Sarah was not freaking out.
The new house design just needed some modifications. These sections would have weaker materials, on purpose, so that if heavy damage occurred and the structure fractured, she could ensure WHERE the pieces would catastrophically fail. And plan for it.
She wasn't ignoring Adam. He was busy anyway, indexing something from the basement [[Harvest.]]
Having a thorium orb for each power outlet wasn't overkill, right? Sure one of these things had lots of self operating nuclear reactors inside it, each one able to produce over a gigawatt of power and theoretically run over 750,000 average homes… Or in other words, supply energy needs for over 57 average cities per power plant.
But what if someone else needed their OWN power outlet and uh… Or…
Adam sighed. <<Yeah, you're over engineering this shit now. What's wrong, Sarah?>>
She held back her screech. "You saw Morty's data? The 'adaption' protocols?"
He hummed, showing the related information. <<The method used for him to convert into a car like species?>>
Sarah glared at the data. "I just thought he had some advanced cybernetics, some nanotechnology and some biological adaptors and stuff. But no."
Because THAT would have been silly but within the character of Rick.
Instead, it was something more frustrating. "Ricks had gotten so frustrated healing up and 'standardizing' the local Mortys that they modified his genetics with other Morty's biological profiles."
Not that most Ricks bothered to examine their Morty. Was this one modified like this knowingly? As part of the healing process? Who knows.
Adam sent emotional peace as he gently sent the 'enhanced' home schematics over to construction for queue processing. <<You got the command nodes installed in the family?>>
Yeah. Aside from the technical benefits of having a psionically bound supercomputer attached to one's conceptual being, just the ability to internally generate and apply serums would drastically improve their survivability. "The Plasmids won't work."
And THAT caught her off guard. Something about this Jump made Tonics and serums MORE efficient, more powerful… But caused active individual psionic frameworks to become impermanent and quickly degrade. It caused the 'Enhance Self' Tonic to dismantle most Plasmids near instantly just to keep the user safe.
So no levitation or teleportation for her family just yet.
Adam hummed. <<At least the command node network is working?>>
Something similar to the Symbiote network from FF7, from the Planetary Network. As the command nodes grew in power and complexity with their users they would share enhancements with all the OTHER command nodes for self improvement and to enhance their owners.
Hopefully it would be enough. "What should I do with Morty? His mind's been… damaged."
Adam shrugged. <<Ensure each family member gets a hive mind module in the command node, add a lesser connected 'Smith Family' hive mind that helps encourage psionic stability and recovery, and our personal connections to both will handle most of his issues.>>
True. "That would let the future saved family members better connect with the others. Avoid them from getting lost as more individuals get saved and so forth."
He hummed. <<But let's not give Jerry a hive mind. He married into the Sanchez family line, he's not as connected to the foundation of this dimensional cluster mess like the others.>>
Sarah flinched HARD at the idea of Jerry getting a unified hive mind with himselves. "Yeah! Uh. To prevent issues since the dimensional filtration methods are so focused on the Ricks."
Shit, the idea of Jerry being MORE Jerry was… No. Sarah was not far enough from being Rick to pretend THAT was an acceptable idea.
Sorry Beth, your husband was NOT someone getting all this mess. Especially since most of them were artificially connected to you by asshole Ricks who needed to breed more Mortys.
Hell, half the time she stayed in that terrible relationship because she wanted a stable family life for the kids or Jerry was… No.
Sarah wasn't going to be a dick about this, but she ALSO wasn't going to give the man enhancements like the rest. He can have a phone or something instead of psionic command nodes.
The mental image of Jerry accidentally or PURPOSEFULLY betraying the rest of the family due to incompetence, fear, or actual spite? The fact that 'Research' implied it was not only possible but LIKELY with little (And sometimes NO) instigation or provocation?
Yeah, no. Jerry was divorced from the local Beth for a REASON, and that was AFTER Sarah's daughter was probably forced to have kids with the man.
