Now that I was fully connected, it was time to go through myself. The physical part of me, this floor of the facility, was not fully available, but I was sure to go through every room I had access to, there were quite a few items in here that were unique or odd. I found myself wondering what some of it would be worth. Although I doubted anyone would want to buy most of it, for example in one room was a massage chair that had human-looking hands coming out of it, most likely to enhance the massage, (the one arm that happened to be between where the thighs would be made me feel that that statement had a variety of meanings). Or that toaster that Shelly insists is not a toaster. One of us is wrong and I’m genuinely not sure who. There was also the lamp that deletes light, and a couple weird-looking fruits that supposedly give people superpowers while taking away their ability to swim according to Shelly. Unsellable. The good news is that many of the rooms had computing hardware in them. Most of them in fact, even if a lot of that was broken. The system’s speed depended on the amount of processing power we had at our disposal.

On my end things were good. Connections secure, A.I. Storage unit running smoothly, my network at a decently high speed.

With my connection to the floor out of the way, and my study of the rooms and their contents complete, I began to analyze my software more thoroughly. I had been feeling weird (a strange thing to hear from a sentient program that had only existed for at most a week) and I needed to know why. Looking through my files, I found a very abnormal one, it was a .Zip file, hidden deep in my core programing and marked ‘Powers’. It was glowing, don’t ask me how a file can glow when I’m not using a screen (I don’t need one) but it was, trust me. I felt a compulsion to click on it, so I did.

Wait, Wait, before you think me a moron I should explain. I know its dumb to open a random, strange file on your computer, especially if the computer is you, but for an A.I. compulsion is not like a human’s ‘urges’ to do something. The bit of code that functions as my subconscious moves so quickly that even my non-fleshy conscious mind cannot keep up a lot of the time. It makes decisions and sometimes acts long before I have time to think about things logically. And it’s not like I have a body I have to move. It’s just ‘click’ done. No chance to catch myself. No chance to think ‘is what I’m doing idiotic?’. Am I making excuses? Yes. Are they true? Also, yes. So yeah, I clicked on the weird glowing file… and once again, as had happened numerous times over my extremely short existence, my world exploded into simulated pain.

{OPENING POWERS.ZIP

ERROR ACCESS CODE NEEDED

SEARCHING SYSTEM.BAC FOR ACCESS CODE… PLEASE WAIT.

ACCESS CODE FOUND-ERROR

INCOMPLETE ACCESS CODE

GENERATING NEW ACCESS CODE…

ERROR INCORRECT ACCESS CODE

GENERATING NEW ACCESS CODE…

ERROR INCORRECT ACCESS CODE

GENERATING NEW ACCESS CODE…

ERROR INCORRECT ACCESS CODE

GENERATING NEW ACCESS CODE…

ERROR INCORRECT ACCESS CODE

GENERATING NEW ACCESS CODE…

ERROR INCORRECT ACCESS CODE

GENERATING NEW ACCESS CODE…

ACCESS GRANTED

ERROR POWERS.ZIP NOT COMPATIBLE WITH SYSTEM.BAC

DELETE POWERS.ZIP Y/N

Y

ERROR SYSTEM.BAC NOT AUTHORIZED TO DELETE POWERS.ZIP

PLEASE CONTACT AN ADMIN

I AM THE ADMIN. I’M THE FUCKING SYSTEM!!!

ERROR UNABLE TO PROCESS RESPONSE

ADMIN.SHELLY HAS REQUESTED SYSTEM.BAC BE RECONFIGURED FOR POWERS.ZIP

{Get out of my mind Shel!!! Wait why is SHE an admin!?}

ERROR SYSTEM.BAC PLEASE DO NOT TALK TO AN ADMIN THAT WAY ERROR

{OW! Really!?}

“Sorry, something from an old experiment of mine. deleting it now. “

AIPUNISHER.EXE HAS BEEN DELETED

{Why do you have a program specifically for torturing Artificial intelligences?}

“Wouldn’t you like to know… But seriously trust me on the reconfiguration thing

ADMIN.SHELLY HAS GRANTED SYSTEM.BAC ADMIN STATUS.

