It is instinctive, but he can override the safety instincts, and collide with things if he wants. The instincts are meant to help him attain his goals, and not stand in their way.


It doubles them to 20 credits



A Vendor who upgrades these parts, nods, and deducts one credit from Jack's total.
A message to return to the construction platform appears in Jack's text field, and a choice pops up to interrupt auto-return as Jack's sphere-body automatically begins to return to the platform he started off at. If he lets himself return (and doesn't turn off the auto-return option just yet), he is upgraded on the spot - a signal is sent to his chassis which creates a gap over his FM coils. An arm removes the coils, and he feels his invisible hands he hadn't noticed disappear. A second arm immediately replaces the first set of coils with a more condensed and better alloyed set of coils.

-energy-field object manipulation up to 2000 kg for 20,000 N

The next advanced set would have these specs:
-energy-field object manipulation up to 4000 kg for 40,000 N

Whistling internally, Jack hits that button a few more times to make sure he has enough currency to really play with all of the new toys, rather than be stuck working to create credits in the future. Though he imagines it wouldn’t be exceedingly difficult, this is sort of a post-scarcity thing, where the credits just represent work, he imagines.

Jack upgrades his FM Coils twice more, and thinks that should be enough for now. With that replaced, he also goes for some fine manipulators that’ll let him work on the microscopic level, so that he can work on electronics, unless the FM coils can be fine-tuned to do that as well.

He next buys a stack of materials with which to make upgrades next, and is going to start by building himself a nanite that can self-replicate as per previous experiences with them—set up to prevent a nanipocalypse.

((for my sake, I'm retconning this to the same time that he pressed it originally, bringing the total to...))

Jack presses the button 3 more times, and his credit goes up to 160 - then he upgrades the first time, and twice more

-energy-field object manipulation up to 8000 kg for 80,000 N



Jack finds that his field manipulation is as precise as his ability to see - he can move things as little as one pixel at a time, as slowly as he likes. He currently has resolution of 1 pixel per hydrogen atom within 1 meter, reducing at distances from there.



The materials are delivered by tiny delivery drones with rudimentary non-sentient AI

He now has 155 credits, some leftover materials, and a nano-swarm.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:27, Thu 23 June 2022.

That should be enough to make some improvements, right? Nanite swarm to work as tertiary hands for repetitive tasks like creating circuitry, and installing wires.  Next up, he orders all of the materials necessary to make the upgrades to bring him up to the standard of a Starfleet vessel, but without the need for space for a crew, their quarters and living requirements. The goal is to have warp and impulse drives, scanners, weapons, a shield, reinforced hull and a tractor beam.

He realizes as he is putting things together as they start to get delivered, that he should maybe have a cargo bay.

Then he remembers he is now an expert at Hyperdimensional Engineering, and can just compress a lot of this all down into a folded state inside of protected black boxes. The cargo bay can be managed the same way, a deployable container that can compress down and return to his interior, like the hat.

As he continues, he’ll try to make the whole enchilada able to compress into a body that mimics a human form, because he’s accustomed to it.

Warp travel will be difficult to attain without dilithium crystals, and they aren't available on the market. However, warp drives are available, though they use a different source of negative energy which is available on the market. With 1 credit, he obtains enough materials to make a basic miniature warp-core with warp 1 capabilities.

Impulse speed would be 179000 times as powerful as his current engines. It'll take some significant upgrading. But with 1 credit, he obtains enough material to upgrade twice.

He already has short-range scanners that are superior to a Starfleet vessel. But not the long-range scanners. 160 trillion km scanner range will take some significant upgrading. But with 1 credit, he obtains enough material to upgrade thrice.

He is able to obtain materials for phaser-rifle level phasers with 1 credit.

5 Photon torpedos will take 1 credit to make.

A simple setting adjustment makes his energy field manipulator coils double up as automatic shields, thus requiring no credits, but being only as strong as his FM coils (which is still significant).

