Just a Guy and a Gate to the Multiverse - Chapter 10 (Patreon)

Chapter 10 - Brainmatter

— Sanctuary, 2288 —

Doctor Amari POV

“What’s her identity?” Amari asked as the unconscious woman was carried into her lab by two soldiers.

“Asian ethnicity, female, black hair, wearing a lab coat belonging to the Advanced Systems Division. Both her physical description and the personal identification found on her identify her as Doctor Madison Li, head of the Advanced Systems Division. She is a priority target,” one of the soldiers replied.

Amari could only nod toward one of the Memory Loungers. “Place her in the pod.”

While she did not feel comfortable with what her job here entailed, she understood the necessity of it. After all, these minds were some of the greatest assets available in the wasteland.

It was for the betterment if the entire World.

And her job was far better than what the medical department would do to them once any of the scientists decided to be uncooperative.

Ideally, they would cooperate. In this scenario, it was the best outcome for all of them. The Institute had completely fallen, and even if they somehow managed to escape, they would only end up as fugitives. Thanks to their past actions as members of the Institute, they would be fugitives hated by the majority of the wasteland.

Sure, it would mean they would live their lives while monitored, performing any research under supervision. But they would be afforded a decent degree of freedom, just like everyone else. All they would be banned from doing was leaving the settlement plus constant monitoring and implanted tracking devices. Considering their crimes, it was a mild punishment.

They would also be able to stay with their children if they decided to work with Sanctuary. Nothing would happen to their children. They would simply be integrated into their society.

But Matt had several contingencies planned in case they decided to be uncooperative and remained stubborn. Hers was still the most humane option.

She was responsible for making several safety copies, brain scans of the entire brains of every human adult Institute member. Nine copies for department heads, and three for any regular scientist. All of them were meant to preserve their knowledge for future use.

Those scans would serve different purposes. Some would stay unaltered as backups, while others would be used with the Memory Pods to train future personnel through those memories. She wondered why she had never come up with such an idea.

It was quite a genius way to utilize those Memory Pods beyond letting someone relive their past memories. Yet so simple.

Other assignments for those copies would take much more effort. She was not even sure if she could do it. It was uncharted territory for her.

Modifying memories was never an easy task, but stripping those memories of any identity and personality, then fabricating a new one loyal to Matt and Sanctuary, was on another level of magnitude. That was why she had to create at least one unaltered backup of every brain, so she could create more copies in case of probable failure.

Those modified copies of their entire knowledge would then be programmed into third-generation synth bodies, who would act as research personnel in the future. Another genius application, so simple yet efficient.

She had no idea why the Institute had never come up with it themselves. After all, they were the ones who had figured out how to program a person’s entire memories into a synth body to replace real humans in the Commonwealth with their spies. Yet they had never used that method to acquire unaging, qualified personnel who did not need to eat or sleep beyond simple manual labor and grunt work.

Maybe it was their pride.

She felt uncomfortable with the entire process of removing someone’s personality and sense of self, only to replace it with another one. She did not want to think about what someone could do with such technology to real humans and not copies.

Still, Amari felt much better about it than what would happen to those scientists who did not agree to work with them voluntarily. Just the thought made her shudder. Some of those pre-war corporations truly had no morals at all. No wonder the bombs dropped.

Stripping human bodies of their brains to use them as parts for supercomputers with access to all their knowledge was just sick. And in the past, that had happened to non-criminals. To regular everyday people, who were just unlucky enough to be easily made dissapear.

“The process is done. All nine copies are fully intact,” Amari finally said as the ninth copy of Doctor Madison Li’s brain finished and the integrity scan of the storage medium completed without an error. Then she let the pod open. “Bring her to the medical department. And store those copies.”

“Yes, Doctor!” the two soldiers nodded as they took Dr. Li toward her next station, while the copies of her brain were sent to several different secure facilities. Neither of them showed any sympathy for their charge.

She could understand that. She had a hard time doing so too. All of them had grown up with fear of the Institute. Having to fear that their neighbors, friends, or even family had been replaced with a synth that was actually spying on them, or could turn into a killer at any time, was a massive psychological trauma.

It did not need to have happened to them for the hatred to be there. It could have already happened to their closest ones, and many would not even know yet. Sympathy was something the Institute would not find up here.

That was the price they would have to pay for their actions.

“Next one!”

Another pair of soldiers entered her laboratory with an unconscious man in their grip.

Already used to the procedure, she simply asked, “Identity?”

“Caucasian male, bald head, wearing a lab coat belonging to the Bioscience Division. Physical description and ID on his body confirm him to be Isaac Karlin, a regular scientist in the Bioscience Division,” came the prompt reply from one of the soldiers.

She nodded. Three copies it was. There were many more to go.

