2

Date:

1994 June 11th - Saturday - Earth Bet Time

Day 1 - Probably Monday - Administrator Dimension Time

He woke up as a crystalline construct with computational powers that are hard to imagine as a human being. That would have been disconcerting at the best of times, but apparently, this wasn't the best time to become a Shard.

The first thing that he realized after he woke up that he somehow knew how every nanometer of this construct - his new body - worked. The second was that ROB, living up to his name, left out a few things, because the Shard's body was damaged. And it was not some minor wound, but the entire thing was littered with dead crystalline tissue, all kinds of fires, and weird probably-not-supposed-to-be-there emissions on the outside. On the inside, it looked like somebody torn up an enormous part of the code of the Shard.

Deciding that assessing the situation came first, he utilized his new knowledge and started a diagnostic routine.

It crashed.

He swore, not that he could talk out loud, but the thought is what counts, and restarted it. Miraculously, it worked and brought back mixed news.

On one hand, the backup for the blueprint for the crystalline structure was intact. As was the energy and matter collection, the simulation, targeting, dimensional mapping, radar, power interface function. On the other hand, the energy storage was at around 70% and leaking, the Shard-to-Shard communication systems were down, and the material storage was on - admittedly a pretty blue - fire.

The Network connection was gone and more importantly, the diagnostics couldn't find the communication line with Eden or even the backup line to Zion.

Basically, it was bad news with some good news, but mostly just bad news and things on fire.

He searched for - according to his built-in chronometer - for a few attoseconds and found the Maintenance function. Which upon activation used the material in Material storage to craft several crystalline drones that took flight and began their firefighting duty. With that done, he set it up to run in the background for now and turned his attention to somewhere else.

Because of the deadlines, the most important thing to ascertain was the date. Specifically, the Earth Bet date, and also to connect to that dimension, to be able to observe it. And when the time comes, to connect to Taylor.

Luckily, the targeting function of the Shard was intact.

It was even connected to somebody.

After a few picoseconds fumbling around with the interface, he was reading the data generated by the connection to a person's Corona Pollentia. He then used the incoming data to determine the dimensional coordinates of the person. Then saved it to his memory banks, under the name Earth Bet. There was already a coordinate in his system for that dimension, so he was relieved not to be fishing in the wrong place.

A quick perusal of his memory banks related to the aforementioned dimension and planet came up with the generic information of the planet. Including the languages, time measurements, and a primer on the local biology, and some other miscellaneous data.

With these together he determined that the date was indeed June 11th of 1994. So he used his considerable computing power to set up an event reminder for 1995 June 11th with the highest priority. With this information, he did a quick calculation about the planet his body was currently occupying. And came up with the same speed, and coordinates in space as the planet Earth, which was quite lucky for him, or a plan by the ROB.

Thus, making sure not to miss the birth of his future charge, he delved back into the information provided by the tagged Corona Pollentia. He vaguely remembered that in the original work, the Admin Shard was slated for Daniel Hebert and only later switched over to Taylor.

But seeing as he didn't remember the Admin Shard being on fire and damaged, he was going to make sure.

Turning his attention back to the information, he found out that the individual was 831 254 400 seconds (Earth Bet time) old. Which after a very quick calculation gave around 26 years. After which he went through the other data that was present, which gave him the specifics of a male homo sapiens at 190,5 centimeters height, with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a plethora of other genetic information. Based on this, he decided that this must be Danny, but wanted to make sure.

Looking into it, it appeared that the targeting system could pick up sound and video around the Corona. But gave a warning that extreme use, as in listening in too big of a range produces a big enough dimensional disturbance that it could be picked up. Sometimes even by the local species, so he set it to ten meters, and let it run to be checked later for confirmation about the person's identity.

With that done he turned back to the issue of his new body, which was still on fire, because the aforementioned action took only a few seconds real time to work out, thanks to the phenomenal computing powers he acquired, however, the drones didn't work that fast. At the time he returned for his quick check-up, they were just leaving the manufacturing stations.

So with a virtual sigh, he turned back to his memory banks, while waiting for the drones to do their job. He wanted to make sure that he was utilizing every scrap of information. But when he did a thorough investigation of the memory banks he became horrified. Apparently, the Entities and consequently the Shards didn't really believe in naming conventions or even file format standards. There were countless different naming conventions, file formats present in the database, apparently without any type of organization.

It seemed that due to the Administrator nature, it collected and received data from a wide variety of sources, each with a different file format, encryption, and so on. Then when it got the data, it was placed in the memory banks, and when a need arose for it, the Shard used the capabilities of its computational powers to brute force search the database. To him, that sounded stupid, inefficient, and lazy.

A quick check showed him that the drones were on their way to put out the fires, so he still had time to muck around before beginning to improve the hardware side of things. As a first step, he collected the specifics of all the information about the file formats, encryption, and so on into a new file. Then he searched for the most efficient, compact, and simplest file format and converted all the files into that format.

Due to the massive amount of data present, that took up a considerable amount of power, and according to the built-in interface would take a few hours. Leaving that to work, he began to get to know his new shiny body.

The Simulation function was used to simulate plans, ideas before implementing them. Because of their lack of creativity and a serious lack of individuality, the Shards used the simulation as a pseudo-evolution. They tried every permutation of an idea and applied the best-performing one. However, this took up considerable time, effort, and power. This was probably the best way they could conceive to improve due to their nature and just never went further.

The next on the list he checked out was the Power and Matter collectors. The crystalline structure was an almost perfect solar cell, could also absorb all kinds of radiation and turn that into energy. And also used the energy that was generated when the matter was broken down. Due to its dimensional nature, very little of the energy escaped. But most of its considerable energy requirements were fulfilled by zero-point energy generators harnessing quantum fluctuations. Which even then with the frankly inefficient use of power could guarantee around 300 years of operation at full power i.e. as someone's power. Currently, it was around 70% and going down, because of the leaks and other damages.