Change topic! "What about the car thing? The genetic instability that was encouraged to allow easier species change and the database of 'Morty Templates' to ensure easier insertion in case of death?"
Adam hummed. <<Give him psionic control over the process, let him modify his forms to a low degree that won't increase genetic issues, and basically make it a super power. Kids love super powers.>>
Yeah. Yeah! She would be the COOL Grandpa that not only saved his family BUT turned that odd 'transformed into a vehicle due to puberty' glitch into something helpful and awesome! "Too bad we can't just let little Beth and Summer have the same abilities."
Adam hummed. <<Eventually, maybe? But yeah, it's only possible due to the insane amount of cloning, genetic exploration, and unethical testing Mortys go through over who knows how many decades. But at the very least we can let the rest of the family alter their OWN template to some extent without issue. Hair styles, coloring, maybe a tiny bit of height and volume modification…>>
Sarah pulled up the data. "No massive shifts though, it could cause genetic collapse or worse. Let's build some self analysis units for the command nodes and enforce safety guidelines."
Eventually it WOULD let Summer get larger or smaller boobs or grow a tail or something, but let's ensure a maximum rate cap of body modification, some limits about max height and width and minimum limits and… Yeah. Let the command node calculate how long each change would take, ensure the process would stall if there wasn't enough food and nutrients, that the diagnostic modules would inform the user about what was needed for the process to continue…
Sarah barely blinked when the mental alert went off. "What, already!?" Morty was still recovering, Beth's body was adapting to her new Tonics and the recent surgical addition of her personal command node, and Summer was… Well, she should be sleeping but she was actually texting on her bed.
Whatever, wasn't this too fast!?
Adam was already opening the new portal a few miles away for the Multiple Residence for Smiths (Version 1.000, open for business!) <<Yeah, well… I was building the thing the entire time you were designing it. Since it is modular it was easy enough to upgrade whatever parts you changed except for the big stuff, like when you decentralized the matter and power generation orbs and when you added the self modification nanites and the production facility.>>
Sarah blinked. "But I couldn't figure out how to get the little buggers to the damaged locations. Had to give up on it."
He sent a very odd design. <<Basically modified the uncertainty patterns from the last Jump to be more like an artery system. Some security measures added to ensure no gas transfer or liquid injections, a few more to attack unregistered nanomachines and nanites, and the MRS's psionc field will handle the other issues like repair order and expansion and so forth.>>
Sarah blinked at the large matrices of Beth, Morty, and Summer psionic crystal threads woven in the massive grids of Sarah psionic material, the entire mess soaked in unaligned liquid energy serum.
Adam pointed at sections. <<With the psionic crystals interacting through the energy serum, the entire home will not only be able to improve itself in a way that better protects each of our family members, but the mess will better bind with the artificial intelligence we harvested from Rick's ship.>>
She pulled up the still activating and new
Space Cruiser, now the MRS V1.000. "Did you make sure to clean her code first? I know that, aside from the hidden crap most Ricks dumped in there, THIS one was heavily damaged before we [[Harvested]] her."
Adam showed the change long. <<Shifted most of the data into the new memory modules, redesigned her processors and systems to be easily replaced, upgraded, and resistant to damage, have several backup and restore features, her own hive mind unit, her own command node orbs, so on and so forth. It was needed for her to better handle the most catastrophic scenarios, like breaking up or having pods escape… And it will ensure she survives things most ships couldn't.>>
Good. "Keep me informed after she finishes initialization procedures, but for now during the startup process activate the blending procedure, move Beth and the kids over after getting them cleaned and scanned one more time, and then [[Harvest]] me and this house."
After all, she had been in quite the mad scientist mindset to avoid going insane with rage at what damage her grandson had gone through. Rebuilding her body AGAIN had been a fun side project, and there was no reason NOT to include the improvements designed and modified from helping her family.