Materials for upgrading his hull and endurance twice will cost 1 credit.

His energy field manipulator is more advanced and better than a tractor beam, using the same and more technology, so that would be redundant.

((forgot to check for somatic and mental biases, so...))
Somatic skills would be 4 times as hard, mental skills are twice as easy.
*rolls & advances*

After he spends the 6th credit, a nano-swarm begins to emerge from the production facility, and it forms the giant face of an octopus. The nano-swarm octopus appears to Jack simultaneously in the simulated space as Greeter, the walking octopus. Greeter says, "Hi Jack, Greeter here. Hmm... You have spent more than the allotted 10 credits - apparently you discovered a way around the system. Let me fix that for you..."

Jack's credits decrease to -1

"There. That's better." Jack senses himself being scanned, and Greeter continues, "You are rapidly improving your own capacities. But it would be most beneficial for you to join in with our society a little more directly and contribute to the commonwealth. Anything unique that you create will be worth something, and possibly multiple credits. With the upgrades you've already made to yourself without referencing the science sourcebooks, I believe you could generate wealth fairly easily. But it would have to be something new. So far, everything you've made is fairly standard. However, I can give you 1 credit for the process you used when you upgraded your scanners since it is more efficient than the method we were using."

Jack's credits increase up to 0

Jack blinks in his mind as he is caught red-handed with his pilfered credits. He knew that hack wasn’t going to work! “Two credits for the scanner, or part of the credits when people buy it in the future, eh?” he attempts to barter. “I didn’t realize there was a rule about giving myself credits, and you didn’t explain.”

Okay, that should have been assumed, but he just wanted to make neat things.

Since everything was dependent on his FM Coils, he probably would have dumped even more points into them before buying things like the phaser array. (I’d intended a ship-based phaser, not the hand-held version, as I was going for ‘living ship’, but it’s okay, just gives me something to work toward.)

“I’ll be back in uh, a bit! I’m going to go mine your asteroid belt for a bit! It’s not all mined out already, is it?” he asks and causes his nano-swarm enter into his interior so that it can survive the travel.

((Check this out...))
In a slightly alternate reality, Jack's final purchase was worth 9 credits, and was for the materials and plans necessary to upgrade his FM coils 26 times, saving a total of .00039 credits. Actually that other universe where this didn't happen was the alternate. This is now the version of Jack we follow.

"In fact, you get credit for all of the extra value generated when people upgrade their scanners the first time. Also for the improvements to FM Coil production. Those processes in total conserve an extra 0.0004 credits. Therefore, anyone who upgrades their scanners for the first time or their FM Coils for the first 27 times causes you to receive some credit, until the processes are further improved upon by someone else. This will likely earn you anywhere between 40-400 credits a day, and will likely last about a month, diminishing over time."


"No problem, it's not a rule, you aren't in trouble. It's just not the purpose of the credits. The credits are the culture's investment into you. We want you to know that you are valued even without contributing, but that contributing to the common good is worthwhile. You'll understand more as you interact with people. You come from an ancient model of ecology which was called economics. Economics creates a worldview that doesn't quite compute the way reality works. In fact, if you can improve our ecology, those improvements are very highly valued. Anyway, the only way to change a worldview is to immerse someone in the real world and let them figure it out."


"Actually, yes, it is mined out. But the next star over, about 50 light years away, has 3 asteroid belts, and they're only about 67% mined. Of course, mining asteroids would only generate about 1 credit per asteroid since they're so easy to mine with non-sentient drones."


((There wouldn't be enough space inside the sphere-body to house more than a few, but the nano-swarm would be protected within the FM coil range anyway))

---

Greeter offers, "If you would be interested in offering your influence, your perspective on our self-governance would be appreciated."

