Stupid, Stupid, Stupid! These were my first thoughts as I came to lying on a table that seemed to be moving. As I tried to move I realized that I was shackled at the wrist and ankle, and I also had a collar around my neck.

“I wouldn’t try anything if I were you,” a guard in a simple black shirt and black slacks said. I stopped struggling and looked around then closed my eyes. I was in a modified truck that was moving along at a pretty good speed. Also, I could tell that we were on a gravel road. I pulled up my nanite interface and checked the compass and realized we were moving in an easterly direction. I opened my eyes and glanced at the man as he said, “He said you might wake up anyway. The collar around your neck suppresses any magical abilities and your nanites should be offline until they’re rebooted remotely”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“That is all I’m permitted to say. Just lay back and enjoy the ride, we’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.”

I didn’t bother to respond. He was obviously a military type and there was a camera looking down on me. Besides I already knew one thing he’d stated was false, my nanites were up and running. I also didn’t bother drawing on my mana as he, or that camera, might be able to detect it. Instead, I closed my eyes and pulled up my nanite menu to issue a system history check for the nanites to find out what had happened. Prompts started scrolling through my vision.

Your Manifestation has Died

Death caused by a triangulated electrical attack. Amplification caused localized EMP secondary effect. – Nanites unaffected.

Sedatives neutralized.

Body Repair started. Mission directives limiting environmental interaction reduce efficiency. Estimate 30 minutes to 100% body repair.

100% likelihood attack was meant to kill and permanently disable normal nanites.

Brain placed into a coma until repairs completed.

Host body at 100%, Induced Coma lifted

Host waking up.

I scrolled over to look at current messages and noted the following.

Hostile nanites are trying to infiltrate host body. Permit Yes or No?

I chose “no” and through my nanites felt for the entry point. The collar around my neck seemed to be where they were trying to invade me. I could allow that but realized that without my full mental prowess I might have issues. Better to keep them out of my body for now. I needed to know how pervasive the nanites were here and allowed the nanites across the surface of my body to inspect all adjacent molecules and atoms and then return.

As I suspected the air, table, restraints, and collar were flooded with nanites that resembled the nanites that I’d released when I’d first started out. If I was comparing them to the generations of nanites that I’d created these nanites were small enough to fit into individual atoms but still hundreds of times bigger than my own. It was still very doubtful they could even detect mine. Thinking back to myself at that point I realized that if someone or something had a similar mentality to mine at the same time in development, mentally, with my current mental faculties, I was going to be far outclassed.

I set up some contingencies with the nanites that had manifested with me in this Cosmos and decided to nap while I could. There was no point in trying to access any phones or satellite uplinks until I knew what was going on. I kept my eyes closed and utilizing the compass function of my nanites followed the path the vehicle I was in was taking.

Estimating that it had taken them at least 15 to 20 minutes to load me into this truck. All I knew for certain was that 33 minutes had passed since the drones had released their electrical attack. A minute ago we’d turned left and my internal compass informed me that we were heading east. If memory served, and it always did, we were on highway 92. If I was right, we’d hit the west side of Wahoo Nebraska, and probably take a left to follow 77 until he veered back to the east and turned into highway 275 or West Center Road. From there, if they were taking me to Offutt Air Force Base (AFB) there were a couple of routes they could take. Determining the exact path would be problematic without allowing my nanites to get me an outside view of where the vehicle was going. I considered it but stopped myself. I didn’t want to give away any possible advantages I had at this point.

This got me thinking. I was in another version of my original Universe. The drone had used the word “Citizen” to describe me which normally indicated some form of the militaristic governmental system. Yet, the map function had been a perfect match for how this area was set up in my world. I guessed if I was going to keep thinking of my world as “my world”. Also, I needed to set some definitions for myself for various Cosmos I’d visited.

My World was the Cosmos or Universe where I first found the ring made by Apolyn. That was also the same Cosmos/Universe I returned to that had been locked out. Cosmos 2 would be the one that held the copy of my original Universe as well as my original place of power, the city of Venoran and the Dungeon of Divine Elements I’d come across, the Cosmos I’d saved. Not that it mattered but I could end up there again someday. Cosmos 3 would have been after the reset and contained the Syndicate. Or were Cosmos 2 and 3 the same Cosmos that had changed? The fourth Cosmos I’d visited was the last one I’d just left that had the Vrax in it and contained my second Soul Projection or Birth.

While I had time to think, I considered everything I’d learned to this point. When I was connected to all my nanites my intelligence and processing power were magnified astronomically. Did this in some way reduce my ability to feel emotions or to let my emotions guide me? As I reviewed some of the crazy things I’d been through I realized that the choices I’d made had fallen away from the lessons that the Goddess Serena had been trying to convey to me. Had I become numb to the feelings of others or oblivious to them? Did knowing that there were souls make those I killed any less important because I knew it wasn’t a permanent death? Part of me quickly answered yes. Another part of me considered the question and felt for an answer. If I was being honest with myself then yes, I was becoming insensitive to others, but only when they crossed me.

