(Location Unknown, Date Unknown)

Adam looked at Janice as he processed everything she’d just said, then tried to call up his Personal Interface again. Nothing Happened. He tried to call up his Universal Interface, but again nothing. Finally, he tried to call up the Cosmic Interface, and again nothing seemed to happen.

“Is there something wrong?” Janice asked as he continued to try to open his interfaces.

“I don’t think so, I can’t open my interfaces though,” he said as thoughts ran through his mind. Using his perfect memory, which still seemed to be working correctly he reviewed the changes to his personal information and reread the text:

“Congratulations! You never fail to surprise Adam. You have successfully evolved your soul into a Soul Space. Normally this is achieved much later in the process of personal evolution as you move through existence yet here you are, having achieved something that only one other has achieved in this Cosmos.

The soul is inviolate. What this means is that anything placed in, or that is a part of this space, remains through every tribulation that a soul is put through. Be it death, rebirth, trauma, magical modification, technological modification, etc…

Note, Fundamental Abilities have been detected. Fundamental Abilities are not compatible with your Soul Space. You may have a number of Soul Abilities equal to 2 plus your Karmic Luck. You may have ERROR number of Soul Abilities. Current fundamental abilities will be converted to Soul Abilities now.

Fundamental to Soul Ability Conversion:

“Perfect Memory” No Change - Like Photographic Memory except for all five senses with an automatic recall of desired information.

“That Was Easy” has been converted to “Pansophical” – Skills that are known to you or known by you are performed as if you were a “Master” in that skill automatically gifting the equivalent skill level of a Master as defined in whatever Reality, Cosmos, Universe, or Dimension you find yourself in.

“Ie have Always Been, I will Always Be” has been converted to “Inviolate” – Your soul is sacrosanct. Your soul cannot be destroyed. As you have learned Energy cannot be destroyed only converted. Any action taken to affect you through time manipulation has no effect on you. When the timeline of your current local stabilizes your soul will remain in its current local, from which you can reform and continue along in the timeline you are in. This process is almost instantaneous. You are not subject to Grand Father Paradoxes or harmful magic that utilized the manipulation of time

“Creature of Raw Chaos” – has been converted to “Chaos Forged” Your soul had been inundated with Chaos and forged your soul to withstand all forms of chaos. During this process, your will has been strong enough to hold your core identity together and permanently changed your soul. You may enter and exit any environment flooded with Chaos 100% resistant to any further changes. Also, the chaotic nature of your soul allows you to designate and change your normal abilities as you desire. These abilities are fixed and may not be modified. You may add, remove or change out your normal abilities as you desire. Maximum number of normal abilities: 2

“Adaptable” No Change - Chaos has modified your body so that you may adapt to any environment. From Absolute Zero to the Gravity well of a Singularity your body can and will adapt to all environmental conditions. This includes the ability to survive in those environments. Example: the ability to breathe underwater if necessary.

“Willed-Movement” No Change - As a being of Chaos, constantly connected to it so long as you are not in a region of ERROR, you have the ability to move through that Chaos as you desire at any rate you desire. As Chaos is present in all aspects of reality, your will allows you to move as you desire. This is a sub-ability of the Fundamental Ability “Adaptable.”

“Undying” has been converted to “Incessant”- Should your physical body be destroyed your soul remains and can reform your body immediately. This is a by-product of your chaotic and nanitic composition as well as a benefit of your Karmic Luck. You are immortal

“Resistant” No Change - You are 50% resistant to all Primal Magic and natural manifestations of those magics. Additionally, you are 100% resistant to all magic from the following spheres of power; "Chaos, Time, Space, and Gravity, and 50% resistant to Holy and Demonic Magic

“Godless” has been converted to “Open to new Ideas”- The changes to your body have severed any clerical link to the divine you had. Reality is vast, there might come a time in the future when aligning yourself to the divine or joining their ranks and becoming subservient to one or more may be required. The limitation of never serving a divine has been removed.

“Confluence” has been converted to “Convergence” - The very nature of your Soul draws Chaotic Energy and converts it as you desire. In any Reality, you have access to and can utilize any magical energy normally. Additionally, your Mana Regeneration is increased by Willpower + Endurance per minute. Crossing into a new Reality is traumatic and resets level, attributes, and skills to one (See Pansophical above for specifics on your skill levels in any new reality). Inside your Soul Space, however, your actual level is maintained and added to. Chaos no longer converts to experience for your current reality. Think of your bodies within any new reality that you visit as a projection. Those projections will have levels and attributes as earned in that reality.

