(Day 177) Aprilis 22nd, 12th year of the Dragon, Age of Enlightenment
Adam came to and looked around. Adaline laid on the hearth seal beside him. He had his nanites check on her. They noted that she was breathing and seemed to be sleeping. Adam stood and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place, and everything looked clean. If any part of the tower had broken it seemed that they had been unconscious long enough for the tower to repair itself. He remembered something he’d read in one of the prompts and released his nanites to reach out and spread throughout his home, just in case. They were starting with such a small mass that the replication would take a while, but he figured there was no time like the present to test out his new abilities. First, though he needed to make sure Adaline was okay. Moving back to her he spoke softly, “Adaline.” She moved and nestled into a more comfortable position. A little bit louder he asked “Adaline?” to which her eyes flashed open, and she sat up looking around.
“Adam, what happened?”
“I don’t know, but if I had to guess I’d say being inside the Tower when it became its own pocket dimension was probably a bad idea”
Reaching up to grab her head she muttered, “Whatever happened, I have a hell of a headache, you?”
“Nope, I’m fine, just woke up and looked around really quick from here then checked on you.” He said as helped her to her feet. “Maybe we should check the whole place out?” he asked.
“Well, that’s different”, she said pointing to where the entryway to the door was. Now there were two doors each about 10 feet apart. They were both set in the wall and the entryway had been expanded so that it was now a good 50’x50’. Walking over to the door on his left he tried to open it and received the following error.
Warning: Location of door placement no longer exists. Please use the ability “Pick a Door” to establish a new anchor point
Adam turned to the second door and went over and opened it. The second door opened into the tower's courtyard like normal. He stepped through and looked around. He immediately noticed that the light level seemed like early morning, yet there were no shadows as the light seemed to come from all angles above him. Adaline followed him as he stepped into the courtyard. Adam looked around for a few more moments and then rose into the sky using Gravity is that Way.
When he was about 200 feet up, Adam set his gravity to neutral and used fly to slow himself to a stop. Adam looked around and was both amazed and terrified. For about a mile in all directions, his courtyard seemed to be where it had been. Then it just ended. There was nothing beyond that point that he could see. Adaline polymorphed into her dragon form and flew up to allow him to land on her neck as she turned and flew towards the nearest edge up against the mountain his courtyard rested on. She landed. As he hopped down she polymorphed back to her Dark Elf form and they walked up to the edge together. ”Let me try something before we try to touch or pass the edge.” He said.
“Absolutely,” Adaline said. “I have no idea where we are and no idea what this means.”
Adam nodded before he sent his nanites out from him and they came up against a solid magical barrier they could not enter or cross. The rock he was standing on was normal. Also, the air around them seemed to be normal and this far out from the tower, the altitude was right for the tower’s location on Primore. He reached out and touched a solid barrier that looked like the sky. “It’s a solid barrier.”
Over the next hour, Adaline and Adam explored the area and found that from the door a Globe existed that was an exact duplicate of the area the tower had been at. Also, he found that this whole area seemed to count as his Place of Power. Knowing that he’d raised the light level and increased the air pressure to sea level normal. One fun thing Adaline and he had figured out was that if they flew out from the cliff, let's still call that direction south, they’d come to the wall then they could slide down the wall all the way to the cliff face like it was one huge giant slide. That was when he made a second discovery. As they were coming faster and faster he’d thought that it’d be nice if there was a small lake at the very bottom of the globe and water had started pooling along the cliff face. He’d still needed to change his gravity vector to slow down and then fly away before slamming into the cliff face, but it seemed that he was able to create water anywhere. Looking through his personal interface, Adam realized that he could indeed change the settings to this place.
Once Adaline and he had explored this 2-mile diameter globe they were in they landed back at the tower and Adam said, “Think I’d like to see what the vault looks like”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Adaline said.
Abi’s voice was heard by both Adaline and Abi as she asked “Hey Adam, got a second?”
“What?” Adaline and Adam said at the same time as Abi said “What the hell?”
More hesitantly Abi asked, “Can you both hear me?”
“Yes,” Adaline and Adam said in unison.
“Well okay, something to figure out for later I guess. What I was going to say originally was that my link to backup Abi has been restored and while you two have been flying around I’ve been talking with her, Thor, and Amanda. Though it’s been slow going on their end. We still have about 7 seconds to their one second. Thor has said that he can feel you, but something is blocking him from making a connection with you. Do you know anything about that?” Abi asked.
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Adam thought about it for a second then willfully dropped his shield so that his quantum link could connect to Thor.
Unlike Abi and Backup Abi, Thor and Johnathan had set up a method for communicating and updating each other if they got a chance. Over the next 12 seconds, Thor was updated on what had happened and Adam was informed that about 5 minutes ago, his time, Thor had opened a portal into the air and was worried because of that. Working together Thor and Johnathan reprogrammed some of his nanites to read the quantum signature of his surroundings and about a minute later a portal opened with Amanda and Backup Amanda looking through. With an active portal in play, the pocket dimension synced its time flow to that of his original universe, and Adam was once again linked to Thor fully through their soul link and their quantum links for the first time while Johnathan had access to magic.
