Infinitium

(Day 3,786) Aprilis 30th, 22nd year of the Dragon, Age of Enlightenment

As normal time resumed, Adam’s links to Thor opened wide and 10 years’ worth of knowledge slammed into his mind. He felt like his brain had been scrambled as discordant thoughts were reviewed categorized and then set aside. As he was forced to review the last 10 years some information caught his attention before new information replaced it,

Earths 1 -10 were going strong.

The large gravimetric anomaly that had been 50,000 years away from Earth-Prime, as it was now referred to, vanished. A thorough investigation of the area had noted nothing.

Thor had spread throughout the Milky Way. In doing so he’d encountered exactly 787 different intelligent species. Some looked to be brothers and sisters of mythical creatures and others were the product of normal evolution. Regardless, with him out of pocket, Thor had waited to inform Humanity and left them alone. Though he had kept an eye on them.

Mom and Dad were doing great and had asked if they could visit Primore. Thor had thought it would be a bad idea.

Amanda and Abi had worked with Humanity to make sure every culture was represented and able to grow as they desired.

The die-hard terrorists that had accepted going to Earth 2 had all “mysteriously” died at the hand of some unknown individual that his nanites couldn’t track, which honestly grabbed his interest but was gone as more information flooded in.

A dimensional incursion was made against the Earth-Prime Moon. A portal had opened up and a version of him had come through. Unfortunately for his evil twin, he had no nanites, and Thor after reviewing the battle, if it could be called that, noted that it looked like the alternate version of him was trying to cast spells that would not work. Thor had opened a portal beside him that sucked him into the Unicorn singularity. Thor had the video of alternate Adam getting spaghettified into the event horizon. He’d played it for the idiots who hated him and who had cheered until Thor informed them that it was an evil version of him. He thought it was hilarious to watch their reaction as they thought he’d died which was quickly smothered by the reality that it hadn’t been him. He was able to get off one coherent thought to Thor, “That’s not right bud”, as more information crashed into him.

Adaline had continued working on raising her levels and had helped Thor, with clones of himself controlled by him which decimated and replaced the Council. It wasn’t fair but it happened. The last he’d checked Freya and the Kingdom of Tavor were doing just fine. King Tavor seemed to be a fair and just ruler. After Adaline had shown up to help the King, he had been able to consolidate his power and do the best for his people he could. Every once in a while Adaline checked in but eventually, she’d come to Thor and informed him that she would be accepting a path of Divinity. This had happened about a year ago and she hadn’t been seen by Thor since.

After the highlights, his mind sorted all of the other data. As he came back to himself He noted that only one second had gone by, though it felt like I’d just lived through 10 years. He double-checked to make sure there were no immediate emergencies then he had Thor create Xsitant and Tasha’s new biological bodies based on the scans he’d made. They transferred their souls into the new bodies, and he opened a portal for them to where Tasha and He had first met at the fork in the road west of Crownport. Xsitant assured him he was done and would be seeking divinity very shortly and Tasha had asked to go along with him. Adam guessed that during the six months they were stuck with him they’d hit it off. As the portal was about to close He said, “We wish you both the best, I’m off to save our Universe.” They both looked like they might have been about to say something as the portal closed.

Once they were gone, Adam opened a portal to Thor’s mind and storage facility. He upgraded him to Chaotic Nanites and solidified their bond. Next, he had Thor set up an automated system to maintain everything that would need to be controlled while he was gone and moved Thor into his personal storage vault. Unlike living objects placed in storage, he was absolutely fine. He also added material he portaled in that was converted to Nanites. He might need more nanites than he had. As he stood there siphoning asteroid materials from various solar systems into his personal storage through various portals, He reviewed what had happened with Thor. Now that they were together though it felt like he was talking to himself.

The Vizier had set a trap with Tasha and the Artifact Ring “Crux”. That trap had propelled him into the future 4.5 billion years to an almost dead Primore. His tests had shown that the sun’s life cycle was coming to an end and would have probably expanded into a Red Dwarf sometime within the next half billion years. That wasn’t what killed the planet though, the hole he’d detected where his tower used to be had never closed. The entire planet had been converted to Chaos but hadn’t expanded further into the Universe. Could Gravity have been preventing It or was it just compressing as more and more seeped in? He’d probably never know.

