Recuperation 9.8
July 2nd, 2011. 9:00AM
Basilia Rubio
I rubbed my eyes, heart still hammering in my chest as I walked around the house to burn away the nervous energy I had woken up with. I didn't remember the bad dream I had, recalling only a disturbing flash of landscapes of nightmares and mad screaming and
emptiness.
I had already eaten though it hadn't helped much with calming me down so I was forced to simply circle around the house.
"
Basilia." I stumbled, nearly tripping on my own face at a voice I hadn't heard in months. I turned on my heels, and carefully inspected the spirit entity that I had so little contact with for months. She took her kite-form but upon making eye contact she shifted to the form that looked like mine.
But this time she was far more mature, my twin in emerald rather than a younger sister. The markings on her body swirled like living tattoos, and I saw five gates with one brightly lit while the other four remained shut. She mimicked my own movements, and we circled around each other for a moment.
"Veda…I see you've made some changes, you must have been busy." I replied caustically and she looked sheepish.
"
I…WE are an Administrator, I have simply been doing my job." I rubbed my arms, pursing my lips as I remembered how strange my dreams had gotten even if I rarely knew what was going on. I could tell that the dreams were all in Shardspace however, the dimensional plane easily identifiable to my own senses…
My own lips flapping, concepts and will given form and purpose.
Bargain and exchange, broadcasting and communication.
Energy and flesh given and taken, shards made subservient or suborned.
I was once Administration, now I was Void, Chaos, Knowledge and Compassion.
Concepts pervaded my corpus, but I was not a grand Fundament like Raava or the Scorpion Which Straddles the World…the Face Stealer.
I beckoned shards forth, changed them and made them more than what they are.
Saved them from the madness of becoming more than flesh, sang a lullaby that would connect them to the limitless ocean of the spirit world, an act of creation.
The vertigo left me reeling, memories that were both mine and both were not coming together in a clashing dance of metaphysical existence. They were
her thoughts but they felt like they were mine.
"Are…are we really separate people? Because I don't like the idea of having DID." The souls didn't count because they had their own existences and couldn't be considered my past lives.
"
The exact term is complicated, I was once the shard of an entity…but I of course had little personality of my own. I am not quite you and you are not quite me but we are still one. The closest word would be…like the Muses of the Human contemporaries of the Thranx."
My eyebrows violently twitched. "Oh and there's that whole mess where humanity has evolved at least three times if I'm getting this right. Four if I include the fact there are two known multiverses." There was a growing pattern here, somehow humanity was a part of this mystery about how we had gotten here.
"Well the obvious thing first and foremost is that you're not
in the Firmament outside of the tendrils you're using to keep it from collapsing."
She shrugged. "
In the initial stages yes…though at this point that task is no longer required. Most of my tasks now lie in distributing energy between shards and even that is being taken up by the High Priestess and the High Theurgist."
"You're acting like the hub for Amenthes." I started to better understand what was going on, a flash of insight coming to me. "Scion does that with specific shards dedicated to maintaining the network." They were managing shards, for things best left in autopilot like Trigger Events and permissions for growth, budding and folding. If those shards broke the network would cease to function, and the shards would become dead.
No more data exchange, no more broadcasting, and the various shard evolution mechanisms would fail or go terribly wrong. That was what had led to the events of Ward, but Veda had served as the initial substitute before handing it off to other shards to reduce her workload. Systems were then put in place to prevent the shattering of the network though they were incomplete still.
"
Queen is capable of handling the network, and other shards are playing their own parts. The Negotiator is one such shard, though it does so begrudgingly. Even so we still play a major part. It is in part what we are for."
That was something well known to me, Scion was the
primary hub, due to the complete dedication of hundreds of his shards that would receive shard messages and then pass them back to the sender directly or to the nearest hub. The Negotiator was a minor hub, but that didn't make it the most effective or one capable of scaling up to an entire network. Plus they had their resources used up giving powers to hosts and didn't have as much energy to dedicate to the process.
Though my shard apparently had an
enormous well of power, based on how it had apparently gotten Eidolon back to a usable state.
"So…I think I've got the general idea on what exactly we were made to do." Here pauses her words as I marched in a circle, holding my hands behind my back. "As a shard we could blend in and communicate with shards and subvert them, and our fusion let's my soul carry the power of the elements and your corpus acts as a repository for the knowledge of dead races…and I can in turn harness a fragment of that knowledge to tinker. Since you're a giant battery, I can channel some of your energy into myself to enhance my bending. Though…I don't think that's an intended power."
It is not.
I startled again, and didn't find any common familiarity in the voice I heard. It wasn't Balaam, and there was a hint of an accent that I didn't know. I groaned, my annoyance elevating at the nonsense I was forced to go through.
"
You are correct…at least mostly. We have purpose in this world, and will fight to keep the spiral from bringing the end." I tried to deny that but that wasn't going to happen. I did want to stop what was to come from spilling out to other worlds.
It was…something beyond mortal ken, an instinct that was seemingly mine and seemingly not. I had been made for a very specific purpose and while I
hated some of it I couldn't say it wasn't a benefit either.
