As he calmed down from the sudden arrival of the Bounty system, he took a second look at how the system had phrased where it came from. Just the word Pre-Origin had huge ramifications, as it ran against everything he’d heard thus far.

According to the multiverse, everything had begun....in the beginning. Even the name Origin meant that this is where the Multiverse's historic timeline began. For there to be a time before the beginning implied that there was much more than meets the eye regarding how the Multiverse works.

Thinking about it, he mentally scraped together a timeline of the multiverse. Rather than working back to front, he started with what he knew best, meaning his own rendition.

Walker and his people currently live in Rendition Four. Virgil had said that each rendition was built on a subset of different advanced systems developed by the Evolvers. Each rendition wouldn’t come to an end until after a unique discovery was achieved by one of its Creators. Something that would completely change the game, as it were. Something huge.

At one point, Virgil had also said that it was likely rendition 4AA would be the only one, as Walker's discoveries had completely changed how the Evolvers would manage the protocol moving forward. He had said that when Walker had just started to find new ways of using magic, let alone the Primordial Collider and all of the strands that came with it.

Thus, rendition Five, or 5AA to be precise, would be nothing like his current one. To a small degree, he was curious as to why the Evolvers didn't just stop his rendition and move on to the next.

But then again, Walker was their golden goose. They couldn't toss him until everything had run its course. The more discoveries he made, the better the fifth rendition would likely turn out.

Although he didn't know if other Creators had made as many breakthroughs as he had, Virgil tended to update him on everything occurring across the rendition. So far, he was the best prospect.

That came with an offer to become an Alpha Protocol Council member, though he didn't think he would take it. The Evolvers were too bastardly for him to contain himself long. He bet that almost as soon as he began working as a Councilmember, he'd be fired and end up God knows where. Not to mention Symphony's people.

The third rendition ended when a Creator discovered uses for the Temporal strand, although he still didn't know how that had been done. After discovering said strand, the Evolvers found a way to harness it and empower the creators of the fourth rendition, thereby creating the Temporal subsystem. They'd also given it to the Creators near the start of the fourth renditions protocol. Walker still remembered Virgil telling him, after he'd made the mistake of creating dimensional portals all over Romulus, that some of the tasks had been traps. Now that he'd gained some experience and knowledge of how everything worked, he realized why the Council had done so.

"They don't know what the fuck they're doing," He said in thought.

By giving specific tasks regarding time, Creators across the rendition would find different ways of using the Temporal strand. Ways that they themselves couldn't, or wouldn't, discover on their own. They didn't know how the strand worked and thus only gave tasks to the Creators of the fourth rendition so they could discover it for them—farming out the responsibility to those who didn't know any better. Who cares if those same Creators unintentionally blew themselves or all of their hard work to smithereens. The ideas they followed through on, the ones that worked that is, would inform the council of how to work the strand themselves.

"Guinea pigs," He said with a sneer. That's all they were to them.

While yes, the council had given him some rewards that greatly helped down the line, the idea that he was being used so harshly for the benefit of others didn't sit right. What if he'd been a happy family man with four kids when they'd taken him? How would he have felt being pushed into all of this if he hadn't just imploded his own life?

He didn't know how Creators were selected, only that a "future image" of someone was used, whatever that meant, and even that had issues. Whenever he thought about Mr. Harrison's staff and the status of Earth, a weight settled on him. It made Walker consider that when all of this was over, he could somehow return and help his homeworld. After all, what was the point of all this power if he didn't use it when it was needed?

Moving back to the protocol's timeline, he considered the second Rendition. He knew that Earth was a part of it, and the rendition only ended when the Assistants were designed and developed. This allowed the Evolvers to stop focusing so much on only those geniuses who could part and parcel worldbuilding together from limited information and power. At the beginning of his work here, Virgil had done much more for Symphony than himself. But, they needed the foolhardy to push the envelope.

By including those of a quote, less intelligent model, the Evolvers gained further innovation from the losers and rejects of the multiverse. Those people had to scrap and work for success within the Alpha protocol rather than instantly knowing all of the right moves.

Naturally, Walker was a member of the failure cadre. Of course, he may also be the only Creator who was stupid enough to test out all the features of the Temporal Subsystem. That meant, to some degree, the Evolvers were right to include lower-caste members of the multiverse in their plans. But, by being just dumb enough to push forward with his time-play while also not destroying his solar system, he'd gained access to not one but two abilities. The System-linker, and the System-splitter ability he still hadn't tested out yet.

"Plans on Plans," He mumbled to himself as he pulled up the ability in his overlay. He hadn't seen it since first receiving it and was curious about what they'd written in the description after all of this time.

