Terrance couldn’t believe what he was seeing, “Jack are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“That’s not possible,” Jack shot back. You know where that memory sector is, once they fail, everything we’ve learned says entropy should destroy it.”

“Wait! What is that?” Terrance asked as a torrent of energy started entering the output buffer.

“It would seem that some of the Saved have decided it’s time to come back to us,” Jack said.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Jack said repeating himself.

“You’re starting to sound like a broken record Terrance. Can the facilities handle this level of output?

“It would be easier to create and seed a planet than place them there,” Jack said.

“One planet?” Terrance asked as he looked at the amount of data that was being placed in the buffer.

“You’re right, it’ll need to be colossal in scale. We still have room for people in any of the Fliateth bio universes?” Jack said.

“Yes, but as you know, everyone in one of those biospheres is there waiting for an opportunity to join the SYSTEM,” Terrance said.

“You don’t join the SYSTEM, the SYSTEM Is used on you,” Jack said.

“I know, but it just sounds cooler that way,” Terrance said.

“You know what SYSTEM stands for right?” Jack asked.

Terrance looked back at Jack with flat eyes, “Of course, I know what the letters of SYSTEM stand for, Sentience Yanking Soul Engram Manufacturer. I still don’t believe people lose their souls when it’s used on them. Nor do I believe it helps create souls Terrance said

“We’ll we’re about to find out because that sector that just spontaneously unquarantined itself housed the Originals,”

Seriously? SYSTEM was used on them before the Soul Wars? Terrance asked.

“You think they’ll come back with their souls?” Jack asked.

“I think, by the amount of data that we are seeing shows that we are getting more people back than the number of originals that were placed in there,”

“That was only a few years ago,” Jack said.

“You know the specs. The engrams are encoded and added to an entropic-resistant array in a universe that has achieved heat death. There are no black holes, cosmic radiation, or any other such stimuli that can change or alter the arrays once placed. Theoretically, they can last forever, though a quantum event could happen spontaneously. Still, our scientists work diligently to make sure that doesn’t happen. As you know the sector of the array that failed was the first location the originals were placed.”

“I know,” Jack said cutting Terrance off, “the Arrays were meant to be a place one could download their consciousness and their ‘soul’ into to live out eternity without being destroyed. When that sector of the array failed and we quarantined it our stock market value crumpled and measures were taken to make sure it didn’t happen again, while a crash project was started to make the Flaiteth biouniverses that could house the many people that didn’t want to use the SYSTEM right away.

***

I woke up fully expecting myself to be in a bed or some other such area with Terrance and Jack looking at me. I looked around for Terrance or Jack. No one, anywhere. I wasn’t floating in Primal Chaos, nor was I at my estate. I was, I looked up at the stars in the night sky on Earth. A quick calculation and I figured I was in the Northern Hemisphere.

I thought about the dream I’d just had. The subconscious could be a powerful tool and I honestly didn’t utilize mine all that often because I hardly ever slept anymore. Jack and Terrance were probably just random names I put on random faces. As I couldn’t remember meeting or seeing anyone that looked like them before, which was saying something as I’d seen billions of people.

As I thought about my dream some more I had to admit that Flaiteth Biouniverse was a nice touch. Flat Earth, my subconscious had a sense of humor. I could almost imagine my subconscious looking at me and saying “Bazinga!” in Sheldon’s voice from ‘The Big Bang Theory.’

Still, the ideas that my mind had put together. There was a book by Gregory Benford called “Eater.” That book described a sentient Black Hole. The black hole had been made sentient because arrays had been made out of the magnetic fields around the black hole and those arrays had been used to store civilizations worth of knowledge, including minds., whether the civilization wanted to or not. Even in that system though, the black hole would eventually evaporate, and the magnetic fields would disperse, which I’d picked up on when I first read the book.

My subconscious had taken the idea in that book one step further and tried to piece together everything that had happened and everything I’d learned to explain what was going on. Unfortunately, my subconscious forgot about one thing. I opened my hand and conjured flame then froze it with a time-stop spell. Yeah, I had magic, and I could still cast it. The dream was so vivid though. I guess magic could be simulated but that would be tricky, especially anything involving time travel unless it was like Peter F Hamilton described in the book ‘The Temporal Void.’ What if every moment could be saved? No that wouldn’t have worked either. The energy requirements alone. I shook my head; no way was that possible. As soon as I’d realized that while dreaming I’d finally been able to break free from the dream.

