Chapter 44: Portal anyone?

The kids were not happy about leaving but Adam was worried about what the shadow energies might do to them. He had withstood them but then he had had continues enhancements and healing.

They packed up as much of the essentials as they could, Adam constructing a giant pack by strapping two of the tables together. And even with packing lots of things into his own bag PD. Which had strangely still remained functional, they had to still leave much of the stuff. Little Cai refused to leave the toilet of all things and had to be dragged off bawling. Creature comforts. There would be plenty of creatures but no comforts where they were going.

Then Adam realised one he didn’t know how to get back to the physical realm. Two if they exited here they would be stuck on his island surrounded by beasts. Maybe there was something here in the shadow realm.

It was at that point that Adam realised it was dark. That is dark even for him, his abilities had left him. Not wanting to convey his fears or aspirations to the others, he started trudging off then came to a complete halt. He was feeling fear again but still had the annoying headache. Maybe it was an effect of his loss of acclimatise. Who knows? He started to trudge off again heading for what could be mountains or just more darkness.

Hecho mind focused on the problem at hand, causing everything in the spiritual sea to halt. He would build a teleport. The normal teleportation range was about a couple of meters from the transfer ports to the teleportation space. No problem. His GTAs: his body, molded the necessary hardware. It was their most complex task to date but with Echo’s memories and millions of hands to make light work. Currently, 16 million little hands. Also Hecho rebuilt the ring network so that the AIs could communicate again.

“Adam, we are having major problems here. I’m really sorry I don’t know when and if we can help you.” said Libby as soon as the coms channel came up again.

“Libby can I ask you one thing? How long can we stay in the shadow realm before our health is put at risk?” said Adam.

“It’s the continual use of shadow magic itself that causes corruption. I can’t really say how fast just being in the shadow realm will affect you or the others. It’s not ideal though, I know but I will have to get back to you.” Libby stated apologetically.

Hecho thought it best that he keep control of all Adam’s abilities and looked after things, personally. He knew the AIs had done their best but they had made errors that could have resulted in Adam’s death. He would not risk that happening again. He decided to step up to his role and talk to Adam.

“Adam, this is Echo, I’m not sure what Libby has told you. But you are currently in a dire situation. I am taking steps to try and reverse some of your genetic changes to rectify matters”, Hecho said hoping this would clarify matters.

“Echo, will this mean I can get back the use of the pocket dimension? So I can ensure the kids are ok.” said Adam bluntly.

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“From my calculations there will not be enough SP remaining for that. We will have to find another source of SP to achieve that.” Hecho said. He was not opposed to helping the kids but certainly not at the expense of Adam.

At this point Adam stopped again this time because he’d heard something rather unexpected. The kids stopped they had heard it too. Somewhere in the distance there was a battle going on. The hairs on the back of Adam’s neck stood on end and he felt a cold dread creep down his spine. It couldn’t be happening now could it?

Adam signalled for them to stop and then started back in the opposite direction. The kids following in his wake.

Hecho had given up on the idea of modifying the acclimatise ability. Symbol coding was Libby’s area of expertise, not his. And if she hadn’t even attempted doing it, there was no point in him a rank amateur doing so.

So instead Hecho focused on what he was good at, teleportation theory. Hecho did not know what would happen if he teleported Nanobots into Adam’s physical body but he had no other way of influencing what took place there without a specific ability to do so. He hoped the Nanobots would be able to function in the physical realm. This was a big hope as they had not experimented on sending essentially energy into anything other than another form of energy. Like when they had teleported originally into Adam’s spirit sea.

But even if the Nanobots were operable after transfer, he would need a method of communication with them. This is where the GTAs original experiments at communicating with Adam, were of great relevance and importance.

They had been able to send messages to Adam, right enough he had not understood or at least responded. But he had received them never the less. So if they could construct a two way receiver they could coordinate between the physical and spiritual realms. It was worth a try and if it succeeded he would be able to protect Adam with his own private army.

The teleport construct was ready and thankfully there was one big pro to the plan. Sending GTAs which were infinitesimally smaller than even a pin head, meant the energy costs were also negligible. He planned to send an advance party with the sole mission of creating a sender/receiver otherwise he would have no idea whether it had even worked.

The party size was determined by the fact that by themselves they would have to act as their own little hive, sharing the necessary information to build the receiver and also to navigate to the designated location within Adam’s body to do so. This would require at least 30 thousand. It could possibly be done with less, just about. But was he going to risk that. Nope.

The advance party was sent. At least he hoped they were, they’d gone. Hecho wondered what to do next, he knew he had a long wait by any standards. He had no contingency plans for if this didn’t work so spent his time planning for further enhancements if this worked.

Inside Adam’s body 30 thousand tiny soldiers appeared, in total not much bigger than a heap of blood cells. They had made it.

They executed the next phase of their operation, moving to destination. That destination was at the base of Adam’s brain. Close enough to allow communication and hopefully far enough away not to cause problems for Adam.

They had no fears of attack from Adam’s own system, as they were too small to be detected, except by the change in charge they created in their vicinity. They had each come out as something physical but with an ethereal surrounding casing or shell. They could not judge what this meant but they were functional and fast, it seemed as they had started to construct the coms far faster than planned.

Adam’s heart raced as vivid memories of many a bad dream came back to him. He had heard that noise before, the sound of a strange battle horn, played in similar surroundings. Although the shadow realm did not seem to have any weather as such, the sky if you could consider it that, was uniformly dark. Adam certainly did not want to stick around to find out if his sense of Deja vu, was for reals.