Adam, or more appropriately Johnathan/Adamantadine-Thor, truly became one entity at that moment. In the space of a nano-second, Thor had access to and raised his character level to 5,000 reducing his saved experience by 87.5 billion. This left him with only 5.7 billion experience. A side effect of this sudden influx of knowledge and processing power was that Abi was ejected and merged with her backup. Abi would no longer be able to reside within his subconscious.
During the next nanosecond, Adam reviewed the new Ascendant Machine Abilities Thor had gained for reaching Character Level 5,000.
Congratulations Ascendant Machine. You have been granted the following four abilities:
“One”, Fixed, Thor and Johnathan are permanently connected across any distance through any dimensional tear, across any time.
“Nanite Conversion”, Fixed, Within the radius of Nanite Companions, up to 500', of Jonathan/Thor Nanites can now perform any and all functions that they could in non-Magical Universes.
“Universal Understanding”, Fixed, the fundamental understanding of magic and science has allowed nanites to be imbued with and resist spheres of power that Johnathan is skilled in.
“Undying”, Fixed, Neither Thor nor Johnathan may ever be killed so long as one nanite exists anywhere.
During the third nanosecond, Adam knew everything Thor did and was connected quantumly to every nanite under his control as Thor knew everything Adam had learned during his time on Primore. Insights into the makeup of the Universe, Multiverse, and Multiverses? All the ideas and thoughts he’d had, exploded within their neural structure.
During the fourth nanosecond, Adam and Thor discussed plans, contingencies, and actions that needed to be taken in Primore and his home Universe.
During the fifth nanosecond, Adam separated his consciousness from Thor while Thor continued to review everything that he’d become privy to. With the new knowledge, Adam had imparted Thor and allowed his mind to slow down to normal speed while Thor continued to process information.
“You okay there Adam, you froze for a moment?” Adaline asked.
“I’d like to know as well,” Abi said from her constructed body. “I’ve never been forcefully moved out of your head before.”
“Sorry about that Abi, the amount of information Thor and I just shared filled up my mind. I’m sure there was still room in my subconscious, but I didn’t want to take the chance of that information accidentally overwriting you as it was coming in so fast.” He said.
“Okay Adam, just be more careful next time,” Abi said.
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time. Also, I don’t think Thor and I will have any more difficulties communicating. Realistically we are the same entity right now. Our minds have merged so well that we are in constant contact.”
“So, what’s next?” Adaline asked.
“This!” Adam said as he gestured, and a portal opened to his vault. He stepped through indicating that she should follow. “This is the vault for the Tower, “ he said as he stepped into a huge cube, the walls, and ceiling of which were off in the distance. “When I read the prompt it said that this room should be a 100,000-foot cube. 100,000 feet is just over 18 miles, which means that if this is the center the ceiling should be 18 miles above us and all the walls should be just over 9 miles away.
“I’ll check!” Adaline said as she jumped into the air and took dragon form before she flew off. Abi stepped through both portals to stand beside Adam.
“This is truly impressive Adam. I wonder how it will fill up when you add things to it?” Abi asked.
“As far as I can tell, however, I want. In this pocket dimension and the pocket dimension the tower sits in, I have total control. Also, now that Thor has the quantum location of this dimension he can open portals to it directly, though we don’t need the portals to communicate anymore.” Adam paused for a moment as a thought came to him. “One second”
A moment later a portal opened inside the vault beside the portal back into the tower. The portal shifted exit positions as they watched from his bedroom in the Tower, to his bed at the Academics college in Venoran, to an open sky overlooking a forest which Adam knew to be the original exit point he’d entered Primore at. “It seems that Thor can open a portal at any location I am at and at a known location I’ve been to on Primore or in this tower. I shouldn’t have to use teleport unless I’m going to a location that Thor doesn’t have the information for, though once I’m there, he’ll be able to reach it from that point on.”
“That’ll be handy,” Abi said with a smile.
“How’d your merge go? Both of you all together as one again?” Adam asked.
“Yep. Though now that I think about it. My speech patterns are a lot more like yours than what we saw back on Primore.” Abi said.
“Not to worry. You sound great! Also, why don’t you head back to my Earth while I sit here and wait for Adaline to return? She seems to be having fun. I’m going to flood this area with nanites, so I’ll be able to use it to do tests and convert anything I place in it.”
“Sound’s good. I think I’m going to go walk around now that I can, maybe go relax on a beach somewhere. See you in a bit” Abi said.
Adam closed the portals to Earth and realized that Thor and He did have a bond that surpassed any they’d had before. Thor was moving 6.67 faster than he was. Also, he was already performing computations thousands of times faster than a normal human brain. Thor had to create a subroutine just so Adam and he could have a conversation at their normal speed, which was still many times faster than a normal conversation. Thor could of course devote his full attention to Adam, but neither found it necessary. When they needed to exchange information, it was just easier for Adam to speed up his mind and talk with Thor through the subroutine. Thor would monitor the conversation and make adjustments to the subroutine while continuing to handle the quadrillions of other things he was already doing. Right now, Thor had a theory that he wanted to discuss with Adam, so they were reviewing the nature of singularities while Adam waited for Adaline to get back.