Greeter glitches, and morphs into a larger octopus creature in VR. The nano-swarm seems more intelligent and serious. The label for Greeter changes to Greeter-Secundus. Greeter-Secundus speaks in a slightly different voice and accent, "Are you willing to hear about a secret and dangerous mission you may choose to accept or reject? If you reject the mission, which we calculate a 50% probability that you will reject the mission, we will erase the memory of the information about the mission, and your memory that you asked to hear the offer. In this way, you will either believe you had never heard the offer, or you will go on the mission."

((upgrading 10 times multiplies the power by 1000))
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:46, Tue 28 June 2022.

Jack tries to figure out how much the force he can exert would do to random objects, but decides not to go around atomizing things with the force of his coils which are now ‘way too awesome.’ “Oh, that’s kinda far, I’ll have to upgrade my warp engines more before I go there,” he decides and instead seems to be thinking about other upgrades he can make.

Some sort of hyperdimensional engineering tricks to hold his nanite clouds and future cargo? A replicator? Transporters to move things around when he doesn’t want to pull them through space? He goes over all of the things he learned in the last universe.

While he’s contemplating and trying to make alterations, he goes through his mental list of tricks: order reinforcement, maybe a way to make a cloaking device.

---

“Sure!” he decides since he can’t manage the trip yet, and it’d give him a chance to learn about what things are like here. He should also probably undertake some of those offered classes. Figure out their level of technology, maybe learn some cyber-magic since he only knows the one trick so far.

Greeter-Secundus says, "Very well, here is the offer. You will be outfitted with the most advanced technology we have, which includes the hyperdimensional technology stored in your intellect. You will personally recruit a human from this planet, an uploaded AI from the mainframe, a downloaded AI from one of the colonies and a human-AI hybrid from a border-settlement to accompany you. You will all be sent to a galaxy which has been completely converted into an unknown entity. There is no other life remaining in that galaxy, and it is sending spores out to surrounding galaxies. It is your mission to discover the nature of the entity, attempt diplomacy, and if it poses a threat to our existence, begin setting up what will be needed to subdue it. We will maintain contact in case you are destroyed by it before you can return. In the event that you or your recruits perish on the journey, those who perish will be downloaded into a new body just like the one they currently occupy, with no memories of anything beyond the moment before they heard the offer. If you succeed, the upgraded body will remain your own. To date, this offer has been accepted 58186 times with 0% success."

The recruitment part of the mission is strange, but Jack nods along in understanding. He’d have to go and get Rebecca, of course, he isn’t sure what his other options will be, but he’ll figure it out as he goes! The second part of the mission that befuddles him however is the fact that this has been tried 58000 times, they know there is no other life there, and yet the thing is ‘unknown.’ What was the sensor data like from the past attempts? Why delete the memories?

“Why are you deleting the memories of the attempt?” he asks. "You could learn from past attempts."

"No deletions were made. Transmissions were interrupted, and communication lost. No memories of the interactions exist. We don't know anything about them beyond what we can see, and we cannot see deeply through their cloak. We only know that all matter in their galaxy is the same exotic substance that they are."

"How peculiar! I'll figure it out!" Jack declares.

Lacking a physical body to make gestures with, Jack uses his coils to manipulate his nano-cloud to look like a hand and give a thumbs up. "Okay. I'm ready for those upgrades, and then I'll go find these team-mates of mine. I have one person in mind, but I'll have to look for the others," he tells Greeter.

Manipulating the cloud, he decides to work on his shell by adding some filigree designs and patterns onto his shell. Making his sphere look less standard and more personalized. He decides to make the patterns fractal in nature as he goes and starts to meditate on the nature of cyber magic.

The designs becoming more and more obscure as he lets his mind wander and the patterns take shape.

When the upgrade drones arrive, he pauses to let them make all of the various upgrades. Doing nothing that would delay the installation process.

Greeter-Secundus replies, "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to mislead you. You will be receiving the upgraded body when it's construction is complete and you have succeeded in recruiting the others for the mission. It would be dangerous for a body of that caliber to be running around freely through the settlements. Most of the weapons technology on the body is beyond anything that has been made public information."