Adam had moved the three of them to the moon and created a Moonbase. It had been slow going until he’d found a gift from Serena. Though there was no evidence that she was around. Had the Universe been abandoned as she’d instructed him to help? If so, that meant that she knew he’d failed, yet she still left him a gift. Why would she do that? The gift had helped him speed up the process of getting everything he needed to get back to his place of power which meant He was still on task. He forced himself to keep reviewing his last half year so his mind wouldn’t keep jumping around.

Once the Moonbase was done he’d been able to create a portal that would bring them to his Place of Power where everything He needed to make a temporal portal was waiting for him. He checked his Thor’s Aspects memories and at no time had he contacted him before he set that up, so it looked like that particular time loop was closed. Thor had provided everything he’d thought he’d need, and it had been enough. He set up the portal and tested it by stepping back through it. While he’d done that he realized he had two soul stones with him and they hadn’t been destroyed, though they’d been in his personal storage. He took them out and tried again and they still weren’t affected. He posited that souls were immune to time, or at least immune to the passage of time or paradox. Once He had that idea He made a copy of Xsitant and Tasha out of nanites, had the copies step through the temporal portal he’d created, and used quantum entanglement to move their souls into the copies on the other side of the time portal. Whatever entity controlled Time might plug that hole he’d found in their rules. Then again the workaround might be there for a reason. The final step had been to create copies of their biological bodies and move their souls into those bodies which hadn’t been hard at all. Of course, that was when He remembered to grab the Artifact Crux and tried to step through the temporal portal.

Looking back on his memories of the small void with the stars rushing away He realized He must have been transported all the way back to the beginning of that Universe. Then when he’d tried to teleport to the Moon Base his will created the environment for a second but the location was outside the known universe. He guessed his ability to teleport across Universes could pick distance and location from his current position in the new Universe. Of course, if that Location didn’t exist he’d end up in raw Chaos, which he had. His will was strong enough to create a shadow of the moon base which the surrounding Chaos had no problem reabsorbing. Same thing with the wishes he’d cast for knowledge. The pockets he’d created had been stable for about 100 seconds but couldn’t hold because He was missing something that made the barriers of a Universe work.

Of course, then He learned about Fundamental Abilities. If he was interpreting what he’d seen right, Fundamental Abilities would work no matter what Universe, or Multi-Verse He ended up in. There’d even been a message that said he shared some of the Abilities of the Divine, so it looked like that acceptance to become a Divine was a lot more significant than he had thought. This could mean only one thing. The scale of conflict at that level was mind-boggling. Also, the divines and higher-level entities didn’t know about it. That begged another question, What were those entities? What-ever had been controlling his “Warnings” had been having fun taunting him. He had no idea why something would want to do that, but he knew if he ever got the chance he/she/it would become toast. He waited for a second because he half expected something like “Warning: Yeah not happening” or some other such denial but nothing happened. The “Unknown” speaker had been even less help, though he now knew he had a task to complete. At the levels, these beings were playing at Adam highly doubted stopping The Ancient Enemy before he destroyed a single Universe… Then He froze as his mind correlated everything that had happened.

He was now a creature of Time

He was now a creature of Chaos

He could move at will through the Chaos and it seemed that He could use spells while in chaos, though He hadn’t tried unless He was in an air Bubble. Did He need the air bubble to cast? Without uttering a word He willed a “Light” spell to activate above him and was pleasantly surprised when it did. That Fundamental Ability Spellweaver was missing some description concerning its capabilities. So If he was in Chaos He should be able to cast spells without leaving Chaos. Good to know.

What had the Goddess Serena said “…some of the eldest of the divines we know of shared that this creature had been seen long ago. When last it came forth, it destroyed countless Universes.” Countless Universes. Someone or something might believe that He had the ability to handle the Ancient Enemy. Did they also think He could change the fate of countless Universes? Sure that would mean he’d have some serious bragging, but how? Then an idea came to him.

