Adam was on his 10th Beer and acting stoically intoxicated. In truth, he was starting to realize that his Step 4 Endurance sucked. Ten beers and not even a hint of intoxication. That didn’t matter though, he wasn’t here to drink. While he’d been sitting at the bar he’d connected to the computer in the office with his Technomancy ability and was currently surfing the internet. It was uncanny how closely this Earth resembled the Earth he grew up on.
The date on the computer indicated that it was July 1st, 2051, he’d come back to that. The first thing he did was research Johnathan Bennard and his mother and father. None of them had existed. That meant his family had been system-generated making him a non-player character in the game world. He might need to talk to a therapist at some point, though he had all their texts memorized and knew what they’d say already, “What is real?” and then go into an explanation of reality akin to Morpheus from the Matrix. He didn’t need therapy, he needed to get to work.
Adam started looking at major historical events like World War I, World War II, The Vietnam War, and other events that shaped the 20th century. Next, he checked who the Presidents of the United States were. He reviewed the various countries of the world and double-checked that he was still fluent in all their languages. Adam also looked up various technologies to see if they existed, specifically nanites and the space compression drive that had been in development. Both had, though nanites were only ever used in medical procedures. The space compression drive had worked and even now helped support a colony on Mars allowing a supply run to be made when necessary in a fraction of the time it would take chemical rockets to get there.
Adam, reviewed all this information while he watched the news, and a football game, Soccer to the Americans out there, and acted slightly intoxicated to blend in. Adam also discovered that Labyrinth LLC had created an immersive game world using a Dungeon and Labyrinth theme. They made a copy of Earth so that the people coming into the game would have a familiar setting so they could acclimate quicker to their new existence. The magical aspects of the world would come later.
Did that mean that he’d been artificially created and just populated the universe? No. A news article he found showed a representative from Labyrinth LLC discussing how they’d created the Universe from scratch, then speed it through a growth cycle, with a few tweaks so it would create Earth as it was now. At least until the visitors started showing up. He knew he wasn’t an NPC. He had lived a real life, just as everyone he’d known had.
When the players came into the game they entered the artificial world thirty years in the past, then lived their normal life with the tweaks the game added to make it a unique and magical experience. As he read one thing really bugged him. Why had none of the people he’d had nanites in ever hinted at this? The answer, when he found it, was simple. Their personality was loaded into the game but the memories they had access to were limited to those that were downloaded into their player body. He couldn’t have found out while he had the entire population of Earth taken over by nanites because those memories never entered his Universe. “In this way, the illusion of their new life becomes their new life,” the representative for Labyrinth LLC had said.
The News continued to repeat their search for Dr. Brittle during each commercial break and repeated how a month ago, all links to every player in the game had been severed, leaving behind catatonic bodies that had quickly expired. Over a million had died worldwide Adam reconsidered his earlier hypothesis. It was entirely possible that the Universe housing the game being wiped out by the Pelza Empire was the reason the connection had been severed to all the players.
Unknown to the people of Earth, magic was real, and their creation had caused an A.I. to become fully sentient. That A.I. had manipulated the very code to try to save all of those minds by creating 100 alternate universes and separating the players into them. That action and Adams to destroy the device that was destroying Universes should give him the time he needed to find them again which helped him formalize a basic plan of action.
Adam realized he didn’t have all the answers yet and that he could keep guessing or he could get back to what he needed to. He looked at the calendar again, July 1st, 2051. It was also a Saturday which meant the calendars from both universes were on the same date/day cycle. That would make remembering things easier. Now it was time to figure out what major things were going on in the world now.
The United States was over 131 trillion dollars in debt and another protracted war in the Middle East again. World War III hadn’t happened, yet. China had expanded and culturally absorbed every county on the east side of that continent. There was talk of Japan succumbing to Chinese culture as well. Weirdly enough Russia had found resources that the west needed, and their country was on the road to recovery. In fact, The United States was a significant partner with Russia now and even seemed to be more financially independent than the United States.
All and all, this world had continued on an almost identical path to the Earth he grew up on. The powerful elite were still vying for more power while the masses struggled day to day. A majority of the Washington Elite was still worthless while a few tried to do the right thing. It was only going to take a significant event or game-changer for people to realize that there were other more important things to worry about and that they should be working to improve themselves. Of course, he was in the same boat because he had to now figure out how to exist in this society and get back to a point where he could help guide that change.