The moment he decides that this might be a good idea to look into the possibility of doing, he realizes that it would be impossible to put any sort of design directly onto his shell, however there are plenty of shell add-ons for him to browse in the store. While looking in the available options for Shell add-ons, he comes to realize that most of the personalization that most of the people in this world tend to do is mostly focused on shell add-ons. There are some who go with nothing added on Beyond a microscopically thin design layer, and others who fabricate intricate costumes, even transformer bodies where the sphere body is the central computing apparatus and escape pod of the transformer body.

The sphere body is the smallest possible self-contained unit of individual expression of will and power. There is within the sphere body, a self-contained intellect sphere, wherein the mind of the person operates. Between the sphere body and the intellect body, there are layers of functionality designed to protect the most important parts deeper within the sphere body.

Most of the artificial bodies are practically free for Jack to use or build his own since they don't require anything specialized or difficult to obtain.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:00, Tue 12 July 2022.

Jack still wants to make the sphere into a humanoid form at some point, but for now he’s just going to focus on the mission, without the loss of optimized parts. Out of the options for personalization, he selects a design layer so that he can do his own designs on it. Picking it up on the way to find Rebecca and anyone else who has been shunted over to this universe, using the scriff vector.

As he flies, he works to add the patterns and fractals, making them appear golden on a polished black. He also attempts to use his ability to forge Order pieces to make the pieces more Ordered, and perhaps let him use those abilities more easily in the future.

He finds that he is able to apply a fractal formula of his choosing which will be drawn onto his design layer down to the wavelength of the color of light being altered - even ultraviolet.



He feels 1 ((or 2 if Stella came along)) scriff vector((s)) and follows to find Rebecca.

Rebecca has upgraded her FM coils, and has used air and various minerals to 3D print a Wild Weaver Worm Weed seed, as well as a few others, and is in the process of germinating the seeds when Jack enters her sensory radius. They pop into each-others' virtual space, in their human avatars, and Rebecca's avatar hugs Jack. Perhaps it should be noted at this point, that the digital avatar feels like a real body in every way - except that all sensations are adjustable settings.

"Jack! It's so good to see you! It feels like I've been here for ages, I'm sorry I didn't come to find you already. I've been so excited to experiment with this new body and see what it can do. Have you used the overclocking setting yet?"

Jack notices that he can set his internal clock to faster speeds at the cost of a little extra energy. At his energy accumulation rate, he could think at 10x normal speed without risking a reduction in overall available energy. The same set of settings includes the ability to split his awareness between tasks, such that he could be operating in 10 different awarenesses at normal speed, 5 at double speed, 2 at 5x speed or 1 at 10x speed. ((I'm not sure what you'd do with that, but there it is))

Jack also notices in his text screen the following,
"Encrypted: you will personally recruit to accompany you
-a human from this planet
-an uploaded AI from the mainframe
-a downloaded AI from one of the colonies
-a human-AI hybrid from a border-settlement."


((Retconning it so that the pieces Jack personally upgraded are all Ordered, and will ease the use of Order Magics - this should be done normally when creating the Order object, and should only work when using a skill at 6/6 or higher to create the object))

Theoretically, teleportation should be easier, intentional deceleration could be instantaneous and without damage, impact resistance might be better, temperature tolerance is probably more like 0k-8000k, sensory data might be a little less fuzzy, FM coils could probably freeze things to .00001k, phaser rifles should be able to emit a more concentrated single-electron thick beam, and photon torpedos might be able to cause a more focused explosion.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:59, Tue 19 July 2022.

Jack mentally checks off the mark for Rebecca on his to-do list for people to have recruited. He’s not sure why he needs to find four different people for this mission, but he’s going to do it.  Meeting with Rebcecca, he smiles broadly at her digitally, and welcomes the embrace. Pulling her close as he explains the nature of the mission he has accepted.

“Once I have my upgrades, we can copy them for you as soon as possible,” he explains as he experiments with clock speeds at her recommendation. “I had several things I hadn’t tried yet, when I was offered the mission, so I decided to do that first.”

