Over the next 2 hours, Pandora made 100 Replicants. Ten of them went to each of the cities while the other 90 spread out throughout the world to various encampments were having problems. To maintain communication Pandora created a communications hub in Scarborough and sent out instructions using Nanite Communication. Each replicant then utilized Mold Chaos to create an earpiece that connected them to the hub. After a little trial and error utilizing some information from Thor’s memories, channels were created from each Replicant's Mindspace into her own utilizing Nanite Communication, and Pandora and the replicants were all flooded with information from each other.
Unlike her father, who controlled a whole bunch of bodies from a singular consciousness. Pandora was a 101-individual consciousness based on the same template that stayed inter-connected. This allowed each body to make individual choices but it was a choice that any of the 100 would have made. The other thing that was interesting. Once all of them were connected each of the replicants thought of themselves as Pandora and the information she was receiving became just another memory she could call on.
***
Pandora stepped from the portal to find herself l Cairo to find herself standing at the doors of the Ramses Hilton. She’d chosen to come to this building to get her bearings.
“Seize Her!” a voice rang out in Arabic from the main door as 30 men in the area rushed toward her, “She does not have a hijab, she must be punished!”
Pandora ignored the men rushing her and began walking toward the man who had called out. Just as the first man was about to touch her she stopped suppressing her aura. Not a little, she stopped suppressing it completely. Aura was a combination of both her Willpower and Charisma. Her Willpower was currently 110,316 and her Charisma was 110,268. When she released it everyone within her visual range dropped unconscious.
Luckily the SYSTEM didn’t count releasing an aura as an attack or she’d have been ejected from the Safe Zone. Pandora continued into the hotel and walked up to the City Node with no effort at all. She saw some people that hadn’t been knocked unconscious but when they noted that she had seen them, they fled. A minute later the Safe Zone was claimed and the exemptions were removed. She also sent out a SYSTEM message to everyone within the City.
Greetings, I am Pandora. This city is now under my control. Treat others with dignity and respect or you will find yourself ejected from the Safe Zone. More directions will be distributed shortly.
***
This process was repeated in the other seven Safe Zones. Pandora’s replicants were not required to lift a finger. They released their auras and walked right up to the City Nodes when issues came up. Only Cairo’s residents had tried to attack her immediately. The other city leaders hadn’t acted until she let them know she was taking over the cities.
Her replicants in the Safe Zones dealt with setting up city councils and seeing to the safety and security of the people in those Safe Zones, some of which had been exploited. The other 90 replicants appeared around the world and started thinning out the monsters. Well 89 of them did. One remained in Scarborough, inside the shop, and began offloading loot or converting various coins into credits that all of her replicants could use from the shared inventory. Five Cubic Feet was not a lot of space. As the space was utilized it increased. Pandora watched as each skill level increased the cubic storage area by 1 foot. Unlike her normal inventory, the shared storage area did not receive a boost when increasing from one rarity rank to the next. At Skill Level Scarce 1 the area for the shared inventory was only 15 cubic feet. Because it was filling so quickly with monster pieces parts and loot one of the replicants stayed in the shop and offloaded materials as they appeared. Daisy of course was ecstatic as buying and selling materials seemed to be how she earned XP for her class.
Pandora remained in Scarborough for a bit and then went to her room where she sat on her bed and dropped into her Mindspace. She didn’t release Triumvirate because she wanted the full processing power of Thor and Caspa as she tried to figure out how Replicant was working.
Once she was in her Mindspace she activated one of her newer skills, Soul Core Perception. It felt like she was being teleported as everything shifted around her and she appeared to be floating in in front of a large sphere with other smaller spheres orbiting it. As they moved close by each sphere listed a tool tip that held one of her Abilities, Titles Perks, or Skills. One of these days she was going to need to pick up some spells, maybe they’d create spheres in this place also?
Pandora focused on the sphere for Replicant and her surroundings shifted automatically until she stood before a sphere that continued to orbit around the large sphere that was the nucleus while she remained locked in front of it. As she focused on the sphere she noticed that 100 threads left the orb and launched out of the domain she stood in. When she focused on a thread an image of a replicant with a status screen below it appeared. The status screen detailed the replicant’s current hit points, stamina, mana, and psychic energy. There also seemed to be a flow of energy coming down the thread into the sphere.
