Chapter 6
An interesting constant that John had found throughout the multiverse - for lack of a better term - was Em. Sure the human race is very common for as long as he had seen, but it wasn't a constant. In fact, he had found a universe domain that had only the existence of purple. It should have been impossible for various logical reasons, but it still existed. It was the universe of purple, and nothing else was there. Only purple.
It was so odd that John dared not to venture into the sector, and was content to leave it be. He had no clue of what would happen to a being such as him if he were to enter into it.
And though the verse had only purple, a colour - a physical description and not normally a noun, it still had Em. In fact, the chaotic nature of Em was - to his estimation - was the only reason that the domain had not collapsed in on itself, as it had not any logic that would sustain its existence. After all, conventionally in order for something to perceive the colour purple - any colour really - they needed to be able to perceive the electromagnetic spectrum in the three hundred THz and one-micrometer range. But since the universe only had purple, then the electromagnetic spectrum didn't really exist properly. Light didn't exist, so there was no way for the purple to ever be seen.
It was like if an entire civilisation was blind, does colour exist to them?
Probably not.
Back to the topic at tendril, John had thought interesting that Em was the only real constant throughout the multiverse that he had explored. It had always existed in one form or another, and from this John had deduced it to be the very essence of reality. He deduced it to be essential for a sector to be born.
From this John had started experimenting more with the limits of Em. He had rediscovered the uses that he had already known about, but then he had started learning things that he had not yet known. For example, he had been able to duplicate Em before, but now he was able to create it.
With duplication, he had to have one part Em, and another part of some other matter in order to turn that other matter into Em. Hence, duplicate the Em. With creating Em, he had to do something slightly different. He had to make a pocket of nothingness, whereupon there was not any Em.
Despite his original readings and assumptions of Dark Space, the area separating the pockets of universes themselves, it was not empty. No, John had missed, in all of his very different readings of the space, the presence of two things that were very important. One of them was antimatter, to which John was very lucky to have never run into any of it thus far. The other was what was of most importance to the topic at tendril, which was Element M.
It was when John found the chaotic element within the outside that he had decided it was not an element at all. Surely, if elements did not naturally reside outside of a viable - it was the purple-verse that led John to use that word - universe, then it would make sense that Em was not an element at all. Instead, John had decided to look into the possibility of it being the fabric of reality itself.
But that begged the question of how it was in Dark Space, as that was the point at which there was no real reality. Perhaps through - again - its chaotic nature, it was able to withstand what most elements could not, and that was existing without existing. John decided to look into it more.
There was a more dangerous thing within Dark Space that John was horrified to learn of, though. It turned out that there was a distinct abundance of antimatter within Dark Space. This was a problem as if it had come into contact with any of his things - or himself - then John didn't really know what would happen. Within one of the universes, depending on the rules, regulations, and laws of that universe - to which John had just called the Astronomical Constant, something that was once a theory of being a random number to which would dictate what the universe would appear like - John knew that there would be a very large explosion.
The explosion from antimatter and matter meeting was based on the Law of Conservation of Energy, wherein the two opposing forces would cancel out, but the energy they had would not be cancelled, just change form. For example, a gramme of antimatter added to a gramme of matter would result in two grammes of energy. Instantly. It was another thing that proved Einstein's equation of E=MC2 .
It was a lot of energy, but it didn't guarantee that the energy would only result in electric charge - a common misconception. There was another form of energy that existed, and though it was only theoretical as it had yet to be measured, it was assumed that the energy released from the (anti)matter would be equally distributed to all of the different forms; it was also converted damn near instantly, hence the explosion.
Another property of antimatter within a universe that made it so dangerous, and possibly rare, was how it was attracted to its opposite. Well, to be fair, they were both attracted to each other. In that instance, the age old saying "opposites attract" rang true. It was also a very destructive relationship, and John was reminded of his human parents from ages - literally - past.
From what John found within Dark Space, it appeared as though the antimatter was actively avoiding all of the matter that John had brought into Dark Space. It appeared as though it was reversed in Dark Space, in that the age old saying of "opposites attract" was reversed.
