'Rick' Sanchez woke up on her military styled bed… Still alive.
So it hadn't happened yet.
Another pull from her flask, another sip of some horrible concoction that SHOULD be high quality alcohol from his… her… favorite dimension. Most of the time a blended scotch and Drambuie served by that orange species that religiously worships fine beverages.
But this wasn't. It couldn't be.
No, this was medicinal in a much more literal sense than she was used to. Something to stabilize her decaying genetics, to keep the low quality subdermal equipment from causing infections, and, if she was lucky, blunt the embedded instincts that were attempting to control her.
With a weary sigh, she rose and dressed for the day. A recreated white lab coat, a turquoise undershirt underneath it. Some brown pants, a dark brown belt with a yellow buckle, and black shoes.
Woman or not, she could wear pants if she wanted to. She was the Rickest Rick!
Wait. No!
Another deep sip helped push back the programming.
Shit. Today was going to be rough. Again.
With a repressed groan she got back to work in her lab under her daughter's garage.
Well, not 'her' lab, or daughter, or… Focus.
At least she had a chance. A boost above all other Ricks out there.
She at least KNEW this was an Asimov's Cascade.
This particular one was caused by a drunken night when he, the primary Rick of this dimension, had fallen into a drunken stupor and grew terrified that his most recent version of his family would get hurt.
So, like all bad decisions made while drunk, he made things worse.
A cloned decoy family. One meant to be as similar to his loved ones as possible, with some restrictions. Commands to ignore each other, to go nearly no where, to not own, use, or build a portal gun or device, and most importantly: To not make more than one clone duplicate family of their own.
It was that last step where things went wrong.
His drunken self had a typo. A small error of design. He had allowed them to replace decoy families if they should be compromised… AND it was very difficult to overcome the commands preventing travel. To verify, or clean up messes.
Which meant that if something set off a decoy family, even if it was survivable, the owners of that group would start making a new batch.
It also meant that all the well made clones were limited to making one decoy family with minor issues (They WERE drunk when this idea seemed reasonable), while the corrupted decoy families could make as many sub-families as they desired. With even MORE issues.
Normally, their innate denial and belief that they were literally the Rickest Rick and all others were beneath them… It would reinforce itself AND the lies.
Oh, I am made of cancerous skin? Must have come from a dimension like that. Those DO exist out there. Like one where everyone is a muppet, or a doll, or squirrels, and so on and so forth.
But almost none of the realities have him as a her. Those dimensions don't get added to the Central Finite Curve, and not for sexist reasons… But because the murderer of her family had been male. And this entire cluster of realities was constructed to FIND that bastard, and adding in other gender versions of himself would just make finding the target harder.
Not that it mattered in the end. Who knew, maybe the self that had killed his love and little one had died from someone else for some other reason somewhere.
Point was, she knew she was an aberration even BEFORE she saw the mutated clone forming her and attempting to perfect his creation despite everyone's lack of equipment, lack of tools, and lack of time.
The Rick that made her died before he could finish the other clones. And the clones of her family, despite also having opposite genders, were not even stable enough to activate the full memory override protocols either.
Still, she was locked in this house.
Alone.
Unable to access her tools, not allowed to examine or fix her own body, no travel outside this dimension to ensure valid targets (Wouldn't be a decoy otherwise!), and a massive amount of other, near arbitrary restrictions on top to just finish this bitch of a situation.
No. Calm.
She took another gulp of her medicine. Because altering her drinks was considered 'normal behavior' and thus allowed, it had managed to keep her mostly stable for days now instead of hours.
She would overcome this.
She might not be an original Rick, but those varied so widely that it was insane. Some smarter, some handicaped, some idiot savants, endless. But unlike them, unlike her other decoys?
She knew she was damaged. She knew she was lacking memories, skills.
She knew there was an impossible problem…
And Richard D. Sanchez the III did impossible things every day. Female insane sick clone or not. Because she was the Rickest Rick!
She SLAMMED her head on the desk. Thankfully a clear spot this time.
No. Because she was… someone else. A name that wasn't Rick.
