Walker checked over what they'd worked on for the hours he was gone. John had decided to finish codifying the different ways entities could gain a territory based on the collected memories from his Creator.

 

 

They'd also started to work on the territories UI, or the user interface. What the Steward or Holder would see...and just as importantly, what they wouldn't be able to. In Walker's mind, too much information was just as bad as too little when first starting. John elucidated on the ideas of overwhelming people with factoids and statistics, but as he was directly influenced by Walker's memories, the Creator had to sit there and hear his own views parroted back to him. Maybe not parroted. Cardinaled perhaps.

The basic starter UI was created and Walker worked with them for a while to figure out what it would look like and what would get added over time. He wanted to emphasize that the Tier-ups, as in moving from nineteen to twenty or tier one to two, were what mattered the most. It'd be annoying for anyone to see a bunch of stats pop up every single level. Gradually bringing in new visuals and dynamic relationships would allow entities to build up their efficiency with the system correctly.

As they finished up the framework for the UI, Walker began to look at how items would be regulated and viewed.

Basic was just that....basic. Weak. Not the right stuff.

Me in my teenage years, Walker thought with a mental smile. He didn't blame himself for his hormone-fueled years, having decided to look back with fondness rather than horror at who he had once been. What he had become is what truly mattered though. Opening his soul had shown him that.

Looking back into the interconnected item system, Neus had used the term advanced, but that was already used in evolutions and he didn't want to double down. Together, they began to piece together what item categories would look like with basic descriptions. This would be a fine placeholder, and honestly, the only people who would really see it were those who had direct access to the Territory system rather than the standard and thus limited access regular entities would receive. It's not like someone was watching everything he was doing and telling the world about it.

They worked at it for several hours, with Neus again asking for flowery language. Walker acceded as it didn't cost him anything, and he was still trying to build a relationship with the green squirrel. When Neus again brought up the value of donating an item and what they would gain in return, Walker excused himself and stepped out of the Territory system, clicking on the system designer. It had been at least a full day since he first began the Territory system, so he could start a new one at any time.

He scrolled through for a moment, scanning the different system options for what he could create. There was another new packet of systems he hadn't seen before, with the filter showing the numbers had increased again. This time though, he found some systems that the Alpha Protocol had given him at the start.

 

The Landmass System:

A system designed by Council Member One in the Alpha protocol of AB.

This system is designed to control primordial energy and allows for the creation of different resources forming collected landmasses for planetary building.

Flexibility: Medium (Adjusted by the Council to High)

Difficulty to modify: Medium (Adjusted by the Council to Low)

Note: This is an original system

 

After seeing one of the original systems he'd been granted, he searched for another.

 

The Temporal System:

A system designed by Council Member Four in the Alpha protocol of 3NM.

This system is designed to control temporal energy and allows for the collection of temporal resources to a near-infinite amount.

Flexibility: Low (Adjusted by the Council to High)

Difficulty to modify: Extreme (Adjusted by the Council to Low)

Note: This is an original system

 

"Huh..." He mumbled to himself as he scratched his chin. He didn't expect them to start showing him the beginning of all of the systems. According to what Virgil had said earlier, the Adaptation System was THE original system, or close to it. All other systems were built to some degree off of it. He figured that he was now gaining access to the other starter systems for modification since he'd already shown he could act at least somewhat responsibly with the biggest one.

The council adjustments were nice. Each time he'd had to deal with systems that had low modifiability, it was simply a matter of using it for its intended purpose, rather than attempting to go a completely different direction. The difference he'd found between modifiability and flexibility was in the adaptability of the system itself. Modifying meant changing the intrinsic use of the system, whereas flexibility focused on the system's inherent ability to handle a large amount of processes and versatility. The Tracking system was a prime example of this. With the council adjustments, it meant that any system Walker looked at using in the future could be completely changed by himself or his assistants.

