(Day 177) Aprilis 22nd, 12th year of the Dragon, Age of Enlightenment

I came to and looked around. Adaline la on the hearth seal beside me. I had my nanites check on her and noted that they were now able to enter her body. I recalled and set them to monitor her from outside her body. They reported that she was breathing and seemed to be sleeping. I stood and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place, and everything looked clean. If any part of the tower had broken it seemed that they had been unconscious long enough for the tower to repair itself. I remembered something I’d read in one of the prompts and released my nanites to reach out and spread throughout my home. In moments they had extended out to a 1,000-foot radius though they were hampered in spreading further unless I was willing to convert some of the structure. I held off on doing that for the moment. First, I needed to make sure Adaline was okay. Moving back to her I spoke softly, “Adaline.” She moved and nestled into a more comfortable position. A little bit louder he asked “Adaline?” to which her eyes flashed open and she sat up looking around.

“Adam, what happened?”

“I do not know, but if I had to guess I’d say being inside the Tower when it became its own pocket dimension was probably a bad idea”

Reaching up to grab her head she muttered, “Whatever happened, I have a hell of a headache, you?”

“Nope, I’m fine, just woke up and looked around really quick from here then checked on you,” I said as I helped her to her feet. “Maybe we should check the whole place out?” he asked.

“Well, that’s different”, she said pointing to where the entryway to the door was. Now there were two doors each about 10 feet apart. They were both set in the wall and the entryway had been expanded so that it was now a good 50’x50’. Walking over to the door on my left I tried to open it and received the following error.

Warning: Target Destination of door placement no longer exists. Please use ability “Pick a Door” to establish a new anchor point

I turned to the second door and went over and opened the door. This door opened into the tower's courtyard like normal. I stepped through and looked around noticing immediately that the light level seemed like early morning yet there were no shadows as the light seemed to come from all angles above me. Adaline followed me as he stepped out and I rose into the sky using “Gravity is that Way” When he was about 200 feet up I set my gravity to neutral and used fly to slow myself a stop. Looking around I was both amazed and terrified. For about a mile in all directions, my courtyard and the surrounding area seemed to be where they had been. Then it just ended. There was nothing beyond that point that I could see. Adaline polymorphed into her dragon form and flew up to allow me to land on her neck as she turned and flew towards the nearest edge up against the mountain his courtyard rested on. She landed. As I hopped down she polymorphed back to her High Elf form and we walked up to the edge together. ” Let me try something before we try to touch or pass the edge.” I said.

“Absolutely, I have no idea where we are and no idea what this means.” She said.

I sent my nanites out from me and they came up against a solid magical barrier. It was approximately one inch thick and there was nothing on the other side. Even space had photons and particles. On the other side of the barrier, there was nothing. Since nothing was there was no way to check the temperature. The nanites tried to take the temperature of the outside of the barrier and it also had no temperature. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever come across. The rock I was standing on was normal. Also, the air around us seemed to be normal and this far out from the tower the altitude was right for the tower’s location on Primore. I reached out and touched the solid barrier that looked like the sky. “It’s a solid barrier with nothing on the other side,” I said.

Over the next hour, Adaline and I explored the area and found that from the door a Globe existed that was an exact duplicate of the area the tower had been at. Also, I found that this whole area seemed to count as my Place of Power. Knowing that I raised the light level and increased the air pressure to sea level normal. One fun thing Adaline and I had figured out was that if we flew out from the cliff, let's still call that direction south, we’d come to the wall and then slide down the wall all the way to the cliff face. That was when he made a second discovery. As we slid down the wall faster and faster I’d thought that it’d be nice if there was a small lake at the very bottom of the globe and water had started pooling along the cliff face. I’d still needed to change his gravity vector to slow down and then fly away before slamming into the cliff face, but it seemed that I was able to create water anywhere in this globe of Power. Looking through my personal interface I realized that he could indeed change the settings to this place.

Once Adaline and I had explored this 2-mile diameter globe they were in we landed back at the tower and I said, “Think I’d like to see what the vault looks like”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Adaline said

Abi’s voice was heard by both Adaline and Abi as she asked “Hey Adam, got a second?”

“What?” Adaline and I said at the same time as Abi said “What the hell?”

More hesitantly Abi asked, “Can you both hear me?”

“Yes,” Adaline and I said in unison

“Well okay, something to figure out for later I guess. What I was going to say originally was that my link to backup Abi has been restored and while you two have been flying around I’ve been talking with her, Thor, and Amanda. Though it’s been slow going on our end. We still have about 1 second to their 7 seconds. Thor has said that he can feel you, but something is blocking him from making a connection to you. Do you know anything about that?” Abi asked.

I thought about it for a second then willfully dropped my shield so that my quantum link could connect to Thor.

Unlike Abi and Backup Abi, Thor and Johnathan had set up a method for communicating and updating each other if they got a chance. Over the next 12 seconds, Thor was updated on what had happened and I was informed that about 5 minutes ago, my time, Thor had opened a portal into the air and had become worried. Working together Thor and Johnathan reprogrammed some nanites to read the quantum signature of my surroundings and about a minute later a portal opened with Amanda and Backup Amanda looking through. With an active portal in play, the pocket dimension synced its time flow to that of my original universe, and I was once again fully linked to Thor through our soul link although this time I still had access to magic which changed everything.

