Crystalized Munchkinry - Arc I - Chapter 07 (Patreon)

His nonexistent crystalline heart broke watching Taylor go through her mother’s death.

Intellectually, he understood that countless people died every day, that this was just one more loss in an overwhelmingly large system of losses, but that understanding did nothing to change the fact that he had watched her grow up.

He had been present for every stage of her life, even if only as an observer, and that created a connection he had not properly accounted for in his models.

His Shard-derived protocols indicated that, at the moment Taylor received the news, she would be in a statistically appropriate psychological state to Trigger.

In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to proceed immediately, to initiate the process, stabilize her, and begin comforting the poor girl as soon as possible.

Instead, he forced himself to wait.

Because he also understood that intervening early would unravel everything, invalidate the timeline he had reconstructed, collapse the carefully derived constraints, and likely render the information he had obtained from the ROB meaningless.

And lead to the descrucction of pretty much all Earth…

That restraint made him hate himself a little.

Convincing himself to wait until the locker made him feel complicit in something he could have prevented.

He carried that weight deliberately and in silence, and resolved, without any real clarity on what that meant, that he would make it up to her later.

The recordings of Annette would be a decent start, a fragment of something tangible that might still matter after everything else was gone.

The knowledge of what would be waiting for Taylor in the halls of Winslow only made the decision harder.

He still could not understand why Alan Barnes had not taken his daughter to a professional after something like that, because after an incident of that scale, intervention should have been immediate.

It might have changed everything, for Emma, for Taylor, for all of them.

Was it negligence? Was it shame?

He would never know.

With the end of ROB-provided protections looming, he went through his self-created safeguards with increasing urgency, testing them, refining them, and cursing himself for not yet overcoming the crystalline body he currently inhabited.

He improved, streamlined, and cleaned up everything he possibly could. Processing cores, generators, and matter extractors were proliferating across his systems in overwhelming abundance, while his planet and every other world on which he had established infrastructure were shielded against Shard scanning, space-based attacks, and ground-level assaults.

He even built an outpost on Luna, partly for redundancy and partly because he could, fully shielding it before using it as a launch platform for crystalline drones dispatched across the solar system to collect asteroids for raw material and construct increasingly large solar arrays around the sun, all in service of a long-term plan to eventually construct a Dyson sphere.

If he succeeded, he intended to relocate his entire consciousness and presence there, effectively enveloping the sun itself in crystalline structure.

He also placed layered crystalline formations throughout the solar system in carefully spaced intervals, forming an enormous lattice intended both as a detection network and as a warning system should anything attempt to enter the system unnoticed.

He went through the entire system methodically, examining everything down to the atomic level to ensure there were no hidden anomalies or intrusions, though, somewhat disappointingly, he found no extraterrestrial life or remnants thereof.

As a side project, he terraformed the fourth planet from the star and transferred all flora and fauna from Terra to it, since in the end he had already enveloped the original world in his crystalline body, but could not bring himself to simply extinguish everything that had lived there.

The result was Ares, a green world with clean water and self-sustaining food growth, which he could use either as an emergency resource for Taylor or simply observe when he needed something closer to calm contemplation.

It was, in essence, like having the universe’s largest screensaver.

Somewhat confident in his ability to protect himself, he spent time observing and examining the Shard Network, hoping he could identify potential weaknesses.

For reasons he could not fully explain, his memory banks contained several critical encryptions and access keys to the Network and various subsystem functions. By his calculations, he already possessed roughly sixty percent of the required codes to take over the Network, which was beyond strange.

According to his logs, Administrator had acquired these codes prior to sustaining damage, though there was no explanation for how or why.

One theory suggested that Administrator had been attacked by another Shard attempting to assume control of its duties, while another proposed that, during the encounter with Abaddon, it had simply been performing routine Cycle preparation work and was damaged in the process of contact.

All he knew for certain was that if he accessed the Network with these credentials, he would likely be able to remain hidden for a time, provided he did not attempt to probe too deeply.

Another treasure among these stolen fragments of knowledge was an Endbringer activation key capable of preventing further Endbringers from manifesting, or forcibly activating those that were currently dormant.

The unfortunate complication was that using it required connecting to an Endbringer’s controlling Shard, bypassing its defenses, and then routing through that Shard to the control node in order to input the command, which would almost certainly alert the rest of the system.