I tried to open my quantum link to Thor and found that it wasn’t there anymore. Whatever the change had done to everyone had altered me just enough to destabilize my connections with my nanites. I’d need to physically visit Thor to reestablish that link. If Thor still had nanites throughout the planet though, he should be able to hear me.

“Thor,” I asked to the empty air.

As I watched the sand at my feet morphed into a small speaker. Adam, is that you, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere.?” Thor asked.

“First things first, status update?” I asked.

“All family members and friends are gone, everyone left approximately a year and a day ago. Training at the dungeon has gone well and people in general seem to be happier. Something changed at the fundamental quantum level that I cannot quantify yet things seem different. Everything is just slightly off, though all natural laws seem to be continuing as advertised. Al has asked to speak to you when your return.”

“Okay, I’m going to try one of my new abilities. I’ll be at your core in a moment.”

“I moved it, I’ll need to open a portal for you,” Thor said as a portal opened in front of me.

I stepped through the portal into a large chamber and found myself looking out of an observation window at a single star, “Where are we, Thor?” I asked.

“We are approximately 100,000 light-years outside the milky way at what was once a dying star.”

“I thought I asked you not to expand too far out and to protect humanity?” I asked quizzically.

“And I did so within the Milky Way. After you left a major change prevented me from creating nanites that could go truly subatomic so I went through the memories your shared with me and utilizing portals, magnetic fields, and the nanites I could create I found one of the rogue stars that was outside of the Milky Way in our Local Galaxy Group. I am currently utilizing portals to search for rogue planetoids and stars as I continuously work to get 10 million light years away from the Milky Way and outside of the Local Group altogether and as far away from the Great Attractor.”

“You know, I never did go investigate that anomaly of space-time that’s drawing all the galaxy clusters towards it. Now I might not be able to. Then again. I can supposedly step to anywhere I’ve been or anything I can see so I might still be able to get there.”

“I have chosen to follow your initial orders and not make a spectacle of myself,” Thor said dryly.

“Fair enough. So, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“I have utilized some mass from various dead worlds and gas giants in various dead solar systems near Earth as well as some of the knowledge you gave me to return this almost-dead star to a condition that should prevent it from decaying for another 3 billion or so years.

“How’d you get the energy to do all that?”

“I created arrays similar to the ones from your memories and placed them and their portals in stars near Earth. Currently, I am expanding the energy production to this location. This far out there are no rogue comets or asteroids and the infrastructure to generate the power Earth and I will need for the foreseeable future is secure.”

“And possible invaders, both already on Earth and that might arrive?”

I have created a transporter system just outside the Oort cloud that takes any object that is trying to enter Earth’s space and places It outside again. If objects are traveling faster than the speed of light and they can be detected a portal opens directly in front of them and they find themselves thousands of light-years from Earth in the opposite direction they came from on a vector at least 30 degrees askew from Earth.

“So, if they reverse their direction, they won’t be headed back to Earth immediately. Good idea.”

“Thank you. I’ve also scanned many planets near Earth and anyone arriving on Earth without announcing themselves immediately finds themselves elsewhere. In a habitat that can support them where we have a conversation. If the Conversation is cordial they get to visit. If not, they are warned not to return. If they do, well, you know how quickly nanites can break down a body,” Thor said.

“How many simultaneous incidents could you handle if a true invasion force tried to enter the Sol system?” I asked.

“If they were coming by ship I have 100 arrays that can work continuously with 50 backup arrays. A fleet moving at, or near light speed would never get near Earth. If beings were teleporting in, well, I can move up to 8 billion humans currently and have started creating a second Earth here just in case.”

“Change your scale and look at turning this into a Dyson Sphere. You should have the information to create one of those already.

“I do. I didn’t because the number of resources necessary for that will strip systems completely?” Thor asked.

“I know, do it. Try to leave the stars intact, but any dead systems near Earth, cannibalize everything and create the Dyson Sphere. First, it will hide the location of this haven. Second, it will provide a lot more land mass for Humanity to evacuate to if they need to.”

“Do you think that will be necessary?”

“I think the changes that Reality just went through are going to invite conflict. I’d hope that Humanity has a place to flee to that is not easily accessible by creatures from the Labyrinth. The other reason to make a Dyson Sphere instead of a planet is, It should be a long time before a Dungeon could form and make that connection, though, I have no data to support that conclusion. I could be wrong, and a dungeon will form as soon as the Dyson Sphere is habitable.”

“I’ll get to work.”

“Good, now let’s reestablish that quantum link. I think we’re going to need to go old school and I’m going to use an implant again.”

