(Various Locations, January 6th, 2047)

It didn’t take weeks to prepare the Earth, nor did it take long for the first humans with the willpower and imagination to be able to control magic to appear. An interesting case manifested while Adam was setting up portals on each of the Earths in multiple locations. He was able to work on multiple portals at the same time by allowing the normal nanites to create 90% of the materials needed for their construction and then popping in to drop off some of his chaotic nanites to create and incorporate the magical components that were necessary. He would then return to collect all the chaotic nanites after they were done.

Adam set up the construction of the portals through Thor and made sure everything was going well when a young girl started to throw a tantrum that his Thor Aspect, who was always monitoring everything, contacted him and instigated an emergency response protocol. What that meant was that he was contacted at machine speed and reacted by opening the Universal Interface and slowing time down to a crawl as he portaled to the location.

The location of the event happened to be a little village in Amesbury England, just east of Stonehenge. Could there be a correlation? he’d have to check that later. Adam stepped out of his portal and looked around as a young girl was screaming in the classic I’m a child and I-will-get-what-I-want scream pose except that a wave of fire had surrounded her and was moving away from her in all directions. Her mum and dad had looks of shock on their faces. Adam also noticed that the mother had started to turn to a toddler sitting in a highchair that was making a god-awful mess of his food. Even so, she was still turning to try to protect him. Adam opened the Universal Interface and reviewed the most recent events for this location.

Sarah Chester-Smith has cast the spell, Nova.

Adam reviewed the spell to see what its effects were and whistled.

Nova – This spell is not castable. Only people with the Ability “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” may cast this effect. In times of great stress, people with this ability will release a wave of fire and force that will devastate that which has stressed them so. Damage is equal to the level of stress which is graded on a scale of 1 – 100. For every point of stress, the wave of force will travel 10+S feet (Where “S” equals the stress level). Damage is fire based and force-based doing 20xS damage to everything and anyone within the radius. One-half of the damage is fire based. One-half of the damage is force based.

An ability that was stress based and did damage based on how much ‘stress’ you were under? Yeah, that was a bad thing. Adam erected a shell of force around the child’s nova of flame and another around her, just in case she wasn’t immune to her own power, then allowed time to resume at its normal pace as he cast sleep on Sarah. The flames stayed between the two barriers until he opened a portal to deep space that sucked the flames out into the void as Sarah slumped to the ground asleep. As he’d been doing that, Sarah’s mother, Charlene Chester-Smith, had finished throwing herself on top of the toddler as her husband, Oswald Chester-Smith had tried to jump in front of her and the toddler, only to bounce off the barrier of force he’d erected to save them.

“What the hell?” Sarah’s father exclaimed as he grabbed his nose, which the nanites in his system were already repairing. He’d broken it as he hit the invisible barrier.

“Not to worry,” Adam said as Charlene turned to look at what had happened.

“What did you do to Sarah?” she exclaimed.

“She’s asleep, you’re all safe and I’m going to take steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said as he opened the Universal Interface and pulled up Sarah’s info. Adam looked through her information and didn’t find anything he wouldn’t expect to see in a young girl except that she had one ability, Nova. Adam contacted his Thor Aspect and had him make the changes he needed at Machine speed. Adam had Thor change the ability to conscious control and lock it out until she was an adult. Though he also made sure that if she was alone and no friendlies were around, and she was attacked it could go off if she was in mortal danger.

“Hey, your Johnathan Bennard,” Oswald said.

“Yep, that’s me,” Adam said.

“What did you do to her?” Charlene asked.

“As was announced, magic is coming back. Your daughter has an ability that is meant to protect her in times of stress, though whichever being thought to give such power to a child, especially a child that gets as angry as she did because she doesn’t get her way, well that was just stupid, so I fixed it.”

“You fixed it?” Charlene asked skeptically.

