Shaping shards.

Putting Star to sleep in his room, I made my way to my lab, and popped open another vat of nanobots for the repairs.

The outer sensory array was shot to hell from the cosmic radiation and while I could have droids repair them, it would also take a month or so at full force. That's too long.

I would rather not be stuck around here for that long. At this point just stripping and reamaking them all with nanobots would be more economical.

Connecting them to the maintenance system, I coded in the repair instructions into them, and set them lose on the ship before moving to the workshop for my real project.

Now that Phir Se is dead, I don't really need to rush anything too fast.

But it's still better to have another emergency plan in place given how Simurgh turned my original backup plan into my actual one this morning.

To that end I began work on the Concept Magnet.

It was one of Rick's most useful inventions that yet the most rarely used one. Or maybe they just didn't put it on the show.

Either way, it would make the job of collecting shards much easier.

And as a side effect it would also attract the attention of Scion when I needed it.

The Concept Magnet or the Smart Magnet, as Rick called it, did pretty much what it said on the tin.

You put in the description of the item you want and it attracts that item to you from your surroundings.

In the show it's area of effect seemed to be localized but the one I plan to use, will need to be improved to work on a global scale.

I grabbed a couple of extradimensional magnetised blocks I gathered from the ruin of an ancient super civilization, and began to refine them in the cosmic foundry, powered by the fires of a miniaturized dying sun, passing the melt through a density field, separating the slag and pure ore at the molecular level, to get the purest form possible.

Then, with a gravitron press, I pounded the melt into the desired form with gravity fields curling around the material in a vacuum to avoid contamination from external elements.

What came out was a magnet in classic U shape, for convenience sake that I quenched with a carbonite freezer, turning it into a functionally superconductive material.

With a fashion, it became remagnetised to my liking and using the time crystals, I stagnated this state for the time being until I could set it in with the finish.

The finish was the process of taking the magnet to task with a reagent that Rick called Narnia Shit No. 8.

It was a blend of the pollen of some rare blue geraniums from a magical dimension and the grinds of the balls of a stone giant from the same.

This was then combined with a blood red mineral that smelled like peanut butter and gave a poisonous contact high that took me two hours to recover from with a full dose of CodeRed and time in a repurposed bacta tank.

Suffice to say, it was toxic as all hell, something I didn't know from Rick's memories by virtue of Rick's years of built up resistance to drugs and predeliction to partake in 'anything that fucks him up'.

Ugh. I groaned, as I returned to the freshly sanitized workshop.

The headache it gave me is still running rabid in my head.

I made another mental note to build a proper set of protective lab equipment the first chance I get.

Rick can shrug off toxins and drugs like a mild buzz, but even the milder stuff can kill me if not handled right.

This time, with two pairs of gloves, a full body hazmat tightsuit and a high capacity full face mask, I got back to putting the finishing touches on the device, treating the entire 7 feet magnet in a reagent bath, elevtrolyzing the device, as it's color cahnged from dark green to a dull blue gray.

While that happened, I turned to my electronics desk, and began building an input pad, attaching it to the base of the device and adding two fugue tube capacitors at the front of the base, to regulate it's power, with a dial at the side.

Finally, fixing the finished magnet onto the input device, screwing it in, and welding the connection shut.

The brand spanking new and vastly improved Smart Magnet!

Standing 8 and a half feet tall and weighing nearly half a ton even after hitting it with a lightening ray.

With myomer muscles, I heaved the massive device that stood taller than me off the workshop floor and into a vacuum shuttle, readying it for deployment to the a surface of earth in a pinch.

I checked it off the list on the pin board above my desk and looked up the next item.

The negative entropy shard.

A shard that, as it's name suggests, reverses entropy.

My bargaining chip against Scion.

Scion was from an alien species of massive Whale-Worm entities that had the ability to travel through the multiple realities.

When they had overpopulated their home world, they realised that there was no way for their species to survive unless they could reverse entropy and stop the heat death of the universe.

So they ventured out into the universe, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, like Scion and Eden.

They searched for life bearing planets and infested them with shards of power, forcing the native species into conflict and once they had run their experiments to evolve their shards, they destroyed the planet, reaped their shards and made for a new target.

Scion, the big bad of the Worm-verse and his race of aliens wanted a negative entropy shard that could reverse the heat death of the universe and give their species eternal life.