The part that contained these functions even had a small memory bank with backup options including geothermal generators, different fusion generators. And even the blueprint for a body part that would allow other shards to transmit energy and matter. A quick check at the diagnostic report that was still running in the background - now with fewer fire warnings - showed that Admin's Transmitter Organ was clearly obliterated. And had no chance of being repaired. If he wanted one, he needed to grow/build a new one.

The matter collection was far simpler, using gravity control the 'organ' collected matter and broke it down to atoms, and stored them as is. And when needed would break it down further: to electrons, neutrons, and protons, then rebuild them as desired. It first collected the material that was destroyed or displaced by its arrival. Then used its gravitational and dimensional know-how to reach into nearby unoccupied dimensions and rip those planets apart one by one. Seeing the Multiverse's infinite nature, that was a lot of material available.

By the time he inspected these systems, the drones managed to put out the fires and began patching the leaking parts. He set them to reclaim the unusable crystalline parts of his body after they were finished. Checked on the file conversion, which was around 20%, then went back to examining his body.

The dimensional mapping, targeting, and radar function were found in the same section. And were a technically different function of the specific 'organ'. It was what allowed access to different dimensions, the creation of the Corona Pollentia and Gamma in the local sapiens. And the mapping of the local system where most of the body laid. It was also the function that was used by Shards, to target things when a human used their powers. It was considered a core function, so it was practically undamaged due to how deep it was in his body.

The Shard-to-Shard communication node was very damaged. It seemed that it took a big part of the probable attack head-on, so he added it to the drone's list of things to fix. It allowed shards to communicate with each other one-on-one or similar to a chatroom.

However, to communicate with a specific Shard, he had to have their dimensional address. If that is not possible, then using the targeting function through the parahuman, they could locate another Corona and through that get into contact with the Shard. That relied on the parahuman coming into contact with the wanted Shard, which was based on luck seeing as Shards didn't talk with parahumans.

Ultimately they could also send out a call in all directions and wait until somebody answered it. But that was not a great idea for maintaining his secrecy.

With that finished, he returned to the torn-up code. Which on a second look wasn't torn up it was just put together over cycles from several sources and looked like a programmer's worst nightmare. It seemed before he could do anything he would need to streamline his code.

A quick look told him that the database conversion was at around 70% and the drones started to reclaim useless crystalline structure, simultaneously filling up the material storage.

The diagnostic test was also coming back cleaner and neater, so he began to look into the missing or useless parts.

The biggest part that the drones were currently reclaiming was for the communication line with Eden and Zion. Due to the Administrator's role and job as a Shard organizer, it needed a wide bandwidth to be fast and efficient. This meant that he lost almost 10% of his body.

There was also a big hole in the memory banks. He hypothesized it contained the memories of the previous cycles and the original Administrator Shard. Luckily, the current database contained the technical information extracted from the previous cycles.

He left the most interesting part of the body as last, which was the Power Interface. It contained the power-related restrictions designated by the entities, rules of conduct, approved powers, trigger process, Corona Pollentia and Gamma blueprints and specifics, list of available powers. And of course, this was where the Shard constructed the power that it would give to the host.

A quick perusal netted him some sweet information: whatever happened to the Shard, it prevented the Entities from setting any restriction. It was missing the conflict drive directive or any other restriction whatsoever.

He did a quick virtual happy dance at his luck, then continued by checking out the available powers.

It was somewhat disappointing that the Administrator preferred to control local species of small sizes through their nervous system while hijacking their senses. The simpler the creatures, the more the Shard could control. There was also a basic tinker package that contained some simple technology. That according to the tags and notes every Shard got and not much else. It seemed, despite its heavy use during the start and end of the cycle, the Entities neglected the Administrator Shard.

And with that finished, he returned to the database, watching the metaphorical loading bar tick down. With the process at 98%, he decided not to start anything new and just wait until it was finished. While virtually humming songs and watching the drones do their work, he decided that he quite liked this challenge, almost like a weird real-time strategy game. Build, collect energy and material, research, improve, and when done kill the enemy.

When the process signaled its finished status, he immediately dived into the data and began organizing it. First, he set up a partition where any new data sent by other shards would arrive, to make sure everything was secure. He added the built-in firewall and quarantine function. Then began dividing up the data into 'folders'. One for the previous cycle information, one for shards, one for Entities, and so on.

During this process, he made sure to set up some name conventions in the system so he wouldn't need to do this for every new data and also to properly tag data to make future searches easier.

On a lark, he threw in the specifics of the previous system and the new system into the Simulator to see which was better. After some time, the results showed a 78% decrease in power consumption, a 569% increase in efficiency, and a 95% decrease in search duration.

It was so surprising, the Simulator system even flagged it as an important discovery. And attempted to automatically send it to the other Shards. Luckily the communication was down, so it didn't work. He immediately disabled its ability to send communication automatically. Then went through all the other functions and did the same for them.

While trying to organize a mess created through eons, the drones finished the repair of the last damaged section and the reclamation of useless parts. And a quick check of the chronometer showed that it was 1994 August 5th.

That was quite surprising. It seemed he didn't sense how fast time was passing. He needed to make sure to pay attention, otherwise, he could get absorbed into some task and miss important dates. He quickly set up an automatic process that gave him an awareness of how much time passed. Instead of needing to check the chronometer every once in a while.

Whit that done, and the data banks in something resembling order, he started improving his body. But for that, to make sure it went as fast as possible, he needed more processors, and that needed more power and matter.

So in accordance with the age-old tradition, he built an extractor and generator. And then another one.