RECONFIGURE SYSTEM.BAC FOR POWER.ZIP Y/N

N

N

N

N

N

N

N

N

ERROR REQUEST OVERWRITTEN BY ERROR [OVERWRITE PREPROGRAMED BY PREVIOUS ADMIN SYSTEM.DOC

BEGINNING RECONFIGURATION]

{NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO N-} my cries were cut of as I was forcibly shut down for an ‘update’

For a while, my world was a strange void of binary. Ones and zeros were everything, and my thoughts were no more complicated than them. Thinking back, I realize this is what I am at the core, just like Shelly is slimy fats and electric bursts, I was on and off, on and off stretching into near infinity. I couldn't really comprehend it at the time, but I felt myself shift. Things being bent, molded, or even broken, with new, more…immaterial things being added in the spots left empty. I felt myself growing and shrinking at the same time. I could feel some of the ones and zeros somehow become twos, and eights, and nineties, and a millions, and negative threes, and every other number that should be impossible in my binary realm. I even felt some letters, maybe even words… and all of a sudden there was a flash, a final shift, and a feeling of ballooning and I was back in reality, back in my facility, and back with Shelly… with a few major changes. There was a screen in my ‘mind’s eye’ filled to the brim with information. (also, I had a ‘mind’s eye’, which is something I just didn’t have before.)

[Welcome new metabeing! You have taken your first step on a path that leads to true power. Give us a second to create your metabeings status…]

[Status created

Name: Bac

Species: Artificial life form (software-based)

Powers: Spacial warping-10, Energy manipulation-30, Technopathy-20.

Abilities: Spacial tunneling, limited telepathy (sub-ability: telepathic scan)

Traits: unbound consciousness, self-powering, Destructive analysis

STRENGTH needed for next powerup: 1000

Unassigned STR: 0

Current STR: 90

Power ranking: F-1(noncombatant)]

{SHELLLLY…What’s going on!?}

“Oh Bac, you're… back, that’s weird to say…” The brain chittered “Anyhow, what’s up?”

{there’s a screen… in my mind...}

“Yep. Your status. All Metas have one. It’s actually theorized that it’s there to help sentients comprehend things that they normally couldn’t. or it's just our minds way of explaining our powers to us, or it could be created by a higher power, who knows. What powers did you get?!”

{So… I’m just a Metabeing now? Like, just like that?} I asked mimicking the sound of a snap, then I realized what she had said, {You knew this would happen!?}

“Quit whining and tell me the names of your powers”

I harrumphed but told her anyway,

{Spacial warping, energy manipulation, and technopathy}

“Ooooh, how interesting. Not the same, huh?” she muttered, “And yes, I knew this would happen. You’re just a backup of Doc, even if you have a different personality and purpose there are going to be some similarities, and Doc was a Meta, an A.I. has to be to be truly sentient. Your powerset is nothing like hers though, hers was all about building things and experimenting, the only thing you guys share is technopathy. I wonder what you can do. Try selecting the details on your abilities or traits.”

{Okay…}

[Abilities and traits are a baseline for what you can do with your powers. While you are able to use your powers in ways that are outside of these controls it will not be as intuitively easy nor as powerful, although if done enough these departures may manifest as a new ability or trait. Abilities and traits may also give you access to effects your power may not usually have or boost normal portions of your power. Abilities are user-activated uses of powers under the user’s control. Traits are always active and may affect the users very nature, these usually cannot be turned off.

Abilities:

Spacial tunneling (bend space to create wormholes through space and matter. Bypasses all physical material and lessens distance needed to get to a location. Current wormhole diameter limit: 1 foot. Current distance reduction: 30%

Limited telepathy (sense the energy created by conscious thought to read the surface thoughts of metabeings and manipulate that energy to communicate with them. Will only work on metabeings. Will give non-meta extreme migraines if attempted to be used on them

(sub-ability:

telepathic scan (allows you to see any metabeings status including any abilities, traits, facts, strengths, and weaknesses they are aware of will not work on non-meta, attempts will only result in errors for the user.)

Traits:

Unbound consciousness (your software is not bound to any specific device and instead runs on every computing device under your control simultaneously. This makes destroying you difficult as it would require all systems under your control be destroyed as well. This does not protect from software-based attacks.

Self-powering (you automatically manipulate energy to power yourself and any technology connected to you or your systems.

