Caelus here! Wow dem clones doe…

This chapter is dedicated to Cody, last commenter of chapter 25 (the last one).

Loop 83 Year 100 Day 120

I’ve started the cloning cat 10s from scratch. Today marks the birth of the third generation of the new cat 10s. After I exterminated the others, I created more. I used the embryos that had not been exposed to the portal.

I have an ongoing experiment as well. I’ve rendered one of the subject’s brain dead from birth in the second gen. Whenever her body gets closer to the portal, her heart rate increases. She is getting excited.

There really is some link to the cat tens and the portal. I wonder, if I were born near here, would I be the same?

I turn my attention briefly to the information coming from AI. One of the civilizations I started about sixty years ago, is now thriving. The originals were all my mind slaves, but now the people are free of my influence.

They are surprisingly peaceful. I’ve had a few times where I had subjects go to that city from my base. They were all welcomed with open arms. Even after I had one turn into a serial killer, the people of the city allowed others in.

The originals I sent to start this city were the weakest of my subjects. Still they could easily kill a group of normal humans without apparent effort.

There are no ‘normal’ humans anymore though.

My body is much stronger than it was in past loops at this time. With my immortality potions, and the effect of the portal, I am in pristine condition.

The subjects in the city seem to evolve to their situation. The children of the farmers, often have powers manifest that have to do with better growing plants. People that work for the water purifier, often have children with some sort of water power.

Loop 83 Year 175 Day 1

The cat 10 embryos I have planted throughout the world finally show signs of decay. AI shows me a recording of the cameras watching the several embryos.

The embryos suddenly sprout light brown spots, then instantly turn a pitch black. The next moment shows them degrading as if acid is melting them. One instant they are fine; then next they are a puddle of APG.

I know they are APG because I have my bots take measurements on each one. The time between harvesting the embryos from the mothers, and decay is exactly 100 years. To the day.

The small community I created with my subjects seems to have developed a type of cast system. People there all share powers based on their ancestors, and seem to only mingle with their own families. They are quite civil in their interactions with the other casts of subjects, but interbreeding between the casts, or even friendship seems to be taboo. Interesting.

I have a new type of breeding program. I want to change the powers of the original cat 10s. All cat 10s, those that are born that way, have control over APG. I have been breeding decedents of those cat 10s, in order to get a subject that has a different type of power: Time Control.

My hypothesis is simple. If I can manipulate time, albeit only at the moment of death, then I should be able to create others with a similar power. I already know it’s not impossible for others to have this type of power. Case in point: Little Emperor.

My body, now over 175 years old, and my mind are both in perfect condition. I assume the reaction from the portal, combined with the effects of my potion, have created a sort of quasi-eternal youth situation for my body.

I replicate the effect on a few others, but it seems they must be cat 10s in order to fully gain the non-aging bodies. I only allow first gen cat 10s to partake of the potion and stay next to the portal. Once the potion is ingested, they are ordered to return.

There are no consequences so far for allowing them a small amount of time, 6 years, to spend close to the portal. I am waiting for further developments.

AI has shown some improvements into developing into a true intelligence. She makes her first inquiry into the soul today. It’s rather cliché, but it does point to the fact that she might be becoming self-aware.

Loop 83 Year 200 Day 16

Slightly more than 25 years after the start of the experiments to find time manipulation. I finally stumble upon a clue! It is the fourth generation of subjects, so there are quite a few of them. I institute a breeding policy of reproduction as soon as the subjects are capable.

I have bred the onset of puberty down to year 10 in the life cycle. Some start even sooner than that, but the off-spring seem less susceptible to mind control. I am not taking chances with them. They are destroyed.

The clue to time manipulation is simple. Every combination of sperm and embryo seem to give some power, at least those of the cat 10s. I can instantly discern the sequence of DNA coding for every power I have bred into my subjects.

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So I only use sperm and embryos that I previously discarded. Those that, for some reason, seemed to have no power associated with them.