There was another level above the Divine and there was more than one obviously. One had put him to task while the other taunted him. A typical good versus evil dichotomy. He had the feeling that there was more to it than that.

As for Nothing. The state of Nothing and the idea that Chaos existed within Nothing. If there truly had been nothing outside of Chaos how could there have been empty space? That would be chains of nothing. Did that mean that the representation that he’d seen on that graph paper…Oh holy hell, He zeroed in on that memory and saw a toggle that had the picture of a cube. He had only seen a single layer of a 3-dimensional space. Also, if they were surrounded by nothing then whatever Nothing was made of surrounded each area of chaos. The square circle representation could just simplify the layout of the various chaotic regions. If someone or something didn’t know any better it might appear that Chaos was unending when in fact it was broken down by borders of Nothing. If the ideas that had just popped into his mind were accurate that meant that any number of universes could have been up against him separated by a membrane of nothing. Infinitely far and at no distance at the same time. How could something cross nothing? He had been able to wish himself into that nonspace by accident, but He didn’t think anyone could cross it because it didn’t exist, yet things did.

His Place of Power most likely existed within Nothing which He could quickly review. He opened his map and noted that Thor had expanded it out to about 1,000 square miles around the Tower. Some towns had popped up and there were even people in the space, mostly from Earth. Families of workers, friends, and Portal Inc. employees who wanted to be absolutely safe. He toggled back until the same graph paper-like image appeared with orbs in the center of each square. His Place of power appeared to be alongside one of the regions of chaos. He saw the cube he’d remembered and toggled it. He wasn’t at all surprised when more regions of chaos appeared above and below the area of his Place of Power. He started pulling back and realized there was a Mobius strip on the far right. He knew zooming out any farther would be pointless and closed the map.

The Ancient Enemy disappeared for a time and then returned. Could it be hopping between areas of Chaos and eating Universes across the Cosmos? His new term for the 3D representation of Multiverse points. There might be a better term but for now, he’d just refer to all the multiverses together as the Cosmos, of which each was a part.

The Ancient Enemy had not destroyed Primore yet which meant he had time to do something.

Was this a singular creature or was it part of some bigger problem the Cosmos had?

If the powers that be above the divine wanted him to fix this problem He would save all those that had permanently died before him but there would be consequences.

Consequences? Did they matter when so many could be saved?

No, no they did not.

“Thor, we’ve been talking back and forth about this. If we can do this there could be a fundamental change in our Universe. Events that took place millennia ago will play out differently. We may not exist as we do now?” Adam said.

“I was made from your mind,” Thor said thoughtfully, “ I may have more experience than you at this moment but the one fundamental concept that I believe in, as you do is If I have the power to make something better, I should.”

“That’s just it, we might not make anything better?” He said.

“If at the very least all we do is allow souls to not be annihilated permanently I would call that win,” Thor said

“Me Too. We have work to do, let’s get started.”

At that moment a message popped into every humans vision on every planet they occupied back in their home Universe:

“Hello Everyone,

At the end of this message, I will no longer be participating in the constant monitoring or recording of every single event each of you takes. Instead, the technology residing in you will activate an embedded smart program that you will be able to utilize as you see fit in a small radius around you. You will not be able to affect living objects, but the technology will maintain your life and provide nourishment for you. As many of you have prayed for, you will once again have control of your lives. Please Note: Johnathan Bennard, Amanda Sifford, and Abi can take control of technology residing within you at any time should you try to rise against them. I would suggest that Humanity concentrate on what is most important and continue along the paths you are on. Please feel free to name your personal smart assistant whatever name you desire and to contact Portals Inc. if you need any assistance. It is about to be a brand new Universe out there for all of you. Travel portals will remain active on all planets save Earth II. There, access will only be through portals Abi and Amanda control at Portals Inc.

Dissociation will occur now.