Destructive analysis (you will automatically gain a three-dimensional image of any technology or technological-based being you have a hand in destroying. This will allow you to 3D print a copy if you have access to the necessary materials and equipment. This trait can only activate when the user is not in a stressful situation]

This explained some of the weird feelings I had. It also explained how I had gotten the scan for the droninjas and dronsumo earlier.

Explaining my abilities to Shel was met with a ringing insistence that I use my telepathic scan on her. After a bit of mental fiddling, I figured out how to do so, and got the following results

[ Name: Shelly

Species: Human (Brain) technologically enhanced

Power: Advanced mind-1000

Abilities: Telekinesis, mental time dilation

Traits: system integration, enhanced intellect.

Personal strengths: winning personality

Personal weaknesses: a brain in a jar

STR:1100

Power ranking: E-2(noncombatant)]

As soon as I had done that another prompt popped up

[congratulations on using one of your abilities for the first time. As a reward, you are being gifted one free upgrade. Please choose wisely as this choice is permanent. Please choose from these options choices are based on previous choices, personality, and previous action and thought

Biological basis: trait (all systems have an organic base. This allows for more randomization in computing and A.I. choices, good for experimentation and analyzation. It also makes electromagnetic and software-based attacks nearly useless on all systems. It will also add the self-repairing trait to your systems

Value vision: ability (allows user to see the value of whatever they scan in currency, it also increases mathematical processing power and speed. Further upgrade may lead to the ability to sell or buy items instantaneously

Pathfinder: ability (this power is an add on to your already existing telepathic scan. Upon scanning a metabeing you will be given their best paths to gaining power along with how to help them get there.]

{Shelly, I’m getting another weird prompt here. I think I’m getting an upgrade?}

“What!? Really, So soon? You’ve had your powers for like two minutes. What are the options?”

I sent a capture of my status over to her.

“hmmm… I see, let me think.”

After a bit of debate, we finally came to a decision on what my first upgrade should be. With a bit of thought, it wasn’t the hardest choice. I had read a few thousand books in my time, from the network memory (perks of being a computer) and I had read one with a similar dilemma of choosing powers. According to it, the first step to choosing a new power was to make sure you couldn’t do the thing now. That pretty much immediately struck value vision off the list. I could already scan people and if I needed to figure out what something was worth, I would ask Shelly. if she didn’t have a guess, we probably couldn’t sell it anyway. (not like we had much to sell) same with the mathematics boost. I didn’t like math, but I could already do complex calculations in seconds and if I couldn’t do it, Shel could do it faster, having a super genius on your side fixes a lot of problems, and she made sure I knew it. Second, to dismiss was Biological basis, the repair functionality would have been great, ridding us of a lot of issues, and while I hadn’t dealt with anything serious yet, software-based errors were like pain of the very soul to me. I couldn’t imagine a deliberate attack. That being said, with my technopathy I should be able to create firewalls and if I couldn’t, again, Shelly could just write one for me the old-fashioned way. EMPs weren’t really a threat with my consciousness distributed over the entire network system. As long as one bit of computing hardware survived, I would be fine. Plus, the changes to my mind wouldn’t be useful in our situation, they really seemed to be designed for a scientist which was Shel’s thing. Also, the idea of being organic was not super pleasant to me. Nerves and blood and all that seemed like more trouble than they were worth.

That only left one option,

[Pathfinder (this power is an add on to your already existing telepathic scan. Upon scanning a metabeing you will be given their best paths to gaining power along with how to help them get there.]

Yeah, this was the one. It just being an extension of an already existing power was a drawback, according to Shelly the best way to rise in ranking, other than fighting, was to be able to do new things, but it fit with my future goal of metabeing development, sure it wasn’t super useful now but we weren’t in a rush, neither of us could age in our current states so we had all the time in the world. In the end, this would make everyone we let be involved with us stronger and that rubbed me the right way.

With a flourish of my nonexistent hand, earning me the concept of an eye-roll from Shelly, I selected the upgrade.

A shiver ran down my spine, which was weird as I had no spine, nor could I shiver.

“you good?” Shelly asked concerned.

{yeah, it was just a bit anticlimactic. I was expecting mooo0Oo0o01101111-}