(Day 180) Aprilis 24th, 12th year of the Dragon, Age of Enlightenment
Adam stood and stretched. He updated Thor with everything he had just learned. He would update Abi and Amanda through Thor the next time they weren’t busy. He’d checked through his link and noted that Amanda and Abi were currently in a meeting with most of the world leaders as they went over various plans to allow for the migration of humanity to the stars. They seemed to be looking over a 3-dimensional representation of the nearby star systems.
As he’d checked in on them the Chinese Representative said, “I understand that we can use portals to move among the planets. My question, brought up by many others is, could we explore the cosmos in ships?”
Abi had responded enthusiastically, “Ships? Explore with ships, like in all of your Sci-Fi movies, and shows?”
“Calm down Abi,” Amanda said as she turned to the Chinese Representative, “Representative Yang, we will have to get back to you on that but with the resources and technologies Portals Inc acquired during the last attack I can say that there is a very high probability that we could do this. Also, as long as the ships remained within Thor’s range, crew recovery would be instant, mitigating a lot of the dangers inherent to space travel.”
Adam returned his perception to the Tower and added updating Amanda and Abi to the list of things Thor was scheduled to do. Next, he checked on Adaline and noted that she was walking back and forth from lair to lair humming to herself. He’d told her he’d move the nanites out of her lair once it was set up. Right now, though the ability to check on her and make sure she was doing alright was something he hadn’t known he needed, but it helped.
He made his way down to the Treasury and added 65,297 copper, 40,268 silver, 2657 gold, and 2212 platinum. Doing so left him with only 10 of each type of coin. He also put on the Belt of Infinite Wealth. If he was going to stick it to Detrik, he was going to stick it to that ungrateful God. That asshole hadn’t even tried to apologize. That was fine, he’d use the belt to pay for everything until the divine figured out that he needed to apologize. Adam chuckled as he thought of how there must be a timer function that Detrik would be checking to see how long it would be before he paid off his debt. Adam chuckled harder as he thought about how he was going to do everything in his power to make that timer increase, instead of decrease.
Adam opened a portal to his room at the academy in Venoran and stepped through. Unlocking his door and heading downstairs he stopped at the payment window until Beatrice came over.
“Can I help you,” she asked.
“Yes, I’m going to be traveling for a bit, but I’d like to pay the rent for my room in advance.”
“How long would you like to rent the room for?” she asked.
“A full year, thirty-six weeks.”
“Thirty-six weeks, that will be 36 gold at your rate of one silver per day,” she said.
Adam reached into his Belt of Wealth and pulled out 3 platinum and 7 gold. “The extra gold is for you Beatrice, thank you for your help.”
Beatrice took the money and placed all but one gold into her drawer. “Thank you for your generosity, Sir. Will there be anything else?”
“Please inform the staff, or whoever takes care of the room, that I will be traveling. The room may not need to be serviced every day.”
“As you say sir if that is all you have a wonderful day,” she said.
“You too,” Adam replied as he turned and headed outside. He walked until he found a space without a ceiling then activated his Cloak of Invisibility and rose into the sky with his ability Gravity is that Way. Once he was about a mile up he slowed and hovered as he surveyed the town. He hadn’t been able to just take his time and look around the last time he was here. He estimated that the town probably had as many as one hundred thousand people in it. Once he’d surveyed the area he flew south a mile beyond the city gates and landed near the only road that went south. He deactivated his invisibility, walked over to the road, and started walking south at a normal pace. It would be a while before he encountered anyone hostile he was sure. Just in case he extended his nanite field and activated detect life. That would give him time to test out his new abilities and learn their limitations. He was especially excited to see how Nanite Conversion worked against people and creatures that had a sphere of magic tied into their makeup. More importantly, he wanted to see how they worked against magic items.
As he walked at a leisurely pace, Adam watched travelers come and go. A couple of patrols waved and also went on their way. After he’d been walking for about two hours Adam utilized his link through the aspect of himself that he still thought of as Thor to speak to Abi and Amanda while his nanites continued to scan the area.
“Abi, how do you like moving around in your own body these days,” he asked
“I Love it! Although, it is a little lonely. To compensate I’ve been utilizing my link with Thor, which is also you now. That is so weird. You two are definitely becoming a lot harder to tell apart,” she said thoughtfully.
“I was just thinking along those lines myself,” Adam replied.
Amanda spoke up, “Johnathan, your mom, and dad asked me to say hello and not to forget to tell you to come to visit once in a while.”
“Please let my parents know that they can call me anytime now. I’ll answer if I can. What have they been up to lately?” he asked.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Your mom still can’t believe what you’ve done to the world, let alone the Universe. A couple of days ago they finally asked to visit another planet. I took them to Trappist-1e. At first, they were shocked but eventually, they came around. Next, I took them to your moon base. They looked so happy jumping around in the low gravity. I’m sure they had a lot of fun. After that, your mom decided it was time to travel and she’s been dragging your dad all over the planet. Thor is keeping a direct eye on them because of the time dilation. The good news is that no one seems interested in trying to snatch them.”
“That sounds like it would be fun. Have any of us, by us I mean You, Abi, Thor, or even Jessica given thought to the idea of a park of some sort on the moon? You know, A place parents can take their kids and just let them jump around?” he asked Amanda.