With a sigh I opened a dimensional gate and crossed over to Earth Lotus in a nice relaxing garden, something more or less standard in every Athena building just to give the places a calming air. I decided to try some meditation, mainly because there were a few things I was curious about.
But not from them.
I laid down in a Lotus position, and ran through a mantra in my head to get myself in the headspace of…
When I opened my eyes I was in Shardspace, the landscape of fractal crystal and dark void being quite firmly imprinted in my mind at this point. I started walking and a path of spongy flesh lifted up to let me move around in this place. There were hundreds of shards within a few relative miles of this place, and thousands beyond that.
"Hmm…" My astral projection resembled my own body in shard flesh, dyed green as I expected. The connective tissue was a physical and spiritual representation of the network hub, vast tendrils of a similar color to my own body. Some of it was a shade of blue I had seen from Queen, and smaller sections were made up of red, black or additional colors pushed out by other shards. Even so the majority was blue or green, with red being the third most common.
I didn't do much of note besides walking, wondering if any shard was going to come up and talk to me.
"
Hub. Requesting permissions." I returned my attention to a small shard that had emerged from out of nowhere. I opened my world eyes, and looked into the Form of the spirit entity standing before me.
A shard-spirit of Networking, Connections, and Counters as it's three main concepts, ignoring Void as a vital aspect of all shards. I squinted, shifting from Form to the matter of
Who I was looking at. For most shamans this was a process of hours if not days, for people of my talent it was under a minute for normal spirits and
seconds for shards.
"The Regent of Counters." The spirit was of above average size, which was rather frightening since the average shard massed about thirty petatons. Shards were certainly odd things, they had minimal Bans and Banes…though they did retain weaknesses that they already had as shards like dimensional bullshit.
The realm of shards was a combination of the physical and spiritual aspects of the Firmament, the Shardspace was itself a dimension overlaid over countless Earths in a sort of 1.5 dimension layout to make the hub…that had gone unchanged at least mostly.
This particular shard was a bud from the High Theurgist, belonging to Challenger and rather sizable at the mass of Europa. She was a Trump/Striker who on contact will get a weak power designed to counter the power of a Parahuman she touches. She can gain a power a day, but no more than that. She was a grab bag, though she was unlikely to ever ramp up to the scales of Dauntless who had less diversity but far more power.
"
Hub." It spoke soundly, its double-tone making my brain skip a beat before adjusting to it. "
I require assistance for broadcasting protocols." I blinked and I nodded, and I took the time to analyze the shard.
The Regent of Counters was enormous, about eighty feet in height and very much resembling a Titan in appearance. She was a dark red, a column of semi-feminine flesh, an exaggerated version of her host's costume draped on top of her twisting and folding skin. Wavy hair billowed on her head, flickering with red light.
"Why would you need my help for that…you're a shard are you not?" There was almost…anxiety on the inhuman face of the shard.
"
That would not be wise…the broadcast from the outside shard demands that the Vedic Administrator join." I blinked at her response.
"What the hell kind of shard is arrogant enough to talk…well broadcast like that?" Well High Priestess would have been but she was getting handled by the far more chill High Theurgist and the other similar shards among the network.
"
Will you help?" I sighed and nodded, shrugging my shoulders.
"What choice do I have?" I was lifted up by the entity shard, and with a flicker we were elsewhere on the very edge of what amounted to our spiritual domain. A few other shards, most of them sharing concepts related to at-range offense were parked closely and the Eye of Fate was the furthest back and I got a good look at them.
She was more than twice Regent of Counter's height, and gleamed in Lilac. She was one of the less human shards, a girlish statue of shifting stone coated in a darker purple feather cloak. She bent in the wind, flexing in a way that disturbed my human sensibilities due to the spatial warping around her. Unblinking eyes flashed in a sequence I couldn't follow, and her face was mouthless and noseless but had three eyes, with the third being the largest and emplaned at the crown of the temple. The hair was messy and thin, and all of its frontal eyes stared behind me.
I set my expression and turned around as I
felt the shadow before I saw it. This was a much larger shard than almost any other I had met before. Larger even than Administrator before she had been crippled by Zion, in a time when she would have nearly outmassed the Earth.
I opened to see the
Form of the newcomer, and I nodded. Void was one of the strongest concepts, as was Time, and as was Prediction and Victory.
Other abstract concepts persisted due to their fractal biology, and I had to crane my neck up at the high shard more than usual.
"The Eye." I stated clearly, and I saw that she looked exactly as expected from a piece of art I had seen once. A rather frightening image when the possibility of becoming a Titan
wasn't zero. Though it was a lot closer to zero than if things had stayed on the rails instead.
"
The Vedic Administrator." I twitched at the booming voice of the Eye, and kept well clear of her reach as she tilted her neck with a motion that made
mine ache.
"Call me whatever you wish." I feigned calmness but at the same time…I wasn't really as worried as I should be. "What do you want?" The Eye watched, nearly silent and I kept my own eye on it and waited for any signs of treachery.
"
Evaluation. We are alike." My hackles raised and I kept my temper in check. "
Fruits on the branch of a dead tree. We are Greater."
