As I flew through space enjoying the flickers of light as they passed before me enjoying the peace and quiet I finally had a little time to think. Why hadn’t I killed the Director? In fact, I hadn’t even threatened him. Why? The simple answer that came to mind was that I hated bullies. I really hated them. That’s why I’d decided to release Earth from the tyranny of my nanites, though now with the Chaotic nanites I could force that back onto them if I wanted, should I return. But again, I hated bullies and I most definitely did not want to be one.

Of course, that idea was predicated on the possibility that the Emperor would understand what overwhelming force was and not order something incredibly stupid like he just had. Across the Vrax Empire in multiple star systems across multiple Universes, The Emperor’s most technologically advanced star ship captains received new orders. One such ship wasn’t really a ship but a higher dimension construct that could, if the specs I was reading were correct, wipe out solar systems in short order. Particle weapons, Laser Weapons, Kinetic weapons, and what was that? Singularity weapons that took a naked singularity, a small one, and accelerated it to near light speed then shot it. Someone had made a video of what would happen if a naked singularity ever hit the Earth traveling at the speed of light. Not good for the planet as a whole would be an understatement.

My mentality was still analyzing all the information my nanites were collecting on the Vrax and while the ships had been infiltrated, except for a couple that were too far away from any Vrax systems to the portal back, and because they had very limited power, I wasn’t concerned with those ships they were not a threat. The tactical response fleet was. Those ships were small with a crew of no more than 27. They only needed 8 to run the ship and keep enough personnel on board to run the ships around the clock. Of course, every ship had a portal and the crews could head back to Vrax at any time but usually, it looked like the portal devices were powered down to conserve energy.

I watched through my nanites as 1,109 Captains received orders that reminded me of “Order 66” from Star Wars. I needed to sit down and take a break and maybe watch some movies with Adaline, I missed movie night. I returned my mind to my current situation and also read the orders and realized they had my movement and trajectory details just as a shockwave rocked me out of the high-dimensional state I was in. That was bad. If one of the ships that I’d been reviewing had had this happen to them. There was a reason objects could not go faster than light. Remember that little formula E=MC2 Well, There is an equal sign there for a reason. While theoretical in the era I was born in it was thought that as mass approached the speed of light it required more and more energy to get closer and closer to the state. Theoretically, if anything were ever to reach the speed of light then mass would equal energy. Most thought that meant a big boom as the mass converted to pure energy and flew apart. I’m here to tell you they were probably right in every case but mine.

While I’d been reviewing the data about the ships another weapon that I hadn’t reviewed was used on me. In each universe that the Vrax had a foothold one barren planet had been converted to generate enough power to create a device that could reach through dimensions and create a shockwave at an almost unlimited range. As I reviewed the information on the weapon, something they’d called an EDS (Energy Displacement System.) They could target any known coordinates within their empire and cause enough interference to either disrupt communications if set to the lowest setting or destabilize dimensional boundaries so much that anything on one side passed through to the other. If used on an object in real space the object would take severe damage if they didn’t have dimensional anchors in their ships, which all Vrax ships had. In my case when it had been used on an area I was about to pass through at faster than light speed, The walls between dimensions became paper thin and I crossed back into real space at the equivalent of about Warp 10, about 10,000 times the speed of light.

I hadn’t thought about the science of my ability to travel faster than the speed of light. With my Adaption ability, I just thought that my body changed enough to survive. I found out that I’d been mistaken. As I crossed back into normal space my mentality retreated into my soul space and my body converted to a wave of coalesced energy traveling faster than light. As I reviewed the data coming from the nanites that were part of that particle-wave I realized that the only reason I had not exploded and all the energy of my body had not dispersed was because of the nanites in my body. My energy way was ripping a hole through space that would leave a scar along the dimensional barrier here. Not my fault but I didn’t want to see a Universe pop like a soap bubble because of me either. Traveling as fast as I was it would be a little bit difficult to slow down. I didn’t have any nanites I could disperse myself into and I couldn’t jump back into an adjacent dimension because I’d already created a tear and opened a wound between normal space and the dimension I was using to travel faster than light as well as any higher dimensions that were adjacent to it.