Plus, when she eventually left… It would be helpful to have some embedded command nodes and portal orbs in this Avatar, and those would be enhanced greatly when she added a thorium orb and the matter generator orb. Not to mention the designed conversion orb and construction orb, that could accept the power and matter and turn that into useful materials and build with them using the construction orb's robotic factory with all those psionically controlled manipulators and tools.
Absently, Sarah wondered if having her command node surrounded by the portal, thorium, matter, conversion, and construction orbs would have future thaumaturgical consequences, since the five chest orbs and the two additional portal orbs in her wrists added up to seven.
Meh. It should be fine.
Right, send the family over to the new home that WASN'T trying to collapse and now to scan everything over HERE and get rid of this entire, irradiated mess of a place. The contamination issues were real, seriously.
[[
Phase Pierce.]]
Target the home, a lot of the ambient area, a good chunk of that amazingly valuable irradiated planetary sludge with chaotic psionic potential… And!
[[
Harvest.]]
The new pit slowly filled up with liquified planet at impossible temperatures.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Morty felt… Light.
Aches and pains, old scars and tight skin, those eye issues that never seemed to be fixed quite right after he nearly lost half his skull to a near miss, all of it.
Calm.
Something was… Different. A side effect of his many adventures, Morty had built up a second sense when it came to danger, to value, to risk, to safety. He HAD to, or he would have died years ago!
And something about his location had shifted powerfully.
That vague feeling of safety, of home… It used to be a thin mist, a feeling. That back of mind thought that said, mom is nearby. Summer is angry about something. Rick is looking for someone.
But now?
Now it was almost a
choir singing.
A strain he had never noticed relaxed.
He could feel his sister, Summer, was safe. And amused. And fascinated. And wandering around [[
Home.]]
He could feel his mother. Sleeping. Grieving… But somehow also at peace? As if some internal hurt was being healed. She was somehow becoming more herself.
And someone, a star, so similar to his Rick that it would be easy to mistake the two if glancing across the street as strangers passed each other by, was so vastly different it clearly was enhanced. Someone more.
This Rick felt… Hurt. And Love. And Pain. And… pride? But not for himself!?
That CERTAINLY wasn't normal.
His mind moved more easily than it should.
Had he been carrying some sort of burden? A heavy load that had been shifted from his worn shoulders?
Thoughts drifted back to the frantic fight. The life and death struggle, another danger on a mountain of fellow flaws and future furrows to follow through, and the tragic end.
Rick had seen they would lose. That their family was to die, as was this world. That the
Galactic Federation had finally determined that ending Rick Sanchez was WORTH destroying an entire planet at minimum, an entire history, even if it required actual suicide and activating a device that would genetically destroy anything similar to humanity like a plague.
A weapon that would eventually spread to the stars and, theoretically, to other dimensions Rick tried to escape to. A cost that the non-human Federation leadership was happy to pay, and that their membership was not allowed to protest.
Morty had been sent home, damaged and unable to properly protest, while Rick stayed behind to try and mitigate the fallout. Literally.
The fact that he was currently alive showed that it worked. On some level.
Morty blinked as a holographic display flashed into being… And provided enough light to see where he was. What was going on.
He was in an odd pod of green bubbling liquid. Liquid that somehow was easy and comfortable to breathe without threat of choking or drowning, that seemed to be a balm to the flesh.
And around him were robotic limbs, near artistic in quality and design, with numerous attachments and tools that were likely responsible for his amazing recovery.
Oh jeez Rick, when did you make something THIS impressive?
He could almost TASTE the old man's involvement. While higher quality and of better material than anything Morty was used to, he could see design habits and aesthetic choices true to most of Rick's work.
Again, normally it was more influenced by Rick being drunk or high and him having accidentally grabbed a ham sandwich at some point instead of the wrench (And getting it to work ANYWAY, because why the hell not), but it was recognizable.
But… Not his Rick. This felt… Less terrified.
