As Adam flew through space enjoying the flickers of light as they passed before him. He truly enjoyed the peace and quiet that gave him finally gave him some time to think. Why hadn’t he killed the Director? In fact, he hadn’t even threatened him. Why? The simple answer that came to mind was that he hated bullies. He really hated them. That’s why he’d decided to release Earth from the tyranny of his nanites, though now with the Chaotic nanites he could force that back onto them if he wanted, should he return. But again, he hated bullies, and he most definitely did not want to be one.
Of course, that idea was predicated on the possibility that the Emperor would understand what overwhelming force was and not order something incredibly stupid like he just had. Across the Vrax Empire in multiple star systems across multiple Universes, The Emperor’s most technologically advanced star ship captains received new orders. One such ship wasn’t really a ship but a higher dimension construct that could, if the specs he was reading were correct, wipe out solar systems in short order. particle weapons, laser weapons, kinetic weapons, and what was that? Singularity weapons that took a naked singularity, a small one, and accelerated it to near light speed before releasing it at the target. Someone had made a theoretical video of what would happen if a naked singularity ever hit the Earth traveling at the speed of light. Not good for the planet as a whole would be an understatement.
Adam’s mentality was still analyzing all the information his nanites were collecting on the Vrax while the ships had been infiltrated, except for a couple that were too far away from any Vrax systems to the portal back, and because they had very limited power, he wasn’t concerned with those ships, they were not a threat. The tactical response fleet was. Those ships were small with a crew of no more than 27. They only needed 8 to run the ship and keep enough personnel on board to run the ship around the clock. Of course, every ship had a portal, and the crews could head back to Vrax at any time but usually, it looked like the portal devices were powered down to conserve energy.
Adam watched through his nanites as 1,109 Captains received orders that reminded him of “Order 66” from Star Wars. Adam became sidetracked as he thought about how he needed to sit down and take a break and maybe watch some movies with Adaline, he missed movie night. Adam returned his mind to his current situation and also read the orders as he realized that they had his movement and trajectory details just as a shockwave rocked him out of the high-dimensional state he was in. That was bad. If one of the ships that he’d been reviewing had had this happen to them. There was a reason objects could not go faster than light. Remember that little formula E=MC2 Well, there is an equal sign there for a reason. While theoretical in the era he was born in it was thought that as mass approached the speed of light it required more and more energy to get closer and closer to the state. Theoretically, if anything were ever to reach the speed of light then mass would equal energy. Most thought that meant a big boom as the mass converted to pure energy and flew apart. In most cases those assumptions would be correct unless they were talking about him of course.
While he’d been reviewing the data about the ships another weapon that he hadn’t reviewed was used on him. In each universe that the Vrax had a foothold one barren planet had been converted to generate enough power to create a device that could reach through dimensions and create a shockwave at an almost unlimited range. As he reviewed the information on the weapon, something they’d called an EDS (Energy Displacement System.) They could target any known coordinates within their empire and cause enough interference to either disrupt communications if set to the lowest setting or destabilize dimensional boundaries so much that anything on one side passed through to the other. If used on an object in real space the object would take severe damage if they didn’t have dimensional anchors in their ships, which all Vrax ships had. In his case when it had been used on an area he was about to pass through at faster than light speed, The walls between dimensions became paper thin and he crossed back into real space at the equivalent of about Warp 10, about 10,000 times the speed of light.
Adam hadn’t thought about the science of his ability to travel faster than the speed of light. With his Adaption ability, he just thought that his body changed enough to survive. He found out that he’d been mistaken. As he crossed back into normal space his mentality retreated into his soul space and his body converted to a wave of coalesced energy traveling faster than light. As he reviewed the data coming from the nanites that were part of that particle wave he realized that the only reason he had not exploded and all the energy of his body had not dispersed was because of the nanites in his body. His energy was ripping a hole through space that would leave a scar along the dimensional barrier as it passed by. Not his fault but he didn’t want to see the Universe pop like a soap bubble because of him either. Traveling as fast as he was it would be a little bit difficult to slow down. He didn’t have any nanites he could disperse himself into and he couldn’t jump back into an adjacent dimension because he’d already created a tear and opened a wound between normal space and the dimension he was using to travel faster than light as well as any higher dimensions that were adjacent to it.
