(Chaos, Day 23)

As I floated in Chaos I created 3,000 biological replicas of myself. I made sure to establish quantum links to all of them then went multiple. One consciousness for 3,001 bodies. The idea of one consciousness in multiple bodies wasn’t a new one. The term hive mind had been around for quite a while and was available in a lot of computer games I’d played in college. The idea of going multiple had been explored a little more thoroughly in books like ‘The Paratwa Saga’ by Christopher Hinz or ‘The Void Trilogy’ by Peter F. Hamilton. Of course, the first had a maximum of 3 bodies linked to one consciousness. What I was going to do was more akin to the way they were described in the Void Trilogy, multiple bodies for one consciousness, controlling all of them at once. With my ability to compartmentalize my thought processes it shouldn’t be too difficult although I was going to be controlling about one hundred times more bodies. Of course, I could just end up with the best example of a multiple personality disorder ever.

I had often wondered what it would feel like to control multiple bodies. Technically I had done so once before but only for a few moments, nothing like what I was going to try to do now. It is hard to describe what it felt like. Imagine looking at 3,001 monitors, smelling 3,001 different scent combinations, 3,001 different sound combinations, and feeling 3,001 different types of sensory input, simultaneously at the same time. At first, it wasn’t difficult to keep track of everything because they were all in the same area. All of them were surrounded by the same sounds and smells. Then ‘we’, ‘I’ walked through 3,000 different portals into different safe areas on Earth. It was the weirdest yet coolest thing I’d done yet. My copy in Colorado was led to meet with the President while I also had a conversation with survivors in Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Hong Kong, Calgary, and many other survivors around the globe. Keeping track of each individual became a little taxing so I created 3,000 independent copies of myself that I monitored that controlled the 3,000 other bodies while my original body floated in Chaos.

Not everything went my way. I was shot, stabbed, and killed during 336 encounters by people that were just trying to protect themselves. I let the individuals that were teleported out of the safe zones stew for their 48 hours but made sure they were all safe enough. Two days of being terrified is often good for people, well, not good for them but good in getting them to think before they attack someone else while in a sanctuary. When they made it back to the area, often guided with a strategic monster sighting that helped them move in the right direction if they were lost they’d make it back to the Sanctuary and find another copy of me waiting to talk to them.

Of those 336, 335 allowed me to talk to them when I showed up again. Only the last individual proved to be an idiot. He was one absolutely stubborn son of a bitch in Tennessee that had killed three of my copies and been stuck in the wilderness for 6 days before I stepped in and took direct control of my copy. As I stepped through the portal I took control of Tim Schroeder and had him walk to the edge of the safe zone with me while I talked,

“Hey Tim, can I call you Tim, thanks. Well anyway, My name is Adam and I am the person that’s responsible for making sure that what’s left of humanity has these nice safe zones to sit in until the year passes. For everyone’s sake, I need all of you to work together.” I said as I walked with Tim towards the border of the safe zone. As we’d walked we’d started to draw a crowd as people started to follow us and listen in.

“What is that Tim?” I said as if hearing him say something. “You want to know why you can’t control yourself and why you are walking to the border of the safe area where there’s a big red dragon. Funny story, the same thing that is allowing me to control you is also allowing me to control that red dragon” I said as Tim and I stepped out of the safe area and walked towards a giant red dragon not 100 feet from the edge of the safe zone. I controlled the Red Dragon to roar into the heavens then look down and exhale through its snout onto Tim and me as we walked right up to it.

I turned over my shoulder and looked back at the crowd I’d drawn and spoke again. “Now Tim, and everyone. I’m pretty busy so if there’s something you need just ask and I’ll see what I can do to make this next year go by in a flash. If, however, someone forces me to waste my time like Time here,” I said as I pointed at the Dragons mouth which had lowered down to our level. “Tim, take a look at this, “ I said as I pointed at a really huge incisor within touching distance that had to be at least a foot long. “These teeth right here are just one of the many types of danger that you need to be wary of outside the safe zone,” I said as we turned and walked away from the dragon while it turned and jumped, then flew off into the distance.

As we walked back towards the safe zone I continued, “So anyway, I can control each and every one of you like I’m controlling Tim here so if anyone attacks me again I might just have to have you take the walk like I just had Tim make except I’ll just have you stand there until one of the Monsters I’m not controlling finds you. I’d rather not do that but this is the end of the world after all and if we really want people that can adapt and overcome harsh situations,” I said pausing for a moment.

