Crystalized Munchkinry - Arc I - Chapter 01 (Patreon)

He woke up as a crystalline construct with computational powers that were hard to imagine as a human being, which 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 was that he somehow knew how every nanometer of this construct, his new body, worked, while the second was that ROB, living up to his name, had left out a few things, because the Shard whose body he had taken over was damaged.

And it was not some minor wound, but rather the entire thing was littered with dead crystalline tissue, all kinds of fires, and strange, probably-not-supposed-to-be-there emissions on the outside, while on the inside it looked like somebody had torn up an enormous part of the Shard’s code.

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 counted, and restarted it, and miraculously, it worked and brought back mixed news.

On one hand, the backup blueprint for the crystalline structure was intact, as were the energy and matter collection systems, the simulation, targeting, dimensional mapping, radar, and power interface functions.

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 could not 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, a few attoseconds and found the Maintenance function, which, upon activation, used the material in the material storage to craft several crystalline drones that took flight and began their firefighting duties.

With that done, he set it up to run in the background for now and turned his attention elsewhere.

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 came, to connect to Taylor.

Luckily, the targeting function of the Shard was intact.

It was even connected to somebody.

After a few picoseconds of fumbling around with the interface, he was reading the data generated by the connection to a person’s Corona Pollentia, and he then used the incoming data to determine the dimensional coordinates of the person before saving them 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 searching in the wrong place.

A quick perusal of his memory banks related to the aforementioned dimension and planet came up with generic information about it, including the languages, time measurements, 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 June 11th, 1995, 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 perhaps a plan by 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, vaguely remembering that in the original work, the Admin Shard was slated for Daniel Hebert and only later switched over to Taylor.

But seeing as he did not 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 old in Earth Bet time, which after a very quick calculation came out to around 26 years, and after that he went through the other data that was present, which gave him the specifics of a male Homo sapiens at 190.5 centimeters in 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 he wanted to be absolutely certain.

Looking into it further, it appeared that the targeting system could pick up sound and video around the Corona, but it gave a warning that extreme use, such as listening in over too large a range, would produce a dimensional disturbance big enough to be detected, 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 actions had taken only a few seconds of real time to work out, thanks to the phenomenal computing powers he had acquired, while the drones did not work nearly that fast.

By 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, wanting to make sure that he was utilizing every scrap of information, but when he performed a thorough investigation of the memory banks, he became horrified.

Apparently, the Entities, and consequently the Shards, did not really believe in naming conventions or even file format standards, as there were countless different naming conventions and file formats present in the database without any type of organization.

It seemed that due to the Administrator’s nature, it collected and received data from a wide variety of sources, each with a different file format, encryption method, and so on.

Then, when it received the data, it was simply placed in the memory banks, and when a need arose, the Shard used its computational power 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 experiment 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 related data into a new file, after which 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, which took up a considerable amount of power and, according to the built-in interface, would take a few hours.

Leaving that to run, he began to familiarize himself with his new body.

The Simulation function was used to simulate plans and ideas before implementing them, and because of their lack of creativity and individuality, the Shards used the simulation as a pseudo-evolutionary process in which they tried every permutation of an idea and applied the best-performing one, even though this approach consumed considerable time, effort, and power, likely because it was the best method they could conceive of given their nature.

The next item he examined was the Power and Matter collectors, where the crystalline structure functioned as an almost perfect solar cell while also absorbing various forms of radiation and converting them into energy, in addition to utilizing the energy generated when matter was broken down.

Due to its dimensional nature, very little energy escaped, and most of its considerable requirements were fulfilled by zero-point energy generators harnessing quantum fluctuations, which, even with inefficient usage, could guarantee around 300 years of operation at full power, meaning as someone’s power.

Currently, it was around 70% and steadily decreasing because of leaks and other damage.

The section that contained these functions also included a small memory bank with backup options, such as 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 of the diagnostic report that was still running in the background, now with fewer fire warnings, showed that the Admin’s Transmitter Organ was completely obliterated and had no chance of being repaired.

If he wanted one, he would need to grow or build a new one.

The matter collection system was far simpler, as it used gravity control to collect matter, break it down into atoms, store them, and when necessary, break them down further into subatomic particles before reconstructing them as desired.

It first collected the material that had been destroyed or displaced by its arrival, then used its gravitational and dimensional capabilities to reach into nearby unoccupied dimensions and dismantle planets one by one.

Given the Multiverse’s infinite nature, that provided an effectively limitless supply of material.

