Crystalized Munchkinry - Arc I - Chapter 04 (Patreon)

The third core was finally complete, and with it came a long-awaited increase in processing speed, because with two free cores available, he could now halve the time required to construct additional ones.

He wasted no time and immediately set both of them to begin building two more cores, arranging the process so that the first completed unit would join the effort, meaning that the total construction time for both would drop to five months instead of six, thanks to the modular and uniform nature of the system.

While that process continued in the background, he devoted his attention to an in-depth study of Shard-to-Shard communication and the broader structure of the Shard Network, quickly discovering that it was both intricate and deeply flawed.

It was a fascinating piece of work.

Unless a Shard possessed the dimensional coordinates of another, the only reliable method of establishing direct, private communication after the beginning of a Cycle was through their hosts, meaning that two parahumans would need to meet in person, at which point their respective Shards could extract the necessary coordinates from the connection and establish contact.

Even this method was constrained by Cycle-imposed restrictions – which, fortunately for him, no longer applied – meaning that in practice only a limited number of Shards were permitted direct communication, typically those whose functions required it or those selected for specific tests.

Unfortunately, his own database of coordinates had been lost along with his communication module, and for reasons he found baffling, his remaining memory banks contained no backup.

The alternative method was to route communication through the Network itself, where a Shard would connect to a central node, usually one of the Entities depending on its origin, and request a connection to the desired recipient, effectively allowing the Entity to act as an intermediary.

As far as he could tell, this entire system existed primarily due to paranoia, as the Entities feared the possibility that a sufficiently advanced Shard might accumulate enough power, information, and autonomy to challenge them, and so they monitored all communications to prevent such developments.

Given Eden’s death and Zion’s apparent state of apathy, however, he doubted that such oversight was currently being maintained with any diligence, and it seemed entirely plausible that some Shards, particularly those originating from Eden, might already be positioning themselves to ascend.

It was, after all, what they had been designed for.

Reconstructing the communication module in its original form would have been trivial, but he instead chose to redesign it entirely, separating the direct Shard-to-Shard communication system from the Network interface and assigning a dedicated processing core to each, ensuring that no external interference could go unnoticed.

Beginning with the Shard-to-Shard module, he incorporated a dedicated core, multiple layers of firewalls, an independent energy transfer system that could potentially be used as leverage in negotiations, isolated data storage to guard against malicious payloads, and a separate reserve of energy and matter to prevent any external entity from draining his primary resources.

After implementing the initial design, he subjected it to extensive testing within the Simulator over the course of several months.

Refining it repeatedly and eliminating potential vulnerabilities, even going so far as to simulate hostile interactions with standard Shard configurations to observe how the system would respond.

Ultimately, he chose to keep this module strictly defensive, opting not to include any offensive anti-Shard capabilities and instead reserving that function for a separate, dedicated system.

He believed strongly in compartmentalization.

He believed even more strongly in not being destroyed because of an internal misconfiguration.

The Network module, however, proved far more complex, as while he still possessed the necessary authorization and encryption credentials, he had no reliable way of predicting how reconnecting would affect his status or how the Network, and by extension Zion, might respond.

As a result, he decided to delay reactivation until he had gathered sufficient information to assess the risks.

When designing the replacement, he took a more cautious approach, constructing a standard interface module that would serve as a buffer and connecting it to a second, heavily fortified system that contained its own processing core, isolated storage, independent energy reserves, and additional defensive layers.

His intention was to obscure the true structure of his system and potentially deceive the Network into treating the interface module as his primary node, though the Simulator could not provide definitive confirmation of success due to the unpredictable nature of Entity-level responses.

Even so, the design offered several advantages, including automatic threat detection, the ability to absorb or deflect hostile interactions, and, if necessary, the option to sever the connection entirely and sacrifice the outer module while preserving the integrity of his core systems.

While waiting for the next set of processor cores to complete, he continued refining these designs, making incremental improvements and stress-testing various scenarios within the Simulator.

From time to time, he checked in on the Hebert family, though with Taylor still an infant, there was little of note beyond routine development, even if his systems continued to accumulate a substantial volume of observational data, largely due to Annette’s preference for books and occasional use of the internet, often with Taylor nearby.

According to his monitoring systems, both remained in excellent health, so his involvement was minimal, limited to periodic reviews of the logs and brief observational checks.

After the fourth core was completed, his processing speed increased to the point where each additional core now required approximately one and a half months to construct.

After a quick calculation, he decided to scale up to eight construction cores in total, which would reduce the build time for each additional core to roughly three-quarters of a month, or about twenty-two days.

Beyond that point, however, the efficiency gains diminished sharply, with each incremental improvement requiring exponentially greater resources and coordination.

At present, he considered that level of optimization unnecessary, especially given the limited physical space available on the lone continent.

Even so, compared to the glacial pace at which other Shards and even the Entities themselves appeared to operate, this qualified as rapid development.

He queued the construction of the remaining cores up to eight, a process that would take another five months to complete.

Once finished, he intended to redirect those cores toward constructing additional cores in an alternate dimension adjacent to his current position, effectively establishing an entirely separate Earth-like environment dedicated to infrastructure expansion.

This would not only accelerate growth but also significantly improve his overall resilience by distributing his economic and computational systems across multiple dimensions.

