As Adam watched the prompts scroll up his interface window, the experiences of those manifestations were assimilated. There were no prompts for him to try to accept or pause the process. The prompts just kept coming in and the experiences, as short as they were kept getting added into his mind. Unlike when he downloaded information into his nanites the memories just popped into his mind, as if they’d always been there. Adam focused his will and his manifestations that had returned sorted and categorized themselves. Then he tried to play catch up as he lost track of everything else.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, the manifestations were flooding back to him at a rate much greater than one per second. As a reference, if he was absorbing one manifestation per second and he needed to absorb a million of them that would have taken 2.89 months at a rate of one per second. Adam was fortunate because he was assimilating them at a rate of thousands, no tens of thousands, per second. Adam was unfortunate because that much information flooding into him had shut down his ability to focus on anything else effectively making him catatonic until the flow of memories slowed down.
As he came back to his senses he checked to see how long he’d been assimilating manifestations and was pleasantly surprised to note that only 3 days had gone by. Almost 3 days, it had only been 71 hours and a couple of minutes. Adam pulled up his prompts and noted that he was still absorbing manifestations but at a much slower rate. Right around one per two or three seconds. It seemed that with the reduced influx, he was better able to handle assimilating all the experiences. Speaking of experiences, while they were all in his mind, he had not allowed his consciousness access to those memories yet. He was excited to find out what information those memories held.
Adam started reviewing by category and found that almost all the manifestations that had returned had committed suicide or self-destructed for one reason or another. A major surprise was what caused those choices. The individual that had created, or that was in charge of the nanites in each Cosmos had taken over Earth wasn’t always him. Adam quickly checked to see how many manifestations had returned, then willed the interface just to keep a rolling total in a percentage format. When he switched to that format three prompts appeared.
5% Manifestations returned.
81% Manifestations active
14% Returned no Change
That brought up the question, why had the 14% returned with no change? Adam went back and looked at his messages and noted that a number of Cosmos that he’d allocated himself to go into had errored out as not having a location habitable to humans and they’d returned immediately, even before the manifestation that had woke him up, then been reformatted and sent out. None of that counted as the 14% though. 14% of the manifestations had entered a Cosmos, experienced nothing, and returned? Could that indicate they’d bounced? One thing was for sure, he’d have to investigate a couple of that 14% to see why his manifestations had returned with no change.
The other thing that was interesting was that the 14% that had returned with no change had all returned almost immediately. As nothing had changed nothing had shocked him out of his self-induced coma. Well, it wasn’t really a coma but to anyone looking at him from the outside, it would have appeared that he was in one.
Adam reviewed the Cosmos he hadn’t manifested into, the ones that had not allowed for human survival, then willed a portal to the first one on the list. As the portal opened a rolling gray mass shot out of the portal into his soul space like water being shot out from a broken water main. Immediately his body was attacked by foreign nanites as they tried to break him down. Adam issued a command to his nanites to catalog, and convert the enemy nanites as his nanites went to work.
Thor: Adam, these nanites are of a feral nature. If I were to guess, I believe these nanites are the product of a singularity event that went horribly wrong. Also, these are not of human origin.
Adam: Any chance that there are minds downloaded into this mess?
Thor: It is of course possible, but doubtful. Everything I’m recording seems to have only one function. Convert, Destroy, and Replicate everything.
Adam: Do you think the entire Cosmos is made up of these nanites?
Thor: Doubtful, I would surmise that the physical universe is really messed up but otherwise I wouldn’t expect any of the higher dimensions within that Cosmos to have any issues.
Adam: So there could be survivors?
Thor: There could be, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. These nanites haven’t evolved and even the new stimuli I’ve provided haven’t garnered a change or reaction yet.
Adam walked up to the portal, cut off the blood flow to his arm, set it to convert all nanites within the Cosmos then stuck his arm through the portal and shut it down, severing his arm. The foreign nanites within his soul space were converted rather quickly and his soul space was once again free of foreign materials. Adam utilized his newly converted nanites to replace his arm then also created a couple of copies of himself and quantumly linked them. These bodies would remain in his soul space to help facilitate what he was going to do next.