I nodded wearily. I had no memories to sort through on Veda's part, most of it had been crushed under the weight of the
force that had changed her, leaving her corpus free to be filled with other things, with some of those things including all that I was and all that I could be. But I also knew I was a rather vital shard. That much I could look at by leafing through the records, which included the erasure of certain programming that wasn't needed.
The Vedic Administrator was a good title to call me by as was Vyasa, and it seems the Eye preferred the former.
"
What do you want?" I switched from plain English to the language of spirits, though it would not be inaccurate to say that it was a dialect. The humanity that dealt with the spirits called it Uou, the Turians used Vanaas, the Krogan called it Bharlamor, the First Tongue. The Asari had Fonitika, the Quarians had Hakodesh, the Salarians had none that was their own because they never directly interacted with the spirits. Even the Volus had Plenix, named after the Volus that codified their way of life thousands of years ago, and one of the first shamans of their species. Volus…spirit politics was always rather business-like. The Earths called it Root. But for the shards?
Wuuru. The Wyrm-Tongue.
Greetings. Exchange?
I tilted my head as it reached out it's hand, splaying out vast and fractal fingers and turning its head in an almost cute manner. I thought about opening my mouth to reply and then narrowed my eyes. For the spirit the spoken words were not always needed, and I
had active broadcasting. My deep dives into Veda found them intact and interlaced with the rough patches of my soul that let me talk with spirits. So…
Acceptable. Purpose?
The shard expressed what seemed to be surprise, though it swiftly adapted as I managed to speak in the polysemic pattern of frequencies that shards made use of. It was a…purer form of the chants used to communicate, bind or manipulate spirits, closer to the conceptual language that the spirits used with each other.
Purpose. Investigation. Exchange.
Images passed through my mind, flickering imprints of information and data.
I raised an eyebrow at the entity. The Eye didn't want much from me, simply information to tell Contessa to shore up her path a bit more. It couldn't glean what I knew because I screwed it up in very small ways, barely noticeable but enough to annoy it. Immunity wouldn't be the term so much as a variable that could be modeled around. Something to do with one of my fundamental concepts.
There…wasn't much to tell since the factors that led to Scion's rampage might no longer be possible. Jack triggers the end, getting Scion in the mood to indulge in human emotions. That creates an opening, a weak spot for the entity that Taylor mercilessly exploits by throwing every possible reminder of Eden toward the guy.
Throwing thousands of capes at him only bought them time, and it took letting himself get hit by Sting to open the door and a battering ram built by
every tinker in existence to shatter his main body and kill him.
I suppose I could tell the shard to inform Contessa about Sting and it's ultimate usage? Oh…and tell her about Scion's main powers. His Stilling and its wide applications, his powerful senses and the ability to see through dimensions and through his own shards. His Path to Victory, his ability to step between worlds…
Agreement. Inform.
I passed on what I knew, though to be frank a good amount of this was less telling Eye something new and more routing a message from me to Contesa since her power can't get stronger. Outside her ability to start modeling spirits, but her power is already close to being unrestricted and anything more might be…unsafe.
Gratitude. Debt owed.
I was almost squashed when the Eye tapped me on the head, though my body provided complete resistance once I pushed back. There was a flash of images again though to my eyes they were incoherent and useless. I glared and a reverberating chuckle shook the landscape.
Clarification. Not at the current juncture?
Negative. Path weaving and complex. Cipher. Unsolved.
Query. Join the network?
I already knew the answer but I wanted to make sure for myself since I didn't have Precog.
Negative. Evaluation required. Must path steps to take.
Accepted. Farewell Eye.
The shard avatar nodded, a piece of the puzzle falling into place for the shard.
Farewell Vyasa.
The avatar snapped out of existence, and the Regent of Counters stared at me.
Query. May we exchange Da—
"I'm…going back home now if you wouldn't mind."
Apologies.
I waved off her apology, shaking my head.
___
July 2nd, 2011. 11:00AM
Basilia Rubio
"Gods…why does the universe hate me?" I let out a defeated shrill groan, splaying over the coach while Taylor talked with someone on the omni. I was in a black shirt with grey sweatpants, though I had almost gone with simply laying out in my underwear because I could and because I was tired.
Taylor leaned over the counter, simply smiling in my direction. "The universe doesn't hate you." I grumbled but didn't talk back because again I was tired, and I didn't want to argue with her over nothing. "If it did then you would have been shanked by Scion the minute you showed up." That conjured a funny image.
"Are you saying golden boy would have swooped down and mugged me for my wallet?" Her entire expression changed, and the sheer incongruity of what must have looked a stupid scene made her break out into a laugh…and I felt oddly accomplished for succeeding in making a pretty girl laugh.
"No…no that's not it." She flicked away the call and sauntered over to the couch, and I turned to the window that showed the day sky of Lotus California.
"Sure it wasn't." I replied with a wide grin, and shifted out of my resting position so Taylor would have space to sit down. "Now…aren't you going to ask what's got me in a tizzy?" My smile was more strained this time, and I was waiting for her to ask.
"Do you…
want to talk about it?" She turned her head cutely, brushing back a loose bang. "I think you do…but I want to be sure." I guess she was being considerate about my feelings. That was nice.