“Yeah, in simple terms, she won’t be able to activate that ability until she’s an adult or all alone and in mortal danger. I wouldn’t want to be the person that corners her, it’s going to hurt a lot,” Adam explained.

“What does that mean for now?” Oswald asked.

“For now, she’s just a normal kid with normal wants and needs and you shouldn’t have any more issues with her exploding. That said, when magic is in full swing I have a feeling she’s going to be very good at magic. Make sure to contact Amanda or Abi with Portals Inc. I have already sent them your contact information, so they’ll expect your call when the time comes. I’ll make sure to let them know about Sarah here.”

Charlene looked around the room then picked up the toddler, “Thank you for saving us, especially Tommy here.”

“I do what I can. There are a lot of changes coming. Please try to read all the material we’re putting out. There will be information there you need to know. Also, let everyone you know, know what happened here. I have a feeling this is going to be one of quite a few incidents in the coming days. With that, have a great day, Sarah will wake up after I leave,” Adam said as he teleported back to New Mexico.

Adam contacted Thor through our mental link.

Adam: Thor, keep an eye on that family. Also, I have a feeling that the proximity to Stonehenge might have a correlation. Keep a close eye on that area and any other areas around the globe with significant mystical history.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Thor: Noted, what will you do now?

Adam: Now, I put out fires as they come up and finish the portals.

Adam focused on the portals that were being created and started teleporting and portaling between sites to add the magical components that only his chaotic nanites or magic could add.

The next few weeks were one crisis after another as more and more people started manifesting random abilities that activated when least expected. None of the issues that came up were normal though and his ability to stop or slow time on a Universal scale allowed Thor, his Thor Aspect, and him to respond and prevent any truly horrific events. Only one event stumped him. Well, it didn’t really stump him, he just couldn’t do anything about it. The daughter of the Vice President who had been lynched in this timeline and beheaded by him in the other, Jessica Billingsgate vanished.

Thor and Adam reviewed the nanites in the area and one moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. The nanites had been able to detect and analyze the quantum signature though. It seemed that wherever Jessica had gone off to wasn’t local. Adam stopped time at the Universal level and teleported to where she’d disappeared, then he’d opened the Universal Interface and read the event log.

Muttering to himself he whispered, “We might have a problem.”

Thor: I think so.

One of the most interesting things that can ever occur is when a rhetorical statement is made and moments later something happens. Adam had time to think that Thor and he had jinxed themselves by verbalizing their thoughts as a message popped into his vision from his Cosmic Interface.

COSMIC WARNING – Intruder Alert – The closed nature of this Cosmos has been breached.

Simultaneously a portal opened in the Maternity Ward of the Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis New Mexico. A much more refined version of Jessica Billingsgate stepped out of the portal and looked at the crib in front of her. Before he could react flame lanced out from her hands and tried to engulf the baby in the crib before her.

Thor, thankfully, had recognized the attack for what it was and opened a portal directly over the baby that redirected the flame into the sky 1,000 feet above their current position as the baby dropped through another portal he’d opened below her into Desirae’s waiting arms.

With a thought, Adam placed a portal 1 nanometer above the portal Jessica had stepped through that led into deep space out past the orbit of Pluto, while he cordoned off the rest of the maternity ward with walls of force that allowed Jessica to be sucked through his portal into deep space, which Immediately closed while placing another portal directly over hers this time with the entrance of his portal against the exit of hers so that anything that tried to follow her through would find itself 1 light second from the Unicorn Singularity. If it could withstand vacuum and extreme cold, it would then have to survive extreme gravity. His Thor aspect monitored, as books, furniture, and other items rushed through the portal into the void of space toward the black hole. Fortunately, this area of space was saturated with nanites. Thor had infiltrated and broken down everything that was non-magical in nature as it fell toward the singularity. Anything that his nanites determined to be magical was recovered through other portals that he opened and saved for him to look at later.

