Of course, there are. -Thor

This isn’t the worst of them, is it? -Adam

No, A couple of better questions to ask; did you receive a soul shard or a message from the Johnathan you just destroyed? Has it joined you? -Thor

I stopped cold. My Thor Aspect was absolutely right. As he had access to all the prompts coming in and processed them much quicker than I did, he’d know the answer. Yes, Yes, we were the same entity but I had parceled out certain functions and since he had most of the processing power from the nanites it was just easier for him to check the prompts. I refocused and checked.

The prompts coming in were still messages about manifestations returning but they had slowed considerably. I was only receiving one about every ten seconds or so. It was also very easy to check the rest of the prompts and messages, although my prompts inbox was starting to look like a Microsoft Outlook or google mail setup. Pretty soon I’d have to add a spam folder. I brought my thoughts back into focus and went through each category of prompt and sure enough, I hadn’t received any prompts. Next, I went through each manifestation that had returned from the time stamp of when I’d destroyed my evil twin and now and none of them held the memory of encountering my true self.

I thought about this for a second or so, then willed myself back into the base on the Moon and wished Johnathan Soul into my presence. Nothing happened. I made sure True Sight was active and looked around. Nothing. I then concentrated my intent to know what had happened to the Soul of Johnathan Bennard from this Cosmos and actualized that intent. I watched as the Soul of Johnathan left the body I’d destroyed by absorbing it. The soul of Johnathan had shrunk to nothing, inverted and fled this Cosmos and it hadn’t come to me? Did that mean there were different versions of me and that each version was its own entity? Or did it mean that I could never get higher than the 99.99% as an absolute soul because there were portions of my soul that I could never absorb? Also, this could be a fluke. This could be a one-time occurrence?

Over the next…I checked my personal clock for reference. I had Thor start keeping time by 24-hour days, and 365-day years from the time I started culling my evil twins. Maybe I should call any time reference since my decision to fix myself, KET (Kill Evil Twin) day. Nah, that was just too narcissistic, even for me.

I’d been going at it for 5 years now. I’d taken breaks once in a while and had absorbed the knowledge of 2,627,596 versions of Johnathan. I was absorbing roughly one of the Johnathan’s every 30 seconds over 12 hours each day. Each of these Johnathan’s was a nightmare and the worlds they’d inhabited had been brutalized. Some had been wrecked by Nuclear War. Others had versions of the Syndicate or the Labyrinth happen to them and others had been a lot like I had done if I’d been a teenager on a power trip. I had multiple memories of the Johnathan’s taking whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, to include any women they desired. Any that raised a fuss, cease to exist or were moved to a location where he could abuse them as he desired and no one could find them. Also, the Johnathan’s I absorbed were not fans of criticism. More than one of the Johnathan’s accepted invitations from media personalities that had every intention of launching a smear campaign against them. It was almost like there was a textbook on how they handled such character-smearing traps.

First, the Johnathans didn’t care about what anyone thought about them.

Second, they’d accept the interview.

Third, he’d show up for the interview and pleasantries would be exchanged then the media personality would make a claim that Johnathan had committed this or that atrocity or broke this or that law after showing some evidence, if they had any.

Forth, Then Johnathan would say something like, “So”, and the host would evaporate from the extremities towards their torso in the most excruciating pain that Johnathan could give them. He’d Amp up the pain receptors artificially and the screams would start. Of course, The screaming would stop once the nanites started on the torso the host’s eyes would glaze over at which point they’d just evaporate into nothing. Each Johnathan referred to that first incident as the first culling.

Fourth, Johnathan would leave the study and head back to wherever he had his base of operation in that Cosmos. In almost every instance he already had portal technology so he’d step through a door and seemingly vanish. In the few iterations he hadn’t had portals, he’d head towards his limo and anyone that tried to stop him would evaporate.

