“Soul Level: Absolute 99.99%”? What the hell did that mean exactly? A message popped into my vision.

Soul Ability Pansophical has activated: Soul Level: Absolute – The Maximum Level a soul can attain in this Reality as designated by ERROR. The percentage given indicates how close you have come to attaining the next level if level progression were in line with previous level progression. For an absolute soul, 99.99% is the maximum possible rating. Soul Progress for an Absolute Soul has no known benefit.

The maximum level for this Reality? At least I was starting to get a handle on the terminology. As I was thinking about the implications of my new soul level my senses were overloaded. I was blinded, I couldn’t see, and a cacophony was exploding in my mind. Even my senses of smell and taste were overloaded. I struggled to overcome this attack then I realized that I recognized the sensation. It was as if a part of myself that had been lost had just been found again. This time there was so much information coming in that I knew this wasn’t just the nanites I’d left behind before going through the aperture. As that thought crossed my mind I was able to reorganize and categorize the incoming messages. The nanites were sending me information about the Universe I had started in, the one I’d just left. These nanites were from the first Universe I branched from. These nanites were giving me information from my Dyson Sphere in the Chaos of that Cosmos. These nanites were giving me information from all the Universes I’d reseeded, and it was that information that was overwhelming me. I created a separation routine and set criteria by which information could be forwarded into my consciousness, otherwise, the nanites within each specific Universe and Cosmos were to quantify and store the information in that area.

As I tried to set this up I ran into my first hurdle. I could not control the nanites that were once again connected to me. So I utilized the nanites within my soul storage and began storing the information there. I had a moment, and I do mean a moment, approximately 1.2 seconds, when my mind was once again at peace, then the mentality and storage I had were full and I was once again absorbing more than I could handle. I did the only thing I could, I set up a barrier to prevent the information from entering my mind. The oppressive pressure I’d felt eased and I could think again.

So, I could now receive all the information from my nanites in other Cosmos but I could not send messages the other way. Was that because I was in this Cosmos? Would I be able to contact and control the nanites when I made it back to Eternity? From what I’d reviewed when going over my the changes to my soul abilities I shouldn’t be able to do what was happening. To be sure I still had some control I tried to contact my nanites in Eloise, Ne’lix, Katja, and The Director. I noticed no issues. I could issue commands and receive information normally so this problem looked like a Cosmos barrier-related one which I wouldn’t be able to test further until I was outside of this Cosmos. Even so, I went through the memories I had absorbed looking for one thing.

Adaline walked through a city made of what looked like many colors of glass with Architecture I’d never seen. None paid her any mind as she made her way towards a talk skyscraper made of a flowing emerald material that looked like an emerald. She walked inside and up a set of stairs to an open cathedral that was much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. There were beings of all types seated around the outskirts as she made her way towards one of the VIP booths that overlooked the Cathedral and everything that was going on below. As she stepped to a seamless wall it separated and she stepped through. It closed behind her as a man in an ornate toga looked at her and asked “Refreshments?”

“Yes please,” Adaline answered.

“What brings you to me today?” the man asked.

“I believe my tasks are done, may I be excused?” Adaline asked.

“To chase after him?” he asked.

“Yes”

“No”

I could feel Adaline’s expression change and the anger flair as the man raised a placating hand.

“Be still my arbiter. I am not releasing you because I do not feel there will be a need. Something has changed, I know not what….” He said as the memory was cut off.

The memory ended and I was left wanting more. I searched the memories I’d been able to get but there was nothing else. I’d cut off the information flow too soon. One good thing though, was I knew Adaline was alive and she was still working for whatever that guy was. Had to be a projection or a manifestation but of who? Nobody that was opposed to me directly but that didn’t mean anything. Also, there was nothing I could do about it now.

Another thought crossed my mind. If my Karmic Luck had been spent to raise my soul level, how much Karmic Luck did I have left? With that though I received the message indicating that there was an Error regarding my Karmic Luck. So still infinite, or so close as not to matter. I wonder why that attribute couldn’t just be part of my normal “Character Sheet” though I really didn’t like thinking about my information that way. It made me feel like I was a character in a video game or LITRPG Novel. Who knows, maybe I was. Or maybe if someone were able to view my innermost thoughts the author had been connected to my network of nanites and there’d been some sort of feedback and the author had dreamed of me. I needed to get back on track. I was losing focus because I was excited to have seen Adaline again.