“To be clear, we can still utilize nanites to invade and control others, they’re detectable though. Once I realized all the microscopic nanites were breaking down I set all nanites to inorganic materials only. The couple of times I’ve tested using them on humans the process hasn’t looked pleasant.”

“I bet, I said with a rueful grin, “before the nanites were small enough that they could forcefully coerce the cells of a body to do our bidding. Now it’s straight-up brute force. That’s probably not very pleasant.”

“Are you going to retake control of the nanites?” Thor asked.

“No, the nanites are yours to control. You know there are still commands in place that allow me to take control if necessary. I’m just going to quantumly link ourselves again so we can stay in touch if you need me as well as be able to ask you for assistance,” I said.

“Understood,” Thor said.

I used Chaos Shape to create the implant and then allowed Thor to implant the device using the nanites, so it sat directly behind my left ear subdermally and connected directly to my brain. I’d had to willfully turn off my pain receptors at one point because damn, it hurt a little bit. Not having an Insanely high endurance and constitution sucked a tad. I was also finding it a little harder to calculate based on new data, but my perfect memory bolstered by Thor’s who was still a massive AI array and now connected to me again fixed most of that issue. It wasn’t that I was becoming dimmer. It was simply that my brain wasn’t working as fast anymore. Thor made up for that.

As I healed I realized that I was healing quicker than my Personal Information stated I should. The implant had done approximately 5 points of damage to me which should have taken 2 seconds to close up and heal. Instead, it closed up and healed as it was implanted. I checked my data and crosschecked with Thor and sure enough, it looked like my Health Regeneration was at about 8 health per second.

“Thor, could you check my Personal Information and stats and figure out what values my attributes would need to be at to give me a health regeneration of 8 per second please?” I asked as I shared my Personal Information with Thor.

“Sure thing, Adam, one second,” he said as a paused then continued, I’m sure you noticed the asterisk next to each of your attributes?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That sentence under ‘Chaotic Core’ that states ‘Your default body is that which you have become accustomed to’.

“What about it?” I asked.

“Until the recent changes your level was over 200 million if I’m not mistaken. At that level, all of your attributes were above what you have now?” Thor asked.

“Yes, well above”

“Currently you have exactly 8,000 attributes to distribute among your attributes giving you 747 in each right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Karmic Luck being at 8,000 gave it away…” Thor started to say

“I get it. Because the most points any single attribute could ever have is 8,000 my Chaos core is treating my body as if I had 8,000 in each attribute,” I said.

“Exactly. If all your attributes were 8,000 your health regeneration would be 8 per second. Conversely, your mana regeneration will return at 1,342 per second and your stamina at 44 per second. As you have to willfully convert Mana to Chaos Points you will be able to utilize Chaos at 63 per second if your mana is full and always have 100 Chaos.”

“Thor I need to check something. My new running speed should be right around 176 Mph if all my attributes are 8,000. I want to try to push myself. Please Open a portal to the Statue of Liberty,”

A portal opened and I stepped out into an early fall morning near the Statue of liberty. I had a couple of ideas. First I activate Chaos Step and started running East. As I suspected, Chaos step allowed me to run out over the water as if I was on solid land. I adjusted my angle and started running up into the air. After 10 seconds I realized my chaos was steadily going down, so I adjusted my mana conversion to Chaos to replace the missing chaos and replenish my Chaos Points at one per second. It wasn’t willed movement but it was close. With that settled, I said, “Thor, keep track of my speed please,”

You got it, Thor sent through our link

I leveled out fifty feet above the ocean and then increased my speed to 176 mph. It was almost effortless. My stamina was returning faster than I could spend it. My mana replacement was taking care of Chaos Step and I was running quite fast. Then I focused my intent and pushed to go faster. Adaption kicked in after I reached 300 miles per hour and I also saw that I was now losing 2 Chaos Points per second. At 600 miles per hour, the wind resistance became unbearable and no matter what I did I couldn’t push myself to go faster. Also, I was now spending 3 Chaos Points per second.

I slowed to a normal walking pace out over the Atlantic then Chaos Stepped to my Estate, then Apolyn’s Place of Power in another Universe, then back to my Moon, and even to Lexi’s home world before I stepped back to my estate. I’d chosen the Lexi Home world just to make sure it still existed and to also see if they were still around this time around.

“Okay Thor,” I said as I finished Chaos Stepping between locations, “what did you detect?” I asked.

“As you ran there was a slight release of radiation that matches our records of chaotic energy usage. When you Chaos Stepped to areas I could observe there was a higher intensity of radiation but nothing too dangerous to you or anyone near you if were following. By the way, where did you go that I didn’t observe?” Thor asked.