Ability: System Splitter

The system splitter ability is unique within the alpha protocol. By selecting a system, you can choose to bifurcate, or split, it's many properties into independent though connected systems.

Restriction: Not all systems can be split.

Upgradeable

That still didn't tell him hardly anything, which was a big letdown. He distantly wondered if the Council had decided to give the ability to any other Creators within his rendition. Walker recalled that when first receiving the ability, it was labeled experimental.

Of course, they'd only created it after he'd asked Virgil to look into it, but how did they do so when they weren't system administrators themselves? He had to assume that somewhere in the Center was someone or something with the toolkit for doing so. A lesser System Administrator than Kwaya. But, that meant another Awakened. One who could play with the Universe's very soul; the overarching system.

Shaking his head at the thought, Walker considered the first rendition. This was the one he had almost no information about. Based on what he knew of the protocol, its ending likely had something to do with either system designing or the AI. He remembered Kwaya seeming to have intimate knowledge of AIs and the consequences of dealing with them. That meant they were a relic from the older renditions as she hadn't been around for the third. Specifically, she'd stated that they should always be restricted, which isn't something he was intending to do. With restrictions came limits, and Walker had no interest in those.

It could be system designing, but Walker's memories discounted that as Kwaya had created systems at the start of the Evolvers multiverse. Her skills at the time were basic and ungrateful, but still existent.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That really just left the creation of artificial intelligence. But how did they do it is the question. Then again, how did they do virtually anything within the protocol before his collider? There was only one answer to that, and it had to do with Primordial energy.

All of the creations found within the renditions before Walker's little experiments must have come from testing out different ideas using Primordial energy. That would have been dangerous as all hell, making him think that many Creators had died during the experiments. It was likely that rendition one hit the triple-alpha, ending somewhere around 1agg or some shit. The amount of Creators that were sacrificed must have been pure madness.

But, it had created artificial intelligence, which allowed future Creators to build automated systems. Without them, Walker wouldn't have been able to manage half of the more complicated programs he’d created across the past nine months.

Thinking on it further, and his vision of Kwaya creating purely with her language, he figured that even his more basic systems likely had some minor A.I. Something barely even noticeable. Which brought him back to creating a limitless artificial intelligence. If things went wrong, he could truly be fucked. Luckily, he had a backup plan in his back pocket.

If worse came to worse and he made a universe-destroying creature, he could just throw his single Entropy strand at it with the hope that everything would work out. It wasn't the best plan, well…it was barely a plan at all. But as his father had always said, a bad plan is better than none.

Waving his hand in the air and pantomiming the erasure of a whiteboard, Walker tried to forget thinking of his old world and looked back at the timeline. Before the Evolver’s multiverse started, there was a place called the Origin, which was also the name of his empowered soul material…Which may or may not be another strand.

"Fucking unoriginal," He said with a mocking smile. It made sense that the Evolvers would use the same name for multiple things. After all, they didn't even have the balls to test different strands themselves, so why would they be daring enough to use multiple names?

The Origin, the location that is, was the basis for all of their wars. Memories filtered in from Kwaya's journey. The underwater world, the strange constantly passing seasons, and the odd way they would capture cities and towns using the system. Since the Evolvers didn't understand systems in the slightest and they predated the Awakened, that told him there was certainly something that came before. And apparently, his notification told him the same. Walker pulled it back up again.

Language located: Frayish: Pre-Origin

"So, there was a time before."

That implied the Origin wasn't actually the Origin at all. Plus, what the fuck was that tower he'd seen? Walker tried to pull up the memory, but for some reason....it was fuzzy. It was as if something was messing with his mind, which was impossible as he understood it.

As always, there was more to learn. He didn't want to suffer the hubris of thinking he knew everything, but still, he thought he was starting to get a handle on things. To better grasp the way everything worked.

"Apparently not," He said with a shake of the head.

Still, this exercise helped him reason out the Evolver's plans. They wanted to get back into power, back into the Origin. That was the ultimate goal of all of the renditions.

A seat at the table.

And so far, he had greatly helped them along. He knew that needed to stop, but he wasn't sure how to do so without fucking over his own plans. It was a great conundrum for him.

The stronger he and his people got, the more the Evolvers would siphon away that strength. When looked at with a clear lens, the protocol was a large parasite draining from the geniuses formed across their multiverse, not unlike their other parasite, the God eater program.

He had an idea of how to start working around what they were doing, but it involved strands and taking big risks—dangerous risks. He didn't see much choice in the matter. With that thought in mind, he stopped stalling and focused on what he needed to do.