"Nice." He said after he had thought it over. The benefits the council kept throwing at him were becoming more and more common, to the point that he was worried he may become entitled or complacent with all of his recent gains. But, he would take any help he could get. For Symphony to become as great as he knew it could be, he needed to keep pushing the envelope.

Walker scrolled through and looked at the options available to him. Filtering for donations didn't pop up anything he wanted to deal with, especially the genetic one. That was multiple levels of gross and invasive. Gifts was interesting, and gave him an idea for another milestone series he could attribute to it. Exchange is where he found his answer.

 

The Exchange System:

A system designed by Creator JP in the Alpha protocol of 3AM.

The Exchange system allows for the donation of items for equivalent exchange with a pre-designated value.

Flexibility: High

Difficulty to modify: Low

Limits: The pre-designated value must be in place for this system to work.

Note: This is based on the Reward system of the Alpha Protocol

 

Because Walker needed the exchange system to work right at the start, he entered the word money into the filter. When nothing came up, he changed the term to currency and found what he was looking for.

 

The Currency System:

A system designed by Creator Locke in the Alpha protocol of 3DG.

The Currency system allows the Creator to make and assign differing levels of value to virtually anything in their world.

Flexibility: Extreme

Difficulty to modify: Low

Note: This is based on a now defunct system in the Alpha Protocol

 

Walker knew that he needed more than that. The problem was the citizens of Symphony would have no understanding of how any of this would work. For him to have a currency system, and thus bring value to items, structures, and everything else...he first needed to build a regulatory system.

"Fuck!" He said as he pulled his hair a little. He was a veteran and teacher, dealing with money on this level was almost beyond him. He needed help.

Walker headed over to Virgil and scuffed a shoe against the dirt, "Uh...hey Virgil." He said quietly.

"Yes Walker, how may I assist you today." The brown squirrel said in a stiff voice without turning around.

"Umm, I need your help with figuring out..money."

He could see the back of Virgil's head as it bobbed up in down in agreement, "Indeed. I had always assumed you would need help with this because of your memories. You were never quite...rolling...in it, as you like to say."

"Yeahhh..."

"Okay. But first, take a look at what we have done, again, I might add." He moved to the side so Walker could get a better view.

The evolution chamber held what used to be an Anteater, but nobody could call it that anymore. It had a huge amount of overlapping scales that seemed to shift colors as he watched, blending in with the green environment within before turning off and going back to normal. Its body had a ton of holes in it, where he could just make out tiny tongues sticking out of it.

"What the fuck is that?" Walker asked as he stared in horror at the creature.

"It's an Eaterhive!" Rimi said excitedly as he jumped up and down, "It's gonna get all of those inhabitor beatles for us!"

Virgil nodded, "Yes. We plant a hundred of these on Remus and another hundred on Romulus, and the beetles are done for. We modified the natural smell of the Eaterhive to be delectable to the Inhabitor beetles."

"How do you know what they like to smell?"

Virgil waved a hand at the chamber next to him, and a two-foot-long beetle popped up. The creature's body contained a shell that seemed invented to take hits while resisting the air as it moved, and its mandibles were sharp and serrated, "I found a dead one on Romulus, so I used the entity subsystem to copy its genetic code. This way we know what we're working against." He flicked his wrist and it disappeared. "Do not worry." Virgil said with a shake of his head as he'd seen Walker's eyes grow a little wide, "I sent it into the sun, not Symphony. As I was saying, they are not sapient beings, and will not pause to consider why the Eaterhive's smell so good to them. I expect all of the beetles to be destroyed in a little over a year."

"Okay, so, we finally solved one of our problems."

"Why are you saying we?" Rimi asked with a darkened expression.

"Rimi!" Virgil said sharply as he turned toward the blue squirrel, "Neither you nor I would be here were it not for Walker. Everything we do, is together."

Rimi stomped a foot and walked over to Cagna at her chair. He disappeared for a moment and a blue chair popped out next to hers. He hopped up and sat next to her, although Walker couldn't hear what they were saying.