There was a lot of work waiting for her future self.

—Vault 111, 2289—

Matt POV

I had spent over two years in this universe. It had been exactly four years since I started my entire journey into the multiverse, and somehow, the time had just rushed by.

Before I even set foot through my Multiversal Gate, the grind had already started with the twenty-four-hour preparation period for my journey. I had after all to come up with a good plan for where to go and what to do.

Although that first plan changed considerably once my skills started leveling up.

Still, visiting the Fullmetal Alchemist universe for a power system that wasn’t reliant on my body’s natural talent, but on my mind and scientific understanding instead, had been a great move.

It gave me a decent push toward my future survival and even gave me a power system that would work in more dangerous and powerful universes. But it was only the first step.

Fallout had been my most favored second choice. It fulfilled several criteria I wanted for my future worlds.

First, it offered a potential way to become stronger without relying on a World Attunement. Leveling up through my Pip-Boy, thanks to the world acting on the rules of the video game was one possiblity, but most importantly I had been reasonably confident that my Stimpak-based training method would work out.

Those were already two options which could improve and even break the limits of my body.

Then there was all the technological support I could collect in this world. Weapons were also a form of power. Whether normal guns, the Cryolator, plasma and laser weapons, and so on, all of them would expand my options and add valuable technology to my collection.

Adding a heavily modified version of the best Power Armor available to me, created through a combination of alchemy and science, made coming here even more worthwhile.

That wasn’t even mentioning all the other technology I could gather here. Hard-light holograms, virtual reality technology including memory manipulation functionalities, biological research with the F.E.V (Forced Evolution Virus), Water Chips for a clean method of water processing in all kinds of environments, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, weapons usually only found in sci-fi settings, cryostasis technology here in Vault 111, stealth technology found all over the world in the form of Stealth Boys or as mods for my Power Armor, teleportation from the Institute, and even matter replication in the form of a vending machine I got from the Sierra Madre or food processors from the Institute that turn any eatable matter into different nutrionial paste options with all kinds of tastes.

Even some of the most advanced sci-fi settings didn’t have all that technology available. Plus, there was all the unethically acquired research data available in this world, ranging from the outright cruel experiments in the Vaults to those performed in this lawless wasteland or found in the ruins of old companies and research labs.

I made sure to acquire as much of it as possible while visiting every Vault I could find. I had no idea what I was going to do with it yet, but it was better to have it than not, especially if it was lying around either way.

The technology I got here alone made this visit worthwhile.

And even after over two years, I still hadn’t managed to get everything I had put on my list or was considering.

There was some stuff I firmly decided to avoid. For example, Fallout’s different versions of immortality or longevity. Like ghoulification. There was no way I would ever decide to become a Ghoul just to live a long, potentially immortal life.

Ignoring the fact that I didn’t even know a guaranteed method to become a Ghoul and keep my mind in the process, the chance was zero that I wanted to spend the rest of a long existence as the Fallout equivalent of a zombie.

I also didn’t want to become a cyborg or outright remove my brain from my body to preserve it with cryotech while continuing my existence in a machine body. The second option, becoming a brain in a jar, was honestly even less appealing than the Ghoul option.

And modifying my body with cybernetic implants wasn’t interesting to me either, especially since they would soon reach their limits. Most cyborgs wouldn’t stand a chance in the more powerful universes.

Even the peak cyborgs that come to mind, the Androids from Dragon Ball, fall short compared to a biological body. A natural body is just so much better. I don’t even know if I would be able to learn magic or any other power system if I turned too much into a machine. My [ World Attunement ] doesn't explain that clearly.

I still made sure to gather all the data and information I could find on those topics. Even if I didn’t use it myself, knowledge was still power.

Lastly, there were the outright supernatural options. The Fallout universe had those too. Closest to me would be the Cabot family here in Boston, only a short distance away from Diamond City.

Their currently oldest living member had been born over two centuries before the first bombs fell. Yes, that family was more than four hundred years old.

It all started with the patriarch, Lorenzo Cabot, an archaeologist. If that wasn’t the setup for a typical Lovecraft story, then I didn’t know what was.

He went on a secret expedition to the Middle East with a team, where they uncovered the lost city of Ubar, also known as the Atlantis of the Sands. I vaguely remembered it also being a thing in my world, but I didn’t have any detailed information on it. With only twenty-four hours of prep time, I couldn’t exactly have information on every known legend to mankind.

Anyway, in that city, he discovered a mysterious crown, the only item he took from that place. Soon after, he started wearing it, he acquired vast knowledge of the ancient civilization behind it. After that, he buried the city so nobody would find it until he returned.