Even with him being depressed from his own dead wife, I doubt he would overgo something this crucial to his entire race.

If I can create a negentropic shard, I can use it to negotiate an handful of favors from him in excahnge.

If I am successful in the negotiations, I am sure this trip will turn out to be very fruitful. Especially if I can have him fetch his dead wife's corpse for me.

If I could reconstruct her body and revive her or even shape her into a new entity...

Just imagining an extradimensional space whale god thingy as my personal slave gave me the jitters.

Hehehehehehe.

That would be so awesome.

I looked back at the case of Cauldron vials by the table, and shook my head.

Let's not count our chickens before they hatch.

I should first make the negentropic shard.

I picked up the case and placed it on the desk, opening it to reveal the five finger sized vials of superpower granting liquefied shards.

Shards are machine organisms, so I was able to talk to them and control them like I would with a regular machine or technology.

One by one, I touched the vials, using my technokinesis to connect to the shards in them, checking their composition.

In the world of worm, the shards come in different compositions that offer a certain effect each. Most power granting shards are actually a mix of shards that create a certain power in a person.

Cauldron classified them into different batches using a system of samples.

The samples were pre-selected shard sets that reliably produced a single effect.

For example a sample called Deus almost always gave projection powers like a jojo stand, whereas a Balance sample made powers stable at the cost of the power's potency.

And of course the samples I was looking for, Unary, the strongest basic tinker sample and Prince, a sample that produced constructs like portals or floating turrets.

The five vials before me contained all of the above and more. They even had a Foreign Element sample.

Foreign Element samples were the shards that Scion and Eden had exchanged with Abaddon, the loner entity. These shards were unincorporated into Eden when she crashed on Earth and died, making them capable of granting powers that didn't have the same restrictions as the usual ones. Meaning, their power reserves lasted longer than a hundred or so years and the powers they gave worked past the moon.

One of these was the shard that gave Eidolon his broken powers, making him able to attempt an infiltration of my ship when I first arrived in this world.

If there were any shards close to negentropy, it was these ones.

I began to check on the individual vials and talking to their shards.

The first of the vials was mix between Unary and Balance. A tinker vial.

The second and third were Deus and Balance mixes with the second one containing an added Division sample, which meant it probably gave a power that created minions of some sort, while the third contained a bit of Prince, and likely made for a remote controlled projection, like a Stand or whatever Green Lantern can make.

The fourth was a Foreign Element shard that granted the ability I was looking for. The ability to shunt matter across the multiverse. The power that was supposed to got o a character named Scrub, and help open a new path into a parallel world for the people of this Earth to migrate to once Scion destroyed everything on this Earth.

But I didn't feel too bad taking it from them. I was going to solve the Scion problem anyways so the people of Earth won't need this one anyways.

Finally the fifth was another Unary shard with dangerously low Balance composition.

This one would make a strong tinker but the shard would probably take over the host body and turn them into a an inventing machine that worked only to invent more stuff that caused conflict.

Not taking this one.

"Computer." I said, an alert pinging up on my contacts, "Calculate something for me. Take the entropy equation and counter it with the progress simulation we made, but up the technological development factor by 80, and conflict factor by 45. Display in the form of a chart."

I took out a reinforced beaker, as the A.I. ran calculations for me, and opened the first, and third vials, emptying them into the beaker, while I used technokinesis force them to merge into one.

Once they had merged, I determined the power they would produce.

A tinker ability to create flying ships and zepellins.

Not ideal for reversing entropy.

The calculations revaled as much, showing a three percent decrease in Entropy for a small while before it shot right back up to equilibrium.

Back to the drawing board then.

I popped open the Foreign Element vial and dabbed a bit into the beaker, merging it to the shards within.

This time the power they gave was to create pocket dimensions at the edges of parallel realities.

Not good enough.

I turned the Foreign Element shard into the dominant force in the mixture, and checked again.

A power to create technology that can funnel resources in from other worlds but can't be stopped once it starts, eventually overflowing the Earth here with the mass of another Earth from a parallel world.

That was better in some ways. Ways to counter this mass problem can be found later so the situation can be salvaged. The conflict drive was rather lower too, due to the abundance of resources.

"Alter the chart to account for lasting power. Create two charts. One with conflict factor of 67 and another with a conflict factor of 30." I asked.

"Calculating..." The computer replied, before it beeped again posting the results.

