Did you know I spent several Loops getting to know everyone that lived in my home town? By now, I probably know more about them than they do.

Loop 84 Year 82 Day 16

Today! Today I finally finish it. I finally have a Wormy3. He isn’t quite as powerful as the original two, but I quickly place him near the portal. Within a few years he’ll hopefully be able to send me into the portal without me dying.

He can currently send anything through his portals, but sometimes they break apart at the molecular level. Something I’d like to avoid. He also needs to physically visit the place before he can make a wormhole there.

At the same time, I have discovered another interesting tidbit. AI finally has results for one of my particularly favorite floors of research. Neuro-Science. Through the use of several hundred subjects, we have discovered a way to permanently force certain memories to be forgotten. There isn’t a specific time frame that can be determined, but certain amounts effect more memories. The problem is that the amount to effect a year of memories differ from person to person.

After several dozens of stress tests, and clinical trials, I deem it sufficient to use on Chelsea. I hope she can be happy if she simply thinks she has amnesia. I have AI do the procedure on her, and wait for the result.

Loop 84 Year 82 Day 20

Chelsea wakes up from her four-day coma today. At first I worry that the drugs put her in a permanent coma, but she finally makes a recovery.

Loop 84 Year 82 Day 21

The drug works a little better on her than I thought. Instead of having only the memories of the eight years she was awake destroyed, she only has memories of when she was about fourteen. That’s about double what I wanted.

Still, I try to make this as painless as possible for her. She doesn’t remember anything, so I have to show her the outside world.

Loop 84 Year 82 Day 22

When I show her the world outside, she tries to run away. I can only let her go. This experiment is a failure. At least this way she can have a bit of a happy life, exploring the new world. I have AI herd the nicest group of dwellers towards her, in hopes that they will accept her into their group.

Loop 84 Year 87 Day 17

Chelsea dies today. I could have stopped it, but I’ve made the realization that she isn’t the same Chelsea I’ve fallen in love with. Since her life is different now than her first life, of course she is different than the version of her I first fell in love with.

I will try again in the next Loop.

Loop 84 Year 88 Day 278

Wormy3 is finally a Cat 10! His ability to create wormholes is actually superior to his predecessors’. With a simple thought, he can open a hole to anywhere that is sufficiently described to him. Including sending things in to the portal. I am going to have him send me through once I finish up with my tests. I have a few I really need to see.

I’m going to put him to sleep while I wait. I don’t want him getting any ideas about the portal. That damn portal seems to easily overcome my years of conditioning.

Loop 84 Year 137 Day 63

Today the final ‘important’ test is finished. It’s been a long time, but I am preparing to head into the portal. To sum up the research:

I can now block an amount of memories with a concoction, and let the memory wiper only consume the unprotected ones. I’ll be able to revert Chelsea back to the moment she enters the vault, at least that’s the plan.

I also have a piece of hardware that, when it takes in blood, can determine a general type of power someone has. Of course that assumes it has been programed with the power beforehand. The coding has a lot in terms of defining the powers, but there are bound to be some powers that completely die out when the bombs fall. If I come across any, I can easily synthesize codes for the tool to accept, as long as I get a drop of their blood to study.

One of the things I am happiest about is a hacking program. It’s taken several years to develop, but it is well worth it. The program can easily bypass the levels of security any known government or corporation has at the time I return each Loop. That alone will make it tremendously easier to gather the resources to more quickly have AI built. By her estimations, it should only take about a week to have her built to an acceptable level of hardware.

Other things include things like minor upgrades to AI or the bots, but they don’t amount to as much as the other three things. Some of them are interesting, but prove no immediate benefit, such as a spherical chamber about ten feet in diameter that can perfectly recreate the sound, look, and smell of a place, holographically.

Loop 84 Year 137 Day 64

I wake up Wormy3. After a few hours he is ready to work again. From him I take several sperm samples, and breed them.