Loop 83 Year 208 Day 253

I was right! Several of the subjects from Powerless Batch 1 have shown powers I have previously never studied.

PB1 has shown two unique powers I have never encountered. One can actually create small wormholes! The other can turn dust or rocks into the consistency of comets. It is strange to watch the blue glow circle the rock before it activates.

I have named the one that can make wormholes. I dubbed her: Wormy. Wormy will begin to procreate in two years. Until then I plan to make her a cat 10.

The cat 10 I have had living away from the portal shows no signs of caring for the portal, so I assume Wormy will be alright. Wormy’s wormholes are not impressive in scope, but as a possibility. She can create a small hole in space, about the size of a fist. She can transport any non-living material through it.

If anything is living, or was once part of an animal or plant, it instantly becomes dust. I created a cyborg, the size of a fist. The fleshy parts were turned to dust, but the rest was fine. Wormy is going to be helpful.

Loop 83 Year 210 Day 350

Wormy succeeds in the conditioning program today. I have realized several things; things I was actually wrong about. I believed everyone got their power based on a near death experience they had. Wormy hadn’t been exposed to any wormhole before. Not even the portal.

I have to re-think my entire premise of power acquisition. I plan on harvesting several embryos from Wormy before allowing her to get near the portal though.

Some of the subjects have slightly more free will than others. I want to see the effects of free will on how quickly powers grow in strength.

Wormy undergoes constant training. She has full days of nothing but practice with wormholes. She is able to create one the size of a small child. Sending small children through kills them when they come through the opposite side.

I have discovered something else about Wormy’s power. Time seems to not move while inside of it. I send a molecularly accurate watch through, several times in fact. Time only moves for the watch while it is outside of the wormhole.

I wonder what would happen if we could actually send a living being through.

Loop 83 Year 212 Day 24

I have several dozen eggs from Wormy. They mostly share the genetic factor for creating wormholes. Now that I know how to pinpoint that factor, I can distinguish between which one is the most powerful of each.

I am in the process of looking for sperm ‘without’ powers.  I want to try to find something that will complement the power of the wormhole. At the very least I don’t want it to overpower the wormhole power. It is proving to be a difficult endeavor.

Wormy is at the portal. She was a rank 8 when she gained her power, she has been at the portal for about a year now. She should soon start to show signs of increasing her power to rank 9.

I am enhancing her eggs to the best of my considerable ability. I obviously use other eggs to test the feasibility of increasing power rank from before birth, but any tests that show positive results get incorporated into her eggs.

Most of the experiments are gentle, but you can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. No pun intended. Many of the experiments would put places like Guantanamo to shame. Too bad it is so hard to find sperm without APG powers.

It seems like APG is more common in sperm than eggs. Whether this has to do with some magical property, or simply the hormonal difference between men and women, I have no idea. I will continue to look at this avenue of experimentation though.

Loop 83 Year 220 Day 189

Wormy is finally a cat 10. She has taken much longer than the previous experiments did. Instead of six years like usual, it took her eight years.

I decide to move my base back to the portal. Since more time is required of her, someone with a more unique power, it might require even longer for me. But I’ve been near the portal for longer than 100 years total in this Loop. I might have to try going even further.

I begin having AI runs statistics. She is to take the initial power levels of the first six gens I put near the portal, and Wormy’s power. It will take a while to process different powers in relation to each other. But we have all the time in the world.

Since Wormy is now a cat 10, AI can use all of the gathered data to approximate a time limit to when I might increase my power to a higher category. Since I started as a cat 10, there might even be a cat 11 I can increase my power to. How would that work?

My brain functions would probably become even quicker. I can get visual information from 35x speed, and other senses around 25x speed of a normal person. If I could increase those… Well it wouldn’t matter much, but it might decrease the amount of time I would need to watch the surveillance of the planet for in each Loop.

Loop 83 Year 227 Day 36

Wormy has finally gotten offspring. I found one sperm that did not have the APG ability, despite being from a cat 10. I had AI modify it slightly by having it stay near the portal, and Wormy’s own wormholes. I used the sperm to fertilize Wormy’s egg near the portal. The result was a child that could create wormholes in a short six years.