Fifth, he’d watch as those that had witnessed the death of the host commented and called for Justice. Any politician, judge, senator, or house representative that took any action against him died in the same fashion as the media host. The Johnathan’ were smart enough not to leave their version of the United States with a power vacuum so when that command to the nanites went out, he also destroyed the leaders of all foreign governments, friendly or foe. Though in those instances, he just caused massive brain aneurysms that killed them instantly. That was the Second culling. The confusion and chaos a bunch of leaders dropping dead all over the globe caused allowed that Johnathan to declare himself leader across the globe.

The Sixth and final step was the systematic monitoring and death of anyone that tried to rebel. Not showing up for work to show your solidarity, you never showed up again. Talking to your friend about how you thought someone should kill Johnathan, whenever you thought no one was watching. The individual that made the statement was destroyed right then, usually in a similar fashion to the media host. A few Earths tried to stop Johnathan by launching their nukes. Instead, they detonated in their launch tubes killing everything in the immediate area. Johnathan did have the nanites clean up the radiation quickly after though. Of course, the individual that ordered the strike or launch died as well.

None of the Johnathan’s that were part of the manifestations that had returned so quickly had any sympathy for anyone else. In each case, the population of those Earths lost between 40% and 60% of their total population before people figured out they could not even talk about overthrowing Johnathan. They just accepted that their lives were now run by a single dictator and there was nothing they could do about it.

To be sure I wasn’t killing a good Johnathan I would first download and review their memories. If I found any hint that the Johnathan I was in front of was a monster I absorbed them and set their soul free. Then I took over the nanites, set them to neutral, and let events play out as they would. In each case, the strongest personalities were already dead. It would take ages for anyone to realize that the Johnathan of their world wasn’t around. Part of each Johnathan’s procedure was to also cleanse the world of the dregs of society. Homeless, addicts, social out layers. Each Johnathan had also destroyed them. The only humans left were the sheep.

If I made any universal declarations, I would only do more harm than good. The humans on each of these Earths would have to find their own way. The least I could do was make sure they were healthy and would have long lives so I set the nanites I’d taken over to the default settings I usually used and also had them make sure that no one came down with any truly horrendous diseases or cancer. Otherwise, they were on their own.

As destroyed each Johnathan I checked to see if any prompts had occurred concerning myself. Each time I was relieved to find that the monster I’d just killed was not part of me. I felt absolutely no remorse for killing such a monster, though killing myself over two million times so far was making me like parts of myself less and less event though I knew intellectually these assholes weren’t me.

While I was following up on each of the manifestations that came from an Evil Johnathan I had my Thor Aspect review the manifestations that were returning that didn’t involve my evil alter egos. Whom my manifestation ran into in each of those cases was random but was usually one of my friends from college. In a Cosmos where there was a lot of magic, a mage of some sort had taken over the nanites. In some cases, my manifestation had survived long enough to be eaten by a monster of some sort. In one such case, Thor informed me that the manifestation seemed to have a memory of a Cthulhu-type creature.

None of the manifestation Thor was reviewing, however, contained any version of myself that would be considered good. It was entirely possible that my manifestations that had run into a good version of myself just hadn’t returned yet. It was also possible that they’d run into an evil version of myself that was smarter. One thing reviewing these manifestations had given me though was time. Time to learn how to utilize my abilities and expand myself to levels I’d never achieved before. Not levels in the sense of experience. Levels, in the sense of processing power.

Over the last five years, I’d absorbed roughly 15% of the manifestations I’d released. I hadn’t visited even 1% of the 5% that had returned immediately. Even so, I’d been able to figure a few things out.

First, the number of Cosmos my manifestations had gone to wasn’t infinite. I was sure that had to do with the fact that I’d put a qualifier in play. By limiting the manifestations to human-friendly the number of manifestations had not been infinite.

Second, I’d been able to learn a lot from the number sequence that had been used for each Cosmos. It had taken a little while but I’d been able to find the annotation that denoted the entire Cosmic identifier. As my manifestations were assigned the last part was added. Once I realized that I’d gone through and compared every identifier which had led to my third revelation.