Forcing my focus back to the here and now I released nanites into the Chaos here and had them start the process of making more and eventually creating a Dyson sphere again. I liked having a refugee I could fall back on if needed. Next, I reviewed my personal information one more time to see if there was anything else that I’d missed that might have an immediate effect. The Soul Ability Chaos-Tempered looked neat and that note about Primal Chaos was interesting, as was the effect it had on me. My Luck and Karmic Luck attributes had saved my ass again. I realized that could have gone very badly. But why did the Chaotic Abyssal Horror have an attack that used a form of Chaos that wasn’t inherent to this Cosmos.? I had saved its memories and decided to check. I went through them until I found their earliest recollections. It had been small, smaller than anything else in its pod of other creatures when something had picked it up. Darkness had closed around it that had lasted only moments then it had found itself alone, hungry within a huge area to swim in. There had been areas that it didn’t like and that it didn’t want to go but food had been plentiful and it had grown. I finished reviewing the memories and knew there was no way to figure out where the creature had come from or what had moved it.

I went back to reviewing the changes to my abilities. The Ability True Prophet had morphed into the soul ability Prophet. That was nice, I wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to talk about the things I knew. Though I would still have to be careful. There had to be some other mechanism to prevent people from learning too much. If not, the Truth might overwhelm them. How many beings wanted to truly live forever? Also, it looked like my skills were now automatically a higher category being at the rare level now, whatever that meant for whatever Cosmos I was in. That would come in handy.

The ability to be Born, Cross Over, or Manifest seemed cool, how would I do that?

Would you like to leave this Cosmos, Yes or No?

What the fuck? I chose no, then asked out loud, trying to elicit a reaction from my ability Pansophical, “If I leave the Cosmos will I be able to return to this cosmos immediately?”

Soul Ability Pansophical has activated: Beings with the ability to Cross Over into Cosmos can enter or exit any Cosmos they have access to at will. Be warned exiting a Cosmos at any non-designated location, such as an aperture, places you in the adjacent location in ERROR. Entry back into that Cosmos can occur at any point you wish though movement outside the Cosmos may change your entry point back into the Cosmos. Also, note that Entry into a Cosmos is almost always into the Astral or Ethereal plane for that Cosmos though entry can be designated as any known location within that Cosmos if it has been visited previously. Accuracy of the location of emergence is determined by strength of will and memory of the location. Temporal dislocation into a Cosmos is permissible if the entity in question has the appropriate permissions to do so. Otherwise, entry into and out of a Cosmos happens at the same rate of time. Entry and exit through an aperture directly into Eternity or similar locations follow the temporal rules in place for entry and exit into those locations.

That last line had me concerned. It seemed that entry and exit into Eternity was following a different type of time rule. If I exited this cosmos without going directly to Eternity was would happen? Well, technically I’d already done that so while it was a concern I wasn’t worried about it. What the fuck, you only live once. Yeah, that saying didn’t work anymore did it? Well if that saying didn’t work, Fuck it! Was a nice runner-up. With that, I willed myself to cross over

Would you like to leave this Cosmos, Yes or No?

I chose “Yes” and felt the universe fade from me as I slipped through the membrane of the Cosmos and found myself in the Place between Places. I hadn’t felt like I moved, just like I’d slipped the bonds of the reality I was in. I looked around and found myself in an area of swirling colors that I knew to be raw chaos. But that didn’t make sense. The last time I’d been here I’d seen conduits and bubbles and what looked like cancerous growths on those universes.

Would you like to modify your interface to its default settings? Your interface settings are currently set to custom. Yes or No?