“The Lexi home world,” I said.

“Of course, you did,” Thor said resignedly, “Anything I need to know?”

“They’ll probably come looking, eradicate them this time if they do. No more playing mister nice guy with homicidal maniacs. If they don’t come this way, just leave them alone. Who knows, maybe they’ll grow out of being complete douchebags.”

“Understood,” Thor said.

I paused for a minute then said, “So, I lost the ability to go as fast as I want because the natural laws are not easily overwritten by magic, but magic is allowing me to break those laws relatively easily based on my abilities. It also looked like the Chaos in my system could further overcome the limitations set forth by the System, “I’m gonna try one more thing then I’m going to go talk to Al,” I said.

“What’s that?” Thor asked

“Thor needs a Hammer, I sent back as I focused my will and tried to use my new ability Chaos Shape to try to create Mjolnir, The God of Thunder’s mighty hammer.

CHAOS SHAPE ATTEMPT FAILED. Mjolnir already exists.

“What happened?” Thor asked.

“Nothing, Mjolnir already exists,” I said. Then my mind caught up with what I’d just said. I had time to think one word, “Shit!” as Ptah, not Thor, but Ptah appeared before me and slapped me across the face doing 24 points of damage to my cheek.

“Thor says hello!” Ptah said with a laugh

“Ptah, what the hell?” I asked reaching up to rub my cheek.

“You did it moral, you bloody well did it!”

“Did what? And why did you slap me?” I asked angrily.

“Simmer down. The slap was from Thor, who sends his regards. The slap was for trying to create his named weapon, which is paramount to stealing it,” Ptah said.

“Oh.”

“Oh? Just Oh? As responses go I thought that was pretty restrained for a God of Olympus,” Ptah said as he cleared his voice and in his best baritone said, “I like that guy but make sure to give him a good thwack. No one gets to touch my hammer.”

I thought about how to respond to the display and then put on a proper face of contrition as I said, “When you see Thor, please convey my humblest apologies. Lesson learned, creating named artifacts that belong to divines on the ‘Do not even try’ list,” I said.

“Good, now that that is out of the way I just came by to let you know that all of us that served as Arcanus Numen for the quarantined area have been returned to our previous glory as Gods. We have a lot of catching up to do so you might not see any of us for a while, if ever again,” Ptah said.

“Since I hadn’t really run into all that many of you, thanks. I do have a question, was this the plan all along?” I asked.

“There was never a plan. There was a hope that one day we’d be able to join our brethren again.”

“So, without going into too many details can I guess what happened, and you’ll let me know if I’m getting cold or hot?”

“Sure, I’ve got a few moments, “Ptah said.

“Some event in the far past, cut off several Realms from the rest of Reality, all still within the Primal Chaos. At some point in the future, the previous holder of the title of Arcanus Numen of Fortune tried to fix the problem without understanding what caused the break and created the Cosmos that fractured.”

“Pretty damn warm,” Ptah said.

“So, the Gods that were left, where you actual Gods or where your pieces of yourself trapped here?” I asked.

“Some of us were fully within this region of reality when the ‘accident’ happened. Others were not. Those of us that were here fully, or mortals that followed the new rules and advanced to Godhood became the Arcanus Numen you ran into. As I’m sure you have figured out, the more we tried to fix the issue, the worse it became. That is until you became involved,” Ptah said.

“And my family and friends?” I asked.

“They have created their own Pantheon, called the Steel Heavens, and have opted to establish themselves in the Realm your daughter ended up in.”

“Can you send me there?” I asked quickly.

“No. And before you go all murder hobo, your loved one is the one who set the conditions that require me to give you this answer. An agreement that the Pantheon made was that no God of the Steel Heavens could contact or let be known that her mother was there. She is to be referred to as “The Shadow Mistress” if spoken about. As a mortal, you are not so restricted. Should you choose to become a divine this restriction will automatically be placed upon you as well. As a mortal, you may find your way there through the means provided naturally, which I’m to understand you know of?” Ptah asked.

“Yes, I can get there through the Labyrinth. I’ll just ask Bri so no issue there.”

“About Bri, I cannot say more than to suggest you should speak with Al.

“Okay?” I said questioningly

“So, the Steel Heavens Exist, they are no longer anywhere near this Realm and your daughter, as far as I can tell, is doing fine. Did I answer your most important questions?” Ptah asked.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Now that we are no longer quarantined I am off to do what I do best, and you are off to do what you do best. Meddle,” Ptah said when I looked at him questionly as he faded from view until he disappeared entirely.