Walker looked at the information that appeared after clicking on the ability.

Teleportation command recognized

Where would you like to teleport?

Options for System Administrator Dante:

Sonata

Symphony

Unnamed planet number 1

Unnamed planet number 2

…

“Fuck, have I really never named the planets?” He asked himself. Quickly choosing Sonata, he felt a shell of something strange cover his body before he was whisked away from the restored Creator’s world.

Teleportation use complete

You may teleport again in one hour.

“Fucker, that’s an hour in protocol standard time, isn’t it?”

Nobody answered him, so the Creator sighed and looked at where he’d been placed.

His teleportation had taken him right to the Portal area. He spied Virgil, who was stuck in time, looking at the Portal gate. Due to his personal Temporal distortion, he couldn’t know if the field had reached this far.

Pulling up his mental library about distances between planets, he found a particular one from his seventh-grade science teacher. The woman had stood at least six feet tall in his memories, although she was likely much shorter. As he reviewed his memory, it seemed to suck him into it.

Walker found himself sitting at a large desk in the middle of the class. Factory row seating littered the room, a remnant of when America only wanted to produce corporate workers and had found the ideal model for keeping children “in line”. Literally.

The class was discussing planets and the distances between them in their solar system study. Thankfully for Walker, they didn’t make them build planetary dioramas in this class. He’d have had a hell of a time with his dysgraphia if they did.

At this moment, the teacher had been talking about the moon and its value to Earth. Ocean currents, its effect on gravity, and how the solstice’s work were all on the table. Each student had a handout in front of them, a hugely drawn Earth with a smaller moon next to it.

Future Walker noticed he didn’t have many notes on his sheet. He must not have been very interested in the lesson, but then again, he was only ten. He didn’t know his ass from his hands at that time.

Benjamin, the angsty, heavy-set kid in the back of the class, raised his hand. Waiting to be called on, she gave him a nod, and he spoke up excitedly.

“How far is the moon from the Earth?”

The teacher…Mrs. Jorgenson exuberantly pointed at him, “Excellent question, Benjamin. The moon is over two hundred thousand miles away from the Earth, and the sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth.”

Walker watched as Benjamin’s face lit up, “Wow! That’s really far!”

“Yes, it is, Benjamin. And now you know why people worldwide admire our astronauts so…..”

The memory faded with the vision, and Walker slapped his chest.

“What the fuck, dude?” He asked the Book of Souls. It exited his chest a moment later, giving him a warm feeling back, “Why are you pulling me into memories like that? I could easily just access it.”

Walker’s Icon warmed, then cooled, then warmed again. A moment later, a series of memories crashed into his mind. One was from when he was five and in a fight; another was his father patting him on the back after a tough loss in a soccer match. A third came from listening in on his conceptual physics class, and a final memory was tossed at him from the time he attempted windsurfing. All of them flashed by in seconds, bringing forth a piece of a phrase.

I am

Trying to

Show you

How to move

“Holy fuck, that hurts!” Walker yelled out as he grabbed his head. While he’d gained slices of the memories, thereby understanding what was being said, a remnant piece of memory built on top of them. So, while he barely understood the words logically, he still saw his father talking about soccer at the same time as seeing Mr. Brinkman breaking down how egg parachutes fall. The memories each overlapped one another, making his brain feel like it was swelling from the pressure.

Walker felt the Book of Souls continue to cool as the pain lessened. A moment later, his healing took over as something wet dripped out of both of his ears. He felt at it and looked at his hand afterward, the color of red staining his fingertips. The Book of Souls became chilly within him.

“Maybe don’t do it like that again?” He said while breathing quickly, “I’m not sure I can survive a paragraph from you.”

Warm then chilly feelings came from it as the Book floated before him. A moment later Walker found himself pulled into another memory. His father was sitting beside him in the passenger seat of a car. Walker realized this was the first time he’d taken him driving after getting his permit.

“Moving a car is like moving yourself, son. A million things are happening, and while you’re not fully aware of everything that’s occurring at once, regardless, it’s still happening.”

A Fifteen-year-old Walker adjusted his rearview mirror, then put both hands on the wheel at ten and two, like he’d been taught. He felt, more than saw, his father nodding.

“Okay, shift it into gear, and let's go.”

Walker touched the gear shift and pushed it into number one. As he applied pressure to the gas while releasing the clutch, the car leaped forward, and he yelled out involuntarily. For a moment, he thought they would fly into the garage. Trying to catch his breath, he heard his father laughing beside him and looked over with incredulous eyes.

