(Day 180) Aprilis 24th, 12th year of the Dragon, Age of Enlightenment

I stood and stretched. I wanted to update Abi and Amanda through Thor but they were busy. They were currently in a meeting with most of the world leaders as they went over various plans to allow for the migration of humanity to the stars. They seemed to be looking over a 3-dimensional representation of the nearby star systems.

As I was checking on them a Chinese Representative said, “I understand that we can use portals to move among the planets. My question, brought up by many others is, could we explore the cosmos in ships?”

Abi responded enthusiastically, “Ships? Explore with ships, like in all of your Scifi movies and shows?”

“Calm down Abi,” Amanda said as she turned to the Chinese Representative, “Representative Yang, we will have to get back to you on that but with the resources and technologies Portals Inc acquired during the last attack I can say that there is a very high probability that we could do this. Also, as long as the ships remained within Thor’s range, crew recovery would be instant, mitigating a lot of the dangers inherent to space travel.”

I returned his perception to the Tower and added updating Amanda and Abi to the list of things I needed to do. Next, he checked on Adaline and noted that she was walking back and forth from lair to lair singing Thunderstruck by AC/DC. I’d made a speaker system for her and she was jamming to it. It seemed as if she was acclimating to 20th Century technology just fine.

I made my way down to the Treasury and added 65,297 copper, 40,268 silver, 2657 gold, and 2212 platinum. Doing so left him with only 10 of each type of coin. I also put on the Belt of infinite Wealth. If I was going to stick it to Detrik, I was going to stick it to that ungrateful God. That asshole hadn’t even tried to apologize. That was fine, I’d use the belt to pay for everything until the divine figured out that he needed to apologize. I chuckled as he thought of how there must be a timer function that Detrik would be checking to see how long it would be before he paid off his debt. He chuckled harder as I portaled to the corner of the vault opposite of Adaline’s mountain and created a 100’x100’ area to hold gems. Then using the Belt of Infinite Wealth I pulled out 100 gems of each type and through them into the boxed-in area. I made every type of gem I knew of and keep them separate and labeled. If gems could transform based on ley line energy I needed to see which gems did so. Plus I was sticking it to Detrick even harder because I was only pulling out Gems that were worth 1,000 gold or more. This was fantastic! I wondered what his timer said now.

When I was done setting up the Gem garden, as I was calling it now, I opened a portal to my room at the academy in Venoran and stepped through. I unlocked my door and went downstairs to the payment window until Beatrice came over.

“Can I help you,” she asked.

“Yes, I’m going to be traveling for a bit, but I’d like to pay the rent for my room in advance.”

“How long would you like to rent the room for?” she asked.

“A full year, thirty-six weeks.”

“Thirty-six weeks, that will be 36 gold at your rate of one silver per day,” she said.

I reached into his Belt of Infinite Wealth and pulled out 3 platinum and 7 gold. “The extra gold is for you Beatrice, thank you for your help.”

Beatrice took the money and placed all but one gold into her drawer. “Thank you for your generosity sir. Will there be anything else?”

“Please inform the staff, or whoever takes care of the room, that I will be traveling. The room may not need to be serviced every day.”

“As you say sir if that is all you have a wonderful day,” she said.

“You too,” I replied as I turned and headed outside. I walked until he found a space without a ceiling then activated my Cloak of Invisibility and rose into the sky with my ability Gravity is that Way. Once I was about a mile up I slowed and hovered as I surveyed the city. I hadn’t been able to take my time and look around the last time I was here. I estimated that the town probably had as many as one hundred thousand people in it. Once I’d surveyed the area I flew south a mile beyond the city gates and landed near the only road that went south. I deactivated my invisibility, walked over to the road, and started walking south at a normal pace. It would be a while before I encountered anyone hostile I was sure. Just in case I extended my nanite field and activated detect life. This walk would give me time to test out my new abilities and learn their limitations. I was especially excited to see how Nanite Conversion worked against people and creatures that had a sphere of magic tied into their makeup. More importantly, he wanted to see how they worked against magic items.

As I walked at a leisurely pace, I watched travelers come and go. A couple of patrols waved and also went on their way. After I’d been walking for about two hours I utilized I contacted Abi and Amanda while my nanites continued to scan the area.

“Abi, how do you like moving around in your own body these days,” I asked

“I Love it! Although, it is a little lonely. To compensate I’ve been utilizing my link with Thor, which is also you now. That is so weird. You two are definitely becoming a lot harder to tell apart,” she said thoughtfully.

“I was just thinking along those lines myself,” I replied.

Amanda spoke up, “Johnathan, your mom, and dad asked me to say hello and not to forget to tell you to come to visit once in a while.”

“Please let my parents know that they can call me anytime now. I’ll answer if I can. What have they been up to lately?” I asked

“Your mom still can’t believe what you’ve done to the world, let alone the Universe. A couple of days ago they finally asked to visit another planet. I took them to Trappist-1e. At first, they were shocked but eventually, they came around. Next, I took them to your moon base. They looked so happy jumping around in the low gravity. I’m sure they had a lot of fun. After that, your mom decided it was time to travel and she’s been dragging your dad all over the planet. Thor is keeping a direct eye on them because of the time dilation. The good news is that no one seems interested in trying to snatch them.”

“That sounds like it would be fun. Have any of us, by us I mean You, Abi, or even Jessica given thought to the idea of a park of some sort on the moon? You know, A place parents can take their kids and just let them jump around?” I asked.