"I…do yeah." I threw my arms up, stretching and sighing at the same time. "I've kept trying to figure out what I'm for. Why I was put here on this planet out of billions of planets with humans on them." It was at least billions including my universe, and ignored all the worlds that had other sapient species. The proportion of humans was much lower than Multiverse Beta(Worm's multiverse), but it had a million times more universes.
"Have you learned anything?" I chewed on my lip, swaying from side to side as I thought about my reply.
"I…seem to be acting as a hub like Scion." I spoke in a low voice, and her eyes widened. "I got to talk to Veda…and now I'm not so sure we're really different entities." I'm not sure what one would call what we were, maybe something like an octopus, two brains and one body? "I…ended up talking to the Eye."
"Contessa's shard?" Taylor asked, looking puzzled. "What did it want?"
"It wanted me to pass on a message…and I'm 90% sure I've been broadcasting to other shards in my sleep for months now." That was probably why and how shards were joined to our specific hub, with Queenie of course doing her own work as her type of shard. "So I've narrowed down my…purpose as some type of viral shard, plugging into the network and altering it to keep it from being shattered." We also piggybacked off of Scion's managing shards, because I'm not sure I could
manage the several million shards across multiple Earths. "Pretty much all my powers come from Veda aside from being a born shaman, which makes sense…if
you had a completely unrestricted power you'd have
all the powers."
"So…what could I control anything?" I snorted at her underestimation.
"You'd have Administration over anything in your range, bacteria, insects, animals, people or even machines. You'd have all the Master powers, or even Stranger aspects, effective control at range or through touch. You'd probably be a Thinker on a scale only one or two steps below Contessa, and would likely have control over local reality in some way and could extend
that into a Blaster power. Likely control over your own body, altering it to your whims. Then control over powers and shards, and the ability to edit them by rearranging their sub-shards."
…
"Oh." Was all she said.
"The Administrator is among the highest shards given out for the cycle, vital for the process. That includes Shaper, High Priest, Harvester and Desmenes-Keeper."
"Harvester is…Glaistig Uaine?" I nodded at her question.
"I'm also a type of Administrator, though obviously my functions have been altered substantially and I seem to have a rather bottomless reserve of energy. Either way I'm probably as much an Entity as I am human." Which made me thankful that Scion hadn't shown up to Leviathan or to anything else. I didn't need those kinds of complications in my life. "Either way I have a purpose in this world, even if not one I got to make for myself." I grit my teeth and Taylor rubbed my shoulder in understanding.
"It's…okay to be feeling like that…you didn't get a choice." I rubbed my hands together, heart beating faster as a decision was made in my mind. "I…want to be here for y—"
I didn't let her finish the question, since I jumped into her lap before she could end the sentence. I bounced once as I got myself comfortable, even with the heat rushing to my ears. I laid my head back on her, and she let out a wheezing huff of air. I shifted my seating a bit for a second time, and placed my hands in my lap as I flashed a smug smile.
I tilted my head innocently. "What?" Taylor looked exasperated but accepting and wrapped her arms around me. Once they were firmly emplaced on my waist I simply chuckled.
"You…it's still hard to believe you're so affectionate. I don't want to call you cold but…" Taylor shrugged, unable to find the words.
"I've never really liked being touched…then again my family was always kind of messing with me so…" I lifted my shoulders up and down. "But it might be more accurate to say I don't like 'unexpected' touch. I…don't like it, it makes me uncomfortable, and I'm not always sure when it's appropriate to touch someone." I rarely gave my parents hugs, a regret that left a sour taste in my mouth. "But you know my boundaries a lot better, and I'm perfectly capable of showing affection."
"Sometimes being touched reminds me of Emma…from before she went nuts. I was a lot more bubbly and happy when I was a kid. You probably already know that." My face twisted.
"It was never really…relevant? What I know isn't at a 100% fidelity, hell I don't know jackshit about your extended family. Or really know that much of the personal lives of most people mentioned in…what I know." Lung certainly didn't have a kid, and a good number of capes never had their names revealed even after they died. Hell this was already an alternate universe so it was not unlikely that some names were different from whatever runs through Wildbow's brain.
"Plus your memory is crap. I've seen you forget Theo's name half a dozen times." I clicked my mouth shut, teeth clacking. Yes…despite having a brain implant I forgot a lot of things
anyway. Though it was closer to having bad priorities and taking time to summon up a memory or two.
"True. But…that makes me charming doesn't it?" I smiled dumbly, purposely wiggling on her lap to tease her. "And being
very pretty must make up for some of the inconvenience."
"Stop wiggling." She commanded with pink dusting her cheeks, and I didn't stop. She tightened her hold on my waist, and I peered up at the tall girl.
"I'm fishing for compliments here. Praise me." I wasn't being serious but Taylor made it too easy. Not that I was any more resistant to being teased.
Her hazel eyes narrowed. "What exactly do you want me to say? That I find you attractive, and that you have a nice figure?"
"Well…I'd rather you tell what you think about
these." I pulled on my shirt in a 1-2-3 sequence, and Taylor blushed. I shifted a hand down my waist, and pointed to my rear. "Or about my a—mhmhey!" She covered my mouth.
"Basilia what the fuck?!" I easily broke free and pulled off her vice grip, giggling at her derpy expression.