Adam’s thoughts had been going in circles as he looked through the internet and thought about how to best proceed. There was the brute force method, a method he was trying to use less and less. Just then a new set of messages popped into this vision.
UNIVERSAL UPDATE 1.01, Interface.
The Interface ability has been added to all sentient races of all cultivation ranks. Your Interface will allow you to view quantitative information concerning your personal growth, the growth of others, and the environment and its effects on you.
All Interface functions can be controlled verbally or mentally, either through the prompts in your vision or simple mental instructions.
If you would like to know more think or say: “Interface Help”
This was followed by a new message.
Hal: Finally! I needed to follow the process of a message popping into your vision before I could do the same. You are seeing this aren’t you Adam?
Adam: I see it. No mental communication then?
Hal: Not Yet. Also, I told you that wave was spreading through the Astral Plane. It looks like it finally reached this world.
Adam: It does. Message me if you notice anything I miss or have a better way for me to handle something I may have never done before.
Hal: As you wish.
Adam shut down his interface and looked around, sure enough, everyone was confused by the message they’d received. Adam needed to get moving before the panic started. He needed more information and a better location for figuring out what was happening.
Adam stood, pulled out 200 pounds, and put it on the counter which drew the bartender’s attention to him, “See to the customer’s needs for as long as that will last and give yourself a 50-pound tip. I’ve got to be going,” Adam said.
“What about these words in my eyes, I can barely see around them,” The bartender said.
“Just think or say, ‘Interface Off’ and they’ll disappear. ‘Interface On’ will get them to reappear. When you have time I suggest you read the help file.”
“Adam, how do you know so much about this?” The bartender asked as he picked up the 200 pounds.
“Don’t you worry about that; you just keep your customers calm. Everyone everywhere just received those words in their line of sight. There will probably be accidents and such. It’s going to be a trying time for everyone for the next couple of days,” Adam said as he went over to the ATM and pulled out another 1,000 pounds with Technomancy.
Adam walked out of the pub as people started yelling questions back and forth to each other. Adam knew this was going to cause chaos and he needed to get ahead of it. The first thing he needed to do was create an identity for himself and to do that he needed to head to the United States. Starting from scratch without the millions of dollars from winning a lottery was going to be a lot of fun, he thought sardonically. Also, if worse came worse, he could make a spectacle of himself to redirect any sense of panic into a sense of wonder. In fact, he had a good idea about how he could do that.
Adam walked north along the road until he passed the houses and came upon a small grouping of trees. He walked down the path until he was out of sight of everyone, and activated Obscure and Flight again, he’d turned off flight while he’d been drinking. He rose into the air and speed off to the south and west. There was one problem. While his body could take the friction of flying this fast, his robe had ripped off and fluttered to the ground about the point he reached 400 mph. He was out over the Atlantic flying butt-ass naked. He was lucky he no longer felt the cold. Once he was 5 miles off the coast he increased his altitude to 100,000 feet then increased his speed to 3,600 miles per hour straight toward Washington DC, he’d worry about clothes later.
***
Captain Anderson had scrambled into his XF-84, ran through his checklists, while he taxied onto the runway, received clearance, and rocketed down the runway. The XF-84 was a USAF 10th generation fighter with hypersonic capability and a stealth suit that made the plane he was flying one of the deadliest weapons the USAF had ever had in its inventory. The aircraft was tailor-made for rapid deployment and had launched from a secret facility in Greenland. Once at altitude, he increased his speed and sped south at Mach 10 toward the anomaly traveling through the atmosphere at just over five times the speed of sound. It looked to be on a direct heading for Washington DC.
The Anomaly had been detected by a weather satellite in much the same way submarines had been detected by an environmental satellite that had been launched to detect whales. The funny thing about the original whale-hunting satellite, it was sensitive enough to detect water turbulence from orbit. They could see the whales. Unfortunately, that was not all they could see. The satellite also detected every submarine that was moving. Once the Department of Defense had realized what was going on they’d had to time-delay the data feed so only the whales showed up on the “live” feed.
This newer satellite that detected the anomaly and could detect the XF-84 as well was tasked to track atmospheric disturbances. A shockwave caused by faster-than-sound travel was one of the easier disturbances it could detect, especially if it was at 100,000 feet.
