I woke up and blinked.
From the corner of my vision, I could see the cleaning lady, Paulina, just leaving my room with her cleaning cart. She was humming a soft tune and seemed to be in a good mood. If she had finished cleaning my room, it meant that I had been away longer than I had initially planned. I had missed Tutor and my father visiting as it was midafternoon already.
“You are back.” I heard Nurse say inside my head as I sat up and began pulling the wires and tape off of my head and arms. After a second I leaned over and turned off the fake and constantly beeping machines by my bed as well.
“Something is still wrong though; I still can’t reach your host body through whatever is encasing you.” Nurse said as I opened up my memories to her, streaming them with the intent of letting my AI review them as well when they arrived. Nurse read my mind and was sure to pass on the knowledge dump. I let her see everything, even the questions that I had posed to the seven before I left. It was a good thing that I had spent the extra time picking their brains, it would save me lots of trouble and heartache later.
“Oh, that is why you didn’t immediately transfer your mind back into your Personal Live Matrix,” she said as she quickly got up to speed.
“Yeah, you kind of failed to mention that, by entering a drone, it would create a new copy of my mind, another me. Now that I am stuck like a bug encased in amber, I would simply be creating a clone of myself by sending my mind back into my Personal Live Matrix. I wouldn’t be free at all, I would still be stuck inside this body.” I said as I took out the little drone body that I was inhabiting. Thankfully, no one walked past my room when I did this, or they might have gotten a fright of their life as my face and skull opened wide to let me grasp the little object between my fingers. The whole invisible shell was about the size of a golf ball encasing my small ant-like body. If I compared its size to anything Earthside, I would say that the little drone body had managed to grow to be just a little bit larger than an Asian Giant Hornet, just without the wings.
I was impressed, seeing that I started out as a barely visible speck.
Looking at it, or rather at it through the invisible shell of the Void seedling, made my vision ripple around the edges like I was looking down a mirrored tube in a swimming pool. It was, worrisome, reminding me of what the seven had said, that their offered connection to distract my Void seedling wasn’t perfect. There were, and would be, gaps in their ability to keep it distracted. I quickly put it back inside my cr body and listened to Nurse’s reply as my skull and face reformed.
“Yes, there is a big difference in what you did and how the Hive Mother controls her swarm. I wasn’t able to predict how the Tela’s technology would interfere with what the Hive Mother and Queens do naturally. Instead of flooding your will and mind into your swarm, you vacated your body, your Tela Personal Live Matrix, and your swarm to push it into what was left of the Queen’s swarm that tried to kill you.”
“Yeah,” I said with a slight grimace and a chuckle, “I know, I had a chat with the Hive Mother, and she let me know just how stupid she thought I was. Stupid and lucky.”
“Your swarm senses that as well as other things. You have gone beyond what any swarm would ever consider possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Queens are never given knowledge about the Creators or the beings that they spread to keep the Void at bay. You have communed straight with the mind and soul of the Hive Mother, feasting on her power and making it your own. To your swarm, any swarm even, you are a Hive Mother now, or in your case, an even more illegal entity, a Hive King. This would be troublesome if not for the other beings that you managed to feast on while you were away. If it were just the Hive Mother’s scent on your mind, I believe that you would eventually have to face her in a battle to prove who was the rightful ruler of her swarms.”
“Wait… I heard an “if” in that sentence. What does that mean? Do I have to fight all of the seven now? That is nonsense.”
“No, you have become something else, even more than you were before. Perhaps, if you desired, you could feast more on each mind that provided you with the abilities that you desired to make yourself and your swarm stronger.” Nurse said, making me get the feeling that it and my entire swarm were licking their vicious mandibles in anticipation of more power and growth. Had the influences of the seven’s minds and beings somehow tainted me and thus my swarm? I didn’t know but it was starting to feel that way.
The creak of the door drew my attention as Tutor and George stepped into the room together. George shut the door behind him as Tutor rushed towards me with her arms stretched out.
I had thought that she would have slapped me for being so reckless and stupid but instead, much to my relief, she threw herself into my arms.
It was in that moment and the many moments that followed, that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she loved me.
I stood there, simply holding her in my arms as George came close to touch my forearm in silence.
So many emotions were battling it out inside my heart. All I could do was smile and blink away the tears as Tutor finally stepped back and held onto me.
“Ha, so where is Invicta? I thought for sure I would wake up to her sitting on my forehead.” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
George rolled his eyes as he answered, “I needed her expertise again. It seems that the creatures in the next dimension repopulate very rapidly. As for why she isn’t here right now,” He said with a slight pause as his eyes momentarily darted towards Tutor, “I just thought that we could have a moment of privacy before I let her know that you were back.”
