8

Date:

2009 September 1st - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time

Day 5562 - Tuesday - Administrator Dimension Time

His nonexistent crystalline heart broke watching Taylor go through her mother's death. While, intellectually, he knew countless people died every day; he had watched her grow up and was there at every point of her life, so he had a very personal connection to her.

His Shard protocols showed that when Taylor heard the news, she was in a suitable frame of mind to trigger, and he had wanted nothing more than to go through with it and start comforting the girl.

However, he also realized that would screw everything up he knew and would invalidate every plan he made. And more than likely invalidate the information he got from the ROB.

Convincing himself to wait until the locker made him hate himself and vowed to make it up to her somehow. Those recordings of Annette would be a decent start.

The knowledge of what would be waiting for her in the halls of Winslow made this decision even harder to make.

He really couldn't comprehend why Alan Barnes didn't take his daughter to a professional after experiencing something like that. It would have changed everything, at least for Emma and Taylor.

Was it negligence or shame? He would never know.

Date:

2009 October 31st - Saturday - Earth Bet Time

Day 5622 - Saturday - Administrator Dimension Time

With the end of ROB-provided protections looming, he was frantically going over his self-created protections. Testing them, improving them, and cursing himself for not overcoming the crystalline body he currently inhabited.

He improved, streamlined, and cleaned up everything possible. He had processing cores, generators, and matter extractors growing out of the wazoo. His planet and every other planet he had some kind of infrastructure on were shielded against Shard scanning, space-based attack, and ground-based attack.

He built an outpost on Luna, just for fun. Shielded it, and used it to launch crystalline drones to other planets in the solar system, to collect asteroids for material. And to build solar arrays around the sun to collect extra energy with the end goal of building a Dyson sphere around it.

If he were to manage that, he was planning to move his entire body there, enveloping the sun in the crystalline matter. He also placed crystalline structures around the solar system in several layers, equidistant to each other. To create a giant shield against scanning and as a warning system in case somebody tried to approach the system.

He also went through the entire system, examining everything down to the last atom, to make sure there was nothing hidden (sadly no extraterrestrial life form or their remains were found).

As a side project, he terraformed the fourth planet from the star and moved all the flora and fauna from Terra to there because, in the end, he covered the entire planet with his body, but he didn't have the heart to just kill everything there.

Now Ares was a green world, having clean water and growing food that he could use to feed Taylor in an emergency, or just observe when he wanted to relax.

It was like having the universe's largest screensaver.

Date:

2009 December 1st - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time

Day 5653 - Tuesday - Administrator Dimension Time

Somewhat confident in his ability to protect himself, he spent time observing and examining the Shard network, hoping he could figure out some weaknesses.

For some reason, his memory banks contained several important encryptions and access keys to the Network and several functions.

By his calculation, he had around 60% of all the required codes to take over the Network which was beyond weird.

According to his logs, Administrator acquired these codes before getting damaged, but there was no explanation why.

One of his theories was that Administrator was attacked by another Shard who wanted to take over his duties. Another was that during the meeting with Abaddon it was doing routine work preparing for the Cycle and was damaged by the contact.

All he knew for sure that if he were to access the Network, he would have no problems staying hidden for a while, granted he didn't try to go deep.

Another treasure within these codes was an Endbringer activation key that could prevent more of them from activating or forcefully turning on the inactive ones. The unfortunate part of it was that he had to connect to an Endbringer Shard, circumvent its defenses, then use the Shard to reach the control node and input the code to guarantee that the other Endbringers would notice it.

He of course made some plans and contingency plans in case Taylor got close enough to an Endbringer, but it was still a few years away.

After he built his Network connection, he began to receive signals that would allow him to connect to it.

Upon closer examination, connecting to it with the proper codes would not raise any flags, as it was a routine activity, and even some past host species figured out how to observe it.

So after taking a deep breath and saying several prayers to several deities of luck and fate, he turned fully on the Network receiver, thus connecting to it.

After some observation, he realized that there wasn't much communication going on there. It was mostly routine data requests towards the central nodes and periodic all-clear from several important Shards.

He didn't know what he expected, but not that.

It appeared that currently there was no communication, at least that he could see, that contained any information interesting to him.

He could try to intercept answers to data requests to see which Shard was requesting what. But that would immediately show that there was an intruder in the Network.

So he set up a routine that would observe and record these communications. Noting every detail it could without getting noticed. And would alert him if there was a noticeable change in the communication patterns.

Then he started to carefully and slowly delve into the Network to get more information and to hopefully map out at least part of it because one of his ROB-given tasks was to prevent the Network from going berserk.

How he was going to achieve that, he had no idea, but he hoped by delving into the Network he would get inspired.

It was an interesting experience.

To his metaphorical human eyes, it was an utterly alien and mind-bending construction. It went through space and dimensions in such a way that even Mad Hatter would get jealous. And the Rabbit would probably get lost and eaten by something that got stuck trying to find a way out.

However, after all the time spent as a Shard, it was rather familiar. It somewhat mirrored the construction of his crystalline body in its multidimensional nature.

The communications protocol, as befitting of the Entities, was short and incredible information-dense. This allowed top speeds and low energy consumption.

Still, to his eyes, it was rather constrained. Because yes, they could transmit information incredibly fast, but it was all mechanical. And upon further research, expressing abstract thought was incredibly hard this way. Not that most of the Shards or even Zion could understand it.

Plus, it didn't allow communication with species that didn't communicate this way. It was so information-dense that there was no chance somebody could learn it like a language. Hell, even the Shards used slightly differing methods. Each one differing from the others just enough that understanding the answer required an actual decoder.

