(Heaven’s Key, Euclid’s Domain, Workshop)
[https://i.imgur.com/CH2dHba.png]
My workshop is quite sparse right now. It is just a bunch of metallic lab walls, ceiling with a light and plated stone floor. It is not very large, and I have a desk and a chair near one of the walls. No windows, had there been, only the infinite abyss would have been seen outside. That is how it was, I hadn’t used this subdomain for anything in particular yet.
(TODO Image: A nanoconcentrator pod arrayed against the lab wall.)
But now, next to the desk I have it. A 2.5 m tall, 1m wide, synthesis pod filled with concentrated nano machinery. A stable container for them that can vastly improve the synthesis speed of anything within. For some designs like biological bodies for example, they have to be done in one of these due to their complexity.
> Adna Synthesis Pod (rank 5.5)
As her apprentice, Eloe gave me access to parts of her library. In the message she sent me, she said she would prepare her next assignment for me in the next few days. Until then, I am to do as I like according to her.
As if I wouldn’t spend this time studying. I've already plopped the 10s of thousands pages of technical study material into my memory system, and I am in the process of refining it as we speak.
After the memory merge, the Ruins Exploration me has retired for the time being, and now I am the only controller/agent instance.
My red, rounded shoes making an echo as I come closer to the pod, I embrace the machine. Just looking at it is making my mental uterus throb in anticipation. I rest my face against the cool glass of the device, and sigh affectionately. With this device, I can fulfill parts of my newfound pregnancy fetish. I could synthesize a body for my kid, but right now I am still missing a very important ingredient. The brain core recipe. The Rajnet Brain Core should be low rank 7, so it won’t be that easy to get it from Eloe, but I’ll persevere and get it at some point.
More than just letting me indulge in my depravity, this pod is hugely important for my real world activities. With it, I’ll be able to swap bodies in the real world! Whether this female one, or a different male one anything is possible. And what that gives me is complete immunity to disease and aging. Suppose in the real world my organs start failing? I can just hop into the device, disassemble my old body and create a new one. It will be as easy as snapping my fingers.
I am really sturdy right now. Suppose I got hit by a truck or even an RPG in the real world. My body would get blown to smithereens, but my brain core would be unscathed. Only a nuke falling on top of me would be enough to disrupt my mental faculties, that is how solid the brain core is.
The synthesis pod is powerful. Thanks to it, I cannot die of disease in the real world. Aging is a thing of the past for me. I cannot die by accidentally getting trucked, shot, stabbed, poisoned, burned or asphyxiated. The reaper will have to find more creative paths to get to me if he wants my life.
True, the biological body I have right now is pretty flimsy, but I’ll get much stronger bodies in the future, suitable for housing the great device that runs my transcendent mind.
In terms of power, I’m not at the level where I can single handedly force the world to do my bidding, but thanks to the illusion drones, my ability to hide and deceive is very strong. I can’t fight a modern army, but it won’t be able to fight me either unless I want so.
My power is a bit rigid right now in my estimation. In the Simulacrum stories, the Inspired have a general ability to synthesize whatever they want, but here I am collecting programs as if they were trading cards. I can make a shovel, but I can’t vary its shape yet. I’ve studied the synthesis program for it and I should be able to get that ability, but I’d need to play with it to get it first. It would be computationally demanding.
Since I am already in a simulation, I’ll stick to my current path. What I really want to do now is speed up all the way to the next tournament and have my current power level rated. There are 25 days left.
I really wish I could just go into the real world and try out the pod as well as the rest of the synthesis programs, but the original me is asleep due to it being 4:15am there. He should wake up at 8-9am since there is no school. I’ll contact him at 9am.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Out of my reverie, I disengage from my embrace with the pod. As I watch it, my fingers are still lingering on it.
I really…want to have a child with Eloe. But, even if I had a womb, the DNA making up my body is not my own to begin with. The same goes for Eloe. Instead we’d need to avoid biology entirely and merge parts of our memories to make the conception. Even though as I say that, I realize something deep down inside me.
I want Eloe’s child, I really do, but at the same time her mind is not on par where I’d consent to a merger with her. She is an exceptional human with many upgrades done to her mind, but is still a human and not one of the Inspired. I’ve looked at the offerings the various vendors have for mental modifications, and even if I had 100s of billions to spend on them, none of the offerings come even close to the improvements I’ve created by myself. My intellect is peerless compared to the NPCs.