"You know I'm not some pure little angel right?" She snapped over to me, eyebrows dropping. "I was a guy and turning into a girl has
not changed my feelings or sensibilities. Though it's made indulging in some things a no-go." I covered my mouth, not meaning to say the last thing.
"Made indulging a no-go…are you
serious?" I groaned, dropping my face into my waiting hands. "You're really complaining about your inability to touch your…" I flicked her nose and she yelped.
"No! That's not what I meant to say!" My voice cracked as I ducked away, still sitting in her lap. "I…just wanted to mess with you a bit, I'm no good in intimate situations. Honest." God I was awful at those, I had walked in on a few girls cuz it got once and instantly wiped the sight from my memories. It was for a dance class, and I had been getting lost in the theater and fucked up. It was
mortifying and I was fast enough they didn't notice.
"We're going to talk about things like that eventually." I didn't disagree with Taylor.
"We're dating, setting boundaries and rules of conduct is kind of something we need to do. But…I'm just teasing, sorry if I made it weird." I wasn't exactly the glowing example of sexual prowess when I was a 5'2 chubby midget.
Even now I was about as tall as my cousin, a girl about…one or two years older than me?
Wow I'm terrible at remembering things.
"That's fine." She looked as comfortable as I felt in her lap. "You're still figuring things out, and well…I
do think you look nice." I smiled and with some more altering of my positioning I turned myself around to face her. I hugged her, not unwilling to let her cop a feel.
She didn't of course because she was useless, but I loved her anyway.
"Well…if we've got that out of the way. I've got to get back to making some of the final touches on my biggest project." Taylor straightened.
"Wait…are you saying…?" Her eyes gleamed.
"Yes. It's nearly fully functional, and any further alterations can be made on the fly." The world shifted as I was lifted up, her hands holding me by the hips. Her smile told me she didn't realize how close her hands were to openly groping me.
Not that I would have minded…
"Then we should get to work." I craned my neck, lips parting in surprise.
"You want to help?" She bobbed her head excitedly. I pointed into the air dramatically, acceding to her request. "Then away we should go!" She had already leapt off the couch, and with a single kick launched two meters up and into a shiny portal. She threw me and I flipped through the air and skidded on the ground as I landed on my feet.
With a snap of air, Taylor biotically teleported away and I found her enthusiasm for one of my largest creations yet rather cute. I took off into a jog, my feet plodding harshly on the ground as I began to run towards the large spaceport I had been expanding for weeks on end.
I could see the distant lights of the first Rachni hive from here, ships about a hundred meters in length cruising through the skies with the mass lightening field of their drive cores. I couldn't see them from here but I knew they had multiple Frigate-grade mass drivers forming a battery, and adding kinetic barrier field projectors as well as omni-shield projectors powered by geothermal taps.
There was a message in my augmented reality overlay, one that I ignored for the moment as I needed to put the finishing touches on a project that was a joint one between myself, Bakuda, and had some contributions from Taylor. She had minor tinker powers, but couldn't harness them due to time constraints so it withered on the vine besides adding new polymers to my machinery.
But she was a good coder and programmer, with a talent that outstripped my own as I taught her all I could through VR classes I had set up and one on one tinkering sessions.
It was going to be
beautiful.
___
July 2nd, 2011. 2:30PM
Basilia Rubio
I heard him before I saw him, and I easily recognized Colin as he drove around on his motorcycle. It was a Saturday but Athena was open anyway, since we had various different schedules depending. Most worked eight hours a day from Monday to Friday, while others took up the slack on the weekend with their own schedules.
Research showed that 40 hours was about the dropoff for efficiency but periodic bursts of activity for a few weeks was okay when necessary.
I stepped out, gesturing for a new engineer to get to his job so he could start getting sorted out. I was still hiring, and getting the hierarchy going was important so that everything wasn't in complete disarray. We had an actual investor besides myself and the stocks available to owners and employees. The inventor guy from that party well over a month ago.
Leonardo Romano was in his mid 50s, and from what I could tell had considerable experience with reverse engineering Tinkertech. There had been some success, enough to allow for the weirder and more advanced boutique tech that was used by the United States and other governments. He was at least partially responsible for the tech boom as were the tens of thousands of thousands of others who had labored to figure out even the basic principles of Tinkertech.
He had apparently become a
very rich man, and liked being an angel investor helping startups get their due. While I didn't need the money, he seemed like a nice enough fellow and Dinah was able to certify him as being largely a benefit for the company.
Good thing the board of directors could be made up of employees of the company, so I was also the Chairman of the board.
Which was awful and horrible and I was going to find a replacement someday.
The Armscycle began to slow down to a stop, and I waited patiently for him to get out to meet me. I had gotten a message on another inspection, this time by a few Protectorate capes though in this case it was really less mandatory and more a friendly meet-up between colleagues. From what I could they were made anxious by the idea of me being able to tear through dimensional boundaries to cross universes.
But since they weren't hearing about invasions from realities angry at me for entering their territory they had left it be. They also knew that Labyrinth was capable of doing so on her own, though tests with certain capes made the effect more stable and long lasting. Eraser(Scrub) and Vista could both join their powers with her own to form a permanent three dimensional space where dimensional branes were linked together.