Of course, within the Entity, the Shards communicated more uniformly, with minor differences. Thanks to Abaddon, tons of new Shards used a different encoding and haven't had the time to assimilate themselves into the whole. Even the Warrior Entity's Shard had a subtly different encoding.

It also didn't help that the two Networks fused, with Zion taking over Eden's part after her demise.

So while it was working, it was incredibly disorganized and unstable. No wonder it would go berserk after Zion's death.

The question was, how could he prevent that?

The simplest answer was that upon Zion dying, he needed to take over the full network. Ready to be a true Administrator, immediately smoothing it out, trimming the fat, and setting up homogenous rules for communication and data transfer.

Sadly, in reality, he would also have to be strong enough to protect this position and slap down any Shard that would rebel against him. For most Shards this wasn't a big problem, they were stupid enough not to notice the change in leadership. But among those who were smart enough were the Simurgh and PtV.

And he wasn't confident that he would win them against either in pure power or intelligence.

He had been doing this kind of stuff for around 10 years, while they had eons to sharpen their craft.

The only reason he wasn't dead yet was because of the shield that the ROB put up. And he expected his enemies would eventually overcome his self-made defenses. Either he had to strike first, fast, or try diplomacy.

The canon work never really went into the plans of PtV or Simurgh. But he hoped that if he could get access to Eidolon's Shard, he could stop his control over the Endbringers and use that as a bargaining chip with her.

As for the PtV, his current plan was to hope that when he straightened out the Network, it would be so impressed he would immediately join him and help achieve his goals.

A guy turned Shard could dream, right?

These goals were vague and not really something he spent thinking about.

One of them was wanting to use the Network and his control over it to disperse the shards around Earth Bet and its populated alternatives. And slowly have each Shard connect to a person, making the entire population Parahuman. Then using the combined might of Shard and humans to figure out how to solve Entropy.

Another one was that after taking control, he would collect all the Shards and depart to another planet. Where he would start a new Cycle, this time without violent triggers and such. Of course, he would have to solve the issue of departure, because that was the point where the planet and its alternates were destroyed.

He hoped by observing the Network he would eventually get some information about PtV and figure out its goal. And if its goal was not something he could accept, he would look for chinks in its armor.

Date:

2010 December 28th - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time

Day 6045 - Tuesday - Administrator Dimension Time

Watching Taylor and Danny go through Christmas was so depressing that he even checked if Shards could get depressed. They barely talked, their gifts were uninspired, the food was bland enough to be served in a hospital. The festive cheer was so far from them that Australians were wondering where the extra Christmas ornaments were coming from.

He hoped he could help reconcile them to the happy family they were before their individual descent into depression and apathy. He knew deep down that for the foreseeable future, they wouldn't be as happy as when Annette was still alive. But with time all wounds heal and he hoped they would make new friends and even find love.

The last month was double and triple-checking everything. Making sure it was ready for the Trigger, preparing his speech to convince Taylor to accept his help, and so on.

In the end, he would contact her while she was laying in the hospital. Which would give him enough time to convince her, and there would be no obligations that would distract her.

After thinking over it, he decided against showing his actual body and the reality it came with, for now. So he created a small imaginary world, in the likeness of VR technology, where he would place Taylor.

He would intercept Taylor's brain waves and other functions with the Corona. And make it seem for her as if she was in a meadow, hoping that wouldn't stress her that much.

On a side note, he would use the same technology to teach her things that couldn't be simply injected into the human brain when she was sleeping.

For his own appearance, he became a hovering, lovely shade of blue, cartoon slime with big expressive eyes. Kind of like a mascot and guide from a generic online game only without the annoying high-pitched voice.

He thought it turned out super cute.

Maybe he should gift Taylor a plushie based on it? Would that be weird?

He shelved that thought and simply decided to ask Taylor.

He had several plans for Taylor, depending on her attitude and compliance. But most of them hinged on one piece of information and action and sadly, no matter what he did, he always arrived back to it.

As he watched the clock tick down slowly and cruelly, he went through everything he did and didn't do. What he could have done differently, what he could have done better, and so on.

He also did a last check on the Network, looking for any change, but sadly the Network was as chaotic yet boring as it was when he first connected to it.

He took another look at Taylor sitting at her window and just looking out of it at nothing, and decided to read a book.

Date:

2011 January 3rd - Monday - Earth Bet Time

Day 6051 - Monday (Again) - Administrator Dimension Time

He watched with mounting anticipation as Taylor went through her morning routine, 90% of which was hair care, and set off towards Winslow.

Even Taylor could sense that something was going to happen. Because instead of her usual behavior of staring out of the window, she was restlessly looking around, looking for something that would affect her, yet not finding anything.

He could see how her paranoia visibly increased the closer to the school she got. Her hands trembling, eyes twitching, and her body occasionally shivering. The biological observation systems were throwing up all sorts of alarms about unexpected and unnatural stress and behavior, but he dismissed them while adding a note about pre-trigger stress, just to make sure the documentation was complete and proper.

Observing Taylor walk into the school was fascinating. He could pinpoint exactly who knew about the coming 'prank'. Which of those were expecting Taylor's suffering, which of them were relieved that it was not them. And which of them wanted to see something 'funny' to happen.

He could even pinpoint several people who, while were extremely uncomfortable yet, couldn't get the courage to speak up or even to warn Taylor or the teachers.

Truly peer pressure at its finest.

Supported with a heavy dose of violence via everybody's favorite phasing hero.

Counting down the steps towards Taylor's locker, he flexed his nonexistent fingers.

And proclaimed to the endless ether around his crystalline body:

"Showtime, baby!"