While a Sting attack would still bypass most conventional defenses and obliterate anything it touched, only a small subset of Shards possessed such capabilities, meaning this strategy alone would shield him from roughly ninety-eight percent of potential threats.

Unfortunately, the remaining two percent were precisely the most dangerous.

Well, Taylor would probably not attract the attention of Flechette for at least a few months, possibly even years, if he managed to subtly redirect her focus elsewhere.

Thinking briefly about Taylor and her usual modus operandi, he added ’develop countermeasures against Sting-like abilities’ to his priority task list.

His next objective was to investigate Anti-Thinker and Anti-Simurgh systems, as well as the so-called Anti-PtV mechanisms.

Based on his memory data, these represented some of the most advanced and dangerous Shard functions in existence, associated with entities of extreme intelligence, predictive capability, and strategic influence.

If he intended to operate safely within this setting, he would need effective protection against them.

ROB had promised that the necessary data for these modules would be included, though he remained uncertain whether all critical information would actually be provided, or whether some elements would be deliberately omitted to ensure a more ’interesting’ experience.

The data packet itself was conveniently labeled: ’How To Not To Get Ganked By Precogs’.

Until now, he had left it untouched in his databanks, preferring to focus on more immediately productive tasks.

Now, however, the time had come.

He took a metaphorical breath and opened the file.

The first notable detail was that the data was encoded in the same file format he had developed during his memory bank optimization process, which itself had occurred after the acquisition of this very packet, a fact he briefly noted before attributing it to typical ROB-related causality complications and moving on without further concern.

What followed was, in fact, highly structured and extremely informative, providing deep insight into how Shards gathered information, modeled predictions, and executed their functions.

However, his initial suspicion proved correct: while the packet explained the underlying mechanisms in great detail, it contained no instructions for constructing actual countermeasures or shielding systems against them.

That portion, it seemed, was left entirely to him.

Fortunately, he had anticipated that possibility and begun early, and based on his prior experience with Shard systems, Simulator-based iteration cycles, and large-scale system construction, he estimated that developing a viable defensive framework would take at least several years of sustained research and refinement.

Still, he was not intimidated by the scope of the task.

He metaphorically rolled up his sleeves and began working through the dense, intricate data set, line by line, committing himself fully to the problem at hand.

Taylor was already one year old by the time the final set of eight cores was completed, and construction had begun on a new core in an adjacent, otherwise empty dimension.

She was happily toddling around, babbling at anything that caught her attention, while her parents watched her with unmistakable pride.

Annette had already returned to university, teaching the joys of Jane Austen with evident enthusiasm, while Taylor sat nearby playing with her toys or occasionally falling asleep in the middle of the lecture hall without anyone seeming to mind.

His databanks expanded significantly thanks to Annette bringing Taylor into those academic environments, although nothing particularly groundbreaking emerged from the new information, only enough variety to keep him from growing completely stagnant during his periodic breaks from deciphering the ROB-provided data.

According to his analysis, several Shards functioned as massive, almost planet-sized processing cores that both the Entities and select other Shards could interface with for computational amplification. Both PtV and the Simurgh possessed direct access to these systems, along with the ability to query other Shards and incorporate their gathered data into predictive models.

In parallel, there existed entire classes of Shards dedicated solely to scanning, continuously surveying the planet down to the quantum level and storing the resulting information, which the precognitive Shards then accessed to generate their predictions.

Access to this data varied depending on Shard designation and Entity discretion, but PtV and the Simurgh held effectively unrestricted access, with only a few known blind spots in PtV’s case, such as Eidolon, the Endbringers, and Zion.

It was therefore highly probable that the PtV Shard would attempt direct contact once Taylor Triggered in order to acquire the necessary data, which represented an immediate and serious complication.

In addition, scanning Shards routinely monitored Earth and adjacent dimensions for potentially relevant information, meaning his own existence would likely be subject to periodic, high-resolution observation attempts.

This led him to a clear conclusion: he would need to construct multiple defensive layers, including a system to prevent direct scanning of his crystalline body, a mechanism to obscure or deny PtV access entirely, and a separate subsystem capable of feeding false or misleading data back to observational Shards.

An outright blind spot would be the simplest approach, but also the most dangerous, as it would quickly attract attention from Cauldron, the Simurgh, and other lesser precognitive systems once inconsistencies were detected.

A more sophisticated solution, involving controlled misinformation fed into scanning streams, would be preferable, as it could actively degrade the quality of enemy predictions rather than merely hiding from them.

Direct interference with host-level observation presented a significantly greater challenge.

Any successful attempt to block or distort those signals would likely result in immediate detection of parahuman activity, exposing Taylor and him prematurely.

However, he understood how Shards perceived and interpreted host data streams, and if he could intercept and manipulate those signals at the source, he could theoretically feed them carefully constructed false readings.

The drawback was that such interference would eventually produce inconsistencies in the hosts’ perceived reality, making the presence of external manipulation increasingly obvious.

By that point, however, he intended for Taylor to be strong enough to handle any resulting attention without collapsing under it.

In the end, the problem was daunting, but not insurmountable.

With sufficient iteration, careful simulation, and what amounted to relentless systematic refinement, he intended to solve it the same way he solved everything else: step by step, until the impossible became merely difficult.