Her mind went back decades ago to Diane helping suggest all those cute boy and girl names, when little Beth was still beaming with happiness and talking about her missing tooth and they had considered trying for another little boy or girl…
Thankfully one set of memories every decoy family treasured enough to not damage or fragment, unlike the REST of her damned mind!
No. Focus.
Tears later.
Rachel? No. Ruby? No. Ricky? She was the Rickest Rick!
FUCK!
NO.
Avoid ALL the names with 'R', it was too easy for the conditioning to lock back in, as terrible as the quality had been. After all, it HAD been made by a Rick and we were more than capable of getting results far better than normally possible.
Move up a letter.
Siccky. No. Salvantaz. No. Saroonda. No. Saram… Closer?
Sarah. A vague memory of that being a potential name if little Beth had a twin.
She certainly did NOT look down at the hidden cloning chamber with the decaying clones of her loved ones. But even so, it was hard to stay focused.
Right. Sarah D. Sanchez the first, the Sarahest Sarah.
Now she just had to fix her body, fix her mind, and escape this damned dimension entirely. ALL the decoy clones were not only badly designed and controlled here, but almost any action to help the others would set off the failsafes.
Mind wipes, assassination missions, suicides, murder sprees, and so on and so forth… Leading up to the big stuff like planet cracking and worse.
And she had to do this without tools. Without permission to improve herself or her equipment. Without full memories or skills. Without a proper working body or mind. Without any emotional support. Without hardware. Or software. Or damned drugs to wait until her actual death, which was more tempting than she really wanted to admit to herself…
Of course, PART of that was due to the clone decoy programming trying to get her to purge herself, it wasn't JUST the years of depression and the horrible situation and the hopelessness.
She took another gulp of the burning liquid trying to keep her organs functioning. This batch wouldn't be effective in another three hours.
But she could work with this.
Half way through another attempt at making a component substitution fabricator, something very basic used way back when he… She was first developing her first portal gun... An alert came in on her sensors.
A fucking decoy family had triggered the failsafes.
The murder chaos was going to kickstart in… Around four hours or so? No, three. This family had discovered another one somehow and the dimensional alerting system she (And likely a lot of OTHER clones, knowingly or not) had hacked into was directing other families to wipe them out.
Which would alert the decoys about other decoys, and this whole house of cards was about to crash down HARD. Shit.
Idly she checked the log.
Jerry. Of course a fucking Jerry would somehow manage to slip his restraints, find ANOTHER Jerry that slipped HIS restraints, and then whine about someone else stealing his look to his OWN family without any fear or hesitation. Rick damn it.
Sure, no man was good enough for his Beth. Her Beth. But seriously, if it wasn't for Jerry's genetic quirk making her little grand-Morty able to deflect dangers to his families, most Ricks would have done horrible things to the moron. Well, more horrible.
Seriously, half the reasons those two got together wasn't even the damned Ricks manipulating the stupid match, it was little Beth being vindictive and rebelling because of what a shit parent he was. She was.
No, not her! SHE was new! Memories or not, SHE wouldn't treat her little girl like that.
Fuck.
Her hands slipped off the equipment. Another Jerry had set off ANOTHER cascade issue on a different continent three minutes ago. Her two hour forty-four minute window to fix something just dropped down to twelve fucking minutes.
Could… Could she just steal a few Beths? Morties were manipulated and cloned most often out of all his alternate family members, trying to help or save them was beyond her skills even in the BEST of circumstances, but MOST of the time Beth rarely got cloned. At least in comparison.
A spike of agony hit her lungs.
Ah. No. She wouldn't live long enough to disable the suicide protocols in any of them at this point, even if she somehow made this body function, overcame the commands, separated one of her little girls from the other decoys, AND she was cooperative.
She couldn't convince her girl to abandon her family, real or not. And she shouldn't… Because doing so would make her a bad Dad. Mom. Parent.
And it was a moot point anyway, because even more issues had just thrown out what little time she had left.
The lowest level of decoy correction protocols had just activated. As it failed to fix the issue, the involved clones would all become more and more erratic and illogical, until mass suicide and blind rage were the only options left for any involved survivors.