The next question I asked myself was Are you going to change? To which I answered no. I’d be as fair as I could but if someone crossed me, all bets were off and if I had to, I’d end them. Which brought my thoughts to my current predicament. This world seemed to be at about the state I’d taken my original Earth to when I’d brought the successes of Portal Inc. to light for everyone. The Earth I was currently on seemed to be following a similar path if mechanical nanites were infesting everything around me.

A helicopter flying low above us brought me out of my thoughts and I realized that we were still on the west side of Omaha. We must be going to the airfield in Menard instead of going to the Air Force Base which was on the southeast side of the metropolis in the Bellevue suburb. The truck took a few more turns and then came to a stop. The back door opened and the table I was on hovered up and out of the truck under its own power. Was I Han Solo after being frozen in carbonite? I couldn’t help myself; I giggled a little.

“So, this is funny to you tough guy?” the guard that had accompanied me asked belligerently.

“Sorry,” I said with mirth in my voice. “I was just thinking that I must look like Han Solo being carted through Cloud City.”

The guards thought for a second before responding with a smile, “I guess you do at that, though where you’re going, Han had it easier,” he said as he placed a gag over my mouth.

Immediately I set my nanites to infiltrate the gag. If I wanted to talk, I would damn well talk. For now, though I laid back and watched my surrounding through the nanites all throughout my body. Sure enough, we were at the Millard Airfield, it wasn’t really an airport as it catered to small aircraft. The guard led my hovering body between two open hanger doors that closed behind me as lights came on. The hanger was empty except for a triangular arch that could easily fit a semi-truck through it. The base took up almost the whole side of the hanger. As I watched the portal activated and four guards came through. The guard that had accompanied me turned, walked to a small access door in the hanger door and went back out onto the airfield. The door clanged behind him, and the four guards took up positions above my head, one on each side and one at my feet. They led me toward the portal, and we passed through.

We moved into a receiving area that had noticeably lower gravity than Earth or the Moon. Each of the guards placed a hand on the table I was on and I realized that the table was guiding their movement as it held me. Their antigravity technology was coming along nicely then. I was guided toward a large, actuated door that rose off the floor and closed once we passed under it. I found myself in an observation room. The table came to rest on a stand in the center of the room. The guards did something to lock it in place then all of them exited through a glass door on the opposite side of the room as I lay there. They stood there in an obvious breech set up waiting for orders to move back into my room. You’d think someone had some trust issues.

I looked around for a few more moments and when I realized nothing else was happening, I closed my eyes, set my nanites to wake me if my circumstances changed, and went to sleep. I didn’t dream, I just closed my eyes, and when I checked my internal clock almost 4 hours had passed when my nanites woke me up as a speaker in the room crackled just before a very familiar voice asked, “Johnathan Bennard?”

“That’s me?” I said as I checked to see if the guards were still in the room adjacent to me. There was another door into that waiting room and only one of the guards was familiar, so I was betting they’d switched out people while I’d been sleeping.

A portal appeared and a man, no, I, stepped through on my left side as he leaned over and said conspiratorially, “Actually, that’s me,” My doppelganger said.

“I was wondering when I was going to run into you,” I said as I had the gag dissolve into nothing.

“You were wondering when you’d run into me?” Johnathan asked seemingly nonplussed by the disappearing gag.

“So, are you going with the Evil Overlord, Sith Master, or Classic Hitler-style bad guy,” I asked?

What are you rambling on about? He asked.

“Well, either my evil twin, though technically you’d be my real self’s evil twin.”

I am not your evil twin and I have all the power here; you should show more respect.”

“I’m sure you know I’m going to say this but I’m going to say it anyway, Respect must be earned,” I said with a smile

“You insolent cur,” he said as he struck my face, which is what I’d been hoping for. I allowed the area he’d slapped to infect his hand and had them start multiplying.

“Very sneaky,” he said. “Trying to infiltrate me with something I can’t even detect, not bad. I must give credit where it is due. Seeing myself so pathetic and then egging me on until I struck you so that you could try to infiltrate me with something. I wonder what it is. My scanners can’t even detect them though I know there multiplying because my mass is decreasing. They must be converting parts of myself, the air and maybe even the particles that are passing through us. Are his nanites smaller than mine? Impossible! Yet here I am gaining mass in an almost vacuum. Alternate me from another Universe or Dimension? Possible, but what are the odds there would be another me with access to nanites or nanites that were just as small or smaller than the ones I’d created?” I listened to him as he continued rambling until his voice died off and then brought my attention back to him as he said, “Can’t have that happening, “

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you?”

“But your not me,” Johnathan said as his fingers came do and he snapped.I

I found myself coming to groggily in my soul space in the place between places. Wait? How am I only level 1?. I pulled up my information and realized that I was me, with the astronomically high stats and levels, not level 1. I had just lived through the memories of a manifestation that returned to my soul. As my mental faculties were back I realized that by setting the criteria I had I had created an equal, almost infinite number of soul shards across all the known Cosmos and that command had been followed exactly. My soul had just been hanging out while my manifestations went to work. Speaking of which, how had I died? Before I could seek out an answer to that question prompts started filling my vision.

2 Manifestations have Returned

3 Manifestations have Returned

4 Manifestations have Returned

….