That crown granted him not only knowledge but also immortality. It made him stronger and even gave him psychic abilities like telekinesis. Oh, it also fused to his head and turned him paranoid and violent, causing him to go on a mad crime spree until his family imprisoned him.

His son, Jack, started researching him in order to cure him and remove the crown. Which, of course, hadn’t happened even after four hundred years. But at least Jack derived a serum from his father’s blood that could turn other people immortal.

It was a bit like the Elixir of Life made from the Harry Potter version of the Philosopher’s Stone. As long as you took that serum, you stayed immortal, with the only difference being that, unlike the Harry Potter version, you also stayed youthful.

So, it was an upgrade in comparison. But you were still dependent on that serum.

That whole story screamed eldritch entities. I was going to keep making a large detour around that family. I didn’t want to have anything to do with stories or beings that reminded me of Lovecraft.

Since the multiverse was real for me, I wasn’t even going to think the names of those existences. The last thing I needed was their attention.

Overall, the immortality here just wasn’t for me, especially since I had a better option in mind.

Originally, I had been planning to go for my immortality at the next World Attunement. But that world was also a bit dystopian. I would prefer to relax and enjoy life next. Sure, I still had a year before my next World Attunement, but nothing spoke against traveling to a world first and using my skill shortly before I left.

Altough that wouldn’t really work for my immortality world. I need that [ World Attunement ] before i could do anything there.

Also the first level-up of my [ World Attunement ] skill had opened up a lot of different options, making many things easier for me in the long run.

I was going to squeeze out what I could from the wasteland that was Fallout before moving on to a nice and relaxing holiday. I got enough Gold to live the rich live. And I would need that relaxation. This World leaves it traces on me.

If only the last piece of tech I wanted to get my hands on wasn’t so hidden. It was the last thing on my agenda besides leveling up, but things looked bleak in that regard.

What I was looking for was the Cold Fusion Diode out there in the wasteland that appeared in the TV Show, or one of those G.E.C.K.s with a Cold Fusion Reactor built in. Cold Fusion technology would solve my power needs long-term, but I could make do with Fusion Cores for now, especially since mine worked indefinitely.

Those were based on a normal fusion reaction and produced a lot of heat, which I turned into the power source for the Transmutation Circle on the core that separated the fused nuclear material again. Unfortunately, that limited how much power they could produce at once, since my transmutation only needed so much heat, and at some point, a core would need a dedicated cooling system to keep working. Which would make the Core bigger, bulkier and more complicated again.

My solution was simply to use many Fusion Cores instead of a single powerful one.

But Cold Fusion, which worked at room temperature and nobody on my birth Earth had managed to accomplish yet, would solve that limitation.

Unfortunately, Cold Fusion technology was rare to find. All the G.E.C.K.s I canonically knew of were already gone at this point in history. For a device that was supposed to be standard equipment in every Vault, I had yet to find a single Vault that had one. And I had visited a lot of them.

And the one Cold Fusion Diode I knew would appear in the future during the Fallout TV series was still seven years away. I didn’t know its current location, only that it was in the possession of the Enclave, who had currently gone into hiding to rebuild themselves after heavy losses during the first few Fallout games.

They played pretty much no role during Fallout 4. Some remnants only got patched into the game later to be encountered and bring the X-02 and X-03 Power Armors into the game, but they played no real story role.

I didn’t even know the rough location of the Enclave facility where the Diode appeared for the first time. I only knew that it was somewhere on the other side of the continent, on the West Coast, where my influence was very limited.

Traveling through the wasteland was very dangerous. I was the only one with the latest fully upgraded Power Armor, with infinite power and alchemy enhancements. My People don't got that luxury.

Beep

A sudden sound came from my comms. What could it be now? They knew better than to interrupt me if it wasn’t an emergency.

With the Institute under our control, the biggest threat in this region was gone. All that was left were some irradiated monsters from time to time, some bold Raiders, and dumbass Super Mutants. None of them were smart enough to band together and form a real threat.

“What is it, Garvey?” I asked into the radio of my Pip-Boy.

“We’ve got a problem, Commander. You better come up and hear it for yourself!” came the prompt reply.

“What kind of problem?”

“There is an incoming army.”

An army? Don’t tell me those Raiders actually put their limited brain cells together. While I always tried to avoid them, not being fond of killing and all that, but at this point, I had gotten used to it enough that it didn’t really bother me if it came to my own survival. Two years in the wasteland did that to you.

I still didn't like it. Especially I hate how numb I was getting to it.

And the Raiders, who were mostly human, were the only exception in that regard. Not to mention mutated beasts. The Super Mutants, while looking like green, bulky humans, were nothing but monsters to me.

“Who could be stupid enough to attack us?”

“It’s the Brotherhood.”

What was going on? Why would they attack us?

[ End of the Chapter ]