As I looked at the prompts the experiences of those manifestations were assimilated. There were no prompts for me to try to accept or pause the process. It just happened. I focused my will and my manifestations that had returned sorted and categorized themselves. Then I tried to play catch up as I lost track of everything else.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, the manifestations were flooding back to me at a rate much greater than one per second. As a reference, if I was absorbing one manifestation per second and I needed to absorb a million of them that would have taken 2.89 months at a rate of one per second. I was fortunate because I was assimilating them at a rate of thousands, no tens of thousands, per second. I was unfortunate because that much information flooding into me had shut down my ability to focus on anything else effectively making me catatonic until the flow slowed down.

As I came back to my senses I checked to see how long I’d been assimilating manifestations and was pleasantly surprised to note that only 3 days had gone by. Almost 3 days, it had only been 71 hours and a couple of minutes. I pulled up my prompts and noted that I was still absorbing manifestations but at a much slower rate. Right around one per two or three seconds. It seemed that with the reduced influx, I was better able to handle assimilating all the experiences. Speaking of experiences, I was excited to find out what I’d learned.

I started reviewing by category and found that almost all the manifestations that had returned had committed suicide or self-destructed for one reason or another. A major surprise was what caused those choices. The individual that had created, or that was in charge of the nanites in each Cosmos had taken over Earth wasn’t always me. I quickly checked to see how many manifestations had returned, then willed the interface just to keep a rolling total in a percentage format. When I switch to that format three prompts appeared.

5% Manifestations returned

81% Manifestations active

14% Returned no Change

That brought up the question, Why had the 14% returned with no change? I went back and looked at my messages and noted that a number of Cosmos that I’d allocated myself to go into had errored out as not having a location habitable to humans and they’d returned immediately, even before the manifestation that had woke me up, then been reformatted and sent out. None of that counted as the 14% though. 14% of the manifestations had entered a Cosmos, experienced nothing, and returned? Could that indicate they’d bounced? One thing was for sure, I’d have to investigate a couple of that 14% to see why my manifestations had returned with no change. The other thing that was interesting was that the 14% that had returned with no change had all returned almost immediately. As nothing had changed nothing had shocked me out of my self-induced coma. Well, it wasn’t really a coma but to anyone looking at me from the outside, it would have appeared that I was in one.

I reviewed the Cosmos I hadn’t manifested into, the ones that had not allowed for human survival, then willed a portal to the first one on the list. As the portal opened a rolling gray mass shot out of the portal into my soul space like water being shot out from a broken water main. Immediately my body was attacked by foreign nanites as they tried to break me down. I issued a command to my nanites to catalog, and convert and my nanites went to work.

Adam, these nanites are of a feral nature. If I were to guess I believe these nanites are the product of a singularity event that went horribly wrong. Also, these are not of human origin. Whatever race created these weren’t human, some oddities will take a few moments to decipher. -Thor

Any chance that there are minds downloaded into this mess? -Adam

It is of course possible, but doubtful. Everything I’m recording seems to have only one function. Convert, Destroy, and Replicate everything. -Thor

Do you think the entire Cosmos is made up of these nanites? -Adam

Doubtful, I would surmise that the physical universe is really messed up but otherwise I wouldn’t expect any of the higher dimensions within that Cosmos to have any issues. -Thor

So there could be survivors? -Adam

There could be, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. These nanites haven’t evolved and even the new stimuli I’ve provided haven’t garnered a change or reaction yet. -Thor

I walked up to the portal, cut off the blood flow to my arm, set it to convert all nanites within the Cosmos then stuck my arm through the portal and shut it down, severing my arm. The foreign nanites within my soul space were converted rather quickly and my soul space was once again free of foreign materials. I utilized my newly converted nanites to replace my arm then also created a couple of copies of myself and quantumly linked them. These bodies would remain in my soul space to help facilitate what I was going to do.