Probably a bad idea, I teleported into chaos near my Dyson sphere with a vector leading away from it. There are bad ideas, then there are bad ideas. Chaos by its nature can be anything but even though that is true, in its natural form it’s basically a fluid consisting of every type of magic that can do anything. When I teleported into that soup I added the potential energy of 170 pounds of mass traveling at approximately 10,000 times the speed of light

Your Primary Projection Ahrem has been destroyed.

Your synergistic nature allows you to recreate your Primary Projection from nearby nanites, would you like to recreate your Primary Projection, Yes or No?

I chose “Yes”

Would you like to create your Ahrem Projection or your Adamantadine Projection?

I chose “Adamantadine”

As my body rebuilt itself out of the 5% of nanites that were floating around in Chaos near me. I realized that I couldn’t see the Dyson Sphere. I knew which direction to go to find it in though, there was a huge empty space leading off into the distance I’d come from that was already refilling with Chaos even as I watched. I calculated how far from the sphere I was. At warp 10 I was traveling 1.8 billion miles per second. I was probably right around a billion miles from the sphere. No wonder I couldn’t see it.

I felt a disturbance just as the higher dimensional construct that housed the consciousness of a pilot popped into existence near me and fired that singularity weapon at me. Since I was still reforming I wasn’t really worried about what might happen because we were in chaos after all but to prevent others from leaping to their doom Empire wide I shut down every power source to every ship that could teleport across dimensions. And locked that function out of their ships. There was nothing I could do for the idiot whose mind had been digitized so it could run the artificial ship that was already here but I could prevent others from being that stupid.

I set part of my mind to open one portal on each ship at a time and dissolve the ship from the outside towards the portal so the crew could travel back to Vrax. I made sure the nanites created an invisible barrier that would maintain the ship’s atmosphere as it was converted into more nanites which also flowed to Vrax through the portal for use elsewhere. If they were to stupid to retreat through the portal they didn’t deserve to live.

As I sent my commands to the nanites in the ships that were about to travel to me I kept my attention on the “craft” in front of me. It wasn’t a craft so much as a holographic representation of manifested matter as energy. Interesting idea but still not good enough to save it here. Almost immediately the holographic images sputtered and died then a human male body appeared in the chaos and screamed. A message I hadn’t expected to see appeared in my vision.

WARNING: A Mortal within your direct sphere of influence has entered a region of raw chaos. A region of chaos is anathema to any form of order. As an Advanced Soul, you may attempt to shield or influence any mortal within your direct sphere of influence from the effects of exposure to chaos.

NOTE: The being in question has never had allegiance to you and is calling for assistance. You may choose to help or not to help as you desire at a cost of Karmic Luck on a 100:1 ratio to improve his odds. Such assistance comes at a cost to the being assisted. Should they agree to the assistance they pledge their allegiance to you in all things for one subjective year of their soul for every point of Karmic Luck spent. For every 100 points of Karmic Luck Spent a positive or negative outcome is increased or decreased by 1% respectively. The outcome cannot be influenced, only that the outcome is either positive or negative.

At a ratio of 100 to 100, this soul would be attached to me for a while if I increased his chance by 100. As the person in question had never done personal harm to me or mine I spent the Karmic Luck for a positive outcome. Immediately an aura of white light built around the man, and the disappeared when he disintegrated.

Congratulations, Stan Whittaker has pledged his allegiance to you for 10,000 years unless released from you.

Note: One of your disciples, Stan Whittaker has upgraded their soul to basic: Nascent

Note: One of your disciples, has gained the one-time Soul Ability: Aspect Blessed. 1% of your Karmic luck at the time this Soul Ability was added to your disciple has been subtracted from your Karmic Luck. This is a one-time award, no further Karmic Luck is earned by your disciple or lost by you from this Soul Ability.