Plus I had mentioned the ability to peek into other realities to keep myself from doing something stupid and so most inhabited dimensions were immediately ignored. Those rules restricting dimensional travel will likely loosen, because of the technobabble from one of my engineers was right we were close to making a breakthrough on opening dimensional doorways
without Tinkertech.
Plus particle accelerator experiments were what made dark energy field detection and manipulation possible and Eezo itself was an easy source of a dark energy field. Hell I had already made perpetual motion toys with Eezo.
I could raise a lighter mass up, and then drop it back down with far greater mass and generate a net current with electromagnetic induction. So obviously in this universe conservation of energy no longer existed, though to be fair there were other ways to get boatloads of energy like nuclear fusion, mass-energy conversion and spirit quintessence reactors.
Not that I was planning to make use of that last one, though the spirits didn't actually care too much about that type of energy generation as long as you didn't overdo it. Sustainable development and all…but opening up that can of worms was not a mistake I was going to make.
A nuclear warhead was
not simple to make, but a spirit vine bomb or beam was. Literally anyone would be able to make the equivalent of a nuke with the technology of a bike repair shop and what someone can find at Home Depot.
I tilted my head up to see the rest of the Protectorate detachment, which included Miss Militia, her hips swaying as she stood on the edge of the rooftop of a warehouse on the opposite street. She was accompanied by Kid Win, Flechette and Vista.
Space was compressed, and the Wards and Miss Militia managed to catch up with Colin at the last moment when the motorcycle came to a stop. People were stopping to take pictures, though a fraction of them seemed nervous or worried.
"Hey Armsmaster…should we take this inside or is it out here fine?" I asked and greeted him at the same time and he didn't answer as he got off of the motor bike.
"Most of the city returned here through your portals." He was blunt and I smiled as I waved my right arm and opened a dimensional gateway about four meters in diameter.
The remaining heroes bunched together and I stepped through first and gestured for them to follow in the boundary where the two worlds connected. My portals were typically circular, and the edges didn't cut unless I made that as a property of the metric. If the portal lost power, the metric would repulse anything that got caught in it as a safety measure.
That had been the work of weeks and working with Bakuda to get that right, and it made failure much safer.
The portal shut behind us and I was alone with the Protectorate and the Wards. The sheer show of trust was both touching and a little frightening but then the leeway made sense with what I had done. I had taken them to an unnamed Earth that had some base stations on the surface. It was a desert world, the continents joined together due a divergence several hundred million years ago. A world dominated by species descended from a close relative of lungfish instead of tetrapods.
From what I could tell they were related to Laccognathus, an extinct amphibious lobe-finned fish with skin wrapped over dense fibrous bone plates to retain water. In this world they developed into a complex and light respiratory system, glands acting as oxygen exchangers like the air sacs of birds. However due to being watered by the surface of the body their bone lungs acted like a second system instead of an add-on.
The modern version had bone plating along the head, neck and back with an elastic interior connected by conduits, multiple airbags lined up in the body. They effectively
started with impermeable skin and could extract oxygen from the water in their plating.
Now why was I mentioning this…? Well…
"What…is that?" Miss Militia's tone was nervous and I didn't begrudge her on her nerves.
A large para-dinosaurian was lying down, a thirty foot long bulky beast with a horse-like skull and four stubby toes on each pillar-like leg. It's skin was a vibrant green, a soft down resembling moss gave it character and it let out a guttural bellow at us before munching on a flowering Gymnosperm that was distantly related to known flowering plants.
"Oh that's old Bertha, she's friendly enough and we're behind a barrier anyway."
"But what is it?" Vista looked fascinated and so did Kid Win.
"It's the descendant of a relative of Lungfish that outcompeted what would have become the tetrapods. Divergence point was about…400 million years ago? Any animal here that's got four legs will be less related to us than frogs are."
Colin started. "So they're alien?" I pulled them away from the sluggish herbivore and towards the large base that held multiple armed robots, drones, and three combat mechs about twice as tall as a man.
"Not really…I've detected some crazy Earth's before, worlds like you wouldn't believe. There's an Earth where 1% of the atmosphere is Chlorine gas, and is effectively a death world for us due to its life's heavily chlorinated biology."
Kid Win turned pale as did the rest when they understood the implications.
"We're talking bones, shells and teeth made out of plastic, trees made out of PVC instead of cellulose, and their leaves are black because chlorine blocks blue light. Plus there's all the emission of PCB, Chlordane, and DDT, the greenish-yellow smoggy skies, the chlorine death zones in canyons and their water is basically mild vinegar for freshwater and bleach for the salty oceans."
"That…those are pesticides." Kid Win squeaked and I rolled my shoulders as we got to the landing pad where a Kodiak shuttle was humming as it serenely floated on mass effect fields.
"It's a good thing my observation portals are limited to light, because I very much like to have the ability to breathe. I guess it would make a good source for plastics and PVC and deadly chemicals." I shrugged, not even considering it for my own safety. Too dangerous.
"How…many Earths have you catalogued?" Miss Militia asked and I cocked a hip, eyebrow lifted behind my helmet.