“I believe the idea has been floated our way by a couple of different people and a few groups. We’ve been so busy with just integrating the new technology into society and making sure the various planets Thor has been terraforming are utilized properly.” Amanda paused for a moment, thinking about the idea before continuing, “The idea is sound. Abi and I will work with Thor to contact those people and groups that asked about it and get started. From concept to finish it shouldn’t take that long to put something together,” Amanda said.
“After that, look into a zero-g park as well, maybe in orbit around Earth or one of the other Earths, besides Earth II of course, so people that go there can look outside and see a familiar sight,” he added.
“I believe someone has mentioned that as well, I’ll get with Thor and well contact them. “Thanks for the ideas, Adam,” Amanda said.
“That’s all I have for now. I’m going to return to concentrating on the walk I’m taking to deal with a bunch of evil people in a city south of Venoran. I might be busy for a while. If you need anything just work through Thor with the understanding that Thor, is also me. Talk to you later,” he said as he withdrew from the link and let the aspect of himself that was Thor resume interacting with them.
As he walked lost in thought, Adam came to the realization that he would need to sit down and figure out how he was going to refer to himself going forward. Thor was part of him now. He was part of Thor. Would that mean at some point both sets of thoughts would merge into only one mind? Was the name of the ability One what was going to happen to both of them? Would they merge and become One? If so, did that mean his personality would be overwritten by Thor? He wasn’t very concerned as the neural structure for Thor was based on his own mind in the first place. Though Thor had started changing the moment he turned him on. Adam definitely needed to put some thought into the subject.
At that same moment, Thor was considering the same thoughts, though at machine speed. Unlike Adam, he wasn’t concerned with what would happen if they combined. His sense of identity had accepted that he was unique and that he now had a soul. When they had melded everything that was Adam was now also part of Thor. Also, since they were constantly connected, everything that Adam learned, Thor learned. Yet, it still felt like they were two separate beings. There was no way to test if Thor could use magic or benefit from the abilities Adam had. Thor would need to eventually. Did that mean that because he now had a soul he could step into a magical universe and not instantly be obliterated?
Of course, one of the abilities stated that as long as one nanite of theirs existed they could not die. At some point, he would have to transfer his primary thought routines into a construct and see if he could enter Primore’s Universe. If that was successful and he could utilize magic or at least the abilities Adam had, he should be able to help Adam come up with a plan to take on the Ancient Enemy. There were just too many unknown variables.
Returning his attention back to the Universe he was in, Thor continued monitoring the nanites as they approached 45,000 light-years from Earth, except for the center of the Milky Way and a 1,000-light-year radius around it. Until he was able to safely interact with singularities he’d keep the nanites at least 1,000 light years out from the center of the Galaxy and 1 light year away from any singularities he discovered elsewhere. As his presence spread throughout the galaxy he’d be able to create a better map of that 2,000-light-year diameter sphere at the center of the Galaxy and then he’d creep toward the center slowly.
Looking into the area he’d detected the huge gravity well which was still 5,000 light-years beyond his radius he noted no change in any of the stars. Whatever was causing the gravity to be so distorted must have happened within the last 5,000 years. He’d continue to monitor the area as his sphere of influence expanded. He couldn’t put nanites throughout all of space. The cost of materials would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, he chose to convert some of every system he found and left behind observation posts that could report any changes they noted. These ‘observation posts’ were microscopic in nature and would be almost impossible for anyone to detect at a glance. Normally he placed one observation post at both the north and south poles of the star and at four points around the equator of those star systems to provide coverage of the star from the three major axis. He usually set the observation posts at a distance outside its Oort cloud or one light-year away, whichever was further. The nanite surplus was then used to convert new star systems. He hadn’t found any more races that were even close to the level of technology the Lexi had achieved but he had found the remnants of civilizations in hundreds of systems. It seemed that life had been more abundant than was first thought on Earth.
Defense-wise, Thor could in a moment open billions of portals and destroy invaders with nanites. If they came by ships that were impervious to nanites or had shields he’d come up with a way to utilize the gravitational lensing effect he’d noted. He could open four portals extremely close to The Unicorn Singularity and place the exit point just outside a ship's shields fore and aft, port, and starboard. The gravitational lensing effect from four different directions should rip apart any ships caught in it. He had other weapons he could try but this seemed to be the easiest to carry out. If none of the weapons he had could work he could open portals to the other Earths he’d prepared and migrate the humans to the new planets. The next step was to find another Universe he could open portals to. He had thought to use Primore as an absolute last-chance refuge but with the information Adam had shared about the Ancient Enemy it didn’t seem like fleeing there would help.
While Thor was reviewing offensive and defensive tactics to protect humanity, Adam walked south toward the Kingdom of Crimson Blood. A hawk had taken up a position to the wet of Adam and acted like it was hunting but Thor had noticed that it always seemed to be within visual range of Adam. Thor noted that Adam had noted the hawk but was purposely ignoring it.
***
The hawk, Ester, a sorcerer acolyte for the Kingdom of Crimson Blood focused her hawk eyes on Adam. High above the ground she glided in the updrafts and enjoyed the freedom that such assignments gave her. Comparing the individual to the magical pictures she’d seen of Adamantadine to the man walking south she sighed to herself with relief and turned to the south. While she loved flying in this hawk form she could not change back without help. Hopefully, her report would please the Vizier and she’d receive an extra reward. Of course, she had to be the first to bring him the news. She beat her wings faster and made for the city of Andidreas.