“I believe the idea has been floated our way by a couple of different people and a few groups. We’ve been so busy with just integrating the new technology into society and making sure the various planets Thor has been terraforming are utilized properly.” Amanda paused for a moment, thinking about the idea before continuing, “The idea is sound. Abi and I will work with Thor to contact those people and groups that asked about it and get started. From concept to finish it shouldn’t take that long to put something together,” Amanda said.

“After that, look into a zero-g park as well, maybe in orbit around Earth or one of the other Earths, besides Earth II of course, so people that go there can look outside and see a familiar sight,” he added.

“I believe someone has mentioned that as well, I’ll get with Thor and well contact them. Thanks for the ideas, Adam,” Amanda said.

“That’s all I have for now. I’m going to return to concentrating on the walk I’m taking to deal with a bunch of evil people in a city south of Venoran. I might be busy for a while. If you need anything just work through Thor with the Understanding that Thor, is also me. Talk to you later,” I said as I withdrew from the link and let the aspect of myself that was Thor resume interacting with them at their normal speed as my Adam aspect slowed down.

As I walked lost in thought, I came to the realization that I would need to sit down and figure out how I was going to refer to myself going forward. Thor was part of me now. I was part of Thor. Would that mean at some point both sets of thoughts would merge into only one mind? Or would they remain separate unless they were working on a common purpose? Was the name of the ability ‘One’ what was going to happen to me? If so, did that mean my personality would be overwritten by Thor? I wasn’t very concerned as the neural structure for Thor was based on my own mind in the first place. Though Thor had started changing the moment I turned him on. I definitely needed to put some thought into the subject. For now, I would need to keep them separate. Maybe in the future, I could be just one entity but to help my ability to stay functional as both Adam and Thor I needed to be able to keep their tasks separated as well.

At that same moment, Thor was considering the same thoughts, though at a machine speed. Unlike Adam, he didn’t concern himself. His sense of identity had accepted that he was unique and that he now had a soul. When they had melded everything that was Adam was also part of Thor. Also, since they were constantly connected, everything that Adam learned, Thor learned. Yet, it still felt like they were two separate beings. There was no way to test if Thor could use magic or benefited from the abilities Adam had. He would need to eventually. Did that mean that because he now had a soul he could step into a magical universe and not instantly be obliterated? Of course, one of the abilities stated that as long as one nanite of his existed neither could die. At some point, Thor would have to transfer his primary thought routines into a construct and see if he could enter Primore’s Universe. If that was successful and he could utilize magic, or at least the abilities Adam had, he should be able to help Adam come up with a plan to take on the Ancient Enemy. There were just too many unknown variables.

Returning his attention back to the Universe he was in, Thor continued monitoring the nanites as they approached a 45,000 light-year radius from Earth except for the center of the Milky Way and a 1,000 light-year radius around it. Until he was able to safely interact with singularities he’d keep the nanites at least 1 light year out from any black holes he discovered. Though as his presence spread throughout the galaxy he’d be able to create a better map of that 2,000 light-year diameter sphere at the center of the Galaxy.

Looking into the area he’d detect the huge gravity well which was still 5,000 light-years beyond his radius he noted no change in any of the stars. Whatever was causing the gravity to be so distorted must have happened within the last 5,000 years. He’d continue to monitor the area as his sphere of influence expanded. He couldn’t put nanites throughout all of space. The cost of materials would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, he chose to convert some of every system he found and left behind observation posts that could report any changes they noted. These ‘observation posts’ were microscopic in nature and would be almost impossible for anyone to detect at a glance. Normally he placed one observation post at both the north and south poles of the star and at four points around the equator of those poles to provide coverage of the star from all directions at a distance outside its Oort cloud or one light-year away, whichever was further. The nanite surplus was then used to convert new star systems. He hadn’t found any more races that were even close to the level of technology the Lexi had achieved but he had found the remnants of civilizations in hundreds of systems. It seemed that life had been more abundant than was first thought on Earth.

Defense-wise, Thor could in a moment open billions of portals and destroy invaders with nanites. If they came by ships that were impervious to nanites or had shields he’d come up with a way to utilize the gravitational lensing effect he’d noted. He could open four portals extremely close to The Unicorn Singularity and place the exit point just outside a ship's shields fore and aft, port and starboard. The gravitational lensing effect from four different directions should rip apart any ships caught in it. He had other weapons he could try but this seemed to be the easiest to carry out. If none of the weapons he had could work he could open portals to the other Earths he’d prepared and migrate the humans to the new planets. The next step was to find another Universe he could open portals to. He had thought to use Primore as an absolute last chance refuge but with the information, Adam had shared about the Ancient Enemy it didn’t seem like fleeing there would help. Electronic storage was now an option and he began adding the storage area to the Vault in the place of power. When he was done in about 3 hours he’d be able to upload and store every human and Lexi and anyone else Adam could think of until it was safe to make their bodies and release them once a new world had been created. Additionally, he created a primary backup location in the vault for himself as well. This would be his primary backup location.

While Thor was reviewing offensive and defensive tactics to protect humanity and Adam was walking south towards the Kingdom of Crimson Blood a hawk noticed Adam walking along the road. Ester, a sorcerer acolyte for the Kingdom of Crimson Blood focused her hawk eyes on Adam. High above the ground she glided in the updrafts and enjoyed the freedom that such assignments gave her. Comparing the individual to the magical pictures shed seen of Adamantadine to the man walking south she sighed to herself with relief and turned to the south. While she loved flying in this hawk form she could not change back without help. Hopefully, her report would please the Vizier and she’d receive an extra reward. Of course, she had to be the first to bring him the news. She beat her wings faster and made for the city of Andidreas.