The large man slapped the dash one last time with a hearty laugh, “That first jump is always funny, son, forgive me. You were pushing the gas too soft. Sometimes, you’ve really gotta give it a go.”

The memory faded, and Walker tried to figure out what the Book of Souls was trying to tell him. Of course, his educator training kicked in. Always apply positive reinforcement when a student does something well for the first time.

“Good job, Book. That was much better.”

Even though he was pretty sure it knew what he was thinking, it still warmed up at the gratitude in his voice.

So, there was something he was missing that the Book of Souls knew. When he got down to the root of things, the Book of Souls was a literal part of him. It's just… mixed with a bunch of power and somehow collated from a literal piece of the universe. The specifics were hazy, but overall, his icon was him, and he was his icon. He really needed to talk to Zeus.

The Book of Souls warmed up, letting him know that all of his thoughts had been heard loud and clear. Just another item on his to do list.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He’d have to think about what the Book of Souls was trying to tell him later. Walker looked around to get a feel for what he needed to do next.

“OH MY GOD! THE A.I.!”

If there was a king of distractions in the multiverse, Walker Reed had just supplanted them.

Of course, at that moment, Walker felt a pang as he also looked at the portal. Due to all of his use of Darkness to cover his body, he’d need to head over to the Crystal Nomads and replenish.

He didn’t like doing it, but it was better than the alternative—feeding on his Founders and the Primigenials. Although he’d bet Poseidon looked pretty tasty right now, it wouldn’t be copascetic.

“Damn inter-universal soul parasites,” He said to himself with a grimace as he walked over to the key command and created a small Temporal distortion in the area that should last for five minutes of time. He’d had to do it carefully to ensure Virgil wasn’t touched. As it sprang up, he felt something on the edge of his skin, as if he was experiencing minute tearing across the edges of his body. It felt decidedly uncomfortable.

Keying in Romulus, Walker looked at the updates to the Portal system after his reward spree. Before, it hadn’t had any options besides placing a new one down; however, he now found two new sections. Walker clicked on the first section, which was plainly named members.

Please select any creatures you would like to be able to access the portal system. You may also create a schema of allowed members from other systems.

That told him he could now give people specific access to the Portals, and he would no longer have to work at it directly from each individual gate.

“What a welcomed improvement,” he said with a smile, then grimaced as a small piece of his forearm flaked off.

The second section was a little different. The word network was written on it; if he was honest with himself, it made him a little nervous. Nothing in the protocol thus far had stated anything like that before, and it made him curious if people could freely travel to Sonata after he clicked it.

After a moment of reflection, Walker hardened his resolve regarding what might happen next. He was no longer interested in shying away from things; after all, most of his biggest improvements came from happy little accidents.

When he clicked on it, a node grid and a series of writing appeared in front of him.

Congratulations on unlocking the Portal network, Creator Dante!

…Analyzing…

…

Congratulations Creator Dante! As the sole individual to unlock the Portal Network, you have achieved mastery-level control over all portals within your universe. Due to your achievement, you can now access the entire portal infrastructure available within the system.

Now unlocking all standard-level portals for your perusal.

“What?” was all he could say before the nodes started to fill in with writing.

Initially, it just stated simple things that didn’t identify much for him. Around twenty different nodes appeared, each with a specific portal name, 4AA1 and 4AA2, and one larger node, Bridge. But as that clump of nodes stopped, a new grouping sprang up not too far away.

Some had the telltale sign that they were a standard portal. More names like 3EF84 and 3EF105, but then more continued to arrive and became more specialized.

Glaxton Hotel.

The Fun Zone.

Training Planet4.

We sell por-

“What the fuck?” Walker said at that last one. He had stopped reading it as he realized what it would say.

“So, wait…wait…” He slapped a hand against his head as he tried to think about this. Another flake of skin tore off his arm, floating into the air. This one was much larger, and he grimaced as his body tried to heal the damage.

Walker looked over at Virgil and noticed the black squirrel was just on the periphery of the portal. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he entered a second temporal displacement.

Even now, while he was amplified by not one but three fields of temporal energy, his body started to feel even worse—as if it were breaking at the seams. Walker jumped onto the platform after hitting the button and, after floating through the dark entrance, found himself on Romulus surrounded by thousands of Crystal Nomads.