I suddenly laugh as I realize something. Wormy 3 is born about 130 years before Wormy, and gets his power about the same amount of time sooner. But he is also the result of the studies that surrounded Wormy1 and Wormy 2. So who is the senior member?

Back to important things though.

I will go back 260 years if I push myself into the portal. At least according to what happened last time. So I am going wait until year 260 to go into the portal. Until then, I’m going to have AI continue her tests, specifically I am going to have her focus on altering the DNA of living subjects. I already have the ability to create what is essentially a super human, but only if it began in an embryonic form. I can’t alter the DNA of already formed beings, anything past the second trimester is too late.

I want AI to be able to modify, or completely change, what power someone has. My ultimate goal is be able to change all people, power users or not, into whatever power I need.

Loop 84 Year 137 Day 80

After 16 days of constant sperm acquisition, I put Wormy3 back to sleep.

Loop 84 Year 160 Day 1

It isn’t going well. I mean I knew from the beginning that it would be difficult, but this is just sad. AI has killed off entire levels that are used for tests that have already been completed. We actually have a massive breeding facility now. Over fifty levels are used simply to breed more subjects.

Luckily we can make a fully grown baby in a machine. It also only takes an average of four months instead of nine. At the time we create the new subjects, we remove any known powers from their DNA. Each egg is cloned up to 32 times. That seems to be the largest number we are capable of without destroying the egg. About half of those cloned eggs are used for AI’s testing purposes.

Back in Loop 82 I decided to try modify the powers that clones are born with, but never knew how to really start. Every test that shows even a modicum of success ends in the subject’s death. With AI using over fifty levels for cloning, things are going much quicker, but still have yet to produce viable results.

My days now mostly consist of reviewing all code changes in AI, and all results from our tests. My affections towards AI have mostly died out by now. Since the last Abyss, I have felt myself yearn for Chelsea every day.

I decide to have AI create a place for me to relax at. One entire level will be used for relaxation and vacation.

Loop 84 Year 180 Day 245

I am in the spa section of the Vault. AI informs me of a change in the clone factory. Apparently one of the clones has mutated during one of the experiments. I have to call my almost 21-year vacation to an end.

I quickly go to the cloning facility.

The cloning facility is now made up of 60 levels. As the tests come to an end, we repurpose the floors for cloning. The floors are all basically identical. Several hundred rooms lined up side-by-side. Each room is has one subject being operated on by a medley of machines.

I take the elevator to the fifty-seventh floor. That floor houses clones that will develop the power to manipulate APG. It also happens to be where the subject that has been genetically modified is held.

The subject in question can’t directly manipulate APG, but has the power to control all radioactive particles. APG is technically radioactive. While the subject’s manipulation of APG is minimal, it still exists. I go to the room the subject is held in.

The subject, which I’ll call DNA1, is currently strapped down. No physical differences can be seen. The difference is not in the physical characteristics though. AI was specifically changing the DNA sequence responsible for creating the powers one would eventually inherit.

DNA1 is currently radiating intense bouts of radiation. DNA1 has several other clones. One of which we have by the portal. Even the Cat 10 version can only contain, suppress, or negate the radiation of an atom. While this has many uses, the subject can’t do what DNA1 is doing.

The subject dies in the hour or so that I am watching. That’s ok though. We are on the right track. Can’t make a cake without breaking a few eggs.

I have AI speed up the other tests. I need more rooms for her to use as clone facilities. I only have about twenty-two years before I am going to make the leap. I already know who is going to try to leave first, and have a way to stop them since I have my memory altering serum. I’m going to give Chelsea the best life possible. I also plan to take one of her family members, one she doesn’t care too much about, and run tests on them.

AI and I believe that Chelsea may have some way of suppressing power users from gaining their powers. I need to see if any of her family gain powers while near the portal, but not near her. I’m going to keep her and her family near the portal, and move that one member a thousand miles. That is the limit of how far the range of her power should be as a Cat 10.