(Various Locations, January 6th, 2047)

It didn’t take weeks to prepare the Earth, nor did it take long for the first humans with the willpower and imagination to be able to control magic to appear. An interesting case manifested while I was setting up portals on each of the Earths in multiple locations. I was able to work on multiple portals at the same time by allowing the normal nanites to create 90% of the materials needed for their construction and then popping in to drop off some of my chaotic nanites to create and incorporate the magical components that were necessary. I’d need to go back and collect all the chaotic nanites after they were done. I’d just set up the construction of the portals through Thor and made sure everything was going well when a young girl started to throw a tantrum that my Thor Aspect, He was always monitoring everything contacted me and instigated an emergency response protocol. What that meant was that I was contacted at machine speed and reacted by opening the Universal Interface and slowing time down to a crawl as I portaled to the location.

The location of the event happened to be a little village in Amesbury England, just east of Stonehenge. Could there be a correlation? I’d have to check that later. I stepped out of my portal and looked around as a young girl was screaming in the classic I’m a child and I-will-get-what-I-want scream pose except that a wave of fire had surrounded her and was moving away from her in all directions. Her mum and dad had looks of shock on their faces. I also noticed that the mother had started to turn to a toddler sitting in a high chair that was making a god-awful mess of his food. Even so, she was still turning to try to protect him. I opened the Universal Interface and reviewed the most recent events for this location

Sarah Chester-Smith has cast the spell Nova.

I reviewed the spell to see what its effects were and whistled.

Nova – This spell is not castable. Only people with the Ability “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” may cast this effect. In times of great stress, people with this ability will release a wave of fire and force that will devastate that which has stressed them so. Damage is equal to the level of stress which is graded on a scale of 1 – 100. For every point of stress, the wave of force will travel 10+S (Where “S” equals the stress level). Damage is fire and force-based doing 20xS damage to everything and anyone within the radius. One-half damage is fire based. One-half damage is force based.

An ability that was stress based and did damage based on how much ‘stress’ you were under. Yeah, that was a bad thing. I erected a shell of force around the child’s nova of flame and another around her, just in case she wasn’t immune to her own power, then allowed time to resume at its normal pace as I cast sleep on Sarah. The flames stayed between the two barriers until I opened a portal to deep space that sucked the flames out into the void as Sarah slumped to the ground asleep. As I’d been doing that the mother, Charlene Chester-Smith, had finished throwing herself on top of the toddler as her husband, Oswald Chester-Smith had tried to jump in front of her and the toddler, only to bounce off the barrier of force I’d erected to save them.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed as he grabbed his nose, which the nanites in his system were already repairing. He’d broken it as he hit the invisible barrier.

“Not to worry, “I said as Charlene turned to look at what had happened.

“What did you do to Sarah?” she exclaimed

“She’s asleep, you’re all safe and I’m going to take steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” I said as I opened the Universal Interface and pulled up Sarah’s info. I looked through her information and didn’t find anything I wouldn’t expect to see for a young girl except that she had one ability, Nova. I contacted my Thor Aspect and had him make the changes I needed at Machine speed. I had him change the ability to conscious control and lock it out until she was an adult. Though I also made sure that if she was alone and no friendlies were around and she was attacked it could go off if she was in mortal danger.

“Hey, your Johnathan Bennard,” Oswald said

“Yep, that’s me.”

“What did you do to her?” Charlene asked.

“As was announced, magic is coming back. Your daughter has an ability that is meant to protect her in times of stress, though whichever being thought to give such a power to a child, especially a child that gets as angry as she did because she doesn’t get her way, well that was just stupid, so I fixed it.”

“You fixed it?” Charlene asked skeptically.

“Yeah, in simple terms, she won’t be able to activate that ability until she’s an adult or all alone and in mortal danger. I wouldn’t want to be the person that corners her, it’s going to hurt a lot,” I explained.

“What does that mean for now?” Oswald asked.

“For now she’s just a normal kid with normal wants and needs and you shouldn’t have any more issues with her exploding. That said, when magic is in full swing I have a feeling she’s going to be very good at magic. Make sure to contact Amanda or Abi with Portals Inc. I just sent you their contact information. I’ll make sure to let them know about Sarah here.”

Charlene looked around the room then picked up the toddler, “Thank you for saving us, especially Tommy here.”

“I do what I can. There are a lot of changes coming. Please try to read all the material we’re putting out. There will be information there you need to know. Also, let everyone you know, know what happened here. I have a feeling this is going to be one of quite a few incidents in the coming days. With that, have a great day, Sarah will wake up after I leave,” I said as I teleported back to New Mexico

I contacted Thor through our mental link

Adam – Thor, keep an eye on that family. Also, I have a feeling that the proximity to Stonehenge might have a correlation. Keep a close eye on that area and any other areas around the globe with significant mystical history.

Thor – Noted, what will you do now?

Adam – Now, I put out fires as they come up and finish the portals

I focused on the portals that were being created and started teleporting and portaling between sites to add the magical components that only my chaotic nanites or magic could.

The next few weeks were one crisis after another as more and more people started manifesting random abilities that activated when least expected. None of the issues that came up were normal though and my ability to stop or slow time on a Universal scale allowed Thor, my Thor Aspect, and me to respond and prevent any truly horrific events. Only one event stumped me. Well, it didn’t really stump me, I just couldn’t do anything about it. The daughter of the Vice President who’d been such a pain in my ass in both timelines, Jessica Billingsgate vanished. Thor and I reviewed the nanites in the area and one moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. The nanites had been able to detect and analyze the quantum signature though. It seemed that wherever Jessica had gone off to wasn’t local. I’d stopped time at the Universal level and teleported to where she’d disappeared, then I’d opened the Universal Interface and read the event log.

