Thor interrupted Adam’s mussing through their quantum link.

Thor: Of course, there are.

Adam: This isn’t the worst of them, is it?

Thor: No, A couple of better questions to ask; did you receive a soul shard or a message from the Johnathan you just destroyed? Has it joined you?

Adam stopped cold. His Thor Aspect was absolutely right. As he had access to all the prompts coming in and processed them much quicker than he did, he’d know the answer. Yes, Yes, they were the same entity but he had parceled out certain functions and since he had most of the processing power from the nanites it was just easier for him to check the prompts. Adam refocused and checked them for himself.

The prompts coming in were still messages about manifestations returning but they had slowed considerably. He was only receiving one about every ten seconds or so. It was also very easy to check the rest of the prompts and messages, although his prompts inbox was starting to look like a Microsoft Outlook or google mail setup. Pretty soon he’d have to add a spam folder. Adam brought his thoughts back into focus and went through each category of prompts. Sure enough, No uncategorized prompts appeared so he started going through each folder he’d created. Next, he went through each manifestation that had returned from the time stamp of when he’d destroyed his evil twin, and now. None of them held a memory of encountering his true self.

Adam thought about this for a second or so, then willed himself back into the base on the Moon and wished Johnathan’s soul into his presence. Nothing happened. Adam made sure True Sight was active and looked around. Still nothing. Adam then concentrated his intent to know what had happened to the Soul of Johnathan Bennard from this Cosmos and actualized that intent.

Adam watched as the Soul of Johnathan left the body he’d destroyed by absorbing it. The soul of Johnathan had shrunk to nothing, inverted and fled this Cosmos and it hadn’t come to him? Did that mean there were different versions of him and that each version was its own entity? Or, did it mean that he could never get higher than the 99.99% as an absolute soul because there were portions of his soul that he could never absorb? It could be a fluke, but Adam didn’t think so.

Before he went to work, Adam had Thor start keeping time for him. He kept it to a 24-hour day, and 365-day year from the time he started culling his evil twins. Maybe he should call any time reference since his decision to fix himself, KET (Kill Evil Twin) day. Nah, that was just too narcissistic, even for him.

Over the next five years, Adam went to work personally hunting down his evil twins. During that time he’d successfully entered, found, and absorbed the memories while destroying the bodies of 2,627,596 evil versions of himself. Adam was absorbing roughly one of the evil Johnathan’s every 30 seconds over a 12-hour day. It was relatively easy. He’d enter a universe, infiltrate the nanites there, hack them, find the evil Johnathan, teleport to him, and end him. After so many times he’d become quite proficient at it.

Each of the evil Johnathan’s memories Adam absorbed was a nightmare he wished he could discard. In every case, they’d brutalized their people and their worlds.. Some had been wrecked by Nuclear War. Others had versions of the Syndicate, or the Horrors of the Labyrinth would wash over the planet. Still, others had been a lot like he had done if he’d been a teenager on a power trip. He had multiple memories of the Johnathan’s taking whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, to include any women they desired. Any that raised a fuss, ceased to exist or were moved to a location where he could abuse them as he desired and no one would find them, ever. Also, his evil twins were not fans of criticism. More than one of the Johnathan’s accepted invitations from media personalities that had every intention of launching a smear campaign against them. It was almost like there was a seven-step plan on how the evil version of himself handled such character-smearing traps.

First, his evil twins didn’t care about what anyone thought about them.

Second, they’d accept the interview.

Third, the evil twin would show up for the interview and pleasantries would be exchanged then the media personality would make a claim that Johnathan had committed this or that atrocity or broke this or that law after showing some evidence if they had any, the stupid ones tried to intimidate his evil twin without evidence.

Fourth, Then Johnathan would say something like, “So”, and the host would evaporate from the extremities towards their torso in the most excruciating pain that Johnathan could give them. He’d amp up the pain receptors artificially and the screams would start. Of course, The screaming would stop once the nanites started on the torso the host’s eyes would glaze over at which point they’d just evaporate into nothing. Each evil Johnathan referred to that first incident as the first culling.

Fifth, the evil Johnathan would leave the study and head back to wherever he had his base of operation in that Cosmos. In almost every instance he already had portal technology, so he’d step through a door and vanish, even as others rushed into the room to try to figure out what was going on. The really brutal versions of himself destroyed all the witnesses too. In the few iterations he hadn’t had portals, he’d head towards his limo and anyone that tried to stop him would evaporate as the nanites went to work.