“Spellweaver” No Change - You neither memorize nor permanently add spells using spell slots. Instead, you may weave magic into any form of your desire so long as you have the skill and mana to do so.

“Personal Storage” has been converted to “Soul Storage” – The area inside your Soul Space is as small or large as you desire and follows any rules you wish to impose. You no longer have a storage limit and can summon any item out of your soul storage as you desire to the current projection of yourself. Items placed into or taken out of the space appear or disappear to the hand touching them. This space can be represented by slots if you prefer.

“Infinite Wealth” has been converted to “Affluent” - Your Fundamental Ability has been transformed by your Karmic Luck. As needed you may produce or create any type of physical money in any reality you visit. In realities where you have integrated yourself into the global markets, digital currency is always available to you. The cost to the divine, that may or may not exist has been set, no further costs will be added to his balance.””

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Then Adam recalled the last system message he'd received,

“Warning: A Copper rank soul has been detected in ERROR. Awakened Souls are not compatible within this subspacial region of the currently known reality. Prepare for immediate trans-location to Eternity.”

But he hadn’t received one system message since then and his Personal Interface seemed to be suppressed somehow.

“Adam, we still have some things to go over, are you done staring off into space yet?” Janice asked as she looked at him with what he now recognized as wariness in her gaze.

“I’m just reviewing some of the messages I received before I arrived here,” he said.

“How are you doing that, Personal Interfaces do not work here,” she said looking puzzled.

“Oh, I’m not looking at my Personal Interface, I’m just remembering what the messages said.”

“Well, okay, but please don’t take too long, things to do, places to be,” she said with a smile.

Smiling right back at her he thought, I bet you do. As he reviewed the information two of his abilities caught his attention, “Inviolate” and “Incessant.” Hmmm. Also, he still had the ability, Soul Weaver. Focusing his will, he created a globe of white light in his hand to test his ability. His had started to glow.

“How are you doing that? That shouldn’t be possible,” Janice exclaimed with alarm.

“Oh that, that’s nothing,” he said as he willed chaotic nanites into every particle of his physical body and had them self-destruct. Which they did.

NOTE TO SELF: Being torn apart at the molecular level fucking hurts.

Immediately he found himself floating in his Soul Space again. Not waiting for any prompts, he willed his personal time to accelerate so he could figure out what was going on. He accelerated his temporal dilation to be at about 1 billion years for every single second. Even if there was something that was going to quickly follow him into his Soul Space he should have at least a couple of seconds to figure out what was going on. More than enough time to review the prompts that were now flooding his vision.

Warning: You have been forcibly ejected from the transient pathway between ERROR and Eternity.

Warning: You have been captured by Textrix

Warning: All Interface access by soul projections have been suppressed.

Warning: Soul Projection of Adamantadine has been forcibly created and called forth by Textrix an ERROR level Soul.

Warning: Contest of Wills has commenced. Free yourself from Textrix or be subsumed into Textrix.

Congratulations!!! You have freed yourself from Textrix.

Warning: You have been discarded by Textrix.

Warning: You are not in, or near, any transient pathways contained within this realm.

Soul Ability “Adaptable” has been triggered.

Soul Ability “Willed-Movement” has been triggered.

Soul Ability “Chaos Forged” has been triggered

Soul Ability “Pansophical” has triggered.

Adam reviewed the messages, then reviewed them again. So, he had been right. If something sounds too good to be true, it most definitely was. He was so glad he called that one right. Adam reached out with his senses and once again felt his connections come back into being. He could feel both his nanites and his chaotic nanites but instinctually knew at a fundamental level that while he might be able to use them to contact the others, that life for him was over. He didn’t want them to worry and now that he was back in his Soul Space and had his full intellect back he created a copy of himself, minus any information he’d learned since becoming a copper-ranked soul, and sent that copy back into what Janice called the Guf to continue doing what he had been doing. Adam just removed any memory that he had gone through The Eye and placed a memory that he should be helping others get ready for the eventual transition. He had no idea if a Geas was making him omit what he’d seen on this side of the Eye, which truthfully wasn’t much, or if he was just playing it smart. Either way, a part of him would be back there getting things ready while he continued on. Hopefully, he’d see everyone again someday.