17 minutes later he was 2,000 miles south and slowing down as he approached the shockwave which was superimposed on his heads-up display so that he could see its approximate location to within an inch or so. Captain Anderson slowed down and pulled into a parallel flight path as he looked for any indication of an object creating the shockwave the satellite was detecting. A moment later his headset activated.
“Control, FM1, do you see it, over.”
“FM1, Control, there’s nothing there, repeat, nothing is there, over,” Captain Anderson said.
“Control, FM1, fall back and trail, repeat fall back and trail,”
“FM1, Control, copy fall back and trail,” Captain Anderson repeated as he slowed down only to notice that the object was slowing down with him, “FM1, Control, the object is matching speed, over,” Captain Anderson sent.
“Control, FM1 Continue to slow down, repeat continue to slow down.
Captain Anderson continued to slow down until a new male voice entered his headset.
“IFM, Control, IFM stands for Invisible Fast Mover by the way. FM1 looks like a sweet ride,” the male voice said.
Captain Anderson looked at his radio and noticed that the transmission that had just gone out had been transmitted from his aircraft, how was that even possible? Had something infected his communications equipment. Captain Anderson started shutting all electronics to the outside down, as Control answered.
“Control, FM1 Repeat the last transmission.”
Captain Anderson was pretty sure he’d shut down his communications gear when he heard.
“IFM, Control, FM1 can’t use his radio right now, I am though. He can hear you. Also, I watched him try to shut down his radio, He’d probably tell you that it looked like he had, but between you and me, we know that’s not true.”
Captain Anderson put his left hand up and flipped his middle finger toward the Anomaly just to see if whatever Control was talking to was actually right next to him.
“and he just tried to communicate with me internationally with his middle finger, that’s not very professional for an officer. Well, I’ve had my fun, Think I’m going to be on my way. over”
“Control, IFM, who or what are you?
“IFM, Control, you both saw the message in your vision today. The world is changing. I am one of those agents of change, over” Adam said as he doubled his speed then stopped and went straight down at a leisurely 300mph.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Captain Anderson had indeed seen the Interface message, as had everyone else at the base. They had a job to do and it didn’t affect his mission so they were ignoring it for now. As he thought about what had happened earlier, he was completely surprised when the object beside him increased speed to Mach 10 instantly and pulled away. He pushed the throttle forward but it would still be a few seconds before he could match speed again and then suddenly the shockwave in front of him was gone. In the three seconds it took him to react, he knew he was already six miles past where the shockwave disappeared.
***
Adam watched as FM1 flew right past him as he made his way down to 1,000 feet above the ocean and started heading towards Washington DC again. By the time FM1 slowed down and made his turn to get back to where the shockwave ended, Adam would be miles below him and not creating the shockwave FM1 Had been tracking. It was interesting that FM1 couldn’t see him on the radar but that same radar could pick up the air displacement from the shockwave. With Technomancy Adam had even seen that the equipment was estimating the approximate mass of the object creating that shockwave based on the shockwave size as received from a satellite above him. What he'd just pulled was going to give the eggheads in charge of that stealth fighter a headache.
Adam also had to admit that the plane, an XF-84, as indicated in the software, was incredibly sleek. It kind of reminded him of the design they used for E.D.I. (Extreme Deep Invader) or call sign Tin Man, from the movie Stealth, with a few minor differences. It was black and sleek with subdued USAF markings. It must be one of the 10th gen fighters that he’d seen hinted at on the net when he’d been looking for technologies.
That the XF-84 could reach Mach 10 was impressive. Adam had reached out with Technomancy to get all of that information as well as talk to Control and FM1. He’d copied and memorized all the microcircuitry of the XF-84 and listened in on the scrambled satellite uplink. It hadn’t even been a contest with Technomancy to break through the firewalls. The system treated him like he wasn’t even there, which was reminiscent of the way he’d utilized nanites.
Adam had also checked and made sure that his Obscure ability was making him undetectable. The only way they had detected him was with the shockwave, a fact that was really good to know. Once he was about 1,000 feet above the ocean, Adam oriented himself and started heading west. The trip would take a little over 5 hours. He’d made it just a little over halfway to Washington D.C. before he’d been intercepted. He wasn’t even upset. He’d learned some valuable information. After analyzing the XF-84 with his Technomancy he had to say the technology of the United States military had definitely improved in the last 30 years.