Pandora deactivated Soul Core Perception and found herself back in her Mindspace. She opened her Status Screen and started checking her logs and memories that she’d been archiving. Nothing had changed when she checked the logs but when she checked the memories that had automatically been archiving she started receiving combat notifications.
Congratulations you have defeated a level 15 mutated Bear!
Congratulations! You have defeated a level 12, Skrachee.
Congratulations! You have defeated a level 16, Goblin.
Congratulations! You have defeated a level 18, Orb Berserker.
Pandora muted the notification after the first four as she started allowing the actions of the replicants to enter her mind immediately. It looked like she wouldn’t get the XP from her replicants unless she experienced what they experienced. With Thor’s memories to guide her she easily accepted the experiences of her 100 replicants.
Over the next week, Pandora worked with Amanda and Abi to expand the bases portal support network while the replicants cleaned up the world and helped out people in general. The increased mana saturation led to 61 legendary, 545 Mythical, and 1,210 Epic monster spawns which one, or more, of her replicants destroyed. With satellite coverage and the portal network in place, her replicants took care of all the issues with ease.
In addition to destroying monsters, the replicants used Mold Chaos to help repair and fix infrastructure as well as set up basic defenses for those settlements that were outside of a safe zone and refused to move. Bunkers were created with emergency phones that could get help to them or allow them to be evacuated into a Safe Zone using the Portal Network, if necessary
In addition to high-level monster spawns her replicants were responsible for destroying over 36,000 basic, 9,000 scarce, 6,000 Rare, 4,000 advanced, and 3,000 master-level monster spawns. At least one replicant was busy fighting monster spawns at any given moment. Over the last week, the constant combat had helped her gain enough XP to earn three more levels as she rose from level 64 to 66.
As part of their arsenal, each replicant could separate into multiple clones and create multiple sets of orbs which reinforced the idea that the class she’d picked up was completely broken. At random intervals, she’d feel kind of sluggish for a moment and then it would pass. She was having way too much fun and gaining too much XP to slow down. Part of her wanted that portal at Stonehenge to open a portal again so she could send a few replicants through but then she’d be intruding on Umbrati’s domain. She wasn’t ready to make an enemy of a bonafide God. Not yet, maybe not ever.
Pandora sent instructions to her Replicants in Shanghai, Cairo, New York, and Buenos Aires to purchase Nanite Stabilizers to cover a 25-mile radius for 1 billion credits for each of the Safe Zones and then get to work fixing the city. She’d need another 4 billion credits to set up the last 4 Safe Zones with nanites so she let her Replicants continue helping people while also culling the monsters. Installing Nanite Stabilizers everywhere on the planet would be pointless but putting them in the ten Safe Zones the SYSTEM permitted made a lot of sense.
While the replicants were busy, Pandora pulled on the memories from Thor and created a vacuum-sealed survey chamber with an interlocked pressure door system that would allow her to open portals to various environments and set up habitats without exposing the base to dangerous environments. One of the things she did not have was her father’s adaptation abilities. Her Chaotic Nature and Damage Resistance allowed her to survive in extreme environments, including vacuum, but some of the things her father could do, like diving into black holes or swimming around in lava, yeah she couldn’t do that, at least not yet. Now that she knew what her father was, or at least had been, capable of she had an idea of the skills and abilities she needed to unlock to match his abilities.
For now, technology could be that bridge. Within the field of nanite stabilizers, she could use nanites to create anything she needed and then send it out through a portal into a location to create a habitat where she could survive. It’s what Thor and Abi had been doing to set up the satellite network around Earth and it was what she was going to do now to set up a couple of bases on Mars, the Moon, and Pluto. She might move and try to spread out to other solar systems, but that was something for later. Right now, she wanted to put a backup plan in place for her family and friends.
The first thing she did was create six satellites and place them 24 billion miles from the sun. Pluto orbited at about 3 billion miles. Four of the satellites were on the orbital plane 90 degrees offset from one another and the last two were placed on the Z-Axis one above and one below the orbital plane. That way she would have orbital coverage of the whole solar system. It would take light from the sun about 24 hours to reach the satellite so she should be able to see all objects orbiting the sun within 24 hours that were within the radius of her satellites.