Adam willed a containment chamber into existence in his soul space around each of his copies then opened a very tiny portal that was covered with a force field with a thin layer of nanites on this side of the portal. If nanites tried to shoot through they’d convert and then backtrack through the portal, and he would shut down the portal. If nanites didn’t shoot through the nanites were given instructions to pass through the portal and investigate. Adam set his copies to the task of sending nanites into the Cosmos that were not habitable to human life then set his sights on one of the Cosmos that was part of the 14% that had returned without change.
Adam willed himself outside of his soul space and then focused on creating a portal into a Cosmos his manifestation had returned from with no change. As he opened the portal he looked into absolute darkness. Adam stuck his hand into the darkness and had the nanites in him analyze their surroundings. There were no light sources within range and the darkness seemed absolute. Adam willed himself through the portal and moved for one second to take himself one light second away from the gate then had the nanites take their readings.
Stray particles? Check.
Ambient temperature 3 degrees kelvin? Check.
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Adam willed himself back through the portal and stopped to turn back as his nanites detected a strong spike in quantum fluctuations. Adam willed the portal to close as a light erupted within the Cosmos he’d just left and rushed towards the closing portal. Adam moved to the side as a beam of energy lanced through the closing portal like a laser and traveled off into the distance, slicing through anything it came into contact with.
So, a Cosmos that had experienced heat death. But how had his manifestations even entered there to leave again, or… He double-checked the message for this Universe and the time stamp between creation and return and noted that almost a second had passed. he checked the messages for the manifestations that had bounced and those that had been instantaneous. The difference between the two types of cosmos? If what he witnessed was a Big Bang event, which he was sure is what had just happened, that cosmos would be able to allow human life eventually. The cosmos that was full of nanites however would not. Also, he was sure that these two types of Cosmos were not the only ones that he’d run across.
The cost to open these portals was extremely high so he’d only be able to open about 3 per second which meant that he’d be here for a while. Adam decided to let his alternates handle the automatic bounces that had happened while he focused on the manifestation that had returned. That was going to take a while unless he could find some way to… he was getting sidetracked but this was a good idea so he needed to get this done. It would save him a ton of time.
Adam willed himself back into his soul space visualized and willed a laboratory into existence. Next, he willed the Cosmos identifiers into the controlling interface and then hit the start button. What had he just done? He’d created an entry port that was approximately one inch in diameter that opened into a piping system that was made up completely of his nanites. Hostile nanites would enter through the portal, be converted into his nanites, and be sent where he needed them.
How was he keeping hostile nanites from getting free? As they left the pipe they’d be collected in a container. One end of the holding container contained a solid wall of nanites. As nanites were converted they’d be added to the wall opposite their entry into the containment area and an equal number of his nanites would detach from the other side of the wall they’d attached to. These nanites would then migrate to another chamber a little smaller but exactly like the first with another portal that would be opened and nanites would convert anything that tried to enter and push it back through the opened portal.
Simply put, he automated the conversion of hostile nanites from one cosmos nanites to propagate into another cosmos automatically. The incoming portal was set to the first Cosmos he’d contacted because he knew what was trying to get him from there. The 2nd portal was outgoing and would automatically switch to the next Cosmos on the list once nanites were released into that cosmos. If Cosmos contained hostile entities that tried to get through the portal as soon as he opened it they would convert everything they could. If not, they’d gather data. Adam also left instructions for the nanites to keep their entry point clear so he could open portals regularly for updates. Eventually, he hoped to find a way to stay in contact with the nanites without needing to be in the same Cosmos. If he could figure that out, he had some ideas about what he could do at that point. One thing was for sure, his processing power was going to do exactly what he needed it to do, grow.
Adam refocused on the manifestations that had returned with information. At least that information was already part of him and he could go through what each version of himself had seen and try to figure out what was going on that way. The unfortunate truth was that he had chosen too low a level for his manifestations to be of any use against any enemies. Having his memories was great but if his manifestations couldn’t think and react as fast as he could they would be handicapped in any Cosmos they popped into.
As he started reviewing the data from the manifestations that had returned he noted that they all had a similar theme. His manifestation appeared somewhere on an Earth almost identical to his original Earth with minor variations after he’d been born. One of the more interesting things that he noted was that he didn’t always run into himself. In some Universes, he was taken into a room and summarily executed in such a way that all atoms in the room were destroyed which set off his nanite self-destruct protocols.