From this, John had hastened his research into better ways of transferring the energy within the antimatter and matter. John had no way of knowing just how long it would take to make any sort of headway in that field, but he would make due as it was with what he had.
It was in this venture that John had an accident. He hadn't the foggiest idea of how it had happened, but he was impressed by the result nonetheless.
An entire new Sector was born at that time. The data he had received from that fact alone was astounding, and from it, he knew what happened during the development of a universe. It was any physicist's wet dream, and he had been able to see one happen. Better yet, he was able to get even more in-depth data from a conveniently nearby science vessel going from SZ0 to SZ4. Unfortunately, that same vessel wasn't able to stop and continue collecting data as it didn't pass through the Baby-Verse. John was already inside the Verse, though it was very difficult for any of his Avatars to live through the radiation that came after such a powerful event.
And powerful it was, as after one took into account the definition of power, and how long it took for there to be nothing, then everything came into existence. John briefly wondered if he had enough data to determine the efficiency of creating universes. It would be fun to figure out. Well, fun for a being like him. He doubted even a virtual life form would enjoy the sheer data analysis that was required to do such a thing.
Eventually, he decided that his presence had already changed the start, by having the radiation effect his Avatars to begin with. So, with that thought in mind, he decided to outright start using the radiation as food to keep up with the rapidly expanding 'Verse.
Because the immortal sapient virus commonly known as John was a little impatient, he had decided to "accelerate" the flow of time in the newborn 'Verse. Yes, John was impatient. As much as he might have liked analysing data, he still did not like what amounted to a normal person as watching grass grow. It wasn't like there was much data to be gained from measuring everything there was to be measured from the grass every second, too.
With the accelerated time, John was able to observe the way the universe developed. It was a very beautiful thing that John was able to see, and he had seen it from every possible perspective, from every place that his Avatars were.
Which were many, many different places. In fact, he had Avatars from the centre of the universe event all the way to the edges. He decided to leave the Avatars where they were in an observation post type of layout. He would monitor them, and would use them for his various purposes as time went on.
The acceleration factor for the observation of the new universe was, if John's estimation was to be believed, about one hundred thousand years for every few seconds that John experienced. So, really, when the cycles started it wasn't really his fault that he hadn't been able to stop them. He hadn't the reaction time to stop the Reapers from harvesting the intelligent races of Before.
To be fair, though, he wasn't sure if he had wanted to, as this Sector was exactly - as far as he could tell - the same as his original universe. He was happy to note that the Reapers were confined to only one galaxy, though. If he had killed off all of the Reapers at an early date, before the time in which he had come to exist, he would have drastically changed history. That, and if he were to allow the previous Sapient races to exist beyond their extinction date, then he couldn't be positive that his favourite species - humans - would come to be.
He couldn't allow that to happen, as they were his favourite. John was quite aware of that bias, but he didn't care; he was once human, and they were his grandfather race. As in his father race was the virus named Mercer, and the one to make that virus was a human named Dr. Mercer. That was also the reason why John chose to have his last name as Mercer, in tribute to his patriarchal ancestry, as was the human tradition.
By the time John was able to sync the time perception of the universes, it was about time for another harvest, by John's standards. If the current harvest were to ask why he didn't help the previous ones, he came up with the half-truth to tell them that he wasn't from their galaxy. If they knew that excuse was false, then he would tell them that he didn't want to mess with the events of time, and point out the fact that they wouldn't be alive if he had done so. Sure it would save billions, possibly trillions, but it would be at the expense of trillions more never existing.
He would also point out the fact that if he had saved the Protheans, then they would enslave the rest of the races down the line. Unless he drastically changed the Protheans. Again, he would be drastically changing the history. He thought that History, in general, was sacred, and was not to be trifled with; even if it was through the simple act of burning books.