Adam watched as the stealth fighter flew a grid pattern above him. Almost no one should be able to see that plane from this close to the ground, but his perception was so good that it wasn’t even a question, the little subdued black dot drew his eye to it every time it was within his line of sight.
Three hours later Adam reached the coast of Canada and followed it south toward the United States. His first stop was the Pentagon where he was going to find out where the NSA archives were in this reality so he could go download all the archived files they had. Once that was done, then he’d worry about blending in. He needed to know the political, social, and military climates before he did anything.
As he flew into Washington DC he was surprised to see how rundown the place looked. There was trash everywhere and he could see some homeless camps here and homeless enclaves scattered throughout the outskirts of the Capital. The inner city near the politicians looked well-kept, as did the House of Congress and the Pentagon but the rest of the city was in shambles.
Adam realized there was one thing he really liked about technology, automatic doors. With Technomancy, he could open the doors and float on through with no one being the wiser, which is exactly what he did. As he entered the Pentagon he floated near the ceiling and looked around while he downloaded the blueprint of the Pentagon. In no time he found what he was looking for, the backup server room which was on one of the sublevels, and an emergency tunnel that went west under the highway and emerged in a hidden sublevel of one of the buildings there. He flew back out of the Pentagon and west to the cemetery right across the highway.
There were alarms and electronic countermeasures to prevent unwanted access, but there were no guards. The electronics weren’t an issue. The door was a lot like a bank vault with sliding pistons on the top, bottom, and sides to prevent the door from budging if it was locked. The locking mechanism was electrically controlled, and all were easily activated with Technomancy. Once the door was unlocked, it opened on perfectly balanced hinges. As Adam floated down the tunnel he noted that there was a button a hundred feet back behind a glass plate that said, “Break and Push, if the door does not unlock.” Adam followed the wiring with his mind and noted the shaped charges placed to the side of the door which would blow a hole through five solid feet of concrete beside the door. He hadn’t realized until just then that he could also follow wiring through walls. Technomancy was an extremely useful ability.
His curiosity sated; Adam floated down the wide tunnel until he was at a door to the interior of the Pentagon. Luckily the servers were within 700 feet of this door. It looked like no one had been in this hallway in a very long time. There was a light layer of dust covering the floor. That’s one of the reasons he’d been floating instead of walking. He took a Buddhist sitting position while he hovered in the air and reached out with Technomancy.
Adam was still amazed at how easy Technomancy made it for him to hack into encrypted files and networks. There was a lot of data, which would still take a little while for him to download and go through. With the emergency bunker also within range, the first thing he did was set up for live communications to be mirrored to him so he could watch what was going on in real time then he started going through files. After a couple of minutes of downloading, he discovered one of the backup sites for the NSA servers in Omaha Nebraska.
As he continued to go through the files he realized The United States was a lot worse off than they were letting the public know. China, through shell corporations, and other countries owned approximately 71% of all the businesses in the United States. The drug cartels were streaming drugs across the southern border and any respect the other countries had for them was gone by 2025. He also found the CIA’s backup files which were one set of files he was looking for. He looked for false identities, took five, and deleted them from all records then downloaded a subroutine into the server to watch for inquiries to a message that simply said redacted due to official use. That simply meant that someone had surfaced with that identity, and they couldn’t use it for covert ops. He now had access to five legitimate identities once he could create the paperwork for them. He’d get to that in a bit.
Next, he looked at the files concerning the various drug rings, terrorist organizations, and predominately bad people that existed focusing on Omaha, since he was going there next. He did download all the files for future reference though. Adam needed money quickly and what better way to get the money that doesn’t belong to you than taking it from some of the most ruthless killers on the planet? That part was going to be fun.
Adam floated in the air for the next six hours as he downloaded and went through the information on the servers. There was a lot to take in but he felt like he had a good handle on what had happened in this world in the past century when he was done. There hadn’t been a World War III yet, but it had been close thing a couple of times. Also, there was no mention of aliens or magic so either the Pentagon was unaware, or they were infiltrated. He knew of at least one person that didn’t belong here having made that had been on the planet which brought his thoughts to Labyrinth LLC so most likely infiltrated and actively scrubbed.