Ah, my sweet Tutor. I promised myself that I would take her out on a date now that we were finally home. I squeezed her arms back and smiled at her.
“We listened in,” she said after a few moments of her staring at my chest with a thoughtful look on her face. I could sense that she was broadcasting to my other AI. It felt as though she was telling them something, commanding something. “We didn’t know that you couldn’t see anything, we had no way of knowing what was going on. Meditati tried everything to get through the shell around you, I took care of everything as best I could, and George has been trying to find anything stronger that might help to break you out…” She said before she trailed off and raised her eyes to intently look into mine.
“We failed you,” she said as Meditati appeared behind the pair with the same intent look in her eyes. Invicta appeared as well, standing on Meditati’s shoulder. All of my AI had the same look in their eyes, even Invicta, which surprised me.
“No, I don’t think that you…” I started to say before she interrupted me.
“Please, just listen. You have given us more than we could have dreamed of and we all will do anything needed to help you to keep your freedom even if it means traveling to countless other dimensions to find a cure.”
“Wait… she just might be onto something.” I thought to myself as I imagined that there had to be something out there that could get rid of this parasite that was wrapped around my drone body. Even living as a drone wasn’t a bad thing, it was the constant threat of having nearly all of my senses stolen from me at any moment if the seven lost concentration or died. Their lives being paramount to my continued existence made the threat of the Void breaking out an even greater threat hanging over everything... No wonder the seven had been so ready to offer to help me, I was literally a cup of water to a dying man wandering in the desert. They were my hope just like I was theirs.
As for my AI, I could sense Tutor’s, George’s, and Invicta’s sincerity. From Meditati, on the other hand, I got another feeling. She was nearly frothing at the mouth with dreams of coveted knowledge that would come with being able to explore, not only this universe but the possible infinite dimensions beyond. Her eyes had a sharpness in them that wasn’t there before when she looked at me. Like I was a prime rib feast for a den of lions.
I didn’t mind at all. It was a good thing to have aspirations of power.
—
Checking out of the hospital was too easy. I didn’t have to sign anything or get anyone's permission. George and Tutor had already taken care of everything for me even before I recovered. All I needed to do was to pick what I wanted to wear, or rather, what clothes I wanted my swarm to imitate and leave. I would have chosen simple blue jeans and a t-shirt but after a little bit of persuasion from my three girls, I decided to let them dress me instead.
And yes, I entirely enjoyed the experience. All three women, small Invicta included, were incredibly gorgeous by any Earthly standards, and having them nitpick and preen over me and what I was going to wear was very pleasant.
Meditati seemed to have business goals in mind with my wardrobe. Her comments seemed to all lead to what I would eventually be wearing in front of the news and in front of people of power. Tutor just seemed to be enjoying the experience just as much as I was. She kept adjusting my collar and telling me how good I looked.
Invicta… Invicta on the other hand just seemed to be all about trying to embarrass me and rile me up. It was her idea to unbutton some of the buttons and even went as far as to model herself in the same outfit to prove just how much better everything looked with more buttons undone, albeit her shirt and blazer always seemed to be a smaller size every minute.
I swear Tutor’s hand kept teleporting in front of Invicta to block my view whenever I would hear Invicta snickering at something. It probably had something to do with the sounds of small objects falling onto the floor every now and then, probably the buttons to her shirt and blazer.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
What formed over my body was highly Italian-inspired and looked more expensive than the monthly, if not yearly, rent of my old apartment. They did let me wear designer blue jeans in the end, but I still had to wear the trim tan blazer with a blue button-up long-sleeve shirt with a slightly unbuttoned collar. Everything was expensive brand name brands that I would have never even considered wearing before, entirely because I could never afford any of them.
Meditati just found all of this interplay to be amusing I suppose. It wasn’t until she handed me some of the buttons that I realized what was really happening. Invicta had been tearing off the buttons from all of the girls' dresses and Tutor was having to replace them as fast as she could. I never hoped more for a wardrobe malfunction after that even though Tutor seemed to be able to intercept all of the close calls that my eyeballs could have gotten a full view of.
It wasn’t until Nurse stepped in to remind me by whispering in my ear, loud enough that all of the girls could hear her, that I could replay the last half hour from any angle whenever I wanted.
This caused Tutor to turn a bright shade of pink and to declare that it was time for us all to finally leave the hospital and to get on with telling my family that everything was going to be alright.