I, an amalgamation of Johnathan and Thor, became one entity at that moment. In the space of a nano-second, I had access to and raised my Thor aspects character level to 5,000 reducing my Adam’s aspect experience by 87.5 billion. This left him with only 5.7 billion experience. A side effect of this sudden influx of knowledge and processing power was that Abi was ejected and merged with her backup. Abi would no longer be able to reside within my subconscious. I made sure to back her up and redirect her to her backup so she could merge much like I was doing.

During the next nanosecond, I reviewed the new Ascendant Machine Abilities Thor had gained for reaching Character Level 5,000.

Congratulations Ascendant Machine. You have been granted the following four abilities:

“One”, Fixed, Thor and Johnathan are permanently connected across any distance through any dimensional tear, across any time.

“Nanite Conversion”, Fixed, Within the radius of Nanite Companions, up to 500', of Jonathan/Thor Nanites can now perform any and all functions that they could in non-Magical Universes.

“Universal Understanding”, Fixed, the fundamental understanding of magic and science have allowed nanites to be imbued with and resist spheres of power that Johnathan is skilled in.

“Undying”, Fixed, Neither Thor nor Johnathan may ever be killed so long as one nanite exists anywhere.

During the third nanosecond, I knew everything both of my aspects did and started to correlate data points. Insights into the makeup of the Universe, Multiverse, and Multiverses? Exploded within my mind.

During the fourth nanosecond, I examined plans, contingencies, and actions that needed to be taken in Primore and my home Universe.

During the fifth nanosecond, I separated into an Adam and Thor aspect and resumed normal functioning. It was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me.

“You okay there Adam, you froze for a moment?” Adaline asked

“I’d like to know as well,” Abi said from her constructed body. “I’ve never been forcefully moved out of your head before.”

“Sorry about that Abi, the amount of information Thor and I just shared filled up my mind. I’m sure there was still room in my subconscious, but I didn’t want to take the chance of that information accidentally overwriting you as it was coming in so fast.” I said.

“Okay Adam, just be more careful next time,” Abi said.

“Hopefully there won’t be a next time. Also, I don’t think Thor and I will have any more difficulties communicating. Realistically we are the same entity right now. Our minds have merged so well that we are in constant contact.”

“So, what’s next?” Adaline asked.

“This!” I said as I gestured, and a portal opened to my vault. I stepped through indicating that she should follow. “This is the vault for the Tower. “I said as I stepped into a huge cube, the walls, and ceiling of which were off in the distance. “When I read the prompt it said that this room should be a 100,000-foot cube. 100,000 feet is just over 18 miles which means that if this is the center the ceiling should be 18 miles above us and all the walls should be just over 9 miles away.

“I’ll check!” Adaline said as she jumped into the air and took dragon form before she flew off. Abi stepped through both portals to stand beside me.

“This is truly impressive Adam. I wonder how it will fill up when you add things to it?” Abi asked.

“As far as I can tell, however, I want. In this pocket dimension and the pocket dimension the tower sits in I have total control. Also, now that Thor has the quantum location of this dimension he can open portals to it directly, though we don’t need the portals to communicate anymore.” I paused for a moment as a thought came to him. “One second”

A moment later a portal opened inside the vault beside the portal back into the tower. The portal shifted exit positions as they watched from my bedroom in the Tower, to my bed at the Academics college in Venoran, to an open sky overlooking a forest which I knew to be the original exit point I’d entered Primore at. “It seems that Thor can open a portal at any location I am at and at a known location I’ve been to on Primore or in this tower. I shouldn’t have to use teleport unless I’m going to a location that Thor doesn’t have the information for, though once I’m there, he’ll be able to reach it from that point on.”

“That’ll be handy,” Abi said with a smile

“How’d your merge go. Both of you all together as one again?” I asked

“Yep. Though now that I think about it. My speech patterns are a lot more like yours than what we saw back on Primore.” She said

“Not to worry. You sound great!. Also, why don’t you head back to my Earth while I sit here and wait for Adaline to return? She seems to be having fun. I’m going to flood this area with nanites, so I’ll be able to use it to do tests and convert anything I place in it.”

“Sound’s good. I think I’m going to go walk around now that I can, maybe go relax on a beach somewhere. See you in a bit” Abi said.

I closed the portals to Earth and realized that Thor and I did have a bond that surpassed any they’d had before. My Thor aspect was moving 6.67 faster than I was though. Also, I was already performing computations thousands of times faster than a normal human could. My Thor aspect created a subroutine just so both of my aspects could communicate almost normally. This was quite handy. My Adam aspect could be having a conversation at normal speed and my Thor aspect could be reviewing all possible responses. 6.67 seconds at machine speeds was a long time. As I waited for Adaline to return my two aspects were reviewing the nature of singularities.