"What was that?" Walker asked as he continued to look at the two squirrels.

"He is still mad that you blew up the last one. He had done the majority of the work, while I assisted in the background. He does not take it well when his monsters die."

Walker gave a small shrug, "There isn't much I can do about that. Would he rather your work with the humans and all of the time you've put into them was done with instead? Plus he's really not going to like the starter zones."

"Yes, but like you have done so yourself, he will learn to adjust to his circumstances. Now, you wished to speak about global currency economics I believe."

Walker nodded and went into great detail on what he was planning on doing with currency and the donation system. He told Virgil about his need to track the economy itself, including every currency that would ever be invented. When Virgil asked about what he meant by inventing currencies, Walker explained about the Territory system he had been dreaming up, and how every territory, or even faction, could have its own internal currency that could be used as needed.

"That way, every city has a currency that can be used intrinsically in just that city."

"Why not have a global currency, similar to the global reserve currency that you have on Earth?" Virgil asked with curiosity.

Walker shook his head, "Options, remember. If everyone has a bajillion Symphonic Notes, they can buy anything, anywhere. This way, they have to spend time in a city and work there....or just get a handout I guess. It's not perfect." Walker shrugged, "I want to explore the idea of Cities having visitors and citizens who need to earn a reputation within said city to live there. I don't want another world like mine, where the rich own homes in every paradisical location and the poor are stuck in apartments and shacks. If Cities can control their own money, they gain more agency in how their city and its people will be managed."

"Ah, that is wise of you Walker." Virgil said with a nod, then canted his head to the side, "Symphonic Notes?"

Walker's face broke out in his of-late habitual smile, "Yep. That's what I'm calling the highest denotation of money in our world. Symphonies have notes, and instead of a stack of notes, we'll say a sheet."

Virgil smiled back, "I see. I like the thematic play."

"Thank you. Now, here's what I need."

He explained how he needed to track the economy itself, with visuals and the whole shebang. Symphony would need a system that could constantly update and balance the value of different currencies to make sure they always had a fair exchange rate. It also needed to be included as an attachment to the Territory system so that Stewards and Holders could gain a fluid and interactive system that tracked their currency. The more control he could give to his citizens now, the more power they'd have later on to create wonders. He knew what it was like to work within a restricted system that didn't work. The American education system.

He also explained his idea about using the donation system he was building to create a bank of resources from across the world that could then be used for duplication as well as rewards.

"How would that work?" Virgil asked.

"If I'm a miner, let's say I donate one hundred ore to the Donation system. That ore would then be stored in the World Editor for my use as I see fit, like giving it to citizens as rewards, or for use in messing with Symphony through terraforming. The Miner would receive just compensation for the donation as well."

"What's the exchange rate?"

Walker snapped his fingers, "Exactly! I need I create a system that does that!"

"Okay." Virgil replied, then began looking at his screens. Walker knew he was going to take a while, so he headed over to his couch and worked on his soul for a few minutes. With a pulse of green, his right leg was fully completed, and he felt his skin and muscles contract into their standard Awakened smoothness of look and control. He shook off the pain and half-limped back to Virgil a few minutes later.

"Problem." The advanced assistant said as he grew close, "The World Editor stores the resources by using the Temporal system. It controls your space by fading things in and out of time, then uses Primordial energy for placement. You cannot directly connect the World Editor to another system, nor use it to store your donations."

"Fuck that jazz, this is bullshit. What about alternate dimensions?"

"The AI's regulate that, but what you're asking for would require a seriously large amount of primordial energy. You would run out as soon as the system fully came online."

Walker thought back to what he'd considered a few days ago, "Because the system uses Primordial energy to control space and movement, correct?"

Virgil nodded, "Just so."

Walker scratched his chin, "How did the third rendition ender, like the guy who ended it, create the Temporal system in the first place?"

