What do you call a genius that can travel through time?

You call me Caelus.

Loop 84 Year 8 Day 1

LE wakes up again today. His cell is completely different than last time. It is actually much more comfortable. He isn’t chained at all. He even has a nice bed and couch. I am just outside his cell. I look inside it through a sheet of Plexiglas.

“Hello Little Emperor. How are we doing today?”

His face tells me he is confused.

“What? Where am I? Caelus? Why would you put me somewhere nice?”

His questions tell me he is confused.

“I have some questions for you. IF you answer all of them, then I will allow you to have your freedom in the next Loop. Otherwise, you will have to experience torture for a few Loops. Understand?”

He hangs his head. It’s obvious that his only choice is to obey me. Even if he only wants to betray me later, he has to at least come up with a believable lie.

I ask him: “What do you know about my power?”

He truthfully answers. “You have the power to revert time to eight years ago, from today. “

“Ok, that checks out. How did you intend on getting rid of me once you had me entire power?”

His face twitches for a moment, then he answered. “By taking out someone’s entire soul, you effectively render them brain dead. I figured that by fusing our souls together, with me having over half of your soul, I’d be able to have control of your power. You told me that I’d be able to obtain someone’s power if I assimilated more than half of their souls.”

A memory comes to me. It is the very scene he is talking about. It feels like I’m unlocking the memory. It was still sealed?

It dawns on me. The self that got LE to help me, also sealed some memories behind an extra layer of sealing. I can fix that in an instant. Which I decide to do right after my conversation with LE.

“Alright. Another question then. Tell me everything you know about how powers work.”

He begins to tell me.

To summarize:

Powers are somehow linked to the soul. He doesn’t know how. What he does know is that the more powerful someone’s power is, the more powerful their souls are. The more powerful someone’s soul is, the less LE can absorb of it. Apparently I told him all of this information in a past Loop.

Powers could gain potency, but he doesn’t know how. He has watched as a few people he controls gain more powerful versions of their power. He thinks that is like his, a rare chance of ‘evolving’ a power.

Also he notes that animals never have powers; and that people with powers usually don’t turn into the irregulars.

That is basically the extent of his knowledge on general ideas of powers.

“Two last questions. First: How do you stop your power?”

He hesitates. Of course he does. Who would want to give up the secret to their power? I am honestly sort of surprised he seems to know of a weakness to his own power, but he would be the one that does.

“My power has no weaknesses that I know of.”

He screams in pain. Electric bolts stream from all directions, and concentrate on his body. The chemicals in his mind that allow one to numb pain, are temporarily cut off.

After a few seconds, he faints.

“Keep him unconscious until I wake up.” I wait.

While I wait, I enter into a trance-like state. I fall unconscious as I sift through my own memories. I forcefully look through the two most recent Eras. I find more holes than I would like. They obviously are hiding things from me.

By concentrating on the memories that are missing, they slowly unfold before me. Many things are hidden. It takes months of searching. Most of the things they hide are simple, pointless. But some things are specifically meant to be kept from our future selves.

Two Eras ago, I watch as the version of me of that time makes plans to assimilate future selves. That is why he wants to hide it! He doesn’t get consumed, because he doesn’t think of ending the Era! He thinks of consuming the future minds, like the first ‘me’.

I wouldn’t want my future selves to know about that either. What worries me is that he somehow makes it so I will ignore the memories even surrounding that one. He does it in such a way that I wouldn’t look for it unless I know that they are missing already.

Past me is smart. But current me is smarter.

Loop 84 Year 8 Day 16

I successfully unlock all of the memories of the previous two Eras. I wake up from my trance-like state. I’m on my bed. Why am I on my bed? The bots no doubt.

As I walk to Little Emperor’s chamber, I have AI wake him up. It takes about an hour to get there, so I will give him plenty of time to wake up and not be groggy.

By the time I get there, he is laying on his bed. “Sorry, I forgot to mention something. I’ve implanted a chip inside your mind. I can accurately predict when you are lying. Hell I can even tell what emotions you are feeling at any given time.”

LE looks towards me in awe. I guess the past two Eras don’t do this kind of thing to him too much. “Now, I’ll ask again. If you lie to me, it will be worse than last time. I’m only giving you one chance: How do you stop your power?”

His face contorts. He is visibly having trouble deciding whether or not he should tell me. Telling me is equivalent to me controlling whether or not he goes into any future loops. Not telling me is the same as being tortured until he fesses up.

With a long sigh, he begins to talk. “I have to come into physical contact with someone to make my power work. If I can’t touch someone, I can’t manipulate their souls. If someone has a more powerful soul than mine, I also can’t effect it. The only reason I could affect yours, is that your soul is weak from lack of memories. A soul is memories, without them, the soul is shallow. No contact no control.”

AI spoke to me inside my mind. “He is hiding something else.”

“What are you keeping from me?”

He looks shocked at first, but shakes his head ruefully. “Fine, I guess it can’t hurt anymore to tell you. If someone attacks my soul directly, or if I try to take possession of a different soul, the one I have now will return to its original owner: You.”

He seems to be telling the truth. At least AI thinks so.

LE quickly interjects something though. “But! But if I did that, you would have that entity return. I’ve gained much knowledge regarding this entity. He wants to consume your mind, your soul, and add it to his own. He has been doing this far, far longer than either of us has been alive.”

“Good enough. Final question. What will happen if I take the parts of my soul that you stole back?”

LE looks at me as if I’ve gone insane. Did I ask something stupid?

“You’ll be devoured by the entity. Its only goal is to consume you. Since it can’t consume me, it is locked in a stalemate. You were actually the one that made me take a small part of this entity out of you. So I can only guess that you were able to locate it, and wanted it gone. Why would you want me to give it back?”

I smile. That’s all I needed to know. In truth I didn’t specifically ask him to take that part out. The original me was just so big that he happened to take it out. He misconstrued it to be what I wanted. That’s fine.

I mentally give AI the signal. She kills him. I am only going to focus on a few more experiments before ending this Loop myself. So I might as well get started.