Thor”

“What we’re about to attempt shouldn’t take anything connected to us with us but He just wanted to be safe.” Thor Said

“This brings us to our next task. Kill all external links and quantum links. We need to disconnect from all the extra bodies, nanites, and Abi.“ Adam said. He felt Abi start to question what was happening as her link dropped off. A moment later he received a personal message through their nanites which still had communication channels active.

Abi: Johnathan what’s going on

Adam: Johnathan was a young boy; I really think of myself as Adam now.

Abi: Okay Adam, what is going on?

Adam: More than you know, more than I can go into. In a moment there will be no more Thor and Adam

Abi: What do you mean?

Adam: We are going to fully amalgamate our two minds back into one. We need to do this before we can move forward.

Abi: Why do you need to do this?

Adam: Because we’re going to save the multi-verse!

As he’d been talking to Abi he’d had the nanites holding her download a complete copy of her, Amanda, and his Parents into his memory storage in his personal vault. Next, Adam cut the link and restricted all access to his Place of Power. He also had Thor override all the individual people’s smart programs in his Place of Power. They’d each grabbed their most precious items and stepped through portals to various Earths that had space for them to move in. When Thor was done, they locked all portal access to the Place of Power. On the Galactic scale, Dissociation allowed the nanites to break down and be absorbed by the various elements and atoms around them. Thor’s window of control closed down to the Place of Power which reduced until he was only attached to the nanites in Adam’s body and in the personal storage vault. Everything else was being run by the programs he’d left behind and Abi. Things like the power stations, portal stations, and early warning detection systems were the only structures that were allowed to remain. He was pretty sure they weren’t going to matter but if nothing changed He didn’t want to have to recreate everything.

“That should do it, are you ready Adam?”

“Ready!” He said.

They both willed their minds to combine. Thor and He became one entity as their minds and souls merged. Until that moment He hadn’t realized that Thor’s soul was simply a small echo of his. When it merged it felt like a part of him he’d never known was missing came home. He wondered if this is what it felt like when copies were made of the same person. Did each copy’s soul get added to the primary one upon death? A question for another day. The nanites Thor had resided in added to his storage space for all of his memories as well as additional nanites to call on if needed. Now that we had withdrawn from all possible outside sources, He thought that they were ready.

The first thing He did was open a portal to the location of the hole in Primore. He released enough Nanites to flow through to the other side into raw Chaos to make a small sealed room. He converted all the Chaos In the room into more nanites and left the empty room floating near the barrier of this Universe. Next, He used his nanites to create a barrier on this side and was pleasantly surprised when the membrane of the Universe followed the nanites and closed the hole completely. No more lost energy and no way for the chaos to make its way onto this planet. He had thought that might work because the membrane around his Place of Power had done much the same thing as He expanded the space. This being a much smaller adjustment the process had been a lot quicker. He recovered the nanites and closed the portal.

He looked around his Place of Power one more time then teleported into the empty room floating in Chaos using the nanites there to guide him. Just in case he ever needed the room again he created an airlock chamber. He stepped into the chamber closed the door behind him and opened the outer door. He moved out and closed the second door and converted the Chaos in the airlock into even more nanites that He quickly added to his personal storage vault.

Adam toggled his perception icon and reduced the opacity of Chaos until He was able to get a good look at the Ancient Enemy. From his vantage point, it was larger than anything I’d ever come across. He closed his eyes and activated his map function and zoomed back. As He did so He realized that it looked like a huge head with a giant mouth and that was about it. It wasn’t a Pacman but it was close. Just a sphere, with no eyes but two cavities that looked like they could be for a nose and a mouth. Of course, those cavities could swallow the Milky Way Galaxy a couple of hundred times over. As He continued to zoom out on the map, He realized that this creature was not bigger than the Universe Primore resided in, but it was bigger than some Universe bubbles He could see. It looked like it would mostly target smaller or just forming Universes as even now it was turning away from Primore towards smaller bubbles. That’s why Primore had survived longer than the couple of years Serena estimated. As He watched its slow movement towards one of the small bubbles, he wondered if it could attack a Universe and eat parts of it at a time. Using his map as a guide He willed himself to start moving vertically until He was above the Ancient Enemy and made his way forward until He was at the top of the head and landed on it. He opened his eyes and looked around. He felt like a microbe. The skin was actually a rocky terrain with crevices and valleys though nothing moved on it. It went off in all directions as far as He could see.