Sixth, he’d watch as those that had witnessed the death of the host commented and called for Justice. Any politician, judge, senator, or house representative that took any action against him died in the same fashion as the media host. The Evil Johnathans were smart enough not to leave their version of the United States with a power vacuum so when that command to the nanites went out, he also destroyed the leaders of all foreign governments, friendly or foe. Though in those instances, Adam just caused brain aneurysms to kill his targets around the world at the same moment. That was the Second culling. The confusion and chaos a bunch of leaders dropping dead all over the globe caused allowed Johnathan to step forward and declare himself leader across the globe.

The Seventh and final step was the systematic monitoring and death of anyone that tried to rebel. Those that chose not to show up for work to show your solidarity never showed up anywhere again. Talking to their friend about how they thought someone should kill Johnathan, whenever they thought no one was watching. The individuals that made such statements were destroyed right then, usually in a similar fashion to the media host. A few Earths tried to stop Johnathan by launching their nukes. Instead of launching, the nukes detonated in their launch tubes killing everything in the immediate area. 24 hours later, the facility was back, good as new after the nanites repaired everything. Johnathan did have the nanites clean up the radiation quickly after though. Of course, the individual that ordered the strike or launch died as well.

There were a few variations but those were the seven main steps that seemed to repeat. None of the evil Johnathans that were part of a manifestation that had returned so quickly had any sympathy for anyone else. In each case, the population of those Earths lost between 40% and 60% of their total population before people figured out they could not even talk about overthrowing Johnathan. They just accepted that their lives were now run by a single dictator and there was nothing they could do about it.

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Adam would cross over into the Universe where one of the evil Johnathans resided. Then, to be sure he wasn’t killing a good Johnathan, he would find that Johnathan, subdue him, and then download and review their memories. If he found any hint that the Johnathan he was in front of was a monster he absorbed them and set their soul free. Then he took over the nanites, set them to neutral, and let events play out as they would. In each case, the strongest personalities were already dead. It would take ages for anyone to realize that the Johnathan of their world wasn’t around anymore. Part of each Johnathan’s procedure was to also cleanse the world of the dregs of society. Homeless, addicts, social out layers. Each Johnathan had also destroyed them. The only humans left were the sheep that did as they were told.

If Adam made any universal declarations, he knew that he would only do more harm than good. The humans on each of these Earths would have to find their own way. The least he could do was make sure they were healthy and would have long lives so he set the nanites he’d taken over to the default settings he usually used and also had them make sure that no one came down with any truly horrendous diseases or cancer. Otherwise, they were on their own.

As Adam destroyed each Johnathan he checked to see if any prompts had occurred concerning himself. Each time he was relieved to find that the monster he’d just killed was not part of him. he felt absolutely no remorse for killing such a monster, though killing himself over two million times so far was making Adam like parts of himself less and less though he knew intellectually these assholes weren’t him.

While he was following up on each of the manifestations that came from an Evil Johnathan he had his Thor Aspect review the manifestations that were returning that didn’t involve his evil alter egos. Whom his manifestation ran into in each of those cases was random but was usually one of his friends from college. In a Cosmos where there was a lot of magic, a mage of some sort had taken over the nanites. In some cases, his manifestation had survived long enough to be eaten by a monster of some sort. In one such case, Thor informed him that the manifestation seemed to have a memory of a Cthulhu-type creature appearing and destroying Johnathan.

None of the manifestations Thor was reviewing, however, contained any version of himself that would be considered good. It was entirely possible that his manifestations that had run into a good version of himself just hadn’t returned yet. It was also possible that they’d run into an evil version of himself that was smarter. One thing reviewing these manifestations had given him though was time. Time to learn how to utilize his abilities and expand himself to levels he’d never achieved before. Not levels in the sense of experience. Levels, in the sense of processing power.

Over the last five years, he’d absorbed less than 1% of the manifestations he’d released. He hadn’t visited even 1% of the 5% that had returned immediately. Even so, he’d been able to figure a few things out.

First, the number of Cosmos his manifestations had gone to wasn’t infinite. He was sure that had to do with the fact that he’d put a qualifier in play. By limiting the manifestations to human-friendly the number of manifestations had not been infinite.

Second, he’d been able to learn a lot from the number sequence that had been used for each Cosmos. It had taken a little while, but he’d been able to find the annotation that denoted the entire Cosmic identifier. As his manifestations were assigned the last part was added. Once he realized that he’d gone through and compared every identifier which had led to his third revelation.