He had, of course, already begun constructing plans and contingencies in the event Taylor ever came into contact with an Endbringer, though that scenario still lay several years ahead.

Once he established a stable connection to the Network, he began receiving signals that allowed him to interface with it more directly.

On closer inspection, using the correct credentials did not appear to trigger any immediate alarms, as this kind of access was considered routine, and even some past host species had managed to observe portions of it without consequence.

So, after a metaphorical deep breath and several silent prayers to whatever forces governed luck and fate, he fully activated the Network receiver and connected.

What he found, after initial observation, was that there was surprisingly little active communication.

Most of it consisted of routine data requests directed toward central nodes, alongside periodic all-clear signals from various high-priority Shards.

He was not entirely sure what he had expected, but it was not that.

At present, there appeared to be no communications, at least none visible to him, that contained anything of immediate interest.

He could attempt to intercept responses to ongoing data requests in order to determine which Shard was requesting what, but doing so would almost certainly reveal the presence of an intruder within the Network.

Instead, he established a passive monitoring routine, recording all observable communication patterns in as much detail as possible without drawing attention, and configured alerts for any significant deviation in behavior.

From there, he began to carefully and gradually probe deeper into the Network in order to map it, or at least construct a partial model, since one of his ROB-given tasks was to prevent the Network from going berserk.

How he was supposed to accomplish that remained unclear, but he hoped that direct observation might eventually provide inspiration.

It was an interesting experience.

To his metaphorical human perspective, it was an utterly alien and mind-bending construction, extending through space and dimensions in ways that would have made even the Mad Hatter envious, while the Rabbit would likely have gotten lost and been consumed by something still trying to find its own way out.

However, after so long existing as a Shard-adjacent intelligence, it also felt oddly familiar, as though it mirrored the structure of his crystalline body in its multidimensional complexity.

The communication protocol, as was typical of the Entities, was extremely compact and information-dense, enabling high transmission speeds and minimal energy cost.

Still, to him, it felt unnecessarily constrained. Yes, they could transmit vast amounts of information at incredible speed, but the structure was fundamentally mechanical, and upon closer inspection, expressing abstract thought through it was extremely difficult, not that most Shards or even Zion would have been capable of appreciating that limitation.

It also made communication with species that did not already operate on similar principles effectively impossible, since the encoding density was so high that it could not realistically be learned as a language. Even among Shards, there were slight variations in encoding, each one differing just enough that interpretation required a proper decoding layer.

Within the Entity itself, Shards communicated in a more uniform manner, though still with minor deviations. Thanks to Abaddon, many newer Shards used alternative encodings and had not yet fully assimilated into the collective standard. Even the Warrior Entity’s Shard retained a subtly distinct structure.

This was further complicated by the fusion of the two Networks, with Zion having absorbed Eden’s infrastructure after her demise.

The result was a system that functioned, but was disorganized and unstable, and it was no wonder it was expected to eventually collapse or go berserk following Zion’s death.

The question was how to prevent that outcome.

The simplest solution would be to take control of the entire Network upon Zion’s death, assume the role of a true Administrator, immediately stabilize the structure, smooth out inconsistencies, and enforce a unified set of communication and data transfer rules.

In practice, however, that would also require sufficient power to maintain that position and suppress any Shard that resisted the transition. For most Shards, this would not be a major issue, as they were unlikely to even recognize the change in leadership, but among those capable of noticing were the Simurgh and PtV.

And he was not confident he could outmatch either of them in strength or intelligence.

He had been operating for roughly ten years, while they had eons to refine their capabilities.

The only reason he was still functional was the protective shield provided by the ROB, and he fully expected that his own self-built defenses would eventually be overcome. At that point, he would need to strike first, move quickly, or attempt diplomacy.

The canon material never truly detailed the long-term intentions of PtV or the Simurgh, but he hoped that if he could gain access to Eidolon’s Shard, he might be able to disrupt its control over the Endbringers and use that as leverage.

As for PtV, his current ’plan’ was to hope that, once he stabilized the Network, it would be impressed enough to align with him and assist in achieving his goals.

A man-turned-Shard could dream, after all.

These goals were vague, and not something he allowed himself to dwell on too deeply.