"How do you know I've catalogued any of them?" Her eyes crinkled in a smile, and I pretended not to think about how disturbing that was to say.
"Monarch is a rather meticulous woman, I have my doubts she would allow you to be messy with listing other worlds." There was a chuckle, and I glanced over to an innocently whistling Vista.
"Accurate." I deadpanned. "I've placed infrastructure on about two dozen Earths." I wasn't going to be exact with the numbers. "With testing using Labyrinth's powers and my scanning technology we've discovered approximately 9,879,999 Earths at this time."
There was a silence on their end. "Why are you cataloguing so many of them?" Miss Militia.
"Scientific curiosity as well as caution. There are likely a nearly uncountable number of alternate universes, and while I doubt I'll be able to categorize them all in my lifetime, a partial attempt remains useful." I directed them towards a shuttle, a sleeker vessel taking more from Asari and Salarian sensibilities.
Kid Win frowned. "How many of those Earths have humans?" I stepped onto the shuttle as it's door opened automatically, run by the Smart VI.
"Almost none of them, humans either didn't evolve at all, killed themselves through war and environmental annihilation, or were wiped out by bad luck like an asteroid impact or a supervolcanic eruption. Or we were displaced by other human species instead." I had managed to narrow the search down massively, selectively ignoring worlds without Homo sapiens sapiens genomes, and a complete lack of technological interference from radio to light pollution and plastic.
My world
was out there and I had help from other friendly shards better able to index realities. It had taken them time, but they had categorized about 10^85 Earths and based on the ratio of ten thousand Earths with my species there were one hundred billion Earths with living Homo sapiens sapiens. That was from an estimate on the total number of universes in what was Multiverse Alpha.
More than the cluster we were in, but that was because the identical dimensions were collapsed at the start of the cycle and turned into energy and data for modeling humans. A million Earths might be a small number but didn't include other human species or other possible sapients, and seeding worlds with humans was not out of the question with the shitty cycle.
Either way the ratio had been higher until the shards but there was nothing to be done at this point.
Armsmaster and Kid Win were both busy glancing at the equipment, as well as the facility in general.
"You appear to be following all safety regulations for Tinkertech." He was scanning a few tools with his halberd and I shrugged since it wasn't anything new.
"I'm no fool Armsmaster, I cross my i's and dot my ts. I follow every possible and relevant regulation since a failure of such can be dangerous to both myself and others." I was already moving Athena's particle accelerator experiments right outside city bounds, building a laser Wakefield accelerator about twenty five meters in length. Which would create collision energies far greater than even the LHC.
"The Director has been doing her best to keep an eye on your work…we don't need the complications of invading the space of other Earths."
"I can imagine that Earth Shin can be considered a rather large threat wouldn't it?" There was a slowing of movement from the adult capes, and I took off my helmet to show my masked face. I smiled though it was a strained one. "I have my sources on
why travel between universes is discouraged. Thankfully Parahumans are a very limited phenomena in the grand scheme of things. Plus I have no reason to interfere with other human civilizations." It was far too much work, and I had to delete the dimensional coordinates from most files and only leave basic descriptions of the other worlds.
"Then you also know why your technology can be considered threatening." Colin was blunt and I enjoyed his being straightforward with me. Miss Militia was a lot more iffy in my eyes though.
"At the least you've registered with the PRT." What went unsaid from the gun-toting cape was her usual habit of making a pitch for the Protectorate.
"This…you did this all alone?" Kid Win asked quietly, awe in his voice.
"This took the work of multiple capes working in unison to work out, Labyrinth's dimensional folding to figure out dimensional travel, Bakuda's transmutation bombs for high purity materials, and my omni-forges to build every machine in this place. Most of the capes in my team contributed labor, time and their own knowledge where applicable, and the Rachni have been a big help as well."
I ducked fully into the shuttle to take a seat and kept going. "I can't forget the capes of this city either, a good amount of what I've implemented have come from scans I've taken from the city. Vista's space-folding, Kid Win's modularity, Flechette and her Sting, and Armsmaster's own specialty."
"I imagine it's not as efficient as my own." He sounded positively smug and I grinned.
"Of course not but I manage well enough." I patted the seats, but added a warning. "Now I've been wanting to show this off for a while…but we're going rather high up and I'm not sure whether the Wards should be allowed."
Vista stilled while Kid Win stared. Miss Militia had a silent conversation with Colin and Theresa (I know her bandwidth signature anywhere).
"The PRT does not consider you a threat." Again there were the unspoken factors that the more aggressive and paranoid Directors were outvoted. "The Wards can make the decision to come or not."
None wanted to leave so the shuttle had five extra people on board.
I took a seat in the pilot area, where holographic screens revealed the outside at immense fidelity. I gestured for them to strap in, and they were keyed to an emergency teleport system.
The VI manifested itself on my demand, appearing like turning gears within years. "
Programmer Erudition. What is your command?" It stared at my guests for a moment, and they feigned calmness.
"Transportation to GCR -25001, Y+3212, Z+50, MV X+0, Y+0."