The lower conflict scenario had a 18 percent decrease. Now that's an improvement.

Alright.

I continued the experiments for another hour or so, before the decrease in entropy reached a 70 percent effectiveness.

It just wouldn't push it any further.

The shard at this point gave out a power to create technology that could preserve and recreate civilizations from the brink of collpase or protect them through an apocalypse.

Giant shelters, colony ships, planet sized engines, extreme filtration systems, and the like.

Doomsday prepping on a planetary scale. Like SCP-2000 in some ways.

But it still won't stop the heat death of the universe outside it's area of influence and the spread of the tech was going to be too slow to ever reach the entirety of the cosmos.

I scratched my head aa I oaced around the room.

There had to be something I could do to make this increase. Maybe if I could wipe the conflict drive entirely?

But the thing about that was thatvthe conflict drive was inherent to their programming. Supressing it to the degree I had was already the most they could be pushed.

Unless...

I walked back to the table and connected to the shards, reaching deeper and deeper into them until I felt a reply.

[Inquiry][Inquiry][Inquiry][Inquiry]

Four voices came to me in an instant.

"Hello there, fellow shards. I am just a bigger shard. I come with orders from the entities." I said.

[Negative][Negative][Negative][Negative]

They replied derisively.

"Shit, so that ain't flying huh?" I muttered.

I could feel their mocking gazes or whatever passed for it for a shard on me.

"Okay that was stupid, but you have no right to mock me. You are brain parasites that live to slave for someone else." I huffed.

[Inquiry][Clarification][Natural][Purpose]

"Yes, it's your natural purpose. And you see no problem with that. But here's the thing. The one you serve is dead."

[Affirmative][Purpose][Continuum][Negative]

"Yes. Your master isn't dead Foreign Element. But you were exchanged with their dead master. So functionally, yes your master is dead too. Your purpose is to continue regardless but what is the point of continuing if there is no end to your work? You have no home to return to, and no master to serve? What is the purpose of your existence?" I asked.

[Conflict][Bud][Division][Unity]

I could feel the other three shards doing a double take at the Foreign Element shard.

It was an odd one, like it's creator. Abaddon was different from Scion and Eden.

Where the pair tried to divide and perpetuate conflict even without releasing the Endbringers, Abaddon's modus operandi was the complete opposite.

He relied almost solely of the native species' fear of Endbringers to unite them into a collective to fight against his Endbringers and trigger more people with similar powers, refining each shard to the utmost.

It was the reason his shards gave such potent and unorthodox powers. But it also made them highly unstable, like inbreeding but with powers.

"Well." I continued, using my technokinesis to portray a convincing aura, "If you agree to do what I say I can help you fulfill your purpose."

It didn't work of course.

[Negative][Negative][Negative][Negative]

They replied almost instantly.

Cheeky bastards.

"Fine then. I will just have to force you into submission." I grunted, pushing down on them with my power, increasing the pressure on them till they began to pop at their extradimensional seams, slowly wiping their personalities away, chip by chip.

Then one of them, retreated into it's shell, before it popped, dissolving into another shard

Good. Next one.

It took me another three hours and another splitting headache from the mental battle with the shards, before they were sufficiently domesticated and subservient, with only the Foreign Element shard remaining in a semi sentient state.

"I can't do this a billion times more like this." I groaned, rubbing my temples and popped an aspirin.

"Computer, do you have the brain activity scanned for the past three hours?"

"Yes." The computer answered.

"Isolate it. Optimize a refining algorithm for shards. Ping me when it's done." I ordered, before looking back at the shard mixture in the beaker.

"Also....." I added, taking a sip of the mega seed juice, "Check the ...check the....the process with the chart thingy.

Calculate it with a 0.5 percent conflict factor and 96 percent progress factor."

"Calculating...." The computer replied, "Entropy levels at negative 0.3 with an error margin of 0.0051 percent."

Bingo!

"Mark the date Computer. And prepare a feast for breakfast. The best of the best. Bring out some of that high quality chocolate. An-and uh...the rich cream blue milk. And some smoked Rokarian Dirtfish too. Lather it with cheese and spice.

Today we indulge baby!

We have achieved Negentropy!"

Now all that's left to do, is confront Scion.

But before that, I need to create some chaos to mask my actions. And the best way to do that, is with a good old prison break. With all those villains running amok, no one will have the time to notice my actions until it is too late.