Once he was finished with that task, he once again tried to figure out how to invert his Soul Space to detect what was around him. Adam could almost feel something, but he was inside the bubble, so to speak, and he wanted to know what was outside of his bubble. With that thought, he found himself in his body floating through a cosmic void of colors and energies all around him. He felt like he should have been blinded but he could see normally. This almost reminded him of his time in Chaos, except that instead of a blank white expanse, he was in a realm of rainbow colors.

As he looked around he had a definite feeling of movement and willed himself to slow down. At first it was hard to tell if his desire to slow down was working then he noticed that the eddy’s he was leaving through the gaseous environment were slowing down. Turning around, he looked back in the direction he’d been traveling from and noticed…what the hell?

There seemed to be what he could only describe as a spider web around an aperture that seemed to be pulsing every once in a while. As he allowed his vision to flow around him he noticed that there were lines of hazy color that went off in all directions from that bundle. He was also able to determine what he could only describe as a rainbow-colored tunnel that had been breached by one of the webs near the aperture. As he watched the aperture pulsed and an energy bundle was drawn out and along the web into a larger structure where it disappeared.

As Adam looked at that structure he noticed that part of it was open to space and that Janice was looking out as the hole sealed itself. Adam was pretty sure she hadn’t seen him.

As he floated there Adam thought about the prompts he’d just reviewed. Who was Textrix? Where had he heard that before, then his perfect memory found the reference, Latin: Textrix, feminine noun, female weaver; the Fates.

Well, if Textrix was the stringer of fates, it would seem like she was taking the spider aspect of that idea a little bit farther than he would have. As he thought that, he also wondered how much of what Janice had said had been true. His prompts had said that he’d been on his way to Eternity before he was rudely sidetracked. While a lot of what Janice had said seemed to make sense, there were just too many holes.

The whole idea seemed to be that if there is a God, who made that God? The idea that the first one had come out of chaos was the most plausible, yet then the question was, what created Chaos, and where did it come from? That was a very long rabbit hole he didn’t seem to have the time to go consider today. Also, the explanation for what had happened to those divines that had already existed made no sense. Though his interface said there was a place called Eternity, at least that much seemed to be true.

Adam returned his attention to the rainbow-colored tube. He followed it with his eyes as it wound off into the distance, though he couldn’t see where it went to. At some point, it became part of the background. he returned his thoughts to himself and decided he needed to get a handle on entering and exiting his own Soul Space at will. Which turned out to be relatively easy.

After a few more tries he was able to change his perspective from his body floating out here in the ‘Deep Astral’? That didn’t sound right but he guessed it would have to do as a way to describe where he was until he knew what to call this realm. The next step was figuring out how to feel what was going on around him while he was inside his Soul Space. With a little concentration and will he was able to set up a link that allowed him to concentrate on his body and experience what it was going through without leaving his Soul Space. That might be a useful ability to have later.

It had seemed like his next stop after passing through The Eye was to go to Eternity so off to Eternity, whatever that was, was where he needed to go. Adam willed himself to follow the rainbow tube and came parallel it as he increased his speed and followed the tube away from the spiderweb-looking structure behind him. As he followed the tube he looked around into the “Deep Astral” and noted only swirling colors of energy all around. It was so dense though that it behaved as if it were gaseous. What could cause that?

Every once in a while he would come upon branches that met up with the tube he was following and some smaller tubes that would break off and go off in another direction. Adam always followed the thicker tube and eventually came to an area that looked like the Helix Nebula. The tube ran right into the center of it. Adam moved around the Nebula-looking object which was only about a mile across if the body he was in was the same size as normal. For all he knew, it could be 100 miles tall. One thing that the rainbow-colored tube didn’t do was come out the other side.

Adam traveled back to the tube and placed his hand on it.

You have discovered Eternity Transient Tube.

Warning, Entering Eternity Transient Tubes from outside will always draw travelers to Eternity. To choose other destinations you must enter or exit the Transient Tubes from a Hub or Eternity.

Would you like to Enter the Eternity Transient Tube, Yes or No?

Adam could have probably entered the tubes from back near the breach and he’d have been fine, but there had been no way to know that at the time. Also, he was sure someone would have been watching him that close to Textrix’s spiderweb structure. He didn’t want to be captured again. Yeah, that was only ever going to happen once. Adam now had a better understanding of what it felt like to be outside his body and also knew what being in a helpless projection felt like. Of course, he had to discount everything he’d learned from Janice. The answers, if they were coming, would be in Eternity, though he had a strong suspicion that his encounter with Textrix indicated that he would probably find more questions than answers. Adam had a lot to learn and probably even more to do. Time to get to it then.

Adam chose “Yes.”