I chose no, which was a good thing because I could feel the pressure of the headache from information overload coming back. I closed my eyes and explored the sensation and realized that my connection to all my nanites everywhere had strengthened. To keep things simple I tried to contact the nanites in my original Place of Power and realized I had a full connection. I had my nanites turn on my stereo system, play some AC/DC for old-time’s sake, then shut off. So, I could contact all of my nanites from here. Did that mean if I was in the Cosmos I just left then I couldn’t? Would that be how it worked in every cosmos I went to, or was it just if my soul went there? Regardless my mentality needed some help with the information overload so I went to work while I kept an eye on my surroundings.

The first thing I did was create criteria by which the controlling subroutine I was going to assign to each Cosmos and then Universe within a Cosmos could forward information. I also left a back door, the same one I’d created that had a 512-point sequence of movements, along with the creation of the room in Chaos. It had been a long time since I’d set that up but good ideas are good ideas. Then I finished setting the criteria up, redirected all quantum links to the nodes I set up, and set them in motion for each Cosmos I’d visited. The Cosmos where I’d saved all the Universes I had was a bit more problematic. Eventually, I designated some of my mentality, about 3%, to create new nodes and redirect the quantum links, and let it go. Whenever I was in this place it would get to work otherwise the Cosmos node would bottleneck everything. While the number of Universes in that Cosmos wasn’t infinite, it was effectively so. That 3% of my mentality was going to be busy whenever I was in this place.

One good thing about having access to all the nanites everywhere instantly was that my mental analyzing power went off the scale. It’s hard to describe. Imagine that you’re a snail. And while the snail is touching something it becomes an Artificial Intelligence connected to the internet with access to every single file within it and a full understanding of the concepts and ideas described there. That, in a very small way, described how much faster I was able to think and do things. It made creating the nodes to reduce the input to my soul and memory a lot easier. Of course, I could search for whatever information I wanted. If my nanites had access to it they would find the information instantly.

One thing I did not do was look up Adaline. I knew that if I did I would dive down that rabbit hole and try to get to her. I needed to get a handle on what had happened to me before I started going crazy with the changes that had happened which brought me back to the interface message. So I was seeing the Place between Places as it really was? With the extra mental power, I ran through a lot of possibilities and then decided on one that seemed the most probable. I focused on one of the Cosmic Nodes I created then opened my eyes and looked for it and watched as the interface brought everything into a sharp focus. I was floating in a place between places that had access to all the Cosmoses. My vision shifted and it seemed as if I was looking at layers upon layers of a cake that faded into the distance above and below me farther than I could see in either direction. The layers shifted in an upward direction dropping away faster and faster until I slowed and one of the layers became highlighted. I should explain that the layer went off in all directions as far as I could see. I tried to focus on the layer and all the layers disappeared and a transparent map overlayed my surroundings projected whatever was within the Cosmos I was looking at around me. The surroundings around were ghostly in nature and superimposed themselves into the chaos.

Within the same Cosmos, I shifted my perception to my Place of Power and the ghostly images shifted the resolidified. I was now floating around the ghostly replica of my place of power. I passed through the doors into my bedroom and felt that if I willed it I could step into that location. Pretty sure what would happen I willed myself into that location.

Would you like to Cross Over or Manifest?

I closed the prompt and released my focus on the nanites in that area and the shadow image remained. Instead, I focused my memory on my estate near Alamogordo NM and the ghostly images shifted until I was standing on the balcony there. I hadn’t seen any living creatures so I changed my perspective to somewhere I knew there would be people, New York City. I’d been there and I also had nanites there. The Ghostly images morphed around me and I found myself standing on the ghostly image of Broad Street looking at the entry doors into the building looming above me. Ghostly images of men and women that were not part of my memories walked all around me. There seemed to be a range of about 50 feet. Because people were appearing and disappearing as they walked into and out of that 50-foot bubble centered on me.

So I could use my memory or my nanites to focus on a specific spot and the images shown would be for the current moment. Then, if I wished, I could cross over or manifest into the cosmos. I released my memories and the ghostly images. I rechecked my surroundings and saw nothing near me. Then I looked at my clock. To be honest I hadn’t been paying attention to it so the date it gave meant nothing to me. Instead, I searched through my memories to the point where I exited the Cosmos I had been in and looked at the time and date in that memory then I compared it to my current time and date. I had forgotten how when I focused on something I could lose track of time. This time that lapse had only cost me three weeks.