“How does this work?” Einar asked as he created a pocket of air that maintained its temperature at 0 Kelvin between the palms of his hands.

“Through Stardust’s vast knowledge of interplanetary science,” the automaton replied. Einar rolled his eyes at that.

“Sure, sure. But I mean is it manipulating matter at a quantum level? Messing with the code of reality? Hell, even if you told me it was manipulating the morphogenetic field, I’d buy it. So which is it?” Einar asked. The automaton stood silent for a while, unseen mechanisms tick-tick-ticking away at its head, then said:

“It’s the fruit of Stardust’s mastery of interplanetary-”

“Okay, sure, whatever,” Einar said, as he waved his hand across the dusty old equipment in his old lab, bringing the machinery to life as he pointed at them, coming alive in a wave. And for a while, it had been like the old days: all busy machines and rushing interns, as Einar poked and prodded at the Universe, just to see what made it tick. They’d even come close, once, before the cowards at the university pulled the plug.

But this time it was different. He didn’t have to play by their rules unless he had to. Not for the next two weeks, at least.

With a few waves of his hands, Einar began to rearrange the air around him, conjuring the shape of a perpetual motion machine, which he hooked up to his machinery. Drawing from his own imagination, he shaped objects and tools created perfectly according to his specification, including a tabletop hadron collider and a pile of room-temperature superconductors. He hooked up the machinery together and just for good measure, wrapped the whole thing in an isolating bubble and transferred it to Mars, letting the machinery run rampant, shedding radiation for miles across the blasted desert landscape.

By the time the automaton caught up with him, Einar had left the bubble, smiling ear to ear, a stack of printouts half as high as he had been tucked under his armpit.

“What is that?” the automaton asked.

“Half the key to unlocking zero-point energy. The rest…” Einar said, pointing at his head.

“What is the use of half-knowledge?” the automaton asked. 

“I’ll dangle it over their heads, let them suffer for a while. I won’t spring the rest of it until I’ve got Gunnarsson groveling at my feet to take his job instead,” Einar said “you know they called my work ‘a waste of university resources'? Can you imagine that? Calling infinite, fuelless, clean energy a waste!”

“An individual unworthy of the boon of Stardust,” the automaton said.

“You bet your ass he is,” Einar said as he flew away from Mars in the blink of an eye, reaching Iceland in a heartbeat and lingering, cloaked in an invisible cloak, near the Reykjavik University’s dean’s office. When, around after lunchtime, Egil Gunnarsson and the rest of the admin staff had gathered for their weekly meeting, he finally zipped in through the window, dropping the huge sheaf of papers on it like a brick.

“Olafsson? What is the meaning of this? Gunnarsson asked as he leafed, confused, through its pages.

“It’s the fruit of my labors. The key to infinite energy; independently researched, proven, and achieved. And it’s only half of it. You can have the rest when…” Einar began.

“You can’t be serious. We can’t simply peer review this based on half a thesis and your word alone,” Gunnarsson cut him off “nevermind your outrageous submission process, dressed in this…what are you even wearing?”

“I am…this is…” Einar fumbled for an explanation, suddenly realizing that he was dressed in nothing but a form-fitting sky blue unitard and a wide golden belt that covered his midriff.

“The suit of Stardust, the Super Wizard, wielder of interplanetary science,” the automaton said, floating in through the open window of Gunnarsson's office. The dean and the admin staff were silent for a while, as they tried to process that strange floating thing that had just swum into view, then finally said:

“Bring me the rest of the thesis by tomorrow and I’ll push it through directly to CERN. I’m sure they will know what to -”

“Trust my greatest achievement with those hacks? Waste years of my life waiting as they poke and prod at it with their tiny minds and oversized tools? No, that won’t do. Not one little bit!” Einar said and flew out the window, away from the University, over the green fields where the sheep grazed, the automaton tailing him as it hovered nearby.

“Perhaps, a demonstration would be in order,” the automaton offered.

“What? Bring the machine to them? With all the radioactivity it’s shedding, it would poison half of Europe before I could put up the containment field. No, I need something bigger. better. But first…” Einar said, before turning in the air, away from the fields, toward a small town nestled against a forest. Picking one of the small homes built along its side streets, he flew down into the living room, scaring the woman nursing a coffee there.

“God almighty, Einar! How the hell did you get here? And who’s this?” she asked, pointing at the automaton.

“What this? Just a robot. I’m here to tell you that I’m omnipotent now, Helga. And that I’m ready to try again,” Einar said, matter-of-factly. Helga only blinked very slowly, then said:

“What are you talking about, you utter madman?”