Muttering to myself I whispered, “We might have a problem.”

Thor responded through our link, “I think so.”

One of the most interesting things that can ever occur is when a rhetorical statement is made and moments later something happens. I had time to think that Thor and I had jinxed me by verbalizing our thoughts as a message popped into my vision from my Cosmic Interface.

COSMIC WARNING – Intruder Alert – The closed nature of this Cosmos has been breached.

Simultaneously a portal had opened in the Maternity Ward of the Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis New Mexico. A much more refined version of Jessica Billingsgate stepped out of the portal and looked at the crib in front of her. Before I could react flame lanced out from her hands and tried to engulf the baby in the crib before her.

Thor, thankfully had recognized the attack for what it was and opened a portal directly over the baby that redirected the flame into the sky 1,000 feet above their current position as the baby dropped through another portal he’d opened below her into Desirae’s waiting arms.

With a thought, I placed a portal 1 nanometer above the portal Jessica had stepped through that led into deep space out past the orbit of Pluto, while I cordoned off the rest of the maternity ward with walls of force that allowed Jessica to be sucked through my portal into deep space, which Immediately closed while placing another portal directly over hers this time with the entrance of my portal against the exit of hers so that anything that tried to follow her through would find itself 1 light second from the Unicorn Singularity. If it could withstand vacuum and extreme cold, it would then have to survive extreme gravity. My Thor aspect monitored as books, furniture, and other items came rushing through the portal into the void of space rushing towards the Unicorn. Fortunately, this area of space was saturated with nanites that Thor had infiltrated and broken down everything that was non-magical in nature. Anything that his nanites determined to be magical was recovered through other portals that he opened and saved for me to look at later.

While whatever was on the other side of the portal was coming through I opened a portal to the back side of the area and expelled some of my chaotic nanites to investigate the portal that was breaking into this reality. I closed that portal then opened a portal 1 mile away from Jessica and flew towards her location, which was more like a blink step but I didn’t use teleport I just willed myself to be 100 feet from her and I was. As I came up there was a look of utter anguish in her eyes and anger. Thor’s nanites had been infiltrating her since she stepped foot into this Universe and I was able to catch her diming thoughts through my technology.

“…I struck as soon as I came through the barrier. He should be dead and everything should be back to the way it was. What the hell, I’m in a vacuum in space. I don’t have any spells that allow for breathing in a vacuum. What is that coming towards me? It’s him, I may be able to succeed yet, even If I couldn’t kill him when he was a babe.

A prompt appeared in my vision as Jessica focused with her last breath and cast a spell she had no right knowing.

Jessica Billingsgate has cast Singularity at you

I pulled up the information on the spell as I changed the Cosmic setting for time to as close to zero as I could get it.

Singularity – This spell creates an artificial point in space that sucks in all surrounding matter that is not shielded from the extreme stresses of heavy gravity.

A very basic explanation for a very complex idea. I dug further into the information which described the amount of force exerted and the effects on matter. As I scanned the information I realized the singularity would be just big enough to come into existence and then evaporate in 10 to 20 seconds depending on how much matter it was able to gobble up in that time. I also checked to see if my Adaption ability would still work against its effects even though they were created by a spell and found that it did. I thought for a second about how I was going to proceed then shrugged, this was going to be fun.

I released my lock on time and events continued as normal. The singularity came into existence against my head. I was beginning to think Jessica really didn’t like me. Even so, I wasn’t going to let her die until I knew what was going on so I countered her spell with a bubble of force around her that was filled with air so she could breathe. She took in a deep breath then refocused her eyes on me as I reached up grabbed her singularity off of my skin and willed it out of existence while I looked into her angry eyes.

Her next spell was a spell named sun beam which was as hot as the sun and would have vaporized a small town back on Earth. It did nothing. My Adaption ability completely negated the damage the spell did. Also, I’d grown tired of this. I contacted the nanites in her system and noted that something was destroying them as quickly as they were trying to replicate. I’d been lucky to catch her thoughts at all when this started. Probably because whatever was attacking the nanites had been trying to save her life in the Vacuum of space. I opened a portal behind me that opened directly behind her and expelled some of my chaotic nanites into her area then backed off. My nanites had just made it into her system when she teleported to Earth or tried to. Realizing her mistake she teleported a second time and ended up back in the Maternity ward which shunted her right back into the air bubble I’d created for her. This went on for the next minute as she tried to teleport away then appeared back in the bubble of air as she was sucked out of another portal into deep space. Thor then opened another portal that dropped her into the bubble and I brought her to a stop with a thought. Once my chaotic nanites had infiltrated her body thoroughly I paralyzed her. Once that was done I teleported into the bubble of force, then took her to the planet we’d shunted all the water to, Earth 11. I chose a place on the beach and had the nanites create two chairs and a table as I grabbed Jessica by the waist and teleported us to the beach, where I forced her to walk over to the chair and sit down while I analyzed everything on and in her body. My nanites easily picked up on her anger and also recognized the quantum signature of this Jessica as having come from the Cosmos I’d been in prior to this one. I conjured some sunglasses onto her body and set the nanites to hydrate and feed her as necessary. I made sure she looked comfortable and that the nanites would keep her comfortable until I returned then teleported back to the Maternity Ward in Clovis New Mexico.

I looked around and searched my memory and realized that this was the room I’d been in right after I’d been born. I had access to those memories and with a little double checking through the hospital records and sure as shit, I’d been born in this hospital, been in this room, and been in this crib at a point in my past. Jessica had tried to come in here and Grandfather Paradox my ass. What the hell was going on?