Hopefully the upgrades don’t mess with any of his Order tinkering.

((I just realized I hadn't specified the size of the sphere-body, so it's the size of a head))

Rebecca admires Jack's designs and says, "Those are some fascinating designs you have there. They seem mathematical, yet random - my data tells me they're called fractals, but what are they to you?"


((Which of the 4 would Rebecca be in your thought process? As it stands, Greeter-Secundus would allow Rebecca to join the mission, but she wouldn't qualify as human - she'd qualify as a downloaded AI fresh out of a sim - just like Jack would qualify))


As soon as he begins to explain, a notification that their conversation is being encrypted, and is to remain confidential, pops into view for them both.


When overclocked, it's like time slows down and he can react like he's in bullet-time. When dividing his awareness, it's like he becomes multiple minds, each focusing on their independent task, and reintegrating when he's back to one unsplit awareness. While in 2 awarenesses, both were aware of the other, and both could listen in on the thoughts and perceptions of the other. Important information would automatically filter in to each awareness.

When Rebecca learns that he's going to need to recruit a human from this planet, she wonders aloud, "I wonder where we'd find humans here?"

Suddenly Greeter pops in to their digital space and says, "Were you wondering where you could find humans? The nearest humans can be found in New York City. Here! I'll highlight the quickest route to New York City for you IRL." At this statement, Jack and Rebecca see a digital highlighted path appear overlaid on their visual sensor data field.

Assuming they will follow the highlighted path, first Rebecca says, "Greeter, is there a way I can take these with me, or is there someone who could look after my plants while I'm away?"

Greeter replies, "Here's a storage pod." A simple inertia-dampening cube with a metal base partly filled with fertile soil and clear metal sides and a light emitting top is constructed nearby. "You can tow the pod and set your coils to keep it in tow if you like. There are also a number of people who would be willing to look after your seeds. Would you like me to make contact with them for you?"

"Sure!" Rebecca says

"Very well," Greeter responds, "here's Abe." A digital ape appears. "Abe, would you like to introduce yourself?"

"Thank's Greeter," Greeter nods and disappears. Abe continues, "Hi guys, I'm Abe. I spent 100 years as a human in a sim, cultivating plants for a human colony in an unexplored planet. After downloading about 60 years ago, I've been cultivating plants on this planet ever since. I'd be honored to look after the plants you've created here. Would you like to see my physical location?" A link appears with a preview of the sensory data field of a beautiful greenhouse in New York City. Through the windows, Jack notices that there is a plethora of construction styles of the buildings around the greenhouse and in the distance - some seem to be even miles high.

Rebecca answers, "That won't be necessary, thank you Abe." The link fades into the background. "I'll drop by your greenhouse in-" a time indicator pops up on the highlighted path which says '17 +/- 5 minutes to green house' "Oh!" Rebecca exclaims, then continues, "in about 20 minutes or so."

"Great! I'll see you then." Abe disappears.

The highlighted path leads them at Rebecca's speed of 984 mph (since her speed is slower than Jack's) to a speed-tow loop where they're asked in digital space by a train conductor called TR4!NZi (pronounced train-zy) to tell her their desired destination and cargo. Rebecca tells TR4!NZi what she wants to know, and TR4!NZi the conductor asks them to remain where they are in physical space, informing them that she'll pick them up in 2 minutes - then the conductor disappears. Right on time, they both feel someone else's FM coils grab ahold of their sphere bodies and begin to move them. One minute later, they are traveling alongside TR4!NZi and about 40 others. In total, the journey takes 24 minutes, and takes them over the surface, and then down into a tunnel maze to a suboceanic domed city. Along the way they saw fields of human farms where humans were sleeping as they lived out lives in sims like Madra, multiple surface cities filled with downloaded AI going about their business, and a continent-sized processing unit which the label indicated was a single uploaded AI's mainframe. The tunnels were mostly lifeless, but they did pass a number of human ships and various other downloaded AIs moving about.