In order to settle Invicta down, I gave her a kiss on the head which seemed to please her greatly. She reverted back into her bracelet form and was content to occasionally hum to herself while trying to hold in her soft laughter. The laughter was fine, but it did keep making Tutor blush, and strangers walking through the halls to glance around strangely. I think that they couldn't figure out where the source was coming from. For some reason, there was a number three adorning the face of the bracelet now. I wasn’t sure what it signified.
“I have been able to retrieve twenty-one of the twenty-four swarm relics that I managed to get locations to after speaking with Jebzzbej.” Nurse said as we exited the main lobby of the hospital. “I repurposed the swarm from the already recovered relics and sent them back out to help canvas the solar systems where they were lost.”
“Any idea what happened to them?” I asked. The use of the orbs, or rather their secret use, that had been known only to the seven and their creators and had become the foundation to any hope that I had of building something that would help both the seven and myself. Their use would hopefully keep my Void seedling permanently spellbound and let me live my life again.
I wasn’t ready to give up and to let a copy take over while I was yet trapped by this Void seedling. The moment I woke up and felt everything reconnect I was sure that my Alpha cube hidden within the sun had updated itself again. That was a good enough backup for me until I ran out of options.
“One was lost planet side during a war, another was raided by cosmic pirates, and the last was simply stolen from the underwater museum on the moon where it was being held. The amount of time that has passed since each of these events ranges greatly so they might have changed hands repeatedly. Meditati has been helping me by hacking and sifting through all data for any leads.”
I walked a few steps, enjoying the sun on my face once again until a little red flag popped into my brain. She had been really vague there at the end.
“When you say Meditati has been helping you to hack and to sift through things, what do you mean by that?” I asked.
"Just that. We swarm believe that if it can be taken, then it is ours. Meditati says the same thing about data for AI."
"She did say that didn't she?" I asked as I glanced back at Meditati who was bringing up the rear of our small train of people.
Meditati had a pleased expression that didn’t change as her striking eyes met and held mine without shame.
“What? She needed help to understand the complexities of intergalactic alien species in our cosmos. She also just so happens to be able to bypass any physical barrier to help me obtain Source or Root as you might call it. Even the highest security that the Tela, LOW, Devgathians, and Six-lei, to name a few, can create is no barrier to your swarm. So, what if I absorb everything that I can get my hands on? And no, it isn’t as bad as you imagine, only three alien races were advanced enough to detect that they had been breached.”
"Only three?" I asked, feeling a slight sense of foreboding in the air. I knew that on Earth, the governments and secret military organizations tended to have quite dark ways of dealing with people who stole from them.
Knowledge was power and the powerful never gave any away.
This could only be exponentially worse when dealing with cosmically powerful governments and entities.
---
“What happens when you find cheat codes to reality?” I suddenly wondered after we had almost made it completely to the car park at the front of the hospital. Thoughts started to race through my head as my feet slowed until I stopped dead still. Tutor, George, and Meditati slowed as well and stopped next to me. My eyes were locked on a ray of sunshine that was streaming through a thick cloud in the distance. The beam was like a focus for me to pour my thoughts and ideas into as I suddenly had to deal with some very mind-blowing facts.
This moment had been a long time coming to me since I had been, for the most part, too busy running from fire to fire on my way to get home. What happened when I returned home though? What happened when I returned with the technology and abilities that the swarm afforded me?
I was no longer human anymore. I was still me, at least the me that I felt was Kevin inside.
Instead, I was a mix of so many other things, all held together by AI programming, swarm minds, the influences of the seven, and possibly this Void seedling.
Well, actually, I was physically swarm now that I was inhabiting a drone body and trapped inside a Void seedling.
It was all fuzzy when I tried to think of what exactly I was now.
But that just brought me back to my first question. What happens when you find cheat codes to reality like it seemed that I had done?
“Kevin? Are you ok?” I heard George ask me as he reached up to rest his hand on my left shoulder. I could feel Tutor’s touch as well as she gently grabbed my arm and elbow to my right out of concern. I barely heard him or felt their touch, I had too much to think about as I got lost in what I was capable of now. I did feel, though, Nurse’s assurance to my AI that I was still well and hadn’t suddenly been overtaken by the seedling again.
“Ah, I knew that this moment would come.” I heard Meditati whisper as I heard her heels moving as she positioned herself in front of me. She was just a little bit shorter than I was but that didn’t stop the top of her head from breaking my line of sight with the stream of light.