I willed a containment chamber into existence in my soul space around each of my copies then opened a very tiny portal that was covered with a force field with a thin layer of nanites on this side of the portal. If nanites tried to shoot through they’d convert and then backtrack through the portal and I would shut down the portal. If nanites didn’t shoot through the nanites were given instructions to pass through the portal and investigate. I set my copies to the task of sending nanites into the Cosmos that were not habitable to human life then set my sights on one of the Cosmos that was part of the 14% that had returned without change.

I willed myself outside of my soul space and then focused on creating a portal into a Cosmos my manifestation had returned from with no change. As I opened the portal I looked into absolute darkness. I stuck my hand into the darkness and had the nanites in me analyze their surroundings. There were no light sources within range and the darkness seemed absolute. I willed myself through the portal and moved for one second to take myself one light second away from the gate then had the nanites take their readings.

Stray particles? Check.

Ambient temperature 3 degrees kelvin? Check.

I willed myself back through the portal and stopped to turn back as my nanites detected a strong spike in quantum fluctuations. I willed the portal to close as a light erupted within the Cosmos I’d just left and rushed towards the closing portal. I moved to the side as a beam of energy lanced through the closing portal like a laser and traveled off into the distance, slicing through anything it came into contact with.

So, a Cosmos that had experienced heat death. But how had my manifestations even entered there to leave again, or… I double-checked the message for this Universe and the time stamp between creation and return and noted that almost a second had passed. I checked the messages for the manifestations that had bounced and those had been instantaneous. The difference between the two types of cosmos? If what I witnessed was a Big Bang event, which I was sure is what had just happened, that cosmos would be able to allow human life eventually. The cosmos that was full of nanites however would not. Also, I was sure that these two types of Cosmos were not the only ones that I’d run across.

The cost to open these portals was extremely high so I’d only be able to open about 3 per second which meant that I’d be here for a while. I decided to let my alternates handle the automatic bounces that had happened while I focused on the manifestation that had returned. That was going to take a while unless I could find some way to… I was getting sidetracked but this was a good idea so I needed to get this done. It would save me a ton of time. I willed myself back into my soul space visualized and willed a laboratory into existence. I willed the Cosmos identifiers into the controlling interface and then hit the start button. What had I just done? I’d created an entry port that was approximately one inch in diameter that opened into a piping system that was made up completely of my nanites. Hostile nanites would enter through the portal, be converted into my nanites, and be sent where I needed them.

How was I keeping hostile nanites from getting free? As they left the pipe they’d be collected in a container. One end of the holding container contained a solid wall of nanites. As nanites were converted they’d be added to the wall opposite their entry into the containment area and an equal number of my nanites would detach from the other side of the wall they’d attached to. These nanites would then migrate to another chamber a little smaller but exactly like the first with another portal that would be opened and nanites would convert anything that tried to enter and push it back through the opened portal.

Simply put, I automated the conversion of hostile nanites from one cosmos nanites to propagate into another cosmos automatically. The incoming portal was set to the first Cosmos I’d contacted because I knew what was trying to get me from there. The 2nd portal was outgoing and would automatically switch to the next Cosmos on the list once nanites were released into that cosmos. If the Cosmos contained hostile entities that tried to get through the portal as soon as I opened it they would convert everything they could. If not, they’d gather data. I also left instructions for the nanites to keep their entry point clear so I could open portals regularly for updates. Eventually, I hoped to find a way to stay in contact with the nanites without needing to be in the same Cosmos. If I could figure that out, I had some ideas about what I could do at that point. One thing was for sure. My processing power was going to do exactly what I needed it to do, grow.

I refocused on the manifestations that had returned with information. At least that information was already part of me and I could go through what each version of myself had seen and try to figure out what was going on that way. The unfortunate truth was that I had chosen too low a level for my manifestations to be of any use against an enemy that was much smarter than them. Having my memories was great but if my manifestations couldn’t think and react as fast as I could they would be handicapped in any Cosmos they popped into.

As I started reviewing the data from the manifestations that had returned I noted that they all had a similar theme. I had appeared somewhere on an Earth almost identical to mine with minor variations after I’d been born. One of the more interesting things that I noted was that I didn’t always run into myself. In some Universes, I was taken into a room and summarily executed in such a way that all atoms in the room were destroyed which set off my nanite self-destruct protocols.