Rick had recently gained an edge to his work. A fear he tried to hide from everyone, an issue he was trying to fix that was clearly cutting into his time. Possibly this whole event, honestly.
THIS creation had no minute blood stains from frantic work. No overly sharp or badly welded sections. Something more precise. More efficient.
Still, he could feel his family was safe… And much safer than expected. Healthier too, they both were not only very easy to sense but somehow… More sturdy? More settled?
If only he could know more.
<<
Alert! User 'Morty Smith' has reached the required level of consciousness. Initializing setup.>>
Morty blinked.
Uh. What?
Command Node Setup: V01.443
~
Initializing Modules
~~External Sensor Network, Passive Mode.
~~Internal Sensor Network, Activated.
~~Memory Units, Indexing.
~~Nanite Production, Building Reserves.
~~Recovery Systems, Activated.
~~~
Tonic Monitoring, Enabled.
~~~
Serum Production, Standby.
~~~
Nanite Distribution, Ongoing.
~~Subdimensional Storage, Enabled.
Connecting to Morty Hive: V01.001
~Defenses Enabled.
~Network Established.
Connecting to Smith Hive: V01.004
~Defenses Enabled.
~Network Established.
Morty blinked as something s̫̳̬͈̰h͍͖̱i̦͚̯̞f̠̠̼͕͓̜̬ṯ̲e͚̭̝͓͓d̫̞̝͎̤̟.
The light vanished as the visual display somehow shifted to internal systems, though Morty wasn't sure how to explain that sudden information or how he knew it.
An instinct that seemed more than natural flickered in his mind.
[[
Menu.]]
And he suddenly saw m͖̺̯̠͕̱o̘̲̫̦̳̥̜rͅẹ.
Even as he began moving through the options, he could feel it altering itself to be more and more understandable. As if what he expected was shifting to what was there, or visa versa. With a thought, configurations shifted and changed and the various windows and displays flickered into a much more calming and relaxing gold color rather than the normal toxic green.
Data flowed like rivers in his mind as he paused.
He could change his body? No, he could change his species AND his body. To enormous degrees, and from what he could feel? With little to no consequences or problems, with minor exceptions for ensuring he had enough nutrients and adequate conversion time.
A much calmer and vastly faster mind began flickering through the data, and stumbled on the logs. Data that covered personal changes, that listed local issues, that listed the local Rick… Huh?
Why was Rick a hot woman!? And why did she look like Ms. Bellum!?
Oh jeez Rick! You can't do this to a guy!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Summer Smith was inside the underground hallways of Mrs. Ship. This new home was supposed to be called MRS Version 'lots of numbers' or something, but the spaceship sounded like a woman and the name worked too well to avoid using it. "So you don't know?"
Mrs. Ship sighed from the nearest communication modules that dotted the cool underground hallways. "I remember Rick enabling sanctum protocols and sending a very injured Morty home with me. We got hit a few times on the way back, which didn't help the boy as he was already hurt, and certainly didn't help ME considering how damaged my shielding was by that point…"
It was neat how much MORE alive the ship sounded than she did back as a more 'normal' unidentified flying saucer/car/beer run machine. "I'm glad you got home, Morty… He was pretty bad when we got to him."
The next hallway seemed to open into a garden? Huh. Smelled nice, and seemed far larger than any 'room' in this underground network should be, but that was Grandpa for you.
Ship hummed. "I… Well, I had opinions. We should have left weeks ago, you know."
Summer was in firm denial about the planet blowing up, THANK you. It hadn't taken her long playing with her command node to find the data about what had happened to her home, but her brother and mom were safe and she was going to freak out LATER.
This seemed more like a plantation than a garden, but at least the fake sunlight felt amazing and there was none of that dangerous material floating in the air like outside.
Still, a morbidly curious part of her wanted to know. "Weeks?"
Mrs. Ship sent her node data that was easy to pull up. "We detected SOMETHING going on, but it wasn't enough to convince Beth to give up her job and move the family. She just assumed that Rick was having a paranoia episode combined with one of his drunk binges."
