I lay in a sea of swirling chaos, surrounded by colorful mirage-like clouds of, dark and bright, colloidal energy. My true body extended for countless light-years. Expanding to an extent where it could dwarf most individual multiverses. Then the vast swirling nothingness that made up my true-body gathered sent countless tendrils flying out, capturing a vast collection of spaces and materials. Once I had enough space-time and matter, I began to refine it. Using the power of my soul to melt. Data-manipulation allowed me to add the resulting materials to a super-construct that I was working on.

The concept for the construct was simple. It was basically a super-massive excavator that broke down the things it dug through and sent the resulting material down a pipeline that led to my Empty-Dream. I had long ago had a similar system helping me ply the Chaotic Sea for its resources. Now I’d moved on to tapping into the deep nebula. The great storage space, storm drain, and sewage space for the majority of the cosmos.

While I could arbitrarily set and supply the laws of the Empty-Dream, using my own rapidly growing understanding of the laws of the cosmos, the data, and energy that made up everything else in my “virtual” (with an increasingly huge asterisk) world, needed to come from somewhere. The grand nebula served a source of essentially infinite data and energy that was generally left untapped because most beings would be instantly erased merely coming into contact with that much cosmic volatility.

Strangely, though, I found that not only was I largely unaffected by the all-consuming chaos of this place, it seemed to be making me grow stronger at a much faster rate. Perhaps, that was my adaptive physiology struggling to find new ways to save me, as the chaotic probabilities of the nebula found new ways to try and kill me. Perhaps, being so close to the original suppository for all the memories and histories of the myriad worlds of the cosmos, was spurring on the development of my Empty-Archive. Or perhaps, I was filled with the same kind of anarchic energy that the great nebula was filled with, and my growth was some kind of sympathetic reaction.

Less mysterious, but just as strange, I always ended up with the most pronounced of erections when I finally returned to normal space. It wasn’t so bad, when I was in my true-form. I didn’t really have a sex-drive as a swirling blob of data and nothingness. Never mind, aroused sexual organs. However, once I turned humanoid again. Let’s just say that I once almost killed someone via high-velocity zipper malfunction, and leave it at. Good thing I have two wives to take this weird energy home to. Even better, the energy seemed to do wonderful things to both Jack and Kalpana’s cultivations. So it was a win, win, win all around.

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Jack sat in her office, a space of cool, comfortable, darkness. A darkness that was filled with the glowing lines of data from a custom-crafted office-software suit that her husband had made for the two of them. On her left were charts and reports, informing her of the present, past, and future, of the 122 multiverses that were currently under their family’s control. On her right, were dossiers on the various women she thought would make a good match for her husband, her family, and herself.

“Hm…” grumbled Jack.

Though they still ran one, just to cover their Ps and Qs, Jill’s Empty-Archive largely negated the need for an extensive intelligence agency. Becoming the administrator and chief rulers over those multiverses had increased their access-rights to the collective unconscious and akashic realm, further increasing the utility of Jill’s Empty-Archive, in keeping them abreast to all the goings-on within the Empty-Bell Complex. Thus with only a single afternoon’s reading, Jill could coldly and impassively mark 319 worlds for summary deletion.

These were their own territories, and the Empty-Society was no longer at war with these worlds, so Jack wasn’t dark-hearted as to just delete those planets, galaxies, and universes at will. She’d double-check using her wife Kalpana’s people to confirm the data that she saw before her eyes, while also, giving the rulers and heavenly wills of those worlds a final chance to course correct.

Alas, only 300 of those 319 would be given this merciful treatment. There were 19 worlds whose data had damned them from a distance. There was no need for further evidence, nor was their need for warnings, or any kind of trial. The errant and perverted flow of causality within those worlds was enough to condemn them. The charges for their crimes were so dire, that even if they were by some strange fluke, partially innocent, the very specter of having potentially been involved in such acts was enough to require their immediate erasure lest they doom countless other worlds.

There was no real mortal equivalent for this crime. It was a crime on par with the creation of new trogs. An act of cosmic, obscenity. The closest approximation would be a mortal somehow managing to go back in time to the earliest forebears of their enemy, so they could fornicate, cook, and eat the jellied protoplasm that would eventually evolve into the man that would one day be their foe. An act of extreme folly, not only because it was a shared ancestor, but also because that protoplasm was both highly toxic and biologically immortal. In other words, a crime of being both stupid and profane at a level that might potentially force the cosmos itself to act.

Thus it was, in various faraway worlds, countless shadowy figures that gathered in unholy places to try and tap into forbidden energies, suddenly felt their fates get violently severed. A conspiracy of devils and dark gods was foiled before it could even get off the ground. All its participants disappeared in a flash, of soul-shattering light, and boiling subatomic material. Meanwhile, the unfathomably ancient things that were sealed away within the oldest encoding of the cosmos, fell back into their heavy slumber, somehow sensing that their chance at waking and being freed again had been thwarted.

Elsewhere still, a great many beings divined that an ominous danger that had been about to fall upon them had inexplicably vanished. Before there had been a shadow stopping them from seeing what was what. A shadow cast by the ancient beings that had been sealed away by the cosmos itself. Sealed within the hard-bricked encoding of an earlier version of the cosmos. Now that shadow had been lifted, and a great many immortal factions, had hard words to say to other parties within and slightly beyond the Empty-Bell Complex.

After destroying the 19 worlds, Jack quickly wrote up and sent out a report of the incident, complete with corresponding data and documentation explaining her actions and observations. This, plus the sudden removal of a rare blocking of their near-omniscience was enough to turn the House of Antipodes and its associates in the Division into another wasp of angered bees. Thus Jack, unknowingly gained a measure of vengeance against her employers and superiors, for the headache that had been dropped on the heads of herself, her spouses, and her allies.

The House couldn’t let what almost happened stand. The very fact that knowledge of those sealed ancients, and earlier iterations of the cosmos was out there somewhere was enough to make them move. The fact that someone had almost freed those ancient monsters was unacceptable, a situation dire enough that this entire patch of the cosmos might have needed to be scrubbed by the ancient ones in the higher planes. The contemporaries of those monsters that had been sealed away ages ago.

It wasn’t all death and hellfire, there were a great many worlds that would be sent aid and assistance from their new overlords. There were a great many worlds whose heavenly wills would soon be receiving enough materials, data, and energy to evolve themselves and the worlds they governed. Last, but far from least, all worlds of the Empty-Bell Complex would be connected to, and granted access to, the Empty-Network and the Empty-Dream.

Once work was done, Jack turned her attention to the other set of charts and figures. She tapped her chin and hummed to herself as she paired at a particular set of profiles.

“Hm, we’ve already had one marriage. We just need a few more,” muttered Jack. Sending a message to a certain, gruff, yet annoyingly shy, warrior to invite her over for tea, and asking Jill what day would be good for him.

“I would have thought that shrinking violet of an Empress would have been the problem, but no…”You’re” the one who has to make this difficult, tch…” grumbled Jack. Also, sending a message to the Empress, accepting an invitation she’d proffered the Calloways a few weeks prior.

Jack already knew there was no helping her husband, she was pretty sure they’d both still be virgins right now if she hadn’t put some serious effort in. Meanwhile, the other party was just as shy and indecisive, as her husband had been in. If the two of them were the last two members of their species, their race would quietly go extinct while the two of them dithered over who should make the first move, and what that first move was even supposed to be.

The most annoying part was that Jack was 95 to 98 percent sure they both held at least ‘some’ romantic interest in each other. She wouldn’t be pushing this hard if that weren’t the case. If they didn’t like each other, then Jack could have just given up, assuming it was just something not meant to be.