Third, the cosmic identifier quantified the settings of the cosmos. It took only a few comparisons for his Thor Aspect to deduce that everything one needed to know about a Cosmos was in that identifier. He identified the sequences that set up the weak and strong interactions as well as gravity. which were identical for each of the Cosmos he’d explored. Thor was also able to determine the sequence that identified the availability of magic in those Cosmos.

Fourth, once Thor figured that out he went back and found the identifier in his archived prompt logs for when he had Universal and Cosmic access and looked for instances when he crossed Universes or Cosmos and found the sequence that identified him as having access to Universal and Cosmic Prompts at that time.

Firth, he figured out that he could not modify his soul spaces identifier, but he could modify his manifestations modifier to give them Cosmic Access when he sent them out.

Sixth, as a byproduct of figuring that part out, he found a way to issue a recall command to all his manifestations at once. Adam couldn’t re-manifest into a Cosmos he was already in but what he could do was send an update or recall by adding some coding to the identifier for the manifestation.

Seventh, he needed to finish converting the fourth Cosmos worth of nanites into the processing power he would need. he had discovered that the nanite swarm was what was left of a Cosmos that had collapsed to a point that held only nanites. All the matter within that Cosmos was now manifest as Nanites. He had discovered multiple Cosmos like this and had begun the conversion process in each. Only if they were mindless destroying machines. Adam had come across a Cosmos containing Nanites that contained the consciousness of a countless number of entities. He’d established contact and would contact them again if he was wrong about a theory he’d been developing.

As he was reviewing the data, Adam received a prompt indicating that the fourth Cosmos had just finished being converted.

Eighth, he removed the Cosmos that manifestations had already returned from the list of Cosmos he’d re-manifest into. He had a good idea of what was there and would revisit them if this next part worked.

Adam didn’t have any more reasons to put off what he needed to do so he opened portals inside his soul space to the four cosmos filled with his nanites and quantumly linked them to himself. Adam reintegrated with his Thor Aspect and sent out the recall command to the rest of the manifestations that had not returned. Unlike his batch command to manifest everywhere this command did not knock him unconscious and the processing power of four Cosmos worth of nanites and the processing power he had available in his Soul Space allowed him to absorb, categorize and review what the rest of his manifestations had come across.

One of his manifestations that hadn’t returned did not return at all. Adam locked that Cosmos Identifier out of his next manifestation command. He quickly reviewed the rest. The majority of manifestations that had not returned hadn’t done so because they’d integrated into various eras of human activity. They had been living normal lives wherever they’d been. Some of the Cosmos had magic, while others did not. Some had been captured by the government of the planet they’d been on, which wasn’t always Earth. Some were in the process of being tortured but in most cases, his manifestations had just been confined.

Adam compared all types of settings with Cosmic Codes and found one more piece of the puzzle. Stellar and galactic coordinates were also in the identifier as well as temporal proximity to point 0 where point zero seemed to be the moment that was his soul’s present, though he wasn’t absolutely sure about that. he’d only been able to recognize it by the amount of technology he saw and how those Cosmos he manifested into that had more advanced technology always had a higher value in one specific portion of the identifier.

Adam added the Cosmic Interface identifier to each manifestation and sent a new level 100 manifestation of himself back to each Cosmos he’d just recalled them from with instructions to open their Cosmic Interface, review their personal information on that interface paying particular attention to the soul abilities and their qualities as well as reviewing the makeup of the Cosmos, specifically extra dimensions, and to see if additional Universes were present. Once the manifestation had a firm idea of the information Adam needed the manifestation was to return. Once he had all the information he needed Adam would manifest back into every one of those Cosmos with the ability to use the Cosmic Interface.

With that done, Adam parceled all information he’d just gained from the returned manifestations into four equal parts, sent one part to each of the Cosmos he was connected to, and closed the portals to those Cosmos. He’d let the nanites review and categorize all the data they had. It would probably take a while.

Once the portals were closed, he willed himself into his Place of Power within his Soul Space, went up to his bedroom, and laid down to take a good long nap. He needed to give his new manifestations time to gather as much data as they could with the access they had. He also needed to give his hordes of nanites time to review all the data his old manifestations had gathered. If he was right, things would change very shortly. First, though, five years without a break? Sleep would be a welcome respite.