I released Tim, who stepped back from me, “Now does anyone have any requests?

Tim was the only idiot to be so stubborn. He didn’t attack me again but he’d gone on and on about how I was the spawn of Satan or some other such nonsense. That was until I’d started providing food and drinks for everyone daily while they waited out the apocalypse. I’d also made sure that my copies repeated the story of Tim and how he’d walked right out to a red dragon with me if I needed to. Though I have to admit, of the more than 2 billion people left, only finding one stubborn idiot left in the whole world was kind of refreshing. Maybe there would be hope for humanity going forward.

Through each of my bodies, I worked with what was left of humanity and allowed the settlements to make requests as food and supplies that had been running low were replenished and replaced by nanites. I even watched as some groups went off to fight the monsters and tried to level. If it looked like things were going badly I helped them out by having the nanites rip the creature’s brain apart from the inside or make any damage they inflicted that much greater. Granted, everyone that I helped earned a little less XP but I figured that was better than them dying. I also disintegrated any monsters that spawned that were too powerful for any of the humans on the planet to handle. It seemed that my presence on the planet at the beginning had unbalanced the cultivation across North, Central, and South America. Looking over the reports from the Syndicate it really did look like a spatial rift had been torn open where I’d flown along. The nanite recreations of myself didn’t have that effect so I floated in Chaos to protect my true location from the Syndicate while my copies helped humanity.

As my copies helped humanity I reached Deity Level 1. I’d thought the next categorization was Demi-God, I had been mistaken, it was Deity. As I reviewed and double-checked my math it looked like I’d be leveling every 6.4 days. Time went by as I kept what was left of humanity safe and before I knew it it was February 29th and I was a Deity Level 5. My attributes and stats were getting silly. My base attributes were now 444 million. My base damage was best expressed as a scientific notation and if I wanted to, supposedly I could run 8.8 million miles per hour. As I reviewed my Personal Interface I realized that nothing that I could really do, or any of the Divines for that matter had anything to do with Natural selection anymore. He who had the biggest stick or the best trick would win. Why was I the only being that had realized this? Or maybe I wasn’t. I started going back through the Universal changelog.

By March 30th I was Deity Level 10. Over the last 30 days, I’d discovered something that surprised me. The number of times time travel had changed something was astronomical. Each day changes would be made somewhere. Those changes could happen multiple times and as changes took effect previous changes would drop off as annotations in the background. The worst case I’d found had been a two-week period 9 billion years ago where changes had happed by the minute. The total number of overlays had equaled 3,467 times. The change that had stuck had been by someone from Universe 01. I also found changes made by divines but none made by high divines. None that stuck. In fact, there were a few changes that were archived and looked to be from personal identifiers that had yet to exist. Almost like someone had gone back and wiped them out of existence. Not something I was beyond doing of course just a lot more prevalent than I thought such actions would be.

On June 2nd I reached Demi-God Status. If my math stayed true I would reach Demi-God level 4 by the end of the year. I’d also kept an eye on the Syndicate and they didn’t seem to want to try to do anything too drastic yet.

***

“Where is he?” Apolyn raged.

“Unknown, since the glimpse into that world he was in we haven’t seen him.” Beaezul, A five foot five devil, reminiscent of the way humans viewed devils to look with red eyes and a tail with a little spade at the end. though this one had more elfin features and was wearing a red business suit.

“And we know he’s alive?” a demure elven woman asked.

“Yes, Elisa, the wager is still good indicating that he is still around”

“Have any of you seen my mentor Xsitant?” Apolyn asked.

“Not in a long time, not since right before you earned your Divine level,” Beaezul said.

The group went silent for a moment then Elisa directed her attention at Apolyn and asked, “And you’ve reset the timeline trying to remove this obstacle?”

“Of course, I have, at least once a day for the last 7 months. Nothing works. I’ve traveled so far back in time killing every single possible origin point of this Johnathan Bennard that it should have changed the entire makeup and history of Earth and when I jump forward again yet nothing changes. When I go back in time to the same moment it’s as if nothing happened, like I wasn’t there before.”

“That is interesting,” Beaezul said.