Just behind them, he saw their portal with a line continuing to shuffle through. Vowing to stop the incursion when he had more time, Walker gritted his teeth and went to work. As he moved, he made sure to only target the biggest Nomads and tried to be as efficient as he could in their sacrifice.

Sure, they were a warlike, conquering group of dickheads, but that didn’t mean he had to be crude about how he dispatched them. This was no fair fight, and he was on a deadline. After around eighty of the creatures died, he felt much better, although that hollow feeling he got after killing a Nomad remained like their souls were manufactured and had no real depth to them.

Stepping quickly away, he moved to a slightly empty section and applied the Kinetic strand to his feet. He made sure not to kick off too hard, soaring out of the atmosphere at a good rate of speed.

Tapping into his memories, he made quick time to his spot of safety, then suddenly had an idea. He pushed himself several miles away, then clicked into his systems.

“As far as my eyes can see,” Walker said with a smile as a portal floating in the darkness of space appeared. He named it “Walker Only: Keep out or Die” and then set himself as the only user who could activate it.

Then, another idea came unbidden. He hadn’t done it in a while but was curious about what would happen.

Walker pulled up the System Linking ability and selected the fourth option.

Option four selected: Sacrifice one of the Creator's abilities to empower a system

What ability would you like to sacrifice?

Teleport ability selected.

What system would you like to empower?

The Portal system selected.

…Analyzing…

Preview provided:

Teleport ability definition: Grants the Creator the ability to Teleport anything from one location to another. May be used on organics or non-organics without the threat of harm. Space resources are required when not using a portal gate.

Empowerment for the entity subsystem: The Creator can create temporary portals in any location without a cooldown.

Note: Due to Creator Dante’s multiple upgrades, temporary portals will have no restrictions on where they may be placed, and all resource costs, with the exception of an increase in size, are funded by the system in their entirety.

Would you like to sacrifice the Teleport ability to empower the Portal system?

Yes/No

Walker inched his finger down and definitively hit yes, feeling a strong pull of ecstasy that his plan had worked as intended. Pulling up his ability chart, he watched Teleport fade into the blue screen he was so used to seeing now.

Although he had just created an unnecessary portal, he figured it was within reason not to show the entirety of the protocol that he could create instant portals when he wanted them.

Smiling, Walker got back to business. It was time to add Dimensional and Temporal strands together. Pun intended.

Walker palmed the two and gently combined them between his hands. He opened them up to see what became of the odd mixture.

Looking down, he found a small, mostly transparent pentagon floating off of his skin. Unlike when he’d added Space to the Dimensional strand, it seemed more flimsy this time, as if it was barely holding itself together.

Rather than test out what would happen when he threw the amalgamation into the reaches of space, Walker bunched up his hand and pressed it into his overlay.

Congratulations Dante!

As the first to discover a new strand, any future combinations, per your agreement with the Alpha Protocol Council, will automatically be siphoned to your resources.

Would you like to name your discovery?

Yes/No

Walker selected no for the first time.

Strand will remain unnamed until you make a decision.

...

.....Analyzing.....

…

Adapting future rewards based on new findings…

…

Congratulations Dante!

Due to your discovery, You’ve unlocked the Bounty system.

You've been granted a bonus reward for your finding!

- - -

Reward for discovering a non-standard use of unnamed strand energy:

Congratulations Dante! You've been granted bonus resources!

You’ve gained the Hologram ability!

1000 Primordial resources.

An amount of equal value in unnamed strand resources.

“Okayy….so…..,” Walker scratched his chin while thinking. His gains always connected directly with what the strand did, so the Bounty system and the Hologram ability had to do with whatever this strand was.

Walker clicked on the Bounty system to see how it worked, and a strange set of writing appeared. It took his translator quite a bit of time to understand how the series of intersecting lines worked.

…Analyzing…

…

…Analyzing…

...

Language located: Frayish: Pre-Origin

Adapting use…

…Translating…

- - -

Hello Creator Dante, and welcome to the Bounty system!

The Bounty system is designed to reward aspiring heroes to eliminate dangerous threats affecting their world.

As each threat is eliminated, there is a pre-designed chance that items may drop.

Each creator is responsible for creating said items, although some models have been provided.

Please peruse the manual when you have a moment.

“Pre-Origin?” Walker said with a questioning tone, “What the fuck does that mean? Wait a minute…” He looked through the notification a second time, but it was no mistake. “This is a fucking loot system.”