Probably a bad idea, he teleported into chaos near his Dyson sphere with a vector leading away from it. There are bad ideas, then there are bad ideas. Chaos by its nature can be anything but even though that is true, in its natural form it’s basically a fluid consisting of every type of magic that can do anything. When he teleported into that soup he added the potential energy of 170 pounds of mass traveling at approximately 10,000 times the speed of light
Your Primary Projection Ahrem has been destroyed.
Your synergistic nature allows you to recreate your Primary Projection from nearby nanites, would you like to recreate your Primary Projection, Yes or No?
Adam chose “Yes”
Would you like to create your Ahrem Projection or your Adamantadine Projection?
Adam chose “Adamantadine”
As his body rebuilt itself out of the 5% of nanites that were floating around in Chaos near him. Adam realized that he couldn’t see the Dyson Sphere. He knew which direction to go to find it though, there was a huge empty space leading off into the distance as the expansion of the explosion raced away from him in all directions. The Dyson sphere was probably off in the direction he plowed into the Chaos from. At his velocity, approximately Warp 10, he had been traveling 18.6 billion miles per second. He’d converted all that energy into an explosion in less than a second. If he rounded to one half of a second he was at least 9.3 billion miles from the Dyson sphere.
Adam felt a disturbance just as the higher dimensional construct that housed the consciousness of a pilot popped into existence near him and fired a singularity weapon at him. A singularity formed behind him, which he promptly ignored. Instead, he wondered why chaos hadn’t disintegrated the craft, then he realized that Chaos had not filled the emptiness that he’d created. In fact, the shockwave was still spreading out giving the pilot a safe harbor at the center of the disturbance in Chaos. The ship was effectively in a vacuum.
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Since he was still reforming he wasn’t worried about what might happen because they were in the home of his element, chaos. On second thought, it would be interesting to see what chaos did to the singularity. The expansion had finally slowed and the Chaos was even now rushing back. To prevent others from leaping their ships to their doom as they tried to follow him, he shut down every power source to every ship that could teleport across dimensions. And locked that function out of their ships. There was nothing he could do for the idiot whose mind had been digitized that was already here. If he wasn’t smart enough to try to leave, that was on him. He could prevent others from being that stupid though.
Adam set part of his mind to open one portal on each ship at a time and dissolve the ship from the outside towards the portal so the crew could travel back to Vrax. He made sure the nanites created an invisible barrier that would maintain the ship’s atmosphere as it was converted into more nanites which also flowed to Vrax through the portal for use elsewhere. If they were too stupid to retreat and flee the ship through their portal they didn’t deserve to live.
As he sent his commands to the nanites in the ships that were about to travel to him he kept his attention on the “craft” in front of him. It wasn’t a craft so much as a holographic representation of manifested matter as energy. Interesting idea but still not good enough to save it here. Almost immediately the holographic images sputtered and died then a human male body appeared in the chaos and screamed. The that had been in the ship’s dimensional storage being smothered by chaos was anticlimactic. Chaos started dropping in past the event horizon and then the singularity had just popped as material released into the chaos which was promptly converted to more chaos. There was a little bit of pressure, but the disturbance was nothing like the one Adam had just made. A message he hadn’t expected to see appeared in his vision.
WARNING: A Mortal within your direct sphere of influence has entered a region of raw chaos. A region of chaos is anathema to any form of order. As an Advanced Soul, you may attempt to shield or influence any mortal within your direct sphere of influence from the effects of exposure to chaos.
NOTE: The being in question has never had allegiance to you and is calling for assistance. You may choose to help or not to help as you desire at a cost of Karmic Luck on a 100:1 ratio to improve his odds. Such assistance comes at a cost to the being assisted. Should they agree to the assistance they pledge their allegiance to you in all things for one subjective year of their soul for every point of Karmic Luck spent. For every 100 points of Karmic Luck Spent a positive or negative outcome is increased or decreased by 1% respectively. The outcome cannot be influenced, only that the outcome is either positive or negative.
At a ratio of 100 to 1, this soul would be attached to him for a while if he increased his chance by 100. As the person in question had never done personal harm to him he spent the Karmic Luck for a positive outcome. Immediately an aura of white light built around the man, and then disappeared when he disintegrated.
Congratulations, Stan Whittaker has pledged his allegiance to you for 10,000 years unless released from you.