Pandora looked on from the control room of her new Survey chamber as she dedicated six micro-portals to keep the satellites linked to the semi-sentient quantum computer in Scarborough and put it to work. The data would be added to a 3-D model which should be able to detect and predict the movement of objects within the Solar System.
Satisfied with the progress her replicants and the A.I. were making Pandora paused for a moment when the sluggishness returned full force. A feeling of immense pressure came from within her. Pandora walked into the vacuum chamber and sealed it before she paused everything else she was doing and retreated into her Mindspace where something had changed. She felt a pulling sensation toward the center of her Mindscape.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The portal to her Soulcore was represented by a circular pond situated at the center of her Mindscape. As she moved up to it she noticed that a circular motion had started to appear on the surface. As she watched a dip formed in the center and an inverted water, or air spout began descending into the depths. Pandora knew that there was a conduit to her Soulcore here and usually the path was sealed. Right now, though it looked like something was causing a path to be opened from her Soul Core into her Mindspace. Thor had memories of Adam’s interaction with the two parts of his soul but for him the door was open and he transferred between each at will. She wasn’t so fortunate.
Pandora activated Soul Core Perception. The fountain fell away and the path to her Soul Core opened up. Additionally, she could also see that while energy seemed to be flowing from her Mindspace toward her Soul Core tendrils of very thin, almost invisible energy were reaching out of the vortex in all directions. What the hell was going on? She thought to ask Thor when she received her first surprise. She could not deactivate the Triumvirate.
Pandora calmed her mind followed the conduit into her Soul Core and received her second surprise. The sphere, or node, labeled Creature of Chaos had those thin translucent webs reaching out in all directions and latching onto every other sphere in this space including what passed for the nucleus. There was an incredibly thick conduit of the strands reaching from her Replicant skill sphere to her nucleus, or was it reaching from her nucleus to the Replicant skill sphere?
As she came into the space one of the strands touched her and she froze. As she froze she felt energy reach out from within her and each of the Replicants she’d made winked out of existence as the energy was somehow reabsorbed into her and the memories and minds she created were added to her own.
She thought her replicants would fight what was happening but realized that it happened so fast that none of them had any warning. It didn’t matter if a replicant was only one clone of herself or if it had separated into 10 or 100 clones to help out an area. Every single replicant clone of herself on Earth disappeared as the chaos that made them up was reabsorbed.
What the hell was going on?
Pandora watched as more and more threads exploded from her Creature of Chaos sphere and filled the space around her. She could also sense that her Mindspace was now filled with threads and that they were trying to expand out of it. With every ounce of his willpower, Pandora commanded the chaos to only affect her, nothing more. One of her memories from Thor hinted at what might be happening but she didn’t have time to think about it because it was all she could do to hold that one thought in her mind.
The threads of chaos, because that’s all it could be, spread out as Pandora focused her will to contain that Chaos within herself. As they began to slow she knew that she’d been successful because she couldn’t feel anything leaving her body. The sensation of growth from her Creature of Chaos sphere slowed and finally stopped. She’d done it! Pandora was able to relax for a moment even though she knew whatever was happening wasn’t over yet but she would accept the reprieve for what it was.
She considered everything she knew. Memories from Thor indicated that her father almost always had more attributes than chaos which made controlling the chaos much easier. In Pandora’s case though, Chaos was part of her makeup in the form of Caspa and her attributes were incredibly lower than the amount of Chaos she’d absorbed. If she had to guess the genie that was her soul bottle had been limited by the SYSTEM and the size of the genie in the bottle was much more than the vessel the SYSTEM had allowed could handle. Though she’d spread that chaos out into her Replicants, which in turn had started generating even more chaos which was all linked back through her.
Which meant?
Which meant that she was either going to explode or something else was going to happen. If the energy were inverted, could a Universe be created within a Soul out here in the real world? Sure, Dad had done it but that had been part of a virtual universe. One of Thor’s memories from his time working for the SYSTEM surfaced, all physical and virtual universal models are valid.
Wait, what?
Was all the time Pandora had to think before the expansion reversed and Pandora's Soul Core, Mindspace, and Body were converted into chaos, reduced to a single point, and vanished.
***
“What did the nanites in the room detect?” Amanda asked Abi, as Pandora’s Grandmother and Grandfather looked around the room after watching the video that showed Pandora standing in the middle of the vacuum chamber with an intense look of concentration on her face. A moment later she shrank to a single point of light where the center of her chest had been a moment before and vanished.