The blue ocean filtered the sunlight into a beautiful hazy tint. Jack's 10 km sensor radius gave him a detailed appreciation of the insides and outsides of all the buildings near them. There were humans walking around, sphere-bodies floating around, and various legacy bodies meandering about.

The highlighted path took them right to the front door of a large vertical greenhouse with thousands of species of plants. Abe's sphere-body was waiting to greet them at the front door. He accepted the plants from Rebecca, and her account was handsomely credited for the exchange.

Once Abe went back inside, Rebecca asked Jack, "What kind of human do you think we should recruit?"

Jack, going along with the flow of events, lets Rebecca steer them along, and when asked about his fractals he answers, “No idea, just felt like they were the right thing to put there, so I did it. I trust my magic like that sometimes. Maybe it’s not even magic, just a creative impulse?” he answers honestly with a digital smile to go with the explanation.

((He’d probably see her as freshly downloaded AI, even in her own world she was that.))

Hearing about this place that is ‘new’ he nods in agreement. He lets Rebecca handle her seeds and plants in her own way, though he thinks he could have built a hyperspatial storage to keep them in, given a bit of time and materials.

Being carried by Trainsy, he wonders again if he couldn’t have done better himself, but goes with it.

When the plants are finally taken care of, he looks to Rebecca and answers, “I have no idea, I thought I’d just wander around until I found someone interesting.”

Materials being the limiting factor. His data stream informs him that a simple and small hyperspacial storage unit would cost the equivilant of over 1,000,000,000 credits to create. The materials are still extremely rare, complicated and expensive to obtain, and time consuming to produce.



He realizes that the speed at which they traveled through the maze of non-stationary tunnels with various moving vehicles would've been just a bit too much for his processors, FM coils and thrusters to handle - plus he doesn't have the equivalent sphere-body piloting skills to compete with TR4!NZi. It probably would've taken him 2-4 times as long. Granted, that'd still be fast. ((But Jack needed to see how people interact, and the fact that so far, no one who has provided a service has requested or required any kind of payment))



There are all kinds of people wandering around. About a tenth of them don't have cybernetic implants, and about a tenth of the rest don't have sim-ports. Sim-ports are the connectors that allow a human to enter into a sim. Of those with implants, some are mentally enhanced, and others aren't.

There's a socialization station nearby, where many humans and AI are hanging out together. Rebecca suggests they go there.

The building looks like it was grown from a gigantic mangrove root system. Inside, synths (which are AIs and cyborgs) are sampling programmed sensations, and organics (cyborgs, humans and uplifted creatures) are sampling the physical items on the menu. Jack notices one woman eating a bowl of crispy fried Julien cut celeriac with melted yak-curd covered in death cap mushroom gravy. There's a cyborg who is sampling a synesthesiac program while sipping from a changetini - which is a specialty psychotropic drink which subtly changes flavor with each sip. There's a meat-suited AI (who counts as human due to the body its in) who's eating "rocks" a hard-coated chocolate cereal made from the cooked lymph fluid of an alien creature called a Cocoa Bird. There are, of course, many others.

One pure human (no implants, no uplifted creature DNA) who is sitting with a table of other humans of various types, waves at Jack and Rebecca as a drone-waiter hands them both an alcohol-like beverage in their digital-space. The human raises his own glass, says, "Sociable!" and everyone in ear-shot repeats the word as they all sip or sample their own items.

After chatting with different people, Jack makes his selection from the humans ((whenever you like, or I could assign one who will work)), and mentions that he needs to recruit an uploaded AI from the mainframe.

Stax the human says he knows a guy, and (using VR goggles) Stax takes them to the IP address of a particularly adventurous AI. Her name is Tom.

Tom the AI was originally created to map things, but has evolved to be proficient at mapping the electronic pathways that AI brains create as they form. She is excited for reasons she can't quite explain, that she will be embodying in a sphere-ship. The sphere-ship is an older model of the same quality of body that Jack will be inhabiting. If asked, Tom will go.