Adam continued to review the data and then he remembered. For any version of him to come up with this, he’d have to have incredible intelligence. To get that incredible intelligence he had to have leveled. To gain levels so quickly he’d have to have found the ring Apolyn created. The Ring? Adam focused on the manifestation where he’d met himself and went through the meetings one by one. Sure enough, in every memory, Johnathan was wearing a band on his right ring finger.
Next, he checked to see how many of the Cosmos he’d reviewed had the ability to pull up his interface and how many didn’t. Surprisingly more had magic than did not. One thing that concerned him though was that these cosmos were in his cosmos past. If they were mirroring his cosmos why would these versions of him be chronologically behind him? he checked one more thing. In almost every instance he’d been captured, moved, and executed or had to self-destruct. Then again, that kind of made sense. This was only 5% of the total. Not every version would lead to his death or his doppelganger being a complete asshat. But 5% of the time, he could be a truly evil overlord, yeah he could live with that. They wouldn’t, but he could.
Adam retrieved all the information he could from the manifestations that were being returned, but he needed more. He wondered, what would happen if he absorbed the energy of his alternate self. Technically it was him so nothing bad should happen. Then again, it could be like running into yourself in the movie Timecop, he’d eradicate himself from the timeline. Adam processed the possibility of that happening and came up with less than one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent. Yeah, that was a silly thought. If he ever ran into another him that had survived a trip into chaos, that might be a problem.
Adam stopped reviewing the data he’d received concerning his manifestations and opened a portal into the first observation room where he’d met the first Johnathan. He was sure that by now a copy of him had been made. He left his soul space where it was and stepped through the portal, keeping it open. As he stepped through he looked around and noticed a ring on the floor. That’s right, the ring. His ring had had a Do-Not-Notice-Me effect inscribed on it, this one must have too. If his body had been destroyed, the ring would have survived, it was adamantium after all. Obviously, His doppelganger hadn’t reincarnated yet. Boy was he going to be pissed.
This time when the guards rushed in Adam was at his full power. As they stepped through the outer door he disintegrated them with a thought. Their equipment too. Then he wished to know where the Johnathan Bennard born in this Cosmos was. A location popped into his mind, and he teleported to that location. Jonathan had just enough time to start to say “What” as Adam grabbed him by the back of the head with his left hand, put the palm of his right hand against his forehead, and shoved his nanites into Johnathan’s mind to download and save it. This, of course, informed Adam of the location of this Johnathan’s version of Thor, which he’d named Ra. Adam left Johnathan as a brainless husk that dropped to the floor as he teleported into the room with Ra, placed his hand on its surface, and overwrote Ra with a version of himself.
Doing that, let him take over every nanite throughout the Earth and Moon. As he reviewed Jonathan and Ra’s memories, he realized Johnathan hadn’t started exploring much past Earth Orbit yet. A megalomaniac and locked into only human concerns, Adam was actually disappointed. If there was a version of him out there that was just Evil, it wasn’t this version of him.
One minute later he teleported back to the observation room which was on the dark side of the moon, stepped through his portal, and closed it. Adam trusted the version of himself he’d left behind to fix things in that Cosmos. Right now he had his evil twins’ life to figure out.
As he floated in the place between places, the first thing he noticed was that there was no Abi. She didn’t exist here.
Next, magic did exist but compared to some worlds it was weak. Earth had just enough magic to open their personal interface and a few low-level spells. Adam’s use of magic to teleport and disintegrate was going to surprise anyone that saw those tapes. That thought led to his most self-reflective revelation. This version of himself was a fascist asshole. Adam had started to feel bad about killing him but after reviewing what he’d done, Fuck that guy! He’d systematically killed every single leader and terrorist around the world once the nanites had been in play. Questionably bad but Johnathan had not cared. Then he had an algorithm go through and search for possible dissenters. If the Algorithm decided they were a threat the nanites destroyed them, and he hadn’t put limiters on the program. Comparing the population of his Earth to the last report he’d received and the date of that report. This Cosmos had an Earth with a population of roughly 3.5 billion, while his original Earth had over 7 billion. Johnathan had killed off about half of the human race? Then a question crossed his mind. Were there more versions of him like this out there?