The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

Carol blinked, picturing that. “How’s that feel to you, me, us, then?” she asked, both curious and rueful.

“Like a big sisterhood who understands you totally. We don’t really have the identity issue you do, because we all know we aren’t the Prime, and we understand we’re all copies going our own separate ways. Can’t help being concerned about the Prime, however.” Cara didn’t hide her own appreciation of the irony of the situation. “We’d love to have you in the loop, but we understand you think you’d lose your identity, and so we don’t link up with you, in Markspace or anything, leaving Dyna there as the buffer.”

“But if you’re part of Dyna,” Carol pointed out, and Cara raised her hand to cut her off.

“Carol, you know what Dyna looks like in Markspace.” Carol nodded despite herself, twisting her lips. “So, you can pretend you’re peers out here in physical world, but in this head, well.” Cara shook her head and smirked. “I represent maybe three percent of Dyna’s personality. Simply because I couldn’t help myself and kept grabbing for more brains, she represents about two-thirds of mine on the analytical side. One of the reasons I get antsy if I don’t update with you is wondering if I’m just losing myself in her and not really staying individual enough... which is very weird when I know I’m just one of her thoughtstreams, but there you have multiple personality stuff. Dyna’s concern for your well-being just supercharges that, too.

“Dyna’s got almost fifty different personalities in here. We’re all pretty different, because we’re meant to be. About three dozen of us have full thoughtstream status, the rest just kind of flitter about as fringe personalities with interests in strange stuff. Being a telepath contributes to formation of new ones. She added a Goth one just last week after we went clubbing!” Carol blinked at that odd fact about their fun night out. “She just kind of popped up after Dyna did a scan of the place making sure there weren’t really any Blooded or vamp-charmed there. She was promptly tagged Elvira, Mistress of the Night.” Cara rolled her eyes. “Added a bunch of black to the old wardrobe.”

“And you’re all just part of Dynamo and don’t clash or anything.” Carol shook her head. “You’re even weirder than I thought, you know!” She frowned. “Do you have, like, an evil thoughtstream?” she asked hesitantly.

“No. Dyna’s very careful to avoid piling negative interests and personality traits into one place, that’s a recipe for disaster! Not much different from not piling all the ‘nice’ traits into one place and proclaiming that boss, actually. Kinda self-defeating. Really, I’m a soldier, so I’m one of the more brutal of us, you know? There’s swathes of us who don’t have any interest in fighting whatsoever, and they leave the whole mess to those of us who do.”

“And... you have a collection of vintage aircraft,” Carol remembered suddenly. “I always wanted some...”

Cara pursed her lips, but smiled nonetheless. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I used Dyna’s Cosmic Awareness to get perfect renditions of all the parts, used Kismet’s Matter Manipulation to make them all, and superspeed and telekinesis to put them all together. I, uh, have every prop-job ever made! Tribal, Axis, Russian, European. Even Wakanda’s models from the turn of the century!”

“Can they all fly?!” Carol exclaimed eagerly.

“Every single one of them! Given the engineering standards, they’re doubtless better than the originals because Dyna just won’t tolerate substandard materials in anything...” Cara coughed knowingly.

“That alchemist part of her,” Carol muttered in agreement. “She goes on tirades about it...” She looked around the room at the hull knowingly.

“Mmmpf mmmpf!” I protested as Cara clamped my mouth shut. “Quiet, you!” Cara said. “I’m having a conversation here, we don’t have to hear about better specs for LaGrange’s hull again!”

“Mmphf!” So unfair! We have the self-sealing hull tech, it’s just a question of...

“You must have REALLY peculiar relationships in there,” Carol half-laughed.

“Oh, the whole telepathy thing and privacy issues and mixed identities and different personalities butting heads when we’re all part of the same person... it gets pretty entertaining, for sure. What some people call trying to see other points of view Dyna has complete personalities for as reference points. We have a super-flighty emotional frippery type about as shallow as a puddle, we’ve got a logic-absolute number-cruncher who exults in reading machine code for relaxation, and just about everything you could imagine in between.”

“Dynamo has an attention whore in there?” Carol sounded scandalized.

“Totally!” Cara nodded emphatically. “She’s not a thoughtstream, which makes her pout a lot, but, well, she’s too shallow to be one. Has the attention span of an ADHD child on a sugar high, too.” Cara coughed slightly. “Fine, fine, Tiff handles ALL the massages, too.”

Carol went pink, and coughed herself. “She has her uses, then.”

“Oh, she has scathingly wicked fashion commentary on everything under the sun, and uses Cosmic Awareness to keep track of every fashion show, trending language, slang, memes, popular topics, and the work with absolute zeal. She also won’t let us leave the house without being turned out perfectly, unless it’s by deliberate design.”

“I hate her already,” Carol sighed, looking me up and down. “Unless she’s going to be working for me!”

“No racy shit! She’s the top female paramount on the planet! I don’t care if it’s no fun!” Cara hissed at nobody, then smiled brightly. “Sorry.”

“Am I going to be able to hear some of these conversations if I do this?” Carol asked with great interest.

“Only if you want to. Dyna never really sleeps, some of us are always awake, and her thoughts are more like entire personalities having conversations before smoothing out and leaving her mouth.