“I know things didn’t work out before with us, but I can make up for it now: all your shortcomings, your doubts. I can make us rich, look!” Einar said, grabbing a lump of still-burning coal out of the fireplace, then squeezing it between his hands. The fire sizzled and tendrils of smoke poured from between his clenched fingers before it cooled. When he opened them, he revealed an off-blue diamond the size of a walnut, cupped in his palm.

“The money was never the problem, Einar,” Helga said, slowly.

“Whatever it was, we can have it. Do you want fame? I can write our names on the face of the moon. I can build us a palace out of stardust!”

“Einar, that’s not-” 

“I’ll take us to the Horsehead Nebula! Subjugate an alien species for us! Make us gods among men!”

“Einar, the problem is-”

“Think about it, Helga! You can finally be important. All you have to do is take back those divorce papers! I can make it all work, just the way you want!”

So I can have anything I want?” Helga asked.

“Just say the word!” Einar said.

“Okay then,” Helga finally said, placing her coffee mug on the table “I want you gone.”

“What?” Einar said, his shoulder slumping.

“I want you out of here. Before the kids come back, preferably. I don’t want them to see you…like that,” Helga said, pointing at the outfit.

“It’s the suit of the most powerful being in the Universe!”

“Well, it looks like you stole the pajamas from a nursing home. Now please, go,” Helga said and Einar roared with rage, blasting out of the window, remaking the glass and plaster and wood as he went. He shot across the sky, into the night beyond, and stopped to scream in rage at the world spinning below.

“You appear frustrated. Might I recommend entering a calming trance by accessing the self-reflecting options installed in-” the automaton suggested.

“I need something bigger. Something with more oomph. I need something that will shut them all up. Helga, Gunnarsson, the whole wide damn world,” Einar said, cutting it off, before adding “where’s the ‘return home’ command?”

“Trespassing in Stardust’s private observatory is not advised,” the automaton said but made no attempt to stop Einar, as he waded across menus until he found the command he was looking for.

“There we go,” Einar said with a grin, tapping the big red button that hung in the middle of his field of vision, before zipping away at ten times at transluminal speeds toward a distant system, finally breaking perfectly at the edges of a star-shaped observatory, its mass shaped from the burning plasma of a living star “so this is Stardust’s home?”

“It is his observatory. His palace of Justice and sanctum sanctorum. You would be well advised to remain-” the automaton said, but Einar had already flown through the burning exterior, before reaching the star-shaped palace that stretched in its interior. The featureless polymer exterior opened wide to accept him, greeting him with a chorus of gentle chimes.

WELCOME, STARDUST, they sang with their non-voices, as Einar glided in from the burning sea of plasma into the cool interior of the observatory, squinting as his eyes and brain tried to adjust to the endlessly twisting hallways and staircases that stretched, Escher-like, in every direction, the halls and corridors buzzing with the traffic of thousands of machines that staffed Stardust’s palace.

“Take me to his laboratory,” Einar told the automaton. When it failed to respond, he grabbed one of the roving automata and repeated the command. It rolled across the impossible hallways, down a tangle of pneumatic tubes carrying strange artifacts to impossible destinations, before finally stopping at a barred pearly gate “how do I get inside?”

“Access is strictly prohibited to unauthorized individuals,” the automaton said, sternly. Einar reached into its brain and undid a coupling, temporarily disabling it, then sent his mind into the door’s complicated interior. After half an hour of trying to divine the impossible complexity of its security systems, he simply stretched his hands impossibly wide and ripped it off its hinges.

“I’ll put it back later,” Einar said to no one in particular as he floated inside the impossibly large space of the laboratory, his eyes scanning the liquid machinery, miniature suns, and endlessly evolving lifeforms that littered its benches. He scanned the screens of the impossible machines that ran the billions of calculations that would brute-force the name of God, skirted around the morphogenetic field adjuster and the alchymical furnaces, where the Elixirs of eternal life were being brewed until, finally, something caught Einar’s eye:

A spherical screen, shaped like a crystal ball, dumped among a pile of wands and robs and portable holes. At a glance, there was nothing truly remarkable about it, except for the small tag stuck to its bottom:

STARDUST LOCATOR

“What have we here?” Einar said, then reached for it, wiping away the thick coating of dust on its surface. He squinted against the haze as its display finally cleared and looked down at the man inside the glass…only for the back part of his skull to explode into a cloud of pink mist as the man looked back.

“Access denied,” the automaton said, when it finally made its way into the laboratory, its systems having finally been rebooted after Einar’s tampering. Something didn’t quite feel right in its metallic skull, but the automaton hadn’t been programmed to be bothered about this sort of thing.

So it pulled the suit and belt from Einar’s body and fed him to the orchid-sharks, then put back the laboratory door as best as it could, before flying out and away from the observatory, to find the next candidate on its list.