Note: Your disciple Stan Whittaker has died and left the Cosmos you are currently in. You receive one point of Karmic Luck from your Disciples actions during his Cosmic Occurrence. You may not receive an award for Karmic Luck earned by the discipline that came from yourself.

“Well shit,” I said as I finished reading the prompts that had appeared in my vision. Chaos had just created another me. Well, not as bad as me surely but pretty damn close. 1% of infinite was still pretty damn infinite, though In Stan’s case that Karmic Luck would have an actual number. I’d have to find him at some point and find out at what point the system decided a number was infinite. For all I knew it could be a number that only had one million zero’s behind it. Stan’s Karmic Luck wasn’t increasing constantly, though, with a Karmic Luck that high, it very well could be in the near future. Of course, if he pulled off anything like I have then I’d get a percentage of his earnings. That would be crazy. Getting a percentage of an infinite number added to my already constantly increasing Karmic Luck. I was really missing my Universal and Cosmic Interfaces. I needed to be able to see what was going on in the background. More importantly, I needed to see how the calculations were happening.

With Stan gone and the other ships nullified I teleported back to the Dyson Sphere near Ne’lix. He was sitting in my kitchen eating a bowl of cereal.

“Adam, what was that?”

“What was what?” I asked.

“This entire place shook?”

“Oh, the Emperor wasn’t happy with the talk I had with The Director of The Agency.”

“Is that all,” Ne’lix said sarcastically

“Yep, just popped in to check on you then I need to see to that issue.”

“Well, you haven’t been gone all that long, though I did look out the window. How big is this planet? Also, am I on the inside of it?”

“I left my memories of the last time I constructed one of these out of the memories I shared with you. Look up Dyson Sphere in the terminal over there. It’ll explain everything. The quick answer is this though, you are inside a sphere with a diameter of 1 astronomical unit (AU) in a perfect replica of my world, plus a few others spread out all the way around the sphere.”

“Can I go explore?”

“Sure, I’ll have a plane on the landing pad for you in a second. It will be able to pretty much fly itself and also be able to teach you how to fly if you want to. Just sit up front and tell it where you want it to go. If something goes wrong or the craft gets damaged just use your code-locked abilities to have the nanites repair it. That shouldn’t be an issue here though. Be aware, you and I are the only sentient people here. There are animals, which are copies run by the nanites but they’re not really living creatures. I can’t add those unless I move this outside of this realm. Most beings that come here will almost assuredly be modified, corrupted, or killed. A few lucky ones might be positively affected but those are few and far between.”

“I was just going to fly around,” Ne’lix said.

“If you want to see what some of the buildings I grew up with look like head down to the city at the base of this mountain. Bigger cities can be found to the north and east,” I said as I pointed out the directions for him. “You can also call up a map on the center console of the plane. Familiarize yourself with the layout, though if you’ve been to other Earths this one is set up a lot like those.”

“A lot of this looks familiar but I think I will have a look around.”

“Remember, utilize the Portals to get out of here. Don’t try to use magic, you’re in the realm of chaos, and you have to cross dimensional barriers to get home. That can get pretty expensive. Also, don’t try to bring anyone here. They’ll have the same problem you did. Someone just tried to follow me here and died. This is one of the safest places you can be but not safe for anyone you know.”

“What about monsters from this realm?” Ne’lix asked.

“There aren’t any in the Dyson Sphere and if they attack the outside, unless they’re supremely powerful, it shouldn’t be an issue. Plus I’ll know if that happens and stop it.”

“What if you can’t?”

“Then we run,” I said.

“Great plan,” Ne’lix said sardonically.

“I know right,” I said with a grin on my face. Our conversation was at a natural stopping point so I went to work and sent orders to the nanites I needed to. I walked out on the balcony, looked at the sunset that was being mimicked by the various mirrors and fake weather within the sphere then teleported to the Emperor’s throne room, where he sat alone on his Throne frozen in place.