“Also,” Cara stage-whispered, “her public persona is by far the dumbest of us, cut right down to average intelligence. It’s the rest of us who take care of understanding everything. It’s why she’s so relatable!”

“She deliberately handicapped part of herself so she wouldn’t put on brainy airs?” Carol shook her head in disbelief.

Cara made wide-eyed robot motions, to Carol’s great amusement. “Seriously, Carol, the smart ones are terrifying. You don’t want to talk to them. They think like Hercules flexes. All the improved IQ I have is just from leaking off from them, kinda like a tiny little computer program operating at the edge of the biggest, baddest-ass mainframe ever. I grabbed a couple little circuit boards for myself, but I stay away from the main programs hogging all the bandwidth in here.

“It’s why I love updating from you so much. It helps me not be overwhelmed by the machine inside!”

“Would that affect you and me if I do this?” Carol asked worriedly.

Cara shook my head. “No. We’d integrate, and I’d be you and the Prime for a few seconds, because your soul would take me. Then you get Duplicated out, your soul goes with you, and you’re the Prime because of it.” Cara’s eyes flickered away. “You’re probably going to get a LOT of mental kisses in those few seconds, so be prepared for that...”

“I... how will this affect our physical relationship?” Carol asked hastily.

Cara glanced away. “Uh, if they did a genescan? So much of Dyna’s stuff doesn’t Dupe out, she’s basically a different species because of it. It’s not an issue. You have your own soul, so you stand alone and can have kids, too. You pick your appearance, so that doesn’t change, either.”

“And I’d have a Comet Core out of this.”

Cara grinned widely. “Ha ha! We all want to see what you and Starfire make out of a pure Comet Core fueled by your Flare!”

Carol clenched her fist. “It should fill up fast, right?”

“You’ll be coming in as an empty Ten. It should be able to take your entire Flare. It’s still going to take you months, but you’ll have the equivalent of a Five before a day is up, a Six on the next day, a Seven within ten days, and an Eight in a month... if you stay in Flare form all the time.

“You want any faster, you take a M’kraan session or go sunbathe, but we don’t advise it. Keep it pure to your Flare.”

Carol took a deep breath, her knuckles popping. “Okay, then, let’s do this!”

---------

“HAH! Oh, ha! Hah, hah, oh, God...”

She hadn’t known what to expect, but being inside a mind that powerful, churning that vast, voices singing back in forth in all different tones and styles...

Kisses on mental cheeks landing with zinging throes of love and care and patience and concern and happy expectation and understanding...

She leaned on her desk, staggering from the mental contact.

But she was Carol Danvers, nobody else.

She was!

And they all agreed with her.

Her head came up slowly.

She’d always had problems with her own Cosmic Awareness. It was precognition-based, and so generally only effective against broad threats coming her way, or avoiding static problems or objects in flight. Moving, living wills had always been difficult to see.

But she could see them now. See all the Carols out there.

There was one standing right behind her. There were scores of them off in the Skrull Galaxy. There were a couple dozen more down on Terra, and she realized everyone that Dynamo had duplicated off had a Carol with them in their heads.

She could dimly feel the Dynamo Duplicates in other dimensions had Carols in their heads!

And they all felt her attention, her awareness of them, and a flow of great relief that their Prime was finally there and aware of them, and wow, what a great thing that she finally knew about all of them.

It was like having all these hundreds of sisters, or maybe alternate selves, just show up. They weren’t Carol Danvers; that was who SHE was, she was the Prime. They were copies, they were based on her, but they had their own minds and souls and lives, but they owed it all to her for starting them out.

They were all Carols, but each of them was individual and different, because their lives were individual and different.

And they were all delighted with her as she reached down and touched her belly, and felt a pulsing, yawning emptiness, like a diamond singularity, aching to be filled. It sparkled and crackled inside her, the shell of it reverberating in every cell, holding her own powers, and ready to build on them with a whole lot more.

Flare was waiting there eagerly on the desk. She automatically lifted him up and put the symbiote glasses on circlet mode, feeling the rush of reassuring invulnerability thrumming along her skin, even more apparent than before. It was like force fields spreading into her Kirlian field, wrapping around every cell to protect her from harm.

Dyna’s Carol was called Cara, a reference to a powerful paramount woman in a comic book somewhere. She’d been Cara, Cara had been her, thoughts mashed, so much extra MIND there, so many extra experiences, memories...

Memories she was now sharing, sitting in her head as she remembered putting together all those prop jobs herself, fulfilling a whimsical dream she’d long had, and the glee she got when figuring out a tough lockpick just by touch and visualizing and some little slivers of metal in her fingers. So dumb, yet so gratifying...

She was aware she felt different in other ways than just having a Comet Core. Her body was different, balanced different, built different, moved different. Almost the same, but not quite.

A Duplicate of Dynamo, with some defaults built into it that she hadn’t had as a half-Kree. Balance, reflexes, and flexibility, among other things.

“I think we both need to Flare up and get this hungry pit in our guts filled, right?” an unfamiliar voice she placed instantly spoke up behind her.

There were TWO Carols behind her...