Third, the cosmic identifier quantified the settings of the cosmos. It took only a few comparisons for my Thor Aspect to deduce that everything one needed to know about a Cosmos was in that identifier. He identified the sequences that set up the weak and strong interactions as well as gravity. which were identical for each of the Cosomos I’d explored. Thor was also able to determine the sequence that identified the availability of magic in those Cosmos.

Fourth, once Thor figured that out I went back and found the identifier in my archived prompt logs for when I had Universal and Cosmic access and looked for instances when I crossed Universes or Cosmos and found the sequence that identified me as having access to Universal and Cosmic Prompts at that time.

Firth, I figured out that I could not modify my soul spaces identifier but I could modify my manifestations modifier to give them Cosmic Access when I sent them out.

Sixth, as a byproduct of figuring that part out, I found a way to issue a recall command to all my manifestations at once. I couldn’t remanifest into a Cosmos I was already in but what I could do was send an update or recall by adding some coding to the identifier for the manifestation. I hadn’t done that yet because

Seventh, I needed to finish converting the fourth Cosmos worth of nanites into the processing power I would need. I had discovered that the nanite swarm was what was left of a Cosmos that had collapsed to a point that held only nanites. All the matter with that Cosmos was now manifest as Nanites. I had discovered multiple Cosmos like this and have begun the conversion process in each. Only if they were mindless destroying machines. I had come across a Cosmos containing Nanites that contained the consciousness of a countless number of entities. I’d established contact and would contact them again if I was wrong about a theory I’d been developing. I received a prompt indicating that the fourth Cosmos had just finished being converted.

Eighth, I removed the Cosmos that manifestations had already returned from the list of Cosmos I’d re-manifest into. I had a good idea of what was there and would revisit them if this next part worked.

I didn’t have any more reasons to put off what I needed to do so I opened portals inside my soul space to the four cosmos filled with my nanites and quantumly linked them to myself. I reintegrated my Thor Aspect and sent out the recall command to the rest of the manifestations that had not returned. Unlike my batch command to manifest everywhere this command did not knock me unconscious and the processing power of four Cosmos worth of nanites and the processing power I had available in my Soul Space allowed me to absorb, categorize and review what the rest of my manifestations had come across.

One of my manifestations that hadn’t returned did not return at all. I locked that Cosmos Identifier out of my next manifestation command. I quickly reviewed the rest. The majority of manifestations that had not returned hadn’t done so because they’d integrated into various eras of human activity. They’d had been living normal lives wherever they’d been. Some of the Cosmos had magic, while others did not. Some had been captured by the government of the Planet they’d been on, which wasn’t always Earth. Some were in the process of being tortured but in most cases my manifestations had just been confined.

I compared all types of settings with Cosmic Codes and found one more piece of the puzzle. Stellar and galactic coordinates were also in the identifier as well as temporal proximity to point 0 where point zero seemed to be the moment that was my soul’s present, though I wasn’t absolutely sure about that. I’d only been able to recognize it by the amount of technology I saw and how higher technology Cosmos always had a higher value in that part of the identifier.

I added the Cosmic Interface identifier to each manifestation and sent a new level 100 manifestation of myself back to each Cosmos I’d just recalled them from with instructions to open their Cosmic Interface, review their personal information on that interface paying particular attention to the soul abilities and their qualities as well as reviewing the makeup of the Cosmos, specifically extra dimensions, and if additional Universes were present. Once I had a firm idea of the information I wanted, I manifest back into every one of those Cosmos with the ability to use the Cosmic Interface.

With that done, I parceled all information I’d just gained from the returned manifestations into four equal parts, sent one part to each of the Cosmos I was connected to, and closed the portals to those Cosmos. I’d let the nanites review and categorize all the data they had. It would probably take a while.

Once the portals were closed, I willed myself into my Place of Power within my Soul Space, went up to my bedroom, and laid down to take a good long nap. I needed to give my new manifestations time to gather as much data as they could with the access they had. I also needed to give my hordes of nanites time to review all the data my old manifestations had gathered. If I was right, things would change very shortly. First, though, five years without a break? It was nap time.