Virgil held a hand up, "You are restr--..." He paused for a moment, then put his hand down, "Never mind. He was an alchemical genius. Truly a once in a rendition genius. He found a way to strain the primordial energy presented to him by the system, and eeked out a single slice of temporal energy. He lost a hand due to the explosion that occurred, but it was easily fixed."

"The shield didn't protect him?"

"The shield did not know how to protect him. Even now, temporal energy is strangely powerful in regards to damaging Creators through the protocol shield."

"Okay, that's good to know." Walker said, swallowing through a dry throat.

"Indeed. Since the Alpha Protocol recognized the process by which it was done, they have managed to replicate it to a massive degree. They now have multiple planet-sized alchemical processors constantly churning primordial energy into temporal resources."

Walker nodded and began pacing for a few moments. He had an idea of what to do, but he needed to take it to the next step. Virgil stood still, working through his screens while Walker spent over an hour thinking about his plan and how to get the most out of it. Nodding his head at finally getting an idea of how to do it, he looked up to the sky and yelled out, "Okay, I have an idea of how to find another strand of energy. But, I want your promise that I'll get some crazy good rewards."

Virgil stared at his screens for a moment, then said, "Granted. What do you need for your work, Creator?"

Taking that to mean that the council member was sending messages through Virgil, Walker shook his head, "Nuh-uh. I have an idea of just how big this is going to be. I want your promise that after it is discovered, I'll get an unlimited supply of each strand for my worlds at no cost. I'll also want any restrictions placed on me regarding assistants to be removed. I need my assistants to manage primary systems now, not just secondaries. And, I want Advanced AI's to be the minimum in all future AI-based systems. Plus any additional awards you feel are warranted based upon the results of my work."

Walker waited for a few minutes while he stared at Virgil, but eventually, Virgil nodded, "Done, although there will be a high cost for failure. Do we have an accord?"

He nodded, "We do."

Virgil had a weird smile on his face, "Excellent. Now, what do you need?"

"I need a lot of empty space in a temporally isolated area and a metric fuckton of primordial energy that I can control. I'll also need some other things, but I'd rather explain when we get there. We'll have to do some things on the fly."

"The fly?" Virgil said in confusion, before he spoke to himself again, "He means in the moment."

Walker stared at Virgil for a minute, confused by the speech patterns before he understood Virgil was speaking to the council member controlling him. He had to wait close to ten minutes, tapping his foot, before he felt a rip in space open up and drag them away. When he faded back in, he looked around and found Virgil beside him, floating in the darkness of emptiness.

"Welcome to rendition 4AB Walker." Virgil said, then waved a hand around, "This was created for you on the promise that you will succeed in isolating another strand from the Primordial energy. There is nothing you can damage here."

Walker nodded, "Good. Does the protocol have a way of accelerating Primordial energy in speed?"

Virgil nodded in return, "Yes, they call them push gates, to use the simple term. They encircle and concentrate primordial energy so that it accelerates to each new rendition. The energy is constantly floating around each new rendition for any time it is needed."

"Good." Walker slammed a fist into one of his palms, "I want the push gates in a repeating ratio of a, b, a, b. A gates will be the standard speed-up, or push gates. B gates will need to be modified, where they're surrounded by temporal energy that increases the speed of time to the highest degree possible. I need them on both sides of the rendition in a straight line, pointed at each other. As the primordial energy comes in, I an almost even split of energy to come from both directions. They need them to pass through every gate, consistently gaining in speed and accelerating through time simultaneously."

"Why?" Virgil asked although Walker took the question to be from the Council rather than Virgil himself.

"Because I believe that primordial energy is linked to itself based upon the idea of strands breaking off. Think about what a lanyard is. You take a bunch of pieces and twist them into a singular shape so that they make up a singular whole. To break the bonds holding the strands of primordial energy together, would require a major event. You need to constantly accelerate them in both speed, or space, and time. As it's all linked together in one cohesive unit, the time gates will constantly be accelerating and destabilizing different parts of it, then as the two beams of primordial energy meet in the middle at infinitesimally smaller time and speed differences, and try to bond, it should destabilize enough for you to catch glimpses of different strands so you can isolate them in the future."