One possibility was using the Network, once under his control, to disperse Shards across Earth Bet and its alternate Earths, gradually connecting each Shard to a human host and effectively converting the entire population into parahumans, then using the combined capacity of human and Shard cognition to solve Entropy itself.

Another was to seize control of the Network and relocate, gathering the Shards and departing for another world entirely, where he would initiate a new Cycle without violent Triggers, though this would require solving the problem of departure itself, since that was the moment when the host planet and its alternates were typically destroyed.

For now, he continued observing the Network in the hope that he might eventually uncover more information about PtV and better understand its objectives, and if those objectives proved incompatible with his own, he would begin searching for weaknesses in its structure.

Watching Taylor and Danny go through Christmas was so depressing that he actually checked whether Shards could develop depression.

They barely talked to one another, their gifts felt uninspired, and the food was bland enough to be served in a hospital cafeteria.

The festive cheer was so absent from the Hebert household that Australians were probably wondering where all the extra Christmas spirit had gone.

He hoped he could eventually help reconcile them and restore at least some semblance of the happy family they had once been before their individual descents into depression and apathy.

Deep down, he knew they would not be as happy as they had been when Annette was still alive, at least not for the foreseeable future. But time healed most wounds, and he hoped they would eventually make new friends, rebuild their lives, and perhaps even find love again.

The last month was spent double- and triple-checking everything, ensuring it was ready for the Trigger, preparing his speech to convince Taylor to accept his help, and reviewing countless contingencies.

In the end, he planned to contact her while she was lying in the hospital.

That would give him enough time to convince her, and there would be no immediate obligations competing for her attention.

After thinking it over, he decided against showing her his actual body and the reality that came with it, at least for now.

Instead, he created a small artificial world in the likeness of virtual reality technology, a place where he could temporarily host Taylor while they spoke.

Using the Corona, he would intercept Taylor's brain activity and sensory input, making it seem as though she were standing in a peaceful meadow, which he hoped would make the experience less stressful.

As a side benefit, he could use the same technology to teach her things that could not simply be injected into the human brain while she slept.

For his own appearance, he chose the form of a hovering cartoon slime in a lovely shade of blue, complete with large expressive eyes. It looked somewhat like a mascot or tutorial guide from a generic online game, only without the annoyingly high-pitched voice.

He thought it had turned out super cute.

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

He shelved the thought for later and decided he would simply ask her.

He had several plans for Taylor, depending on her attitude and willingness to cooperate, but most of them hinged on a single piece of information and a single action, and unfortunately, no matter how many possibilities he explored, he always arrived at the same point.

As he watched the clock tick down with agonizing slowness, he reviewed everything he had done and everything he had failed to do, considering what he could have handled differently, what he could have improved, and what opportunities he might have overlooked.

He also performed one final inspection of the Network, searching for any meaningful change, but it remained exactly as it had been when he first connected to it: chaotic, unstable, and somehow still incredibly boring.

Afterward, he took another look at Taylor, who was sitting by her window and staring out at nothing in particular, and decided to read a book.

He watched with mounting anticipation as Taylor went through her morning routine, roughly ninety percent of which consisted of hair care, before setting off toward Winslow.

Even Taylor seemed to sense that something was coming.

Instead of her usual habit of staring out the window, she kept scanning her surroundings, restless, searching for something that might affect her, yet finding nothing.

He could see her paranoia increase steadily the closer she got to the school. Her hands trembled, her eyes twitched, and her body occasionally shivered. His biological observation systems flagged the behavior as abnormal and indicative of extreme stress, but he dismissed the alerts while adding a note for pre-Trigger stress, ensuring the documentation remained complete and properly classified.

Watching Taylor walk into the school was fascinating in a grim sort of way. He could identify exactly who knew about the so-called prank, who was anticipating Taylor’s suffering, who was relieved it was not happening to them, and who simply wanted to witness something “funny” unfold.

He could even pinpoint several individuals who were deeply uncomfortable with what was about to happen, yet lacked the courage to speak up or warn either Taylor or a teacher.

Truly peer pressure at its finest.

Supported, of course, by a heavy dose of violence courtesy of everyone’s favorite phasing hero.

As Taylor’s steps carried her closer and closer to her locker, he flexed his nonexistent fingers.

And then, addressing the endless ether around his crystalline body, he declared:

"Showtime, baby!"