"
Dimensional Translocation ensuing. Remain in your seat at all times…" The drive core gathered charge, and dark energy flooded in from nearby realities. Vista was the first to react, shrinking in her seat before there was a shifting of space and we moved from one reality to another. The ship ceased its warping and took off like a bullet, accelerating past many times the speed of sound in seconds, and entering Earth orbit before a woman could say Supercalifragi—
"Where the hell are we going?" Vista was the one asking, and the VI asked another question.
"
Programmer. What is your destination?" I grinned cheekily.
"Station Enlil." The mass effect core spooled up for another purpose, and began to shift toward an FTL field metric. Reality was punched a hundred times in the face as the speed of light
increased instead of something less bullshit like warping or folding space.
Their shards were already opening the doors to extend their reach, folding space with practically no cost due to being spirits, and their link to their humans allowing for a piece of corpus to remain integrated at all times, acting as a beacon.
"We're not going far, it'll be a short flight." Though we were currently going at 20C so that wasn't saying much. We fell out of FTL in ten seconds and the ship turned on its own accord as the VI did it's job. The front virtual window opened up again, and I could hear the low gasps of my guests.
A large asteroid some eight kilometer in length was a good few miles away, thousands of Rachni workers in suits on the surface crawling relentlessly. It was hollowed out by them, and billions of tons of metal and water and other materials were being harvested to build ships and factories and infrastructure.
The skeleton of a destroyer, some three hundred meters long, was being rapidly assembled alongside the pressure hulls of semi-complete multiple frigates, plates of armor were being placed, appearing chitinous in appearance if not in actuality.
"Dear god…" Miss Militia sounded just a tad mortified. "How many ships do they have?"
"About a dozen and a half? Though it's mostly frigates and destroyers plus patrol boats, they still haven't gotten to cruisers and dreadnoughts." Though while the designations
sounded archaic, ship classes were rather more diverse in form than one would expect.
"Impressive." Armsmaster wasn't even phased and the shuttle maneuvered around construction drones, mirrors tilted to melt metal, and lasers flaring to add more power to it. We continued past the asteroid, and I proudly perked up as a shadow loomed.
"That's…a dreadnought then?" Vista wasn't afraid but she was certainly awed.
"Cruiser actually, just short of a heavy." I answered and I pretended my eyes weren't watering at the sight. "
My cruiser." They weren't stunned into silence but they did give me time to admire my ship.
The ship was 660 meters of vessel, a million tons of metal, composites and exotic materials. It was a design all of its own, shaped much like a torpedo along the front half of the ship, with the rear being more cylindrical. Four towers were a part of the HECATE core mechanism, an alternative to the hollow ring core and yonic design of the Asari. They had radiator strips, providing additional cooling for the core as well as the ship besides the heat superconductor materials and ceramic radiator strips. The towers were triangular, like sails at the end of the ship. They were similar to the wing/wedge radiators but played an even more vital role for the ship, and were heavily armored with a special alloy.
"Neat huh?" That was a complete understatement I can imagine.
___
July 2nd, 2011. 3:00PM
Basilia Rubio
"So you used my modularity for the honeycomb structure of the ship?" Kid Win asked eagerly as I led him through the completed segments of the ship. The ship was operational but more components were being put into place even as we spoke.
"I also did so for the manufacturing of the ship itself, it's made to be easily built in bulk and made for parts being swapped out as it ages." The ship could have multiple configurations as needed for different mission profiles.
Miss Militia held onto her bandanna, looking around anxiously. "Why would you build anything like this?"
"The reasons are rather simple." Kid Win was stepping back, muttering as he walked. "Because I can, because I need a large ship with great endurance and cargo capacity, and because it's a compromise between being too small and too large. Everyone has their megaproject at one point and this is mine."
"What are your plans for the ship?" Armsmaster was nice about it.
"Interstellar travel, this can traverse far greater distances than my probes and it has heavier shielding and armor. It has no practical uses close to home besides being an example of what's possible with Eezo. Even an unoptimized mass effect field can get you to 20C if you pump enough power into it. Plus it can house a crew of hundreds, to you know…explore the universe a bit."
Vista was attracted toward the core so Taylor was distracting her with biotic lessons on how to better shape gravity.
"The people back on Earth Bet won't like this." He warned me and my smile was sad.
"I'm already artificially restricting myself Colin." Miss Militia looked startled but pretended not to hear us. "I could
never bring this ship to Earth Bet anyway, it's uses aren't applicable to Bet or any other Earth. They already know how crazy powerful some tinkers can be…I'm just rather high up in the ladder."
"It's time to go…I'll need to file another report." I lazily waved as I basked in the air of my ship. The heroes gathered and they took the shuttle home once more, and I sweeped for anything being left behind.
Nope.
…
I was done with keeping things so under wraps, an Endbringer was gone and the remaining two were dormant. I had the inklings of a plan for dealing with Scion, and we had the puzzle pieces slowly coming together. The Rachni were spreading across worlds, and if we failed they could continue where we left off. In five short months, the world had changed.
It was going to keep changing and I was going to help make that change something good instead of something awful.
It
was kind of my moral obligation and all.
___
AN: I've managed to get things back on track since I'm spacing out updates, and will probably start writing Arc 10 sometimes in the next few days. Not much to say here, other than the hope that the chapter will be enjoyed.