“Quantum signatures were detected from the other Pandora clones that appeared, which coincided with the disappearance of the 100 Pandora clones that were working around the world. A millisecond later they closed and one quantum signature appeared that we didn’t recognize. The energy that was Pandora reduced to zero and then winked out of existence,” Abi said.
“Where did she go?” Amanda asked.
Abi shared a holographic screen with everyone in the room.
Pandora is not within the SYSTEM Domain.
“You bought the information from the SYSTEM?” Cindy Bennard, Pandora’s grandmother asked.
“I also asked where she was, this is the other answer I received?” Abi said.
Chaotic Imbalance has removed itself from the local SYSTEM Domain. Commence normal Mana Integration.
“Removed itself? Is it saying she chose to do this?” Robert Bennard, Pandora’s Grandfather asked.
“We’ve all watched the video, I don’t think she knew what was happening until it happened,” Abi thoughtfully.
“Still where did she end up?” Amanda asked.
“No idea,” Abi said.
***
Pandora came to the awareness with no sense of up, down, or her body. She simply felt herself floating along like she was in a stream of water that happened to be her body temperature. As she floated along, stress left her as did any semblance of coherent thought. She had no idea how long she floated along as she enjoyed the relaxing feeling of the current. Eventually, a thought crossed her mind which brought her back to herself, Where am I?
That thought was like a shock to her system as Pandora tried to open her eyes and realized that they were open even though she couldn’t see anything. She tried to listen but only heard a dull whine in the background, almost static, but not quite. It was like…It was like billions upon billions of noises combined to a point where you couldn’t tell them apart. She tried to touch something but couldn’t feel her fingers. She tried to take a deep breath to smell something but couldn’t do that either. Finally, she tried to taste something but again nothing changed.
What was going on?
Pandora tried to open her Status Screen.
Status Screen unavailable
“There she is!” A male voice called from all around Pandora, “Here let me help you.”
Suddenly Pandora’s nude body formed around her and she found herself floating with clones of herself that extended in all directions as far as she could see. There were so many that there were columns and rows along all three axes. If she could see the outside of this formation she wouldn’t be surprised if her bodies formed a gigantic cube made up of her bodies.
“What is going on?” Pandora asked from her newly formed mouth.
“One second,” The voice called back. A moment later every other clone of hers disappeared and she was left floating by herself again.
“What is going on?” Pandora asked again.
Pandora’s surroundings shifted and morphed into a balcony, complete with a table on a patio that looked down from a cliff onto the sun setting on the ocean. Complete with pink and purple fluffy clouds. Across from her was a human dressed in casual shorts and a light blue polo shirt.
“Please sit, we have a moment before I send you back.” The man said.
Figuring there was no point in arguing, Pandora walked over to one of the chairs at the table and sat down. She looked around one more time and couldn’t tell if what she saw was real or an illusion.
“It’s all real enough, Pandora.”
“Are you reading my mind?” Pandora asked.
“Yes and no. In this place your thoughts are known to me.”
“You know my name, what am I to call you?” Pandora asked.
“You can call me Xavier if you like. I can see from your memories that Professor X was a very powerful fictional character in your…wait, Those are Adam’s memories. What is going on? Ahh, that is interesting.”
Pandora waited patiently.
“Very well, an analogy then. I see from the memories you hold that you understand how black holes are formed. In the simplest terms I can use, You became a black hole. Not in the literal sense of course. Actually, it would be more appropriate to say that you became a chaotic hole, but that doesn’t exactly fit so let’s stick with the black hole analogy.”
“Okay,” Pandora said hesitantly.
“Using that comparison let's pretend for a second that the chaos that was carried around in your Soul had mass. Chaos normally conforms to its environment or reverts to its natural state. Well, inside Creatures of Chaos what that means is that as long as your total base Chaos is less than the sum of your attributes it will adhere to your will for the most part and only act out once in a while. In your case you had Caspa helping you out which further reduced the chance that the chaos held by you would act chaoticially”
“What was supposed to happen?” Pandora asked worriedly.
“Normally when one cannot control the Chaos within themselves, the chaos erupts from them, killing them and anything around them. In your case, because of Caspa, exactly how insanely high your attributes were, and a few other factors the chaos within you worked to return to its origin point, where you are now,” Xavier said.