The first thing that John did was go and see the Geth when he was fully synced with the local time. The Geth came in a close second in John's favourites, as they were created, like him, but more so of the fact that John was the closest thing to a biological version of the A.I. species. He quite liked AI, having created them before, as they were quite versatile when it came to technology. He, himself, was quite versatile when it came to biology.
There was also the bonus of John and the Geth being empathetic to each other's social norms. That was to say, John was able to interface on a technological level - in the virtual existence that the Geth reside - and the Geth were able to interface on the biological level by way of nanites.
Before he went to meet the Geth, he reflected on what his automated systems had collected in the observation Avatars. There was approximately one per solar system, ever since they were formed so long ago.
Apparently, whenever a race had become advanced enough, regardless of the species, they had tried to investigate the strange objects that were the observation Avatars. 'Course all of their attempts failed, regardless of what they tried. John had had the foresight to create automated defences embedded in the very DNA of the observation posts. Whatever they tried, had failed to work. Even the Leviathans had tried to use their "natural dominance" ability to try and take control of the strange space organism that predated even them, the first sapient organics - to their knowledge - in the galaxy. It had lead everyone to believe that he predated them, and they would be right about that. Well, in a sense anyway.
He was amused with the humans, when they tried to investigate them, even more so when the recent group "Cerberus" tried to conduct experiments with his Avatars. His automated programs had been brutal in response to their attempts. Eventually, his Avatars were dubbed a useless, harmless anomaly to every species. Unless, of course, you attacked one.
Honestly, what could an omnipotent being, chained to only one planet, actually do to an omnipresent being? Nothing, really.
He had managed to kill the slaver, though. It appeared that an omnipotent being could be killed by an omnipresent being. He hadn't bothered to consume the bratty quasi-immortal. He did not want to have that voice mixed with all of the others. Besides, he was already immortal, why would he want to add whatever it was the other had had? There was no point. And, besides, that would be boring to have that power, all the power of that universe.
He compared it to having cheated in a video game; there would be no real point to life after that, and would get very boring.
The Reapers, a cyborg race with the original made from the corpses of the Leviathans, their indirect creators, had been based on what they could find out about his Avatars.
Apparently, his observation posts were revered even higher than a Prothean beacon, they were just less rare than the beacons. It would make it easier for John to take over a Reaper, seeing as they were based on what John himself had designed.
From his observations of past Harvests, John would explain the Reaper's work as the old illustrations of a Dr. Seuss house, compared to John's architectural depiction of a house.
It was cute, but not nearly close to efficient or natural.
This was a very odd divergence from what his original Sector had been through. It went to show one of the many things that can change from merely observing something.
In short, John had gone through the millennia worth of automatically collected data, and observations, while his first contact vessel was en route.
In his original time, the Geth were a very paranoid race, with redundancy as one of their priorities. They were right to think this seeing as shortly after the race of digital life had been created, they were forsaken by their creator race. Their creators had tried to commit genocide, and murder all of the Geth programs. They failed, and with great pain, the Geth had driven the creators off of the home planet. Further fueled by their fear of organic beings, the Geth had then shot down every ship - civilian or otherwise, they could have been a trojan horse - identified as not of Geth origin.
But that only explained what John knew of the Geth's past, and what data John was able to collect. All of which was helpful to know for the future, when John planned to approach the Geth, but at that time it was useless as John had then changed his mind, and decided he wanted to introduce himself to the centre of Galactic space.
The Citadel was considered to be the centre of galactic commerce when in fact it was only one of seven in the galaxy. At the moment the most used, and active one, was the third in a series of seven. John found it amusing that every time a race had become advanced enough to be space faring, they thought that the citadel they found was the only one in the galaxy. And, each time that they did, they always dubbed it to be the centre of galactic civilisation.
As John's First Contact Vessel neared his destination, he mused on how to present himself.
A/N: It has been a while since I have updated anything of this, and I had originally meant part of this to be another one shot, but it found a way into the main story. But, yeah, happy fun times.
And how do you think John should present himself this time? How do you think he should play this?
Please review, I love reading whatever it is that you all have to say. Maybe I'll even respond to your review.