Was the starting Rick of this madhouse even IN this dimension!? Or had he died long ago and a decoy had ended up starting this mess automatically?
Didn't matter.
If she had a second chance, she would have… Well, no. This dimension was basically dead now.
One of the Ricks would set off one of the many unstoppable collapsing entropy devices before they died. Because stopping us from fixing ourselves was 'fine' and 'reasonable', but letting us make doomsday weapons was 'expected behavior'. For fuck's sake.
Sarah sighed as she leaned back in her chair.
Should she run? Where to? Her programming made it nearly impossible to escape the other decoy families. It was on purpose, and attempting to run made you MORE predictable to the execution protocols.
Staying still wasn't really an option either. She didn't have a decoy family, and eventually when the violence died down and this stupid mess started AGAIN with whoever lived… Well, the cleanup protocols would end her. Even if it ignored the gender issue.
A bloody cough had her sip the medication again… Ah. The chemical substitutes had degraded faster than expected… This wouldn't actually help her recover anymore.
Shit.
Was it worth ignoring the oncoming storm to fight this pain and make another stopgap medication? It would have to be nearly exponentially more powerful, as anything powerful enough to keep her operational at this stage would start to cause many additional issues.
By the time she would get a dose together that was safe to consume, she would have… about seven minutes between sips? Based on the damage taken while getting it all set up? And of course, assuming she lived long enough to finish any of the components to get going.
Carefully, mindful of her cancerous bones and twisted tissue, she relaxed her body onto the work bench, pushing the cobbled equipment aside.
Sometimes, it was hard to get things done.
Sarah D. Sanchez the First gave a worn out sigh.
And stiffened.
Her mind
pulsed!
Years of self reflection and meditation and self control allowed her to feel her body seem to lock down, her mind carefully and tenderly being scanned. Recorded. Memories that even with her skill had faded with poor insertion and improper cloning equipment became refined, then splintered as theoretical issues and potential alterations were suggested, calculated, extrapolated, and added to the mess.
And as her mind was being examined like a late night research paper, she could feel her body being scanned as well. On levels beyond basic science, up near the psionic limits that she had explored to help establish portal technology to begin with!
Even unable to change or alter, she could feel her systems attempt to pulse with hope and fascination as she was altered. Expanded. Enhanced.
More and more minds. Entire pointers to her existing framework, used to enhance individual skills or topics or research.
Her body was being shifted. Dead flesh and cancerous growths were being ejected into nothingness along with the fragile and broken mechanical enhancements that mentally disturbed Rick had insisted were needed to be a 'Rickest Rick'.
And somehow she was… melding. Merging? Separate but whole. Not overwritten, but granted access to old memories, impossible places… And a version of herself that never existed and COULDN'T exist!
Even as she felt an incoming cleansing team via the dimensional alerting system, one set to destroy this copy of her loved one's home, she couldn't hold back a grin. "Adam?"
<<Hey Sarah. Come to the Warehouse, let's get you fixed up.>>
Her Boss was the best Boss! "Wubba Lubba Dub-Dub baby! Let's do this!"
Adam grinned as she froze. <<Hmm?>>
She glared at nothing. "Shut up, it's super cool and everyone likes it. Now get out of my way and let me rip my body apart, fill it with Tonics and serums and stuff, and then we can head off to somewhere with GOOD materials and technology to steal. I am NOT basing any of our 'Research' using THIS pile of trash."
As the explosions began to burn the neighborhood (Mostly more decoy families, how bad WAS this dimension!?), she…
Step.
...Moved to the Warehouse. "Eugh, I can't believe how many fractured and conflicting mental commands were forcing me to act like that!"
The wall skull hummed. <<Emotional?>>
She waved it off as she began [[Harvesting]] large sections of her body, using a healing pod and some easily constructed tools to begin examining her surviving cells for the most healthy and least damaged dna fragments. "No, the lack of critical thinking. I think the bastard Rick that set up this dimension had set up some blocks preventing us from feeling emotionally allowed to LEAVE this place, even if we COULD overcome all the blocks."