He closed his eyes again and sent his nanites out to tether him to this creature. As a creature of Chaos, its skin was resistant to raw Chaos. That didn’t stop his nanites from being able to infiltrate and learn as much about the substance as they could. This outer area was the equivalent of a hard crust. His nanites expanded and worked their way deeper and deeper. While that was going on, he also had the nanites create a coffin and lay down in it. Making sure that he was attached and sealed in the coffin he had the nanites sink it into the creature inch by inch. He wanted the coffin to displace itself deeper and deeper into the creature, following his nanites towards the skin, or bone of this creature. He set the nanites on their course and then went into a meditative state.

While He sank into the crust that surrounded the head He reviewed what He wanted to do. His plan was to somehow track this creature through its life cycle back to where it had emerged using Time Travel. If He could do that He might be able to change the fate of a lot of Universes and the souls that had been destroyed. Marvel’s Dr. Strange had given him the idea, not to mention a lot of other fiction by various authors. He did not doubt that changes on such a major scale were going to have serious consequences. The visit from Adaline as a Divine Harbinger of Change gave him the biggest clue that he was probably going to do something that would have some crazy side effects. Even if it somehow cost him everything He’d accomplished he’d still take the same action. Something running around causing entire Universes to die was probably something that should not be happening. He checked his internal clock every once in a while as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into years. After the first ten years, He put himself into stasis until the nanites encountered something different.

12,054 years later He came out of stasis as his nanites encountered a change, one He had not been expecting. A layer of metal covered a biomechanical structure. He had just traveled through approximately 100,000 miles of the crust-like structure to a very thin layer of metal which his nanites pierced easily. In doing so He was able to analyze the properties that had allowed this outer shell to survive exposure to Chaos and knew that He could recreate it as needed. He sank his coffin into the metal structure and placed it one inch below the surface and locked it in place. Next, He sent his nanites out to investigate and analyze everything they could and then report back. While He waited He spent some XP to level up. He was surprised when He reached level 100,000 because He was informed that 100,000 was the maximum level He was allowed to achieve. He was offered the chance to become Divine which He declined. He had tasks to complete.

He didn’t even look at the experience as He increased each of his 10 casting skills, Unarmed Defense, Unarmed Combat, Running, and Jumping to level 1,001. Even after that he still had over 369.3 trillion XP. At level 100,000 his attributes had been raised to 54,545, except for luck which was 54,550. He spent as much XP as he had left to increase his Chaotic Nanite Companion ability level. He was able to get to level 9,572 for 369.3 trillion XP which left him with 68.4 billion XP. With what He had planned He didn’t think these experience expenditures were going to have long-lasting effects but right now the Chaotic Nanite Companions having more range would definitely help. His range was now 9,572 feet which allowed him to modify, remove, and replace over a greater area. He used the structures He could reach to create small drones that went out and explored. He placed his body in stasis but allowed his mind to stay active as He went to work.

Over the next 10 years, his drones explored enough of the structure He was attached to for him to realize that this was artificially created. In the 100,000 miles near him, he’d discovered storage devices consisting of silos filled with various biological samples, batteries, and even some things that looked like giant soul gems that He couldn’t Identity. What He didn’t find were any creatures or constructs that protected the place. He hadn’t investigated even 1% of the head yet so He could just be missing them. It didn’t matter though; he’d spent enough time to know that he was done here and it was time to do what he came here to do.

He recalled all of his nanites back to himself and placed them in his personal vault Then he went to his map to watch what happened as he cast his spells. The first thing He did was bring his coffin back to the surface of the construct. He used nanites to chain it to the surface. Next, He placed nanites around the coffin with instructions to break down and store everything they came into contact with in his personal storage vault. He figured as He traveled backward through time there would be some backward movement that would come into contact with the coffin. He needed it to remain next to the construct as it retraced its steps. Devouring a little crust growth shouldn’t be an issue. Finally, he willed his intent into a spell to follow this head as it traveled backward through time.

