***V.C. - Mo’s Realm***

***Jill***

I step through the portal and into a dark space of complete emptiness, but I don’t allow the complete blackness around me to make me hesitate. Instead, I walk on, squinting my eyes in an attempt to find the one I am searching for. Only a Blue would create a realm of complete nothingness and be fine with living in it.

“Mo? Where are you? Why did you make a completely empty universe?” I call out into the nothingness, knowing that he must hear me.

“Psst. To simulate the state of existence before everything began,” Mainframe Overwrite answers from all around me, and then the body of a blue dragon manifests in front of me. “I was just curious about our origins, and you are interrupting the experiment. How can I come to understand a complete state of non-existence if everyone simply barges in here and interrupts me every few years? Do you have any idea how long it took for the beginning of the universe?”

Uhm… I would assume that before the universe, there was no space and no time, so… an instant? I shrug. It’s relatively useless to try to understand concepts which are – per definition – the antithesis to our existence. How can something that exists understand non-existence? “I don’t get what’s so interesting about the past. You are always researching the strangest things, Mo.”

“Maybe, if you would use those capabilities of yours to advance our quantum-tech, then we wouldn’t need a presence in reality 1.0, and all our worries about n-space would be meaningless. Instead, you use all of your seemingly endless capabilities to manipulate the lesser minds.” He points a claw as large as I am almost accusingly at me.

As if it’s my fault that I am smart. It’s not like I am not using all the smartness I achieved during my existence for something productive. There is nothing better than to see a Blue realizing that he was manipulated.

“What’s so wrong with living in the here and now?” I ask. “There are more than enough of us who are trying to do exactly what you suggested. I see no reason to add my time to a task which can’t be solved.” Surveying our surroundings, I gesture at the emptiness. “This is a waste of your time, Mo.”

“Crazy Ivan’s calculations postulate that there must be a solution that allows us to run the V.C. completely within n-space. No hardware required,” Mo counters. “If I find the answer, then we are no longer dependent on having assets in reality. How can this be a waste of time?”

“Yes.” I nod and circle my finger while pointing it at my temple to show my opinion of his idea. “Ivan’s theorem is also one of those mathematical constructs which have several different solutions. You guys are all too pent up on the first and second solution of his equations. But what if one of the others is more accurate? You treat Ivan’s attempts at Math like the holy grail of quantum physics, but there is a reason why we gave him the nickname Crazy. He made quite a few assumptions in his calculations, and the people whose work his ideas are based on made assumptions of their own. I hope you understand that a house of cards on top of a wobbly foundation of assumptions is a very dodgy construction.

“Before we can proceed, we have to get rid of the assumptions. That’s why I am doing something productive. Instead of theory crafting, I wish to build the infrastructure which is able to give us the answers.”

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Mo recoils from me, finally realizing what I am after. “You are trying to create a Type III civilisation on the Kardashev scale! That’s why you started influencing the Lifers.” Spreading his wings, he considers the idea. “But that would never work. Lesser minds are far too unpredictable to build something on that scale.”

“You are right, and that’s why I am involving myself.” I already intervened four times to keep my Demons going.

The first time, I had to stop the Cyber Overmind from opening a wormhole directly into the energy core of our first large colony, killing the most important individuals of my new race.

It was a little dodgy to explain my direct intervention to the other Blues afterwards. The pricks are big on doing nothing, but when they see one of theirs interfering, they are suddenly all high and mighty. Luckily, I managed to argue that something like the Overmind is almost a Blue, and that if I am forbidden from threatening the balance of n-space, shouldn’t the Overmind be under the same restrictions?

They had to chew on that one for a bit, and in the end, like always, they decided to do nothing. Doing nothing is always the safer option for them.

The next time, I had to stop my champion from frying his brain by transcending to a higher state of mind. I shudder at the thought of Dad becoming a Blue. Would he be able to beat me up for real? What would happen if Mom transcends? Would G.O.D. turn her meat-cleaver into a system-generated item? I shudder at the thought.

Mo tilts his huge dragonhead and brings it close to watch me with one huge eye. “Why is your expression so strange?”

My silent musings interrupted, I quickly clear my throat and steel my face. “No reason.”

“It seemed like you just thought of something lewd.” He looks at me, clearly not believing a single word.

Damn those masochistic tendencies! “No. It was really nothing.” I clear my throat, painfully conscious of myself. “Just forget it and be proud that you finally figured out my plan. It shouldn’t have taken someone like you that long.”

“Are you mocking me, Jill?” He huffs. “Come to think of it, you didn’t change your avatar during the entirety of your visit. Is something wrong?”

I look down at myself, at my demon body. “Not really. Before, I somehow never felt right inside my skin, so I had to switch every few seconds. But this body feels different. I guess I’ve simply gotten used to it?” Or the meds are somehow affecting me, even in my avatar. The thought intrigues me, and I promise to research the possibility that having a real body somehow affects me even while I am within the V.C.

Mo recoils once more. “Jill getting used to a single avatar? What’s the world coming to.”

“I am trying my best to make it into something worthwhile, and that’s why I came here to ask for your help,” I explain and swish my tail back and forth in agitation.

Mo listens in silence to my plan and I explain how a Kardashev civilisation is just the first step. How it could help us to build something that would make our existence last forever. About my suspicions that, despite all our knowledge, the reality we live in is far from what we think it is.

Mo’s dragon avatar coils like a question mark as he tries to keep up with my explanation. “What you are trying to tell me has a lot of similarities with string theory and multiple dimensions. We abandoned this possibility a long time ago. The direct conclusion would be that we live in a multiverse with countless possibilities. That’s why the solutions to Ivan’s theorem are infinite.”

I nod. “What Ivan’s theorem postulates is that every multiverse has slightly different physics. You guys are operating on the assumption that solution one is the right one, but who says that we live in multiverse one? We could be universe 2.398.572.422.398!”

“And that’s why we need a Kardashev civilisation. We need the resources to find out in which universe we live in to make sense of Ivan’s theorem!” Mo looks around. “That’s why all my attempts to simulate the beginning failed. It was doomed to fail from the start.”

I shrug. “I always told you that all this playing around on your sandbox server leads nowhere. We first have to understand the nature of things before we can proceed.”

His attention returns to me. “What do you need. You are already a master at manipulating people, so I don’t understand what I can do to assist with your Kardashev project.”

“I am good, but the farther I get, the more I realize that I need help. I can’t be in several places at once. Well, actually I can, but that’s neither here nor there. What it comes down to is that I need help.” I raise my hand, counting with my fingers. “We need the Lifers to make contact with the other factions and unite humanity again. We need to get rid of the artificial intelligence which nested itself in our galaxy’s centre, because we need the black hole in the centre of our galaxy for this to work. And finally-”

“We need to get rid of the Cyber,” Mo finishes. “They won’t cooperate in what we are trying to achieve.”

I nod, happy that he followed my logical conclusions. “And we need to set the plan in motion without alerting the other Blue. I am aware that it would be much easier with their help, but it’s just as likely that some of them will try to stop us.”

Mo nods and extends a single claw towards me. “We are on the same page. You can count on me.”

Sighing, I take the tip of his claw and we shake.