Thinking of Labyrinth LLC made him think about what he’d found concerning that company. The military had contacted Labyrinth LLC. with the idea to use their artificial world for training if it was ultra-realistic. The LLC had agreed but warned that the technology was untested. The military had held off and with millions of players dead, the military leadership was being praised for their caution.
When he was done, Adam floated out of the escape tunnel and headed west toward Omaha Nebraska. Adam stayed low to the ground and stayed under the speed of sound which was 730 miles per hour at sea level. The flight took just over four hours and almost no time to find the small square building that sat on a small hill 500 feet above the Missouri river. The outer walls of the building were reinforced concrete and five feet inside there was another reinforced concrete wall. There was a single airlock to get through both walls and enter the building. The building also had three 3 sublevels which were encased and waterproofed even though the lowest level was still 200 feet above the Missouri river. The building could flood, and the servers would remain dry and operational as long as the airlock held.
Compared to the Pentagon this building was tiny. Adam flew above the roof and floated there while he downloaded everything the NSA had archived concerning all communications in the United States. While he was downloading, he entered his Mindspace and started organizing his information into two categories Holographic Life and Real life. He didn’t want his mind getting confused or cross-referencing. The information he had from before was valuable and it would help him but anything concerning people may not have happened that way here. Adam didn’t want to remember someone doing something they didn’t do. It was very doubtful that he would but better safe than sorry. He followed an idea he remembered from the movie Dreamcatcher and visualized his mind as a library, then he cordoned off every memory before waking up in the Battery Plant as happening in the holographic universe and everything else in the new area as Current events. That should help him keep things straight. He was a being of chaos but being a confused being of chaos was something he wanted to try to avoid.
Absorbing all the information from the NSA took another 10 hours. They had a lot and some of it was on servers that were not present at his current location. When he was done he stood in the air, pulled another robe from his Shadow Vault, and put it on before he checked Google maps and headed west for the treasury building over on west Dodge Street.
Within five minutes he had five IDs for the false identities he’d pulled from the CIA. It had been easy. At 2 a.m. with no one present he entered the building. He’d found a door on an electronic cipher lock and opened it with Technomancy while shutting off every Camera within range. Next, he made his way to the camera they normally used to take the ID photos and stood in front of it. Adam copied the image into his mind. Once there he dropped into his Mindspace and modified the image so that he was wearing a white shirt with a blue tie. The last step was to download that image into the printer with his personal information and print out the ID cards. He’d timestamped the creation date for January 10th, 2051, a Thursday, six months before today. For the personal information, he’d just filled it in with what he’d downloaded from the CIA. When he was done he cleared all the logs, backup logs, caches, and archives of the information and the printer’s memory cache. The only thing he couldn’t do was replace the cardstock for the cards he created.
Before he started this next part he needed to check something. He focused his attention inward and looked at his Core. He only had 20 chaos motes orbiting his core so he’d have to be careful with how he spent them. The first thing he needed to do was review what Teleport and Planar Travel could do. Both were only at Low rank. He’d absorbed them while in a rush and had closed the information down before he’d had a chance to glance at it. He didn’t want to spend 12 motes to level them up to Legendary until he knew what the abilities could do or found more quintessence. He did have the ability of Treasure Renderer but he had a feeling it wasn’t going to create Quintessence out of Class-M Cultivators. Mortals wouldn’t have any energy to convert unless he could get a quintessence from a racial ability. If he killed a mortal he’d have to try “Treasure Renderer” to find out.
Adam focused on what he needed to do and opened his messages. He scrolled through them until he found his two new ability messages. He started with Teleport.
Congratulations you have integrated the Space Quintessence ability “Teleport.” At low rank/low mana cost you can teleport line of sight up to 1 mile per ability rank. At medium rank/medium mana cost you can teleport to any location you are familiar with up to 10 miles. At high rank/high mana cost you can teleport to any location you are familiar with up to 100 miles. At Elite rank/Elite mana cost you can teleport to any location you are familiar with up to 1,000 miles. At Epic rank/Epic mana cost you can teleport to any location you are familiar with up to 10,000 miles. At Mythic rank/Mythic mana cost you can teleport to any location you are familiar with up to 100,000 miles. At Legendary rank/Legendary mana cost you can teleport to any location you are familiar with up to 1,000,000 miles.