Virgil's face looked stunned, "I...I see. Yes. Yes that just might work. Wait....the Large Hadron Collider. That is where you got this idea."

"Yep. Leave it to Earth's scientists to find solutions for the multiverse's problems."

"Hah! It should work. Okay, okay, one moment." He looked at his screens, and it was not for one minute.

Fourteen hours later, hundreds, thousands, millions of rings were set equidistantly from each other on both sides of Walker. He had to explain that they didn't want them to be uniform, nor the time dilation within the time-push gates to be uniform either. Destabilization was the key. He also had them make four slowing time gates for even further destabilization.

He waited another two hours for those changes to occur before they said they were ready.

A green pulse washed out of Walker's other leg.

"Finally, my body's done. All that's left is the head." He said to himself with a nod.

"Walker! Are you ready?" Virgil called out a small amount of space away.

"Sure am!" Of its own accord, his body floated to the large brown squirrel, who was fidgeting quite a bit.

"Okay, here we go. If this works Walker! You-you do not even know, my friend."

Walker put a hand on his shoulder, "I get you, buddy. Don't worry, it should be quite fun."

Virgil nodded, and a bright yellow light began in the far far distance to either side of them. They couldn't see it reaching the gates, and Walker had to rely on Virgil for what was happening in the distance.

"The energy is almost equal in power, and has cleared the first ten percent of the gates."

Walker watched as it continued to move down the line of gates at an ever-increasing speed. The closer it grew, and the faster it moved, the brighter the light and the less color it held.

"Thirty percent." He said as the brightness from the energy was lighting up the whole dark and empty rendition. By the time it reached the halfway point, it had already changed to an off-white-yellow color and was still accelerating.

"Fifty percent. It's getting closer!" Virgil said while taking short breaths.

"Yep! It's gonna work buddy!"

"It better! Or we are all going to fucking die!"

"What?"

In the beginning, the gates would activate as the energy reached them, but now the speed was so great that they weren't doing so in time, so they all turned on at once. The sound was so powerful that Walker and Virgil's shields sprang up around them, insulating them from the pressure. The energy on the left was almost pure white by the time it'd passed through eighty percent of the gates, and the one on the right was just as close.

When they hit the ninety percent mark, Walker couldn't even see the energy coming, as it zipped right by them with the sound of thunder and struck each other. A tearing sound, like jeans being ripped to shreds, rang out, and different colors splashed into the dark void before him. Walker saw pulses and thin bars of energy flinging off into the dark sphere around them. He counted no less than twelve different colors spaghetting away from the collision, the cyan color of magic among them. The sound was unbearably loud, with the ripping sound continuing at an unabated pace.

"It's working! You've done it, Walker!" Virgil yelled out, but just then another explosion occurred as some of the broken strands touched one another in space. Bits of the darkness imploded as multicolored strands now floated in the darkness. Planets began to form and corrode instantly in front of them, stars burning themselves out in seconds. A thousand-foot-tall creature with horns and wings appeared in the middle of space, screaming, as parts of it froze and then burned away until it faded to the nothingness it came from. A planet started up, barren as can be, before a green strand touched it. Life sprouted everywhere across the surface as Walker's brown eyes took in the sight. Cities formed and faded in moments, wars raged, and then the planet imploded. Different bodies began to float through space next to them...well. Pieces of them anyway.

"Get us the fuck out of here!" Walker yelled out to the sky.

"One second." Another explosion erupted only a thousand feet away, "One second!"

A portal ripped open next to them, and Walker felt himself shunted into space toward it. Unknown to him, a small piece of black strand flew out and broke through his shield. Just as he was inching through the portal, it fell and touched the top of his head as he went through. The gate closed, leaving the unexplainable landscape behind.