With everything ready, he cast the spell and watched as he was dragged back through time with his Ancient Enemy. Adam watched as the last 12,064 years disappeared, Primore was regurgitated. The Souls the Ancient Enemy fed on were reconstituted over the 6,000 years it fed on them. Then he continued to follow the ancient enemy further back through time as it regurgitated more souls and Universes. He did get the question answered about whether it could eat something bigger than it. The answer was yes. It would take huge bites out of it, though as soon as the membrane broke Chaos rushed in and started devouring the matter within also. Then it became a rush between chaos and the ancient enemy as to who absorbed more energy. It was easy to deduce as he watched the process happening backward.

His journey backward through time went by faster and faster until it traveled into an adjacent multi-verse. He hadn’t even felt them cross the boundary of Nothing. He watched in horror as Universe after Universe was regurgitated. Over and over this happened. They crossed the Barrier of Nothing again and once more they were in his home Multi-verse as Universe after Universe was regurgitated long before his Universe or the Universe of Primore came into existence. When it happened he couldn’t believe what He was seeing. The construct regurgitated the borders of Nothing and an area of Chaos formed and expanded until it was big enough for the construct to pass into it. It had swallowed an entire multi-verse!

Once inside it regurgitated Universes until He felt the barrier of Universe surround and envelope the construct and him. He witnessed the process of its construction and how every electron, proton, and Neutron in its birth universe had been incorporated into its construction by something He could not perceive. He zoomed his focus in as the construct came apart to a point directly above the roof of the mouth. There was a sphere big enough to hold an entire galaxy. He hadn’t noticed it before because it was obscured but as He witnessed the construct’s construction going backward there was a point where the ultimate Dyson sphere was created to surround a Galaxy. He zoomed in on the map further and further until He was above a planet with purple oceans and a race of beings hard at work.

He slowed his backward progress through time until He came to a point where his perception was blurred as something was handed to an Alien. This Alien looked to be a humanoid with blue skin and wings speaking a language He couldn’t understand and the look of awe and wonder one might get when in the presence of Divinity. He was not Divine, but he knew he was powerful enough to see through this cloak of obscurity it was using to hide its true form from observers. He stopped time and cast God’s Sight on himself which brought the blurry figure in front of him into focus. He activated Analyze

Nox, Goddess of Destruction, Divine, Level 49,999

He willed himself to be at the moment of her acceptance of Divinity. The world transformed around him until He found himself standing before an Altar. Nox looked up and cast a pretty nasty spell that would have separated every part of him from every other part of him. He cast Detect Alignment as she cast another Spell. She was Chaotic Evil. Her Fireball washed over him as if nothing had happened.

“What are you?” she asked in a language that was so similar to Common that He could easily understand it.

“Perhaps, if you’d asked questions before attacking me twice He wouldn’t have had to do this!” He said as He moved forward and twisted her head off. Interestingly with God’s Sight active, He recognized the Clone spell taking hold. He willed himself to know her soul and then teleported to it as it entered a new body. He cast his area of effect Soul Trap spell as she came to her senses then crushed her head with his hand. The soul that came forth was malignant red and swirling purple as it was drawn into his Personal Vault to the Soulstone waiting for it.

The area around him exploded into a bright white light that quickly faded as a prompt appeared.

It is Done!

Adam expected everything to go blank and then he’d be back to the point where his life had changed. For him, that would be when he found the Adamantium Ring. Instead, He felt as if nothing had changed. He even still had the abilities that his Place of Power granted him. He activated his Teleport ability and wasn’t surprised when he appeared in his entryway. The area looked exactly as it had when he’d left it so long ago. Could objects in Nothing exist outside of time? But that made no sense, though if it was tied to him and He was immune to time as well. Maybe that shielded it?

He went up to his room, took a shower, and laid down to go to get some sleep. As he started to drift off he could have sworn he saw a flashing exclamation mark in his personal interface but he was too tired to even think about looking at it as darkness took him.