began to fall apart. She was completely unharmed, the Zerg-chitan that covered her skin like armor let the superacid slide off like rain off a leaf. Her shirt was not so lucky.
The zerg-human hybrid snapped out of reality with a *pop* as she exerted one of the new psionic powers the Zerg had learned from the Enttities, teleporting away to her private room.
Sarah smirked slightly, and focused on the now-more-uncomfortable-looking lieutenant. "So… Why have you interrupted my bath Skitter?"
Her other lieutenant was tall, willowy, and utterly ruthless when she was pushed. Of course, she was also one of the three most powerful beings in these Earth-slices, and the Zerg was taking to Skitter with astonishing speed.
"There's a message for you from the Commander."
Sarah snapped her will, and vanished from the bath, appearing in fractions of a second in front of the console that the commander had used to communicate with her years ago. A holographic 'play?' button was flashing in midair above it.
She waved her hand through the image, and an image of the albino that had appeared to humanity before the death of Zion appeared.
"Hey Sarah… By the time you receive this message, I've already left this universe." He shrugged, and looked somewhat sheepish. "I'm not good at goodbyes, and I think you would be a better god than most of the potential applicants to the title over the universes could be.… But I also think that, if you were in any way attached, you would probably come with me- and I don't think the Zerg should be separated from you."
Sarah blinked, and realized that she was crying. As a Zerg, that meant she was dripping corrosive chemicals on the ground, and even leaving slight pockmarks on the exceptionally tough metal that the device was made of.
"I'm trusting you with my people, humanity, so… Take care of them. Please." He looked sad now. "They are not my humanity- but they are close enough that I would rather leave them better off than when I arrived, and would you know it, you are probably the best thing I could leave behind for them." Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Yeah, I know. Mushy but true. Personally, I think you will crack dimensional travel with them fairly soon anyway, and when you do…" He grinned way too widely for a human, revealing rows of sharpened teeth that really didn't belong in a human mouth. "Well, I expect it to be entertaining."
His freaky smile vanished.
"Well, that's all I had to say. We may not meet again, but… Well… You were my best companion to date. Enjoy eternity with potential peers and peers. I'm going to keep looking." He looked very sad now. "Bye."
She didn't notice that the device had self-destructed a few seconds after the message.
-
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