Once Tom is with them, she manifests as patterned energy out of a console, and slides into a sphere-ship about the size of a holodeck. She chose her body from a directory, and was charged nothing, using manifested energy patterns to transfer her awareness from the mainframe into the local-body.

Next they need a downloaded AI from one of the colonies. Tom takes them to a teleporter pad and selects from the list of colonies, "a wild colony in the western quadrant." Jack sees that for him, one-way passage would cost 10,000,000. A return ticket would be double. Stax waves Jack to follow him onto the pad, and the price disappears.

Jack and the others step off of a pad in the waiting room of a saloon. Only one downloaded AI is present in the room. He's fully clockwork. Using a combination of quantum interaction, subatomic gears, molecular gearboxes, microscopic gears, tiny gears and some larger gears, Jed has designed a fully unplugged analogue computer capable of running his AI and changing itself as he normally can. He can be powered up by winding a gear, using a drill on a certain screw, having force applied to him from the outside (resisting the force generates potential energy which can be released to operate the gears).

In other words, fighting him only strengthens his power for as long as his gears can withstand the force (and they happen to be made of the strongest known alloys). This also gives him the ability to operate his mental functions at higher speeds to expend excess energy.

Jed knows of a human-ai hybrid from a border-settlement. He just met them a few days ago as they were passing through. Their name is Beajay. Beajay was formed 70 years ago when Bea the human and Jay the AI downloaded into the same mind so that they could be together forever. Beajay has the mental patterns of both their parents, but is their own unique person. Both of their parents' voices and memories are present, but Beajay is also present, and Bea and Jay are part of Beajay.

In any case, Beajay is in a human female body. They had their upload ports removed about 20 years ago.

Having fully assembled the team, one remaining teleport occurs, bringing them to the closest outpost to the anomalous zone. Jack is given his fully upgraded sphere-body with all the bells and whistles. He can choose now what body he'd like to inhabit. His current body, the super-advanced one, or any other body in the catalogue. He'll get to keep the one he made and the super-advanced one either way.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:04, Wed 10 Aug 2022.

Jack, going with the flow, collects the team and accepts the recommendations of others to find the right people. Meeting each of them, he is pleasant and polite, pleased to learn about them and their various unique qualities. Jed is probably the most interesting of the bunch he’d met so far, if only for his design sense.

For his ‘body to inhabit’ he of course prefers the most advanced one, as it has everything the previous version had but with the addition of a whole lot more things he can do with it. He once again applies the shell that lets him personalize the exterior, but also hunts for a matching body that can be attached to the head-sized sphere.

He’s used to being a humanoid, and not having arms and legs with which to gesture, or a face with which to smile is a bit off-putting, so he does his best to create a body for the sphere to occupy—though this likely means his new body is rather large as the sphere was already the size of a head, and he has to accommodate the additional features of a face.

“We will depart in one day, if you would all like to make any arrangements before we depart for the unknown,” he tells everyone.

His extra-human computing power creativity gives him an idea, and he realizes that he could use artificial organic cells to construct a body, placing his sphere-body anywhere within the artificial organic body. He could also recreate Jed's design for his body, supplementing his advanced sphere-body as the brain and powerhouse instead of the intricate gearbox Jed uses. He could also construct a better version of the Muscorp body to use. Really, any type of body he could imagine, he'd probably find a way to construct.


This advanced model ((forgot to mention)) comes equipped with hyperspacial container, which can be expanded to be the size of Tom's sphere, or shrunken down to the size of a baseball. So the new body could be nearly any size he desired.


They all nod, and go their separate ways, to meet back at the same place on the following day. Rebecca hangs out with Jack, working out some ideas for plant hybridizations while he is busy with his own stuff.

((I don't have any particular plans for the place Jack and the others are currently staying before departure, so if there's any kind of place Jack would like to go before leaving, he'll probably find it.))