By the time he finished inspecting these systems, the drones had managed to extinguish the fires and had begun patching the leaking sections, so he set them to reclaim the unusable crystalline parts of his body after finishing their current tasks, checked on the file conversion, which was around 20%, and then returned to examining his body.

The dimensional mapping, targeting, and radar functions were located in the same section and were technically different aspects of the same organ, allowing access to different dimensions, the creation of the Corona Pollentia and Gamma in local sapiens, and the mapping of the surrounding system where most of the body was located.

It was also the function used by Shards to target actions when a human used their powers, and because it was considered a core function, it remained largely undamaged due to its deep placement within his new body.

The Shard-to-Shard communication node, however, was heavily damaged, having apparently taken a significant portion of the attack head-on, so he added it to the drones’ repair list, noting that it allowed communication between Shards either individually or in a structure somewhat akin to a chatroom.

He referred to it as a chatroom, though it was more accurately a multi-dimensional lattice where energy signals functioned as data packets.

To communicate with a specific Shard, he needed its dimensional address, and if that was unavailable, he could use the targeting function through a parahuman to locate another Corona and establish contact that way, although this depended on chance since Shards did not communicate directly with parahumans.

At least not in the way most of them could understand.

Alternatively, a broadcast call could be sent in all directions, but that was not a viable option if he wanted to maintain secrecy.

With that finished, he returned to the damaged code, only to realize upon closer inspection that it was not actually torn apart but rather assembled over multiple cycles from numerous sources, resulting in something that resembled a programmer’s worst nightmare.

It became clear that before he could proceed, he would need to streamline the code.

A quick glance showed that the database conversion was at around 70% and that the drones had begun reclaiming unusable crystalline structures while simultaneously replenishing the material storage.

The diagnostic test was also returning cleaner results, so he began examining the missing or unusable components.

The largest section currently being reclaimed was related to the communication line with Eden and Zion, and due to the Administrator’s role as a Shard organizer, it had required significant bandwidth, meaning that he had lost nearly 10% of his enormous body.

There was also a substantial gap in the memory banks, which he hypothesized had once contained memories from previous cycles and the original Administrator Shard, although the existing database still held the technical information extracted from those cycles.

He saved the most interesting part for last, the Power Interface, which contained the restrictions imposed by the Entities, rules of conduct, approved powers, the trigger process, the blueprints for the Corona Pollentia and Gamma, and a list of available powers.

Naturally, this was also where the Shard constructed the power it would grant to its host.

A quick review revealed something extremely valuable: whatever had happened to the Shard had prevented the Entities from imposing any restrictions, leaving it without the conflict drive directive or any other limitation.

He performed a brief virtual celebration – imagining doing a silly dance – before continuing to examine the available powers.

It was somewhat disappointing that the Administrator specialized in controlling small local species through their nervous systems while hijacking their senses, with simpler organisms being easier to control.

There was also a basic Tinker package that contained simple technology, which, according to the tags and notes, every Shard received, and not much else, suggesting that, despite its importance at the beginning and end of the cycle, the Administrator Shard had been largely neglected in that aspect.

With that complete, he returned to the database and watched the metaphorical loading bar approach completion, and when it reached 98%, he decided against starting anything new and simply waited.

While idly occupying himself by observing the drones and running idle processes, he realized that he quite enjoyed this situation, as it felt like a strange real-time strategy game involving building, resource gathering, research, improvement, and eventually eliminating the enemy.

When the process was finally completed, he immediately began organizing the data by setting up a partition for incoming data from other Shards to ensure security, adding firewall and quarantine functions, and dividing the data into structured categories such as previous cycle information, Shards, Entities, and others.

During this process, he established naming conventions and tagging systems to prevent similar disorganization in the future and to streamline data retrieval.

Out of curiosity, he ran a simulation comparing the previous system to the newly organized one, and after some time, the results indicated a 78% decrease in power consumption, a 569% increase in efficiency, and a 95% reduction in search time.

The improvement was so significant that the simulation flagged it as an important discovery and attempted to automatically transmit it to other Shards.

Fortunately, the communication systems were still offline, preventing that from happening, and he immediately disabled all automatic communication functions across the system.

While he continued organizing the data accumulated over countless cycles, the drones completed the final repairs and reclamation tasks, and a quick check of the chronometer revealed that it was now August 5th, 1994, on Earth Bet.

The passage of time surprised him, making it clear that he needed to remain aware of it to avoid missing important events, so he implemented an automatic process to track elapsed time continuously.

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 had passed, instead of needing to check the chronometer every once in a while.

With the data banks finally in order, he turned his attention to improving his body, but to do so efficiently, he required additional processors, which in turn required more power and material.

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

And then another one.