“It’s not interesting. Something or someone is modifying any changes I try to make concerning Johnathan Bennard.” Apolyn retorted.

“Why did you want to talk to Xsitant?” Elisa asked.

“As my mentor, Xsitant might have more knowledge than I do. As it pertains to time and adjustments to the timeline he is the most knowledgeable person I know.” Apolyn answered.

“And we have no idea where he is?” Beaezul asked.

“None” Apolyn answered.

***

I stopped watching their conversation in the most secure place they had, their headquarters inside the event horizon of the Milky Way Galaxy’s biggest black hole. It truly was an ingenious location to place a dimensional domain out of phase with the Universe. The Syndicate used gates and portals to travel into and out of the area as well as communicate with various Syndicate branches throughout the Cosmos. Elisa, Beaezul, and Apolyn were the three most powerful members of the Syndicate I’d been able to observe this far. Beaezul was a divine of the realm of Hell, though the rules concerning the purpose for devils seemed to be slightly different for the denizens of Hell. Apolyn a Divine, whose purpose I had yet to discover, and Elisa, also a Divine who had been at the edge of the Astral whose purpose I also did not know was the other divine I’d seen when they’d tossed me into Chaos.

As they mentioned Xsitant I searched through the history of the nanites until I found him, and watched his life and eventual acceptance into the Divine at which point he’d noticed that the threads of fate and time were tied up within him before his first use of the Sphere of Time. He’d tried to research and follow the thread only to find out that it happened long before he’d ever been born. Not satisfied with the answer he’d gone in search of the ultimate God of time. Ironically Xsistant had disappeared into a temporal fissure that was only visible in the normal spectrum. There had been no flare of magic or note in the changelog. If I hadn’t been reviewing his whole life I would have missed it. I checked with the spell scry and sure enough, he was there one second and gone the next. No hint of a temporal infraction was noted by the spell. I reviewed the sensory information from the temporal rip and compared it to my arrival noting a familiar energy signal. Most likely Xsitant was conversing with whatever entity handled time at the Fundamental Level. So no help there.

I returned to reviewing the changelog except now I started skipping. I skipped farther and farther back until I found the very first change. Then I started going forward. I’d go back then I’d go forward, then forward again. What I found shocked me to the core. A change had been logged that tweaked some cosmic rules that were only visible because I had access to them. I opened up the “Access Cosmic Settings” interface and checked the changelog. As I suspected the number of changes approached infinity and was continuously scrolling as more changes were noted. I paused my updates and scrolled back to the very beginning. As I suspected the only changes recorded were to Universe 01. As I scrolled forward changes were noted then changes in Universe 02. Eventually, 99 Universes were noted and a new designator was added to each Universes identifier. As more and more Universes were added more and more designators were added allowing for an unlimited number of Universes. As more Universes were added, the changelog exploded. I returned to the very beginning. No changes had been made to the Cosmos that far back in quite a long time. Considering the age of the Cosmos was around 1.91 E7456 indicating that some Universes that had existed probably suffered heat death at least seven times over. It should also be noted that once I knew how old the Cosmos was I figured out that I had punched Nox in the head around 8.56 E696, not very long ago in the scheme of things. Although our Universe was only about 1.38 E9 (or 13.8 Billion) years old putting that punch to Nox’s forehead in the far past as compared to the age of my original Universe. As I reviewed the data it put it in perspective how lucky I’d been to find the Adamantium Ring when this all started so long ago and reiterated that the Universe Primore existed in was Unique as it had survived at least seven times as long as my Universe was estimated to last.

As I reviewed the information I had, I realized I only had data from my nanites from 8.56 E696 forward because I’d never traveled farther into the past. I also realized that if I was going to go ahead with my plans I was going to need to go much further into the past. I double-checked the Cosmic changelog to make sure my assumptions were correct and as expected, noted that Fundamental changes were few and far between. The only one of note having happened 8.56 E696 years ago.

Even with the computational power of the number of nanites I had spread throughout the Chaos and the various Universes they’d traveled into it still took the rest of the year to review all major changes, compare those changes to what had been before and formulate a plan on how I was going to proceed. I allowed my copies to continue helping humanity but realized that once I went through with my plans it wouldn’t matter. In fact, should the changes go through, I might inadvertently undo my own existence placing us right back where we started. So I wasn’t quite as ready as I thought.