As tempting as it would be to use advanced magical, psionic, or technical tools to improve this new body, Sarah wanted a baseline form with the highest potential to start working from. A clean base, in other words. "Now that I can fully access all the data injected into my cloned form, AND with permission to critically EXAMINE that data, a LOT of us 'clones' were way too far off base for a single Asimov's Cascade Cycle."
Baseline human form it may be, but some of these damaged and mutated cells had some USEFUL genetic effects, if some of this dross was cleared away. Sort of like she had mutated a billion samples of herself, which was important because her actual sample size was limited. "No, I think that over time all people in this Dimension were created by one decoy batch or another. That NONE of these people, Ricks or not, are without mental commands and restrictions."
Stronger organs, especially the liver. Even without her modifications and hardware, this new 'baseline' baby would let her outdrink a Skarlog easily! Thank YOU, massive amounts of mutative cancer and clone damage. "How long till this body destabilizes?"
The skull winced. <<Thanks to 'Bad Ass', you could go on for a damned long time… But the best and optimized version of your current form IS the current form. It is literally on the edge of fragmentation WITH our help.>>
Right, so best do this right. Hmm. "I'm going to make sure I'm 77 again in this new form. Sort of. My clone body was somewhere between twenty and thirty hours or so, and my memories are much longer than that… And I think our Sarah Killgrave Avatar is older than that, but she LOOKED younger."
Adam hummed. <<You can make your form sort of LOOK like a theoretical 77 year old grandmother, but it would be one that was supernaturally healthy, had years of enhanced health and… Well, basically aside from your hair color you'd still be attractive to a very wide range of people.>>
Sigh. Diane would have found this hilarious. And she would have LOVED Elizabeths and Shiva, unlike some of her other 'conquests' the male Rick had gone through in his years of depression.
That said, she was finding some disturbing parallels. "Huh. My male half ALSO dated a hive mind. And a planet. Though he was more of an ass in those relationships than we are in ours."
Adam hummed. <<You'd think a man able to go anywhere and do anything would be more open to multiple partners rather than getting a vast majority of existence angry at his actions.>>
Meh. "Pretty sure a lot of our past shit as Rick was attempts to either find and kill the asshole who took our loved ones away or suicide attempts that failed because we were too powerful. There is a reason why the Council of Ricks barely cares when a Rick dies."
Good. "Got my new form set up. Inject her with 'Enhance Self' Tonic and some healing boosters, nothing else… And then, when stable, drop her in a Gaia environment copy to degrade the psionics away and scan it for my new baseline."
Bone white hair, like usual. Silver eyes, because that seems linked to her form somehow. WAY more muscles than expected, although they weren't bulky. And the density was a bit high for a standard human… Meh, more power to work with. "Where is my portal gun? Oh, never mind, it's already in inventory."
Ignoring the grinning Benefactor behind her, she easily set up some work tables, sensors, vices, chemical furnaces and fabricators… Each step she easily manipulated the interfaces to carefully design and then summon equipment and parts and chemicals for the next stage.
Oops, nearly blew her arm off again. Watch it Sarah, no need for messy mistakes. "Please duplicate the existing reality in this lab Adam. I need some Jump constants set up to get my equipment operating long enough to make some unstable materials and a few catalysts."
She certainly wasn't going to use the STANDARD portal gun. Thing was made by her drunk and lazy self and barely maintained, if he died while using it he would only be mildly annoyed thanks to Operation Phoenix which would just give him new clone sleeves to rebuild his setups.
For the 'smartest man', he certainly made a ton of ways to survive despite wanting to die. And refused to acknowledge the situation.
Point was, SHE was going to improve this sucker. Not even hard, the original version was far less stable and had some scrap material used to make the bitch.
As her future body stabilized and prepared for her transfer (Moving to a new Avatar was trivial without mental conditioning), she made a few alterations to the default portal device.
Radiation converters, used to keep the portal fluid from causing damage to her, travelers through the portals, or the device itself. The energy collected from the dimensional shifts would then be used to shield both the materials AND direct the outputs.