Wormy’s wormholes still cannot push living beings through. Though they have several addition abilities now. Wormy can control the size, from a pinprick to large enough to swallow the statue of liberty. The distance any one thing can travel is, predictably, 1000 miles. Anytime she tries to exceed that distance, the wormhole destabilizes and destroys anything within 10 feet of both ends.

Luckily she only has to be within 20 feet of one portal to use it. Her offspring has the ability to move living objects, a success in the department of advancement. The major problem is that she can only move creatures that have as much intellect as an insect. The range is embarrassing. Though oddly the size of the portal started large enough to allow a human to go through.

Loop 83 Year 267 Day 311

Forty years. Forty years since Wormy produced the child capable of moving living creatures. They have both had dozens of offspring, but the large amount of ability they both show seems to be the exceptions, not the rules.

Their offspring, both the mother’s and daughter’s, are not capable of even reaching rank 4 before age 10. Being near the portal obviously makes them more powerful, but I am not going to allow anyone to reproduce near the portal anymore. Wasting resources in raising faulty products is a pointless exercise in futility.

The sad truth is that all of the offspring other than Wormy and her daughter, Wormy2, are useless for my experiments.

Wormy is still incapable of moving living objects, but has absolute control and precision when it comes to her power. Wormy2 is able to move things the size of a full grown man, I know I’ve sent several through.

It took the greater part of thirty years, but she is finally able to send people through without destroying their minds. I intend on sending one person into the portal to see what happens. Not for a while though. Wormy2 was given the potion years ago. She won’t age for a while.

The caste city has destroyed itself. One couple interbred. The resulting child created an explosion at the moment of their 12th birthday. It was a child of a water user and a farmer. Somehow the child gained the ability to create hydrogen bombs. It was not immune to it.

AI has created a decent algorithm. One that has helped in determining the amount of time needed to enhance a power. Interestingly enough, she has also determined the amount of ‘boost’ a certain distance from the portal gives.

According to her findings, it works a lot like gravity or electricity. It gets much less prominent the further out you go. It would have enough power to effect the entire planet, and the moon when it is in the right orbital position.

Normally this kind of information would take much longer to find, but I have given AI a bit more freedom. She has about a hundred subjects to run experiments on at any given time. Her data has grown increasingly more helpful since then.

Loop 83 Year 267 Day 341

A month later. I have my uplink to AI on all the time now. I am constantly reviewing any code that changes, any data that she gets. Today is a risky day.

Wormy died. She had created a wormhole into space, and simply stepped into it.  I don’t know why. That bothers me. If there is some sort of mental deficiency in her genetic code, I will have to get rid of Wormy2. It was probably just a fluke though.

I’m not taking any chances though.

I have Wormy2 create a wormhole. The wormhole leads to the exact center of the orb-like portal. After a moment of watching, nothing unusual happens.

So the cause of the portal destroying everything isn’t the powers themselves getting near. It is the actual people. It is time for the next step of the experiment.

I have one of Wormy2’s decedents walk into the portal. Judging by what happened last time, the portal should destabilize and destroy everything.

It didn’t!

The subject is given strict orders to not walk out of the wormhole. The portal seems to try and eat away at the wormhole, but it cannot damage the wormhole at all. The inside of the wormhole is already mapped. It is a long portal. The reason living things couldn’t move through it before is that the long tunnel pushed and pulled apart anything with living matter in it.

Wormy2’s wormholes don’t do that. They are more stable than her mother’s. So the subject stands on the very edge of the wormhole. Not only are they more physically stable, she can hold them indefinitely, unlike her mother.

On the other end hundreds of gallons of the purest APG imaginable pour out every second. If Wormy2 wasn’t anchored down, and in a safe room 20 feet away from the wormhole, she would have drowned.

Luckily she is.

I order the subject back. The moment they step foot out of the tunnel, I step inside. I want to see what this thing will do if I stay in it.