Something hurt inside. "She… Mom?" She ignored something that led to THIS!?
More data. "Rick didn't have enough data, and well... He WAS having a bad time at the same moment and honestly it SHOULD have been a paranoia episode. Basically it boiled down to 'We should flee Earth and I don't know why', and it is something he's said to Beth before. Been wrong over half the time too."
The feeling eased as Summer relaxed slightly. "What was different THIS time?"
An image. "A Rick from another dimension fled HIS Galactic Federation into this one, and an agent managed to follow him through. Stayed alive long enough to send an emergency report to OUR Galactic Federation, and well... That was enough data to get this attack approved."
So it was… Just, what? "Bad luck?"
A sigh. "Most of the time, Rick can easily handle issues like this. He DOES handle situations this bad fairly regularly… But it can get a bit odd when more Ricks get involved with each other. Certain defenses act a bit off, some data collection modules have issues. It's normally not a big deal, and it never was a high priority issue to fix until this situation came up."
Well.. Shit.
No, worry about that later. Focus, Summer. "How big is this room?"
Mrs. Ship sent more data. "Not large, a few thousand square acres?"
What?
The map expanded. "Honestly those little plant production rooms are all identical, you should go back to the main hallway and visit my garden spot! I got Sarah's permission to set up all kinds of stuff, and Adam made sure meat people like you won't explode from diseases or pollen or something."
How big WAS this place!? "Right. Uh…"
Was this ship like Grandpa's moveable lab basements? Or just a dimension connected to a portal? And who was Adam? Wait, no. More important. "Can we go back to the plants that could have exploded me please?"
The ship huffed. "I said it's handled, even if you have allergies or rickets or whatever humans catch all the time you should be safe!" The grumbling was real. "The list of things organic people die from is nearly endless! You all need some good sturdy hulls and some radiation absorbing paint layers, honestly."
The floating windows shifted as she tried to look up… Well, any of this. "Right, so don't worry about people popping plants. Got it. Now, who is Adam?"
As the ship explained how Grandpa had a super advanced computer outside of space and time, one that helped ensure Mrs. Ship was able to grow and protect herself even against future Ricks entirely, Summer came to a disturbing issue. "Hang on."
The mechanical vehicle paused. "Yes?"
Shit. "Which way is it to the entrance!? I should have gotten back by now!"
A holographic arrow showed… WAY to the right. Summer wasn't even CLOSE to heading the right direction.
God damn it, more walking. "Sorry, continue?"
At least the company was nice.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Beth woke up… Sober?
No headache AT ALL.
Huh. "Dad?"
A flicker and suddenly her silver haired female father was in the room. "Ah! Good Morning dear! How are you feeling?"
What? "Good?"
The silver haired attractive version of Ms. Bellum nodded. "Right, best check the logs."
Huh? "The Logs?"
And suddenly [[Data!]]
Beth sighed. "Dad, we have RULES about elective surgery in this household."
The smug look on her Dad's face didn't match the words. "Oh is that so? Oh no! Welp, I promise I won't do it again unless it is to prevent you from slowly dying due to your son entering the house protection fields while already irradiated with a species destroying biological bomb designed and deployed to end humanity by an overly powerful kingdom or organization."
A pause. Dad raised a finger. "Or similar situations."
Sigh. "Let me read the data, Dad."
The asshole smirked! "Of course dear. I'll go get you breakfast."
At least her new father was being helpful. Right, let's work through this mess.
Later (Felt like hours, but her new internal clock said it was minutes), she leaned back from her bagels and cream cheese. "I honestly expected worse."
Nothing that would set off metal detectors, a method to call for help if something happened in the future, a communication system that wasn't easy to hack or intercept or interrupt. And she certainly felt far more energetic and healthy than she ever had before.