Note: One of your disciples, Stan Whittaker has upgraded their soul to basic: Nascent
Note: One of your disciples, has gained the one-time Soul Ability: Aspect Blessed. 1% of your Karmic luck at the time this Soul Ability was added to your disciple has been subtracted from your Karmic Luck. This is a one-time award, no further Karmic Luck is earned by your disciple or lost by you from this Soul Ability.
Note: Your disciple Stan Whittaker has died and left the Cosmos you are currently in. You receive one point of Karmic Luck from your Disciples actions during his Cosmic Occurrence. You may not receive an award for Karmic Luck earned by the discipline that came from yourself.
“Well shit,” Adam said as he finished reading the prompts and the chaos finally refilled and surrounded him. Chaos had just created another him. Well, not as bad as him surely but pretty damn close. 1% of infinite was still pretty damn infinite, though In Stan’s case that Karmic Luck would have an actual number. He’d have to find him at some point and find out at what point the system decided a number was infinite. For all he knew it could be a number that only had one million zeros behind it. Stan’s Karmic Luck wasn’t increasing constantly, though, with a Karmic Luck that high, it very well could be in the near future. Of course, if he pulled off anything like Adam had then he’d get a percentage of his earnings. That would be crazy. Getting a percentage of an infinite number added to his already constantly increasing Karmic Luck. Adam was really missing his Universal and Cosmic Interfaces. He needed to be able to see what was going on in the background. More importantly, he needed to see how the calculations were happening.
With Stan gone and the other ships nullified he teleported back to the Dyson Sphere near Ne’lix where he was sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal.
“Adam, what was that?” Ne’lix asked.
“What was what?” Adam asked.
“This entire place shook?”
“Oh, the Emperor wasn’t happy with the talk I had with The Director of The Agency.”
“Is that all,” Ne’lix said with a hint of sarcasm.
“Yep, just popped in to check on you then I need to see to that issue.”
“Well, you haven’t been gone all that long, though I did look out the window. How big is this planet? Also, am I inside of it?”
“The memories of the last time I constructed one of these are in the memories I shared with you. Look up Dyson Sphere in the terminal over there. It’ll explain everything. The quick answer is this though, you are inside a sphere with a diameter of 1 astronomical unit (AU) in a perfect replica of his world, plus a few others spread out all the way around the sphere.”
“Can I go explore?”
“Sure, I’ll have a plane on the landing pad for you in a second. It will be able to pretty much fly itself and also be able to teach you how to fly if you want to learn. Just sit up front and tell it where you want it to go. If something goes wrong or the craft gets damaged just use your code-locked abilities to have the nanites repair it. That shouldn’t be an issue here though. Be aware, you and I are the only sentient people here. There are animals, which are copies run by the nanites but they’re not really living creatures. I can’t add those unless I move this outside of this realm. Most beings that come here will almost assuredly be modified, corrupted, or killed. A few lucky ones might be positively affected but those are few and far between.”
“I was just going to fly around,” Ne’lix said.
“If you want to see what some of the buildings I grew up with look like head down to the city at the base of this mountain. Bigger cities can be found to the north and east,” Adam said as he pointed out the directions for him. “You can also call up a map on the center console of the plane. Familiarize yourself with the layout, though if you’ve been to other Earths this one is set up a lot like those.”
“A lot of this looks familiar but I think I will have a look around,” Ne’lix said.
“Remember, utilize the Portals to get out of here. Don’t try to use magic, you’re in the realm of chaos, and you have to cross dimensional barriers to get home. That can get pretty expensive. Also, don’t try to bring anyone here. They’ll have the same problem you did. Someone just tried to follow me here and almost died. This is one of the safest places you can be but not safe for anyone you know.”
“What about monsters from this realm?” Ne’lix asked.
“There aren’t any in the Dyson Sphere and if they attack the outside, unless they’re supremely powerful, it shouldn’t be an issue. Plus, I’ll know if that happens and stop it.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Then we run,” Adam said.
“Great plan,” Ne’lix said dryly.
“I know right,” Adam said with a grin on his face. Adam went to work and sent orders to the nanites he needed to. He walked out on the balcony, looked at the sunset that was being mimicked by the various mirrors and fake weather within the sphere then teleported to the Emperor’s throne room, where the Emperor sat alone on his Throne frozen in place.