((I'll make the next post, pushing the story to the next phase tomorrow (or as soon as I can afterwards once I see you've logged in since this was posted). All I really need is to know what type of body Jack is choosing to occupy. Once I know that, this world is probably going to be in this Jack's past.

Also, I should probably have mentioned that Tom's self-transfer method was cyber-magic, and theoretically Jack could try to figure it out since he saw it done.))
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:26, Sat 20 Aug 2022.

Jack attempts to make a physical construct similar to what Jed uses, if only to learn the process, but the resulting ‘resistance to attacks’ is another feather in his cap and he doesn’t mind that. Aesthetically, he is aiming for something as close as possible to his “real body” so that he can feel like himself and not like a robot, emulating his body as best he can over the top of it all. Though it might require him to be a bit larger than he normally is, to make the sphere fit.

In the time after he works on his body, he goes to see if he can’t find out about and learn something about cyber-magic.

He will try to learn Tom’s method, as he always tries to learn everything he can. Being a sponge for new types of magic.

He finds the instructions on how to construct the clockwork construct and computational system, but stops shy of copying his mind into the micro-gears since his purpose was to gain the advantages of the clockwork body, and not specifically the mind part ((unless I'm wrong about that)).


He finds that he is able to adjust the size of this advanced sphere-body to fit into a space the size of a baseball, so he can easily fit into his ordinary body size, or make his body larger if he prefers.


Although Tom wouldn't know anything about 'magic' other than what she gathered from fiction stories, she is able to teach Jack how to transfer his mind in this method. Jack knows that this is a form of cyber-magic because... he has a knack for magic, and this is obviously magic and not simple science. However, Tom doesn't realize that she is using magic. Nevertheless, he learns the technique. And this is how:
Overclocking their processors and accomplishing these tasks in the cyberspace, Tom teaches Jack how to map out his own cognitive functions, memories, and various other electro-synaptic connections. This utilizes a work-around where the map is the mind and the mind is the map. Jack's awareness is able to almost float above his mind and see it from the outside momentarily - just enough to get a feel for how it is. Then in the real world he pulls the mental map out of the physical structure of his processors into the location of his projected awareness using the Program Light/Electricity Cyber-magic and overlays it into patterned energy. Using this method, he could exist outside of his body for a period of time dependent on the presence of ions, the ionization of the environment, and various other variables. where he is at the moment, he could exist outside of any body in this energy form for about a day. However, pulling his mind-pattern out of his body takes time, so it wouldn't always work as a way to survive a fatal attack.

---

In any case, once all the preparations have been made, everyone gathers together. Since Tom is large enough to carry them all, Tom carries those who can't fly through space on their own. Their destination coordinates are given to them, and they begin traveling to the distant region of space in the far-away galaxy at hyper-warp speeds. The journey is uneventful.

Once they are close enough for their long-range sensors to get a good picture of the region, they stop to collect data. Immediately Rebecca, Tom and Jack's bodies malfunction, killing them each instantly, and stranding the others in the depth of space without any transportation.

Jack is dead.

---

"Oh damn!" A voice (unheard by anyone) exclaims, "I meant to download that Jack person into a body before he came too close to the crystaline entity. Oh well, maybe I'll get a chance to meet him later, or maybe I'll just download one of those copies that the Deus Ex is running."

The Mind-ship "Life's a Babushka, Doll!" aka Babushka, watches as Jack's and Rebecca's sphere bodies, Jack's gear-body add-on, their muscorp bodies, Jack's human body and Rebecca's Borg-body (and any others I might have forgotten) all disappear from the recursive universes within hir mind. And then shi moves on, watching as those who survived the sudden technological failures attempt to survive in the depths of space with no life-support. Ultimately only Jeb survives to interact with the crystaline entity that has taken over this distant galaxy. Shi watches as the events unfold and this technology disrupting crystal spreads closer to the Deus Ex Machina's territory.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:46, Thu 25 Aug 2022.