Still. "I'm not super enthusiastic about dumping raw data into the kids brains just to avoid high school."
Sarah snorted. "Then clearly you don't remember high school. But to be fair, MOST people don't. They either get a job where that level of education is over qualified or they go onto college and almost everything from the lower levels isn't super important anymore."
Yeah yeah, she heard Dad's opinion on the education system for years now. "Building social skills is important. Remember how letting me have my own candy world made it difficult for me to relate to others?"
Actually there was a whole MESS of issues with
Froopyland.
Repress. Right, move on.
At least that DID make her dad wince. "At least it helped me learn how to define universal rules and artificial existential modifications?"
She raised an eyebrow.
Sarah slumped. "I'm better now. And I'm trying not to create dimensions or worlds or reality clusters with advanced life forms now. Plus, I haven't reset or destroyed one of those since I escaped! That counts for something, right?"
...Sadly enough, it did. "Right, what is your plan then?"
The scientist pulled up data. "Well, I am establishing a series of redundant command nodes inside the Multiple Residence for Smiths. Basically a more flexible and self indexing wikipedia of data that anyone in the Beth, Summer, Morty, or Sarah hive mind can access!"
The what now? Dad continued. "That way everyone can learn what they do normally, but OTHER people who were not there at the time can benefit as well! Eventually it would become something like a massive information gold mine, one that our MRS AI can keep an eye on and offer rewards to any of us who help it grow!"
Nope, hang on. "MRS AI? That's your ship's artificial intelligence now, right?"
A nearby speaker activated. "Correct, Ms. Smith. I'm currently going by Mrs. Ship."
Uh. "Nice to meet you? And one moment." Turning back to a proud looking father, Beth narrowed her eyes. "Dad, what do you mean 'Hive Mind'?"
THERE it was. The slightly confused look that Dad always had when she caught him rewriting reality or changing nature itself and the inability to understand why it was interesting or even an issue.
Sarah blinked. "You know, the hive minds! So that we can better take care of the family!" She pointed at something. "You did read the 'help' section of the menu, right?"
Beth paused… And glanced at the other menu options.
And the 'Help' button.
A mental selection showed her the nearly endless topics and issues and… Oh good grief.
It had taken her forever just to just go through the NORMAL menu options!
Sarah flinched, as something from Beth's expression must have escaped her control. "Ah. Well, um. Should I wait until you look through that first?"
A slow nod. It wasn't her Dad's fault, this was just part of the woman's nature.
The scientist fidgeted. "Good. Good! I'll just… Go get you a drink?" Seeing the glare she raised her hands. "Non-alcoholic! Summer has a whole bunch she loves, maybe you could relax and drink a few while getting a grip on the situation?"
Glancing at the massive list to read… She sighed. "Yes, that would be lovely. Thank you, Sarah."
After all, Beth certainly wasn't going to complain about her dad actually making helpful notes and explanations, even if even the 'simple' and 'basic' stuff reminded her of her late night college cram sessions.
Plus her drink making skills were astounding. "And Dad, thank you for asking BEFORE embedding customized memoires crafted by your artificial intelligence into the children. I promise to review the entire scenario before I make a judgement."
And her dad's face lit up, the woman's happy gray eyes sparkling! "Anything anytime, sweetie! Right, try some of this Egyptian Chamomile Tea, and I'll go rescue Summer from the growth facility she somehow wandered into."
The exasperated mother had already sipped the lovely and hot drink before she froze… And continued. Sarah had already left to handle that situation, and there WERE a lot of documents to read.
Baby steps Beth.
Still. "Mrs. Ship, you'll keep an eye on my girl?"
The warm and somehow familiar voice from the speaker settled some worries. "Of course, Ms. Smith. She would have already returned to the more normal areas of my facilities if she hadn't gone apple picking. And it isn't the acid apples either, these are the normal, safe to eat, not-exploding basic apples."
What? No. "Thank you, Mrs. Ship."
Baby steps.