I continued to review the data and then I remembered. For any version of me to come up with this, I’d had to have incredible intelligence. To get that incredible intelligence I had to have leveled. To gain levels so quickly I’d had the ring Apolyn created. The Ring? I focused on the manifestation where I’d met myself and went through the meetings one by one. Sure enough, in every memory, Johnathan was wearing a band on his right ring finger.

Next, I checked to see how many of the Cosmos I’d reviewed had the ability to pull up my interface and how many didn’t. Surprisingly more had magic than did not. One thing that concerned me though was that these cosmos were in my cosmos past. If they were mirroring my cosmos why would these versions of me be chronologically behind me? I checked one more thing. In almost every instance I’d been captured, moved, and executed or had to self-destruct. Then again, that kind of made sense. This was only 5% of the total. Not every version would lead to my death or my doppelganger being a complete asshat. But 5% of the time, I could be a truly evil overlord, yeah I could live with that. They wouldn’t, but I could.

I’d retrieved all the information I could from the manifestations that were returning but I needed more. I wonder, what would happen if I absorbed the energy of my alternate self? Technically it was me so nothing bad should happen. Then again, it could be like running into yourself in the movie Timecop, I’d eradicate myself from the timeline. I processed the possibility of that happening and came up with less than one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent. Yeah, that was a silly thought. If I ever ran into another me that had survived a trip into chaos, that could be a problem.

I stopped reviewing the data I’d received concerning my manifestations and opened a portal into the first observation room where I’d met the first Johnathan. I was sure that by now a copy of him had been made. I left my soul space where it was and stepped through the portal, keeping it open. As I stepped through I looked around and noticed a ring on the floor. That’s right, the ring. My ring had had a Do-Not-Notice-Me effect inscribed on it, this one must have too. If his body had been destroyed, the ring would have survived, it was adamantium after all. Obviously, he hadn’t made it back yet.

This time when the guards rushed in I was at my full power. As they stepped through the outer door I disintegrated them with a thought. Their equipment too. Then I wished to know where the Johnathan Bennard born in this Cosmos was. A location popped into my mind and I teleported to that location. Jonathan had just enough time to start to say “What” as I pushed my hand into his forehead and forcefully took everything that was him into myself. This, of course, informed me of the location of his version of Thor, which he’d named Ra. I teleported into that room, placed my hand on its surface, and overwrote Ra with a version of myself. This of course let me take over every nanite throughout the Earth and Moon. As I reviewed his memories I realized he hadn’t started exploring much past Earth Orbit yet. A megalomaniac and locked into only human concerns, I was actually disappointed. If there was a version of me out there that was just Evil, I mean Universe spanning Evil, it wasn’t this version of me.

One minute later I teleported back to the observation room which was on the dark side of the moon, stepped through my portal, and closed it. I trusted the version of myself I’d left behind to fix things in that Cosmos. Right now I had my evil twins’ life to figure out.

As I floated in the place between places, the first thing I noticed was that there was no Abi. She didn’t exist here.

Next, magic did exist but compared to some worlds it was weak. Earth had just enough magic to open their personal interface and a few low-level spells. My use of magic to teleport and disintegrate was going to surprise anyone that saw those tapes. That thought led to my most self-reflective revelation. This version of myself was a fascist asshole. I had started to feel bad about killing him but after reviewing what he’d done, Fuck that guy! He’d systematically killed every single leader and terrorist around the world once the nanites had been in play. Questionably bad I know. Then he had an algorithm go through and search for possible dissenters. If the Algorithm decided they were a threat the nanites destroyed them, and he hadn’t put limiters on the program. Comparing the population of my Earth to the last report he’d received and the date of that report. This Cosmos had an Earth with a population of roughly 3.5 billion, while my Earth had over 7 Billion. He’d killed off about half of the human race? Then a question crossed my mind. Were there more versions of me like this out there?