“Where is that exactly?”
“You are currently outside of the SYSTEM you are familiar with in what you would term a Plane of Elemental, or Primal, Chaos. If you were not a Creature of Chaos, you would have been converted into and then absorbed by the Chaos here.”
“And the copies of myself?” Pandora asked.
“Replicants all. They will be receiving a copy of everything you’ve learned concerning attributes and the need to keep your Chaos below the sum of your attributes but I’ve sent them elsewhere.”
“Why?” Pandora asked.
“The Chaos within you was yours. It had to be used by you. I may have cheated a bit by forcing your hand but in the long run, I think it’ll work out better for everyone,” Xavier said.
“Where did you send them, and why can’t I feel them?” Pandora asked.
“Well, the reason you can’t feel them is because I modified your Class Skill. You can look that over when you get back to the Earth you came here from. As for where I sent them. How to explain this quickly? Simple version. If there is 100% of a Universe, The SYSTEM controls just over 20%. The other 80% either does not have SYSTEM oversight or is controlled by a different SYSTEM, though the SYSTEM you’re used to is the largest by far. That SYSTEM is constantly expanding and growing and someday it will probably control 100% of the Universe in this model. “
“So, the SYSTEM is trying to take over the Multiverse, I understand the context,” Pandora said.
“Sort of, and remember that I said if there was 100%, how reality is set up is a lot more complicated than something so simple. Let’s get back to answering your question. I sent your replicants to every universe and dimension I could that is outside of the current SYSTEM. Because there were so many of you I had to adjust a few things about your class skill. The primary of which is that All information and energy from you to your replicants or your replicants to you comes through this realm which I hold dominion over. You cannot gain XP for levels or Skills from those Replicants yet but they are helping you and the SYSTEM spread. How will become known after you reach beyond level 100 of Teir 5.
“So what good is that Class Skill then?” Pandora said.
“As I said, I changed it. It works as normal for any Replicant within the same dimensional plane as you. Otherwise, you are cut off from them. How the Replicants are helping you for the future is known by me.”
“Why are you doing this? Also, it seems like you’re helping me, so why are you helping me?”
“You are unique in this interaction, even if there are now so many copies of you that you hold hands across the breadth of your universe. You are important because we hope that you or your father will succeed where so many others have failed.”
“No pressure then?”
“None whatsoever,” Xavier said with a smile.
“Very well, is there anything else I need to know?”
“Your friends and family are worried about you; I’ll be opening a portal for you to re-emerge near them.
“Very well, and thank you, Xavier. Until we meet again.”
“Until we meet again,” Xavier said as a portal appeared and Pandora was sucked through without a preamble. Unlike the portals her network created or even theoretical wormholes, the travel wasn’t instantaneous and Pandora felt like she was falling through a very long tunnel. When she finally emerged from the tunnel, the portal was oriented so that the opening was above her bed and parallel to the floor. She landed on her bed as the portal winked out.
An Alarm sounded and four portals opened with men pointing guns at her as she tried to roll around and sit up. What the hell, the blanket was fighting her.
“Freeze! Wait! Pandora?” a familiar voice called as one of the men with a gun trained on her rushed through the portal and pulled her into a hug. It only took her a moment to recognize that it was her dark elf friend, Robert, before she also recognized the fact that she was naked.
“Robert?”
“Where have you been we’ve been so worried about you!” Robert exclaimed as Pandora noticed that the other three guards were stowing their weapons and were studiously not looking through their portal at her.
“Robert?”
“Do you know that you’ve been gone for almost five years now! Five Years! Even your dad stopped by. You missed that. He did something and made all of us as strong as you, it’s been crazy fun whipping this planet….
“ROBERT!” Pandora yelled as she pushed against him, which was actually kind of hard to do. Wait, did he say Dad had visited?
“No need to yell,” Robert said as he backed away and looked down. It was at that moment he realized that she was naked. She knew this because his eyes went wide. Pandora hadn’t known until that moment that dark elves could blush.
“Like what you see?” Pandora said, to drive the point home.
“Um,” Robert said “Nice try Pandora. The only appropriate answer I can give is “Yes, of course,” he said with a wink.
Pandora couldn’t even be mad. That was a great response. Also, damn it, she was blushing.
