4

Date:

1995 February 14th - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time

Day 248 - Tuesday - Administrator Dimension Time

With the available power, he used the second core to start the build of a new one, while he used the original for self-improvement.

Before he really got started, he set an alarm for three months later. To be able to get immersed in the process while not missing his chosen Host's birth. That would give him around a month's time to make sure everything was in tip-top shape for the connection to be initialized.

Done with that issue, he turned his non-existent head towards his bigger body. Sadly, with the new core done and already tasked with building a new one, he was back where he started. Which wasn't a big problem, because he didn't plan to do any big architectural changes yet.

The first improvement to be made was the connection and communication protocols between different parts of the body. While it was made clear in the original work, these Shards were somewhat biological. To him, it didn't seem so.

Yes, the crystalline body comprised countless smaller units that came together in a hive-mind-like structure to create something like a computer. Seeing that these smaller units were not self-aware and the Shard itself wasn't the smartest, he likened the Shard to a semi-autonomous AI software running on a single set of servers. And every time the software gets deployed the Boss makes some changes, but because of the frankly criminal lack of creativity on the part of the Entities, those were somewhat random and haphazard.

It was a shame that this specific race won the evolutionary lottery on their planet.

As the song goes: 'Phenomenal cosmic power, itty-bitty brain.'

Due to these facts, many of these small units communicated and connected, sometimes subtly, sometimes very differently. So his self-imposed first task was to record all of them. And then run countless simulations on them to see if they could be improved, then choose the best one, and implement it across the whole body.

Luckily these small units were tiny and simple, so altering them was child's play. With that came a bit more than a marginal increase in efficiency and decrease in power consumption, but it made him feel better and he had time, so why not.

Although he made sure to save all the recorded information into his data banks. He also set up a routine to monitor newly created units for differences and apply corrections if needed.

That took the manufacturing system around a month to accomplish. Meanwhile, he continued to play with the power design interface and watching the antics of the Heberts.

Date:

1995 March 17th - Friday - Earth Bet Time

Day 280 - Friday - Administrator Dimension Time

The next task was to set up routines, alerts, and such things in the Shard's system while putting everything on the same page, so to speak. Currently, this improved nothing beyond a few percentages, but it was always better to start from a solid foundation.

It seemed reading all those Xianxia novels was useful for something.

After that, it was just general housekeeping and planning for the expansion. He planned to cover the entire continent in crystal matter until nothing else fit. Then use that processing, matter, and energy collection power to radically improve the crystalline material that made up the Shard.

Sadly he still had around five months left until the third core was done, unless he decided to use both current cores and their auxiliary functions to complete it faster.

It showed why it took Shards so long to Bud while they were also handling the parahuman power.

In the end, he decided he would focus on research while it was under construction and not go through another pure boredom phase. Watching Danny and Annette making faces at each other and debating baby names was more than enough once.

His research started with how the energy gathering part of the Shard functioned.

He delved deeper into how this system harnessed quantum fluctuations, with the end goal of improving it to a level, where he wouldn't need to build more or worry about energy requirements.

Because of Entropy, these fluctuations will eventually cease and the Entities will run out of energy. His goal was to - eventually, he was not arrogant enough to think he would figure it out lickety-split when the Entities have been working on this issue for eons - figure out a proper solution that did not involve destroying planets, or the universe.

As of now, he lived there, so that would cause some issues.

The problem was that, while the technology the Shards used to generate energy was monstrously advanced by current Earth Bet standards (excluding Tinker-tech), it was constrained by dimensions.

It meant that if the Shard wanted to 'mine' 10 dimensions for energy and matter, then first it would start with the first one. Then use the gathered energy to open a way to the second dimension, and so on.

They ignored the 'stuff' between dimensions.

Was this because they tried it before and found something they couldn't subdue, or they couldn't work out how to do it?

Or maybe they worked it out, but it was useless. Or they saw these dimensions, but they never conceived the idea that there was something between them.

Whatever the reason was (he decided to ignore the possibility that there are 'Things That Should Never Be Seen' between dimensions), his problem was that he also didn't know how to access that part of existence. He watched, played, and read several TV Shows, Movies, Video Games, and Books where they talked about doing it, but it was always handwaved away or the explanation was made up.

Seeing that this issue would take time to solve, he decided that at first he would streamline, upgrade, and improve the current energy generator. While using the Simulator to hopefully figure out the issue.

His other idea to supplement his economy was to use more than the planet and its dimensional counterparts to generate energy and matter. It seemed so wasteful to only use the planet the Shard landed on.

After another quick perusal of the data banks, he didn't get an answer to this question. The Shards were equipped with every tool needed for asteroid mining or other stellar work. But there was no evidence, at least in his data banks, that they ever tried it.

Giving the idea a quick once over, he decided a brief experiment wouldn't hurt. The current planet - that he should probably name - had a Moon equivalent satellite, which with his current abilities would be a child's play to reach.

He quickly fired up one of the drones that were used for external maintenance and sent it to the satellite.

For easier record-keeping, he named the satellite Luna, the planet Terra and the brave little drone Gagarin-01.

Little Gagarin-01 flew until it reached an altitude of around 100 km. After that, for every few hundred meters, that connection between him and the drone degraded exponentially.