Not as powerful as the spell he’d had but not too shabby. Seeing as he could fly a million miles with his flight ability in an atmosphere in less than an hour and less than a second in space, Adam wasn’t too worried about increasing that ability anytime soon. Line of sight up to a mile or a familiar location for low mana cost was good for now.
Adam looked at the message for Planar Travel.
Congratulations you have integrated the Dimensional Quintessence ability “Planar Travel.” This ability may be used in two ways. The first allows you at a Low rank, low mana cost to slip into an adjacent dimension to the current Universe you are in. You may enter any of the elemental dimensions as well as the ethereal and umbral planes. if able to survive in the Astral Plane this ability can be used to enter that plane as well.
WARNING This ability does not allow travel through the Astral Plane or protect you from the forces that will rip you apart.
The Second use of Planar Travel allows you to travel between universes; At low rank/low mana cost you can travel to a random adjacent Universe. At high rank/ low mana cost you can choose which adjacent universe you have visited before. At High Rank/ Medium Mana cost you can travel to any Universe you have traveled to before. At High Rank /High Mana cost you can travel to any location within the target universe you are familiar with. At Legendary rank, with a high mana cost, you may target an unknown Universe with a high probability of success though nothing is guaranteed.
It was too bad he hadn’t checked on what these abilities could do before. Regardless neither one of them needed to be leveled this instant though he could increase Planar Travel to high and teleport back to Nostrom and from there find out where the scouts were that had heard about his escapades with the Eternal Empire.
That’s not why he wanted to check on his abilities though. With Chaos and nanites, he’d been able to make anything he needed. He needed to get an ability that could do something similar. Adam focused his thoughts on acquiring a chaos-based conjuration ability that would allow him to form any items he might need utilizing only mana.
You have chosen to integrate a mote of Chaos. The ability “Variable Quintessence” has been activated. New Ability sought: Category: Conjuration/Creation. Energy Type: Chaos. Ranged: limited. Goal: Create Items. Is this information correct? Yes or No?
Adam chose “Yes.”
Congratulations you have integrated the Chaos Quintessence ability “Mold Chaos.” This ability allows you to create items. You can either create copies of something in your possession with little effort or you may create items if you have the skill and knowledge to do so. You may only spend mana equal to the abilities rank. At low rank, you may create an object, or objects totaling no more than 10 pounds in weight, at Medium – 50 pounds, at High - 100 pounds, at Elite – 200 pounds, at Epic – 400 pounds, at Mythic 800 pounds, at and Legendary 1 ton. The item can be created in your hand or within line of sight within a 100-foot radius.
That was exactly the type of ability Adam had wanted to create. An ability that allowed him to conjure items out of thin air. This might even be better than having nanites create items as he wasn’t converting anything but man into the new items. Eagar to try out his new ability, Adam created a set of contemporary clothes; jeans, a shirt, tennis shoes, socks, and underwear. The items coalesced into his hand. He quickly stored the set of clothes in his Shadow Vault then pulled out the items one at a time and put them on, he was tired of being naked.
For his next trick, he searched his memory and found the leather armor he’d liked to wear and conjured five sets of it and the boots that went with it in quick succession. He placed all of the sets in his inventory and decided to look at the Shadow Vault. He hadn’t bothered since he ranked it up and was surprised and delighted to discover that it had a wardrobe function. He quickly went through the inventory and designated the clothes he was wearing as a set and each of the leather armor sets as another wardrobe set, then with a thought, shadows surrounded him, and he was wearing his leather armor. With another thought, shadows swirled, and he was back in his casual clothes.
Adam quickly integrated 6 motes of chaos leveling the ability to Legendary and leaving only 13 motes of chaos orbiting his core. He released his focus from his core and looked around. To his south, he saw a parking garage and teleported to it. Using his Technomancy ability he learned everything he could about the electric hybrid Kia he was looking at, something called a Nero Supreme. It seemed that his Technomancy ability allowed him to become familiar with the item so Adam utilized his new legendary ranked ability “Mold Chaos” to create an exact duplicate of the car with a visually accurate license plate and tags parked right next to it. He was still near the treasurer’s building so he added the vehicle registration to the database making it legal to drive on the street. That done, he walked up to the Vehicle, opened the door, and sat in the driver’s seat.
It was 3 a.m. and he had a lot to do still. What was next on the to-do list?