Honestly, she probably cheated and manifested taller heels to achieve this. Regardless of how she broke my line of sight, my eyes were drawn toward hers instead. Eyes that shown with the same light that I had just gotten lost in a moment ago.
She reached her hands up towards my head to gently cup the sides of my face with her palms and fingers. It was an oddly intimate thing to do considering how troubled our relationship was and had been. The light in her eyes slowly faded as she realized that she had my full attention.
“Kevin, I need you to listen to me and to come with me into VR. I have some things that I need to show you.” She said as she glanced at Tutor as though she was asking for permission. A massive wave of data was sent to Tutor and after a second’s consideration, Tutor nodded and spoke.
“Yes, in this case, I believe that Meditati would be a good teacher. I believe that you should trust her on this Kevin. She has been simulating outcomes and I think that there are some things that you need to see in what possibilities can manifest. “
Possibilities. Endless possibilities. That was what my mind had been lost in. If there was anything that I had learned up to this point, or rather that had been hammered into my mind, was that I was not capable of seeing farther than what was in front of me.
I knew it was time to start relying on my friends and trusting them to help me make the best decisions.
“Ok, fine. Let’s just do this, at least it will give me an idea of what I am missing.” I said as I entered my personal VR and set the speed of time inside as fast as it would go.
Surprisingly it topped out as fast as a Core could generate. Forty-two years per hour. It would seem that my swarm had been busy building Tela technology while I was incapacitated.
I had decided to enter a fresh and empty location to give Meditati space to show me whatever she felt that I needed to see. My other AI were also here, just observing without any physical manifestations.
Meditati arrived, standing as close as she had been in the walkway to the parking lot of the hospital. I could smell her perfume and hear her breathing. I squinted at her, not feeling like she had fully earned the right to be that close to me and she quickly got the hint as she read my mood.
“Yes, it is even worse than I expected.” She commented as she stepped back a few meters into the distance.
I watched her, waiting for her to continue and to explain herself rather than feeling the need to wander down any conversation path that she had deemed to already set up. I knew her mind was like a chess board, and I wasn’t in the mood to play games.
“Ah, what I meant by saying that was, all of these simulations that I have prepared are out of date and will most likely not be as accurate as they would have been. Your time trapped in the other dimension, as well as your… communion with the alien entities that you call the seven, have drastically changed you.” She said as she brought up displays behind her body that rapidly played through what she had predicted would be my first moves when we both arrived here with her standing as close as she had been.
In most of the simulations, it was I who stepped back first. There were a couple that played with me getting angry and asking her to step back but none resulted in the air becoming thick with my will and dislike for how near she had decided to place herself within my personal space. It was both emotion, coming from my human nature, and a manifestation of something that she hadn’t encountered before.
Probably the willpower of the Leva King.
“Regardless though, of how much you have been changed by outside influences, the fact still remains that you are a fallible entity that has just realized that you have ultimate power over your fellow beings. It is no different than the first person who held a gun and understood that they could end someone’s life simply by pointing at them and bending their finger.” She said as I nodded. I had thought of this and other similarities as I had gotten lost in thought.
“Your power far exceeds the power that your leaders currently possess on this planet. Where they have nukes and kinetic weapons as their most powerful physical form of attack, you cannot be harmed in any way by anything anyone possesses in this dimension. At least, as far as I have been able to determine. Skism weapons are still on the table but that shell around you might even negate its effects.” She said as in rapid succession she showed me the tests that she had performed on the shell while it was shrouded in gold and obsidian cr. She also revealed to me just how far her expansion into the cosmos was going with her search for a weapon that could damage the shell.
I wasn’t really sure how I felt about that. It was clear that she was doing it to release me, but I also got the feeling that she was using it as an excuse to gorge herself on the various race’s intelligence that she came across.
Always the glutton for data.
“As for nonphysical weapons, your leaders control the economy, financial sectors, and media of this planet. Even these things, with just one of your AI, are not even a hint of a threat to you or your world anymore. The only possible threat that remains on this plant and in this system is the Tela Planet Barrons and the Arbiter. Once you take care of the Arbiter, which I recommend you doing today once we have the swarm in place, then there will be no one on this planet with power over you.” She said as she showed me things that went well beyond what I had any understanding about.
She had clearly spent a great amount of time breaking apart everything that went into running this little blue planet, either that or she stole it all from the Tela Planet Barrons.
Either way, I was well and truly impressed.
But what did this all have to do with what she wanted to show me?
“Are you ready for some simulations?” She asked, showing a little pleased smile as she finally got to the heart of what she wanted me here for.
“Sure. Hit me.” I said as she vanished and the world around me changed.