Palming the Dimensional strand in his right hand, he transferred it over and placed five Temporal resources in the palm of his hand. Gently combining them, Walker took the plunge and rubbed it across his body, much like he’d normally do when simply holding Time.

A gentle ripping sound came from all around him, a tear in space opening in front of his eyes, and the next thing he knew, he was looking at a mirror reflection of himself. Walker tilted his head as he looked, with the reflection doing the same thing. Only….

It tilted the wrong way.

“I see,” the voice of his doppelganger said, Walker eerily hearing himself speaking only ten feet away, “I’m a reflection of you.”

The Creator scratched the back of his head, “Aren’t you…ummm….freaked out?” He felt it was a legitimate question. After all, he knew he was.

He watched his own head shake back and forth, “No. I don’t know why, but I know I’m not the original.” He watched a smile break out on his own face, “You’re wondering how many of your memories I have. All of them, bud.”

“I’m not your buddy pal,” Walker said, testing out what he’d just said. He still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that he hadn’t just created a supervillain clone of himself.

“I’m not your pal, friend,” Other Walker said with a second smile.

“Alright, cool,” Original Walker said with a nod of his head. His reflection did the same, both understanding that the now classic joke was enough to know he did in fact have his memories.

“Soooo…”

“Soooo…”

“Yeah, we need to name these.” Original Walker said with a grimace, watching the same expression cross his doppelganger’s face.

“I’d prefer the word you rather than these,” he huffed. Looking at the sky momentarily, he appeared to enter a moment of deep thought. Walker looked at him, wondering if he looked quite as stupid when doing the same. A moment later, he said, “Middle name?”

“As a name? Yeah, that could work. But how do we know you’re the only reflection I can make?”

“Valid. Numbers are boring, plus we already did that to the Founders once upon a time.”

“True,” Original Walker said with a nod. “Hrmm, what about-” But before he could finish speaking, the other Walker disappeared with a puff of air.

Walker looked around, wondering where he’d gone, then realized what that meant when he couldn’t find him. He took a moment to think about it.

“The Temporal strand,” He said as the reason why dawned on him. He’d used five resources to create the reflection Walker. Five resources, five minutes. So, technically, he could create a Walker that lasted for one thousand minutes, right? That’d be the same as just under seventeen days. It was a lot of resources, but Walker considered that a healthy investment for what was essentially the ultimate form of multitasking.

Scratching his chin, Walker created another reflection with the name David stuck in his mind.

With a rip, his reflection looked at him and spoke up immediately, “Five minutes, right?”

“Yep, and David.” Walker couldn’t help but ask, "Do you feel any different knowing you’ll go pop in that time?”

The reflection smiled and shrugged, “I’m you, man. The moment I go wherever I’m going, it’s not gonna to matter to me much anyways.”

“Fair,” Walker said with a nod, as obviously that’s the same thought he would have in that situation.

David clapped his hands together, “Okay, so let's go through what we were thinking.”

Quickly, they got down to testing out the strand. Walker hadn’t gained anything special when the former reflection Walker had disappeared. That meant they were independent entities formed directly from his…mind?....soul? He didn’t know. Ultimately, it didn’t matter where he came from, just his strengths and abilities.

David reached out, and Walker grabbed his hand, proving the physicality test a success. He definitely felt something, but it was strange. He felt…less. Thin. Like David wasn’t fully in his here. His hand felt pressure from David’s, but it was still odd.

Moving to the force test, Walker stuck his ass out, and David kicked it. Sure, there were easier ways to test force, but who else could say they kicked their own ass? He’d felt pressure, but it was a light pressure. Like someone gently pushed him rather than the big wind-up and push-through David had just attempted.

“So, not the same strength.”

David shook his head, “Not at all. It means we can’t really make clones and just throw them into fights.”

Walker nodded, “Yep. Okay, Soul test. Give it a shot.”

David took a few steps away and then tried to activate his Icon. After a few moments, his face turned a little red, but nothing else occurred.

“Alright, so that’s a negative on soul. Hrmm,” Walker scratched his chin. “If adding Temporal gave more time, what would adding Dimensional do?”

David scratched his chin, “Won’t know till you try.”

Walker combined ten Dimensional strands with five Temporal and smothered it over. Looking at David to see if he disappeared after making another reflection, he nodded when nothing happened. David nodded back. Then, the third reflection nodded to both of them.

“So, we can have more than one.”

“Yep.”

“Yep.”

Original Walker smiled, “Yep. Now, kick my ass.”