While whatever was on the other side of the portal was coming through, Adam opened a portal to the back side of the area and expelled some of his chaotic nanites to investigate the portal that was breaking into this reality. He closed that portal then opened a portal 1 mile away from Jessica and flew towards her location, which was more like a blink step, but he didn’t use teleport he just willed himself to be 100 feet from her and he was. As he came up there was a look of utter anguish in her eyes and anger. Thor’s nanites had been infiltrating her since she stepped foot into this Universe and he was able to catch her diming thoughts through his technology.

“…I struck as soon as I came through the barrier. He should be dead and everything should be back to the way it was. What the hell, I’m in a vacuum in space. I don’t have any spells that allow for breathing in a vacuum. What is that coming towards me? It’s him! I may be able to succeed yet, even If I couldn’t kill him when he was a babe.

A prompt appeared in his vision as Jessica focused with her last breath and cast a spell she had no right knowing.

Jessica Billingsgate has cast Singularity at you.

Adam pulled up the information on the spell as he changed the Cosmic setting for time to as close to zero as he could get it.

Singularity – This spell creates an artificial point in space that sucks in all surrounding matter that is not shielded from the extreme stresses of heavy gravity.

A very basic explanation for a very complex idea. Adam dug further into the information which described the amount of force exerted and the effects on matter. As he scanned the information he realized the singularity would be just big enough to come into existence and then evaporate in 10 to 20 seconds depending on how much matter it was able to gobble up in that time. Adam also checked to see if his Adaption ability would still work against its effects even though they were created by a spell and found that it did. He took a second to think about how to proceed and then shrugged, this was going to be fun.

Adam released his lock on time and events continued as normal. The singularity came into existence against his head. He was beginning to think Jessica really didn’t like him. Even so, he wasn’t going to let her die until he knew what was going on so he countered her spell with a bubble of force around her that was filled with air so she could breathe. She took in a deep breath and then refocused her eyes on him as he reached up grabbed her singularity off of his skin and willed it out of existence while he looked into her angry eyes.

Her next spell was a spell called Sun Beam which created a beam of light as hot as the sun and would vaporize a small town back on Earth. It did nothing. His resistances and his Adaption ability completely negated the damage. After the spell ended Adam decided he’d grown tired of this. He contacted the nanites in her system and noted that something was destroying them as quickly as they were trying to replicate. He’d been lucky to catch her thoughts at all when this started. Probably because whatever was attacking the nanites had been trying to save her life in the Vacuum of space. Adam opened a portal behind him that opened directly behind her and expelled some of his chaotic nanites into her area then backed off. His Chaotic nanites had just made it into her system when she teleported to Earth, or tried to. Realizing her mistake she teleported a second time and ended up back in the Maternity ward which shunted her right back into the air bubble he’d created for her. This went on for the next minute as she tried to teleport away then appeared back in the bubble of air as she was sucked out of another portal into deep space. Thor then opened another portal that dropped her into the bubble and he brought her to a stop with a thought. Once his chaotic nanites had infiltrated her body thoroughly, Adam paralyzed her.

Once that was done he teleported into the bubble of force, then took her to the planet he’d shunted all the water to, Earth 11. Adam chose a place on the beach and had the nanites create two chairs and a table. He grabbed Jessica by the waist and teleported them to the beach, where he forced her to walk over to the chair and sit down while he analyzed everything on and in her body. His chaotic nanites easily picked up on her anger and also recognized the quantum signature of this Jessica as having come from the Cosmos he’d been in prior to this one. Adam conjured some sunglasses onto her body and set the nanites to hydrate and feed her as necessary. Once he made sure she looked comfortable he teleported back to the Maternity Ward in Clovis New Mexico.

Adam looked around and searched his memory and realized that this was the room he’d been in right after he’d been born. He had access to those memories and with a little double-checking through the hospital records he verified that this was the hospital he’d been born in. Also, this had been in this room, and the crib she’d attacked had been in his crib. Jessica had tried to come in here and Grandfather Paradox his ass. What the hell was going on?