Remote dimensional sheer. No more needing direct access from the instability source and a surface, instead the additional power from the converters would let her first portal the sheer apertures INTO unexistence first, then OUT into reality.
Enhanced Psionic interfacing. Before, Rick had used basic mental connection to allow the user to innately target locations or places without additional commands or safety restrictions. Made it easier to travel when drunk, for one thing. Now it would properly connect with Sarah instead of 'Anyone touching the damned thing'.
Without the emitter issues or radioactive issues, the portal liquid would last much longer and be barely consumed at all through use. This was only improved thanks to only exposing the new portal after activating it from outside the current dimension by 'shooting' the opening THROUGH the liquid in the device first.
And without all those hacked together 'safety' and convenience features everything could be much smaller. After all, if you waste portal fluid? Just make it easier to refill! Oh, that causes more risks and waste and leaks? Meh, make the device larger so less damage to the user! Sort of.
Sarah examined the golf ball sized orb that seemed to flicker in place. The glowing green liquid was carefully contained in the middle, and was only a few drops of the original dimensional portal liquid instead of the literal ounces that were supplied before. The shiny steel coating hid away the efficient esoteric energy converters and the psionic interface module, and… Hmm.
Right. "Adam, look at this for me."
[[
Harvest.]]
Her friend blinked. <<Hmm. Let's swap out this and these materials with Beryllium Copper. Almost as strong as steel and yet it isn't magnetic… Safer in general and it won't be easily ripped out of you if you decide to embed it into your new body.>>
Oh! That would make it MUCH safer to store internally! "A thin shell of titanium so it would be safe inside flesh wouldn't go wrong. Let's add…" Um.
Losing limbs was surprisingly a common issue, but she didn't want to be a full robot or gynoid.
Three? Three. "Let's modify two of these to be longer and thin, it would fit in the arms easily enough, and put the orb version inside my chest bone. That way people will assume I can only make my portals with my hands and I can use the torso one to escape a huge issue."
Adam grinned! <<Well, if that torso one is INSIDE your sternum, we can modify it slightly.>> A new design showed up. <<Letting the blood flow through it should allow 'Enhance Self' to more easily adapt your entire biological system to resisting dimensional corruption and possibly allow me to gather enough data to just let you Step dimensionally as well as spatially.>>
Ooh! That would… No. Focus. "Is my new form stable enough for that?"
As summarized data came up it was near instinctual to expand it to more raw information. Adam hummed. <<Baseline, yeah. And I think it would be easy enough to add some basic electronics for interfacing with machinery and connecting it to the Warehouse directly. Then I can just give you full access and scan the systems WITHOUT letting people know you can scan stuff using [[Phase Pierce]] and your mind alone.>>
Sarah paused as she was adjusting her body to not be fertile unless desired and avoid menstrual cycles. "Shit. I'm going to have to make a decoy portal gun to avoid giving other Ricks any ideas, won't I?"
He grinned. <<Only if you want to be sneaky.>>
Shit. Hide how much better her transportation methods were, or show off by waving a hand or just sinking into portals looking cool. Damn it. "Fine, but it will just be some glowing green liquid. I am NOT going to carry around that metaphysical conceptual psionic fluid so badly protected just to show off some fake technology."
It took moments to create a plastic 'portal gun' with green alcohol and glowing green LEDs to make it look 'authentic'. Though she could probably sell these to little Mortys as kid toys now that living near one wouldn't give you random cancer or something.
Oh! New body's done! "Right, send me over and do NOT leave a copy in this dead body. In fact, let's skip that step entirely."
[[
Harvest.]]
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam blinked as Sarah [[Harvested]] herself.
Huh.
Well, it worked. Direct the Avatar unit to the new optimized body… And! <<Good morning, Sarah!>>
The tall woman's eyes flashed silver, her body flickered… And Sarah was standing outside the healing pod, grinning like mad! "Oh this is FABULOUS! Look at these guns!"
He grinned as she flexed, her new form still wearing that white lab coat. <<It is impressive.>>
She jumped a few feet in the air. "Hell's yeah it's impressive! Sarah in the HOUSE! Oh, hang on, let me test this: [[Portal: Transparent.]]"