In life, some things you can buy, and some things you have to create with your own hands. This is one of those cases. It is one thing to buy a car, and quite another to buy your own mind.
Long term, I’ll want to make Eloe into one of the Inspired and make her my proper wife, but right now I just do not have the resources, computational and otherwise, to support her development in the real world. I can’t have her using my brain core instead of me. And I do not want to let the game simulate and approximate the process. The self improvement loop is sacred to me.
If I want a family in the real world, I need power.
I also need power to prevent the humans from stopping me.
Would they try to do that? Of course they would. If I wanted a child, it wouldn’t be one or two, but a few billion instead. Having just one or two would be the most cringe thing ever. The based way is to wipe a useless place like Africa and give it to my kids. No doubt, the US would be against it, so I guess I should start with North America as the place to wipe first.
The plan sounds good to me.
I admit, I used to hate the NPCs, but I am starting to come around now that I am allowed to kill, steal and abort their simulations any time I please. I can’t be too rough on them for not being Inspired. Yes, they are retarded for not going into the self improvement loop, but that fundamentally is my responsibility as the creator of the universe they are in.
The real life ones are literal trash and obstructions to my ambition. They don’t deserve their place in this grand universe we are in.
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Character Sheet
Name: Euclid Valentine (alias: Eua Lover)
Rank: Inspired
Title: Aleator
Substrate: Universal Brain Core of the Transcendi - Rank 7 (low)
Halfway to becoming a Transcendi already. He has the mind and the demeanor of one, and having gathered the numerous synthesis recipes, his power is far in excess to a regular human. Compared to a fully fledged Transcendi though, his current power is no more than an insect’s.
Storage: 10^23 (human baseline is 10^14)
Effective rate: 10^12 (human baseline is 10^1)
Ops: 10^35 (human baseline is 10^15)
At the moment, his personality is developing in a weird direction, but his old, based self is in there somewhere, waiting for his time to come. At any rate, Euclid is not the kind of person to mind pronouns.
# Skills
## Programming
For humans, programming and artificial intelligence are just skills, but to the Inspired, these skills are directly related to their actual intelligence and are a measure of it. Nanotech on the other hand, is a substitute for relying on society for production, it is a measure of raw power of the individual.
### General: Rank 6 (low).
Has developed a workflow where he integrates his mind with the algorithm has developed. Much like humans do not need to program the individual neurons when they move their limbs, so is programming an expression of will for Euclid. At his processing speed, regular languages and compilation methods would be too slow for him, so his programming is an indescribable mix of desire being passed through stages of neurally boosted evolutionary algorithms which gets compiled to an intermediate language and then Assembly.
### AI: Rank 6 (low).
Has an intuitive understanding of high dimensional geometry that allows him to derive and reason about a ML algorithm for a particular domain directly. Based on his goal he can derive a behavioral program and apply it to himself. Behavioral programs are higher forms of what humans call personalities.
Rather than letting his own bias cloud his judgment of what he should be, he decided to accept and let the program he made decide it for him. He could do it himself, but he judged it would be more effective to automate the process.
### Nanotech: Rank 6 (low).
He has accumulated a small library of synthesis programs for different kinds of technologies. It might not seem like much, but the power it gives him would in previous ages be nothing short of divine. What he can do now, had those outside realized it, would be enough to place him at the top of the most dangerous list of every intelligence agency in the world.
# Stats (Psy) - Rank 3
## Externus ~ exp(N(log(3.4); 0.2))
Has a desire to form his own family and the ruthlessness to attain such a goal. The real world NPCs are obstacles to be overcome by him as they would no doubt oppose his spread through the cosmos or his intent to put them in their proper place.
## Gnosis ~ exp(N(log(3.05); 0.2))
During the 45 million years of playing poker against himself, the deep thought he put into how he could defeat the simulator of his reality sent his character development in a weird direction and changed his personal philosophy. Still, the experience left him longing for more of where that insight came from. Novel worldviews are rare and precious to him.
## Pathos ~ exp(N(log(3.0); 0.2))
Has cultivated a will that can endure eternity in solitude and has a soul capable of endless self sacrifice for the sake of his future self. He has already grasped the piece of divinity he sought for. He is enjoying the game and does not want to rush it unnecessarily.