After a kilometer or so past that 100 km line communication ceased, the drone stopped working, because it didn't have enough computing power to function without connection to the main body and fell back to the planet.

It seemed while the Shards could communicate at extreme distances through dimensional tunneling, their real word communication skills were not the best.

He decided to solve this. His next core was proceeding well. Danny and Annette were alright (there were automatic alerts in case of injury or unexpected events), so he had some time to work out the issue.

Date:

1995 May 10th - Wednesday - Earth Bet Time

Day 334 - Wednesday - Administrator Dimension Time

After retrieving the fallen drone with another drone, he then tried it again without changing anything.

It ain't science if you can't repeat it.

And after another short test flight, Gagarin-02 suffered the same fate as his pioneering brother.

After that, he changed the communication mode from direct to dimensional tunneling. However, that required that the drone stays in constant motion, which was impossible. Giving the drone its tunneller was out of the question. That function was part of the core, and making a country-sized drone was not the most economic solution.

Thus, he continued his experiments with different configurations.

After he prepped Gagarin-68 with his newest dimensional beacon, he had an epiphany.

Following an unsuccessful facepalm - since he had no face or hand - he simply opened a dimensional tunnel to Luna.

Unsurprisingly, it worked. However, it required a small percentage of the core's processing capabilities and had a small energy consumption. If he were to build generators and extractors on the satellite or maybe try asteroid mining (don't even mention his Dyson sphere idea) these small drains would add up quickly and would probably cripple the Shard capabilities.

It seemed that while the shards were capable of it, with the restraints that the Entities placed on them, it was not a viable approach. However, seeing that he was currently building a new core. Nothing stopped him from building another core just for managing system-wide energy and matter generators.

Running it through the Simulator yielded a viable plan, for when he had enough cores, so he shelved the idea for now.

Just for fun, and he launched Gagarin-68, and when that failed, he loaded up Gagarin-69 with some explosives and sent it up, whereupon reaching space he exploded it spectacularly.

Explosions are indeed art.

He was just about to delve into the Shard-Network relations and connections when an alert sounded.

Immediately checking it, he was surprised to realize that the allocated three months were over and Taylor was going to be born in less than a month.

Quickly creating another alarm, this time for the processes of the Shard body, he then focused all his attention on Danny, Annette, and the soon-to-be-born Taylor.

While he wasn't particularly interested in witnessing her birth, he wanted to make sure the connection succeeded and that no issue would crop up during the tagging process with the new type of Corona (which he called Corona Redix).

Date:

1995 June 11th - Sunday - Earth Bet Time

Day 336 - Sunday - Administrator Dimension Time

He spent the last month before the auspicious date rerunning the simulations for the new Corona. Trying to predict how Taylor's brain will grow and making sure he was ready no matter what happened.

Even with his actions and worries, he was nothing compared to Danny, who was anxiety personified. Anette, while uncomfortable, was entertained by her husband's frantic attempts to help her, no matter how futile they were.

He made sure to record all of it.

Annette went into labor in the late hours of June 10th and gave birth to a healthy little girl on the 11th at the Brockton Bay Hospital.

The Corona integrated nicely with her still-developing brain. And he hoped now he would get more accurate simulations of her brain. But even so, he would still pay very careful attention to Taylor to make sure that the Corona growing through her brain would grow in the most optimal way and wouldn't cause any issues in the future.

It would be a shame if he would design these awesome powers just to watch Taylor die from some kind of brain cancer.

He also added an observation globe to her while removing the one around Danny. If he could have, he would have left it on, on both of them, but according to the protocols he had access to, only one of those could be active at a time. So because he didn't want to call undue attention to himself from other Shards, he reluctantly removed it. While lamenting the loss of new media that would come from Danny.

Next, he started a new file for Taylor in his databanks. He took a snapshot of her entire body down to quantum level and even set up a routine to do it every second. Then he took a sample of her DNA and ran it through every test he had access to it to make sure no genetic disease would negatively affect her and his plans.

Originally, he wanted to take her DNA and improve it until it was the perfect human DNA. But then realized that it would be very obvious that something is going on with Taylor. Plus, it made him feel a little too much of a nazi.

Instead, he made sure to only strip away any genetic markers that indicated some kind of inherited genetic disease that could crop up later in Taylor's life. And set up another system to watch for any unexpected changes in her DNA.

With that, every avenue was closed for him to interact with Taylor for the foreseeable future, so he settled back. And now that the birth happened, and the connection was established, he could spend the next 14 or years with self-improvement.

His only tasks related to Taylor were to make sure the Corona grew perfectly that she didn't die and to record everything that goes around her, for data collection purposes, and to make sure he could show her memories of her mother.

Watching the happy family celebrate the birth, he was hit with a bout of melancholy. Despite his awesome power, he couldn't do the simplest things humans took for granted. He was also missing his own family, but at least there he was comforted by the knowledge that his original didn't leave them behind.

He spent a little more watching the newly expanded family, then reluctantly turned his attention back to his crystalline body.

He now had around 14 years to improve. Figure out Sting, the Anti-Thinker, the Anti-Shard functions. And to put together a coherent and viable power for Taylor.

Time to buckle down.