A blue dimensional sheer flickered into existence even as Adam felt her mind units optimize the process and begin reducing energy costs and casting times. She could create portals without commands, obviously, but Sarah always liked being flashy to some extent.
She grinned at the blue ring floating in mid air with the moon's surface on the other side. "Awesome! The dimensional protections are still in place, and only the light waves within described parameters get recreated on the side I wanted it to work with! Hmm… What are the consumption rates looking like, Adam?"
Uh, better double check. Got it. <<Looks like the portal fluid rejuvenates over time in minute amounts. As long as you only make about… Ten portals an hour or so, there is no limit on how often you can use these things. That's ten per device, so thirty total an hour will stay about neutral. If you create something like two hundred portals with one I think it goes into recovery mode for two hours or so, takes longer to fully recover. And all those numbers might get more efficient as your mind units catch up to speed and test stuff.>>
She flickered another blue portal to the side, showing space somewhere… Causing her to frown. "That should be
Glapflap, and that one
MWA739…No
Zorpantheon 9 either."
Sarah sighed. "Yeah, this isn't right. This dimension is something set up by a fucked up Rick." More portals opened, all empty space or blank planets. "Must have originally been an empty dimension before he set up this entire decoy setup. We might have been a testing facility to ensure the originator didn't screw up when working in HIS home."
Adam sent her more data. Seemed like it was easy to set up unrelated portals and keep them open or closed based on her psionic connection to the network. <<The blue color seems to be due to the portal juice coming from a Jump Document purchase. I think you can visit ANY dimension in this Jump once you can target it, not just ones in the local bundle.>>
She hummed… And frowned. "Shit, it does stand out. Meh, I can probably alter that color easily enough, we just never cared enough to try before. Always left stuff to 'easiest to set up while drunk' levels of competency."
Oh, right. <<Speaking of which.>>
Let's see! Four Roses bourbon, some lemon juice, a drop of agave nectar, a dose of energy serum… Fill a new flask with the stuff and add a touch of lime juice. Chill it as if shaken over ice, ensure it would STAY that temperature with some minor hardware in the base of the container… Done.
Sarah was grinning before she quickly snagged it and drank deep. "God DAMN that's the good stuff!"
Adam felt her trying to ignore the one portal that was showing the exploded ruins of her former 'home' and the cloned family lost forever. Which was fine, he'd be there for her. <<Lot more where that came from. When you want something different, I'll have an additional flask with something different.>>
Maybe something basic. Wild Turkey 101, dash of hot sauce, energy serum? Should be interesting, even if normal humans would have to have it in a shot glass instead of an enhanced flask that never runs out and pours at the perfect temperature.
She glanced again at the ones that didn't live long enough to save… Who she wouldn't have been able to save without risking an entire dimension collapsing while also causing soul deep agony to her little girl from having to leave her family in the process.
Adam didn't bother her as she carefully sat in a chair and watched the local portals, visible only on her side, show the end of this world.
Sarah poured her flask into a double old fashioned glass, the lime wedge added without comment. "After… After it ends,we can go."
The two watched as Sarah wrapped herself in fraudulent memories from a sad and hurting old man. Watching a world pass.
As events settled down and 'undetectable' systems began resetting the clone chaos to a stable state again, she sighed. "Keep an eye open for the fucking Rick that did this, Adam."
They both knew that there were so many realities in this Jump that the one responsible might have died eons ago or have cloned new bodies every year… But the emotion was shared nevertheless. <<Of course, Sarah.>>
She sighed, stood FAR taller than she expected she could, and gave a weak grin! "Alright! {Belch}, Let's go find some of my kids who need help!"
Easy enough, Sarah had handed Adam a compact and efficient portal orb for 'Research' to play with already. Thousands of dimensions were being connected to and scanned in real time every moment based on the memories gained from Sarah connecting to this version of herself, each one having hundreds of thousands of landmarks and locations to mark off.
Lots of delicious data for 'Research' to work with!
Although, it would be best to find a group that were good people first. No lobster hitler zombies or something. <<No problem, Sarah.>>
