An Ecology of MInd (38 page)

The energy absorbed from each new star enabled him to create more bodily extensions, but it also increased the radius of his abilities from each extension.
The increase in the range of his powers was not linear. The larger his range limits, the greater the amount of power needed to expand it further. It was
related to the fact that his powers did not expand in just a straight-line direction or cover the area of a circle. Instead, they covered the volume of
space within a sphere.

When he reached the point that he could control all matter within a radius of twenty-five thousand miles, he stopped. Earth has a radius of about 3950
miles, so he could easily control all matter to a comfortable range beyond earth from one extension at its core. Larger planets within the solar system
took a few body extensions perform the same function. The sun took more yet.

After the twenty-two-hour series of jumping body extensions to other stars he now had space probe bodies within 2,384,185,791,015,625 stars. He currently
had a body inside every star within Earth's galaxy and numerous stars within several other galaxies as well. They were all fully functional bodies, and all
were continuing to absorb energy. This was the point he had been at when he had jumped an extension to Leader 1*'s home planet, and before he had let the
alien ship leave Earth.

He had stopped expansion at that point as he deemed it gave him enough power to ensure that Leader 1*'s people or any other aliens could not destroy the
Earth. He had also stopped further expansion because of the risks it presented. While the expansion to so many stars gave him phenomenal power, he had
never been as vulnerable to the risk of destruction and death since that Neanderthal had shoved a spear into his guts so many years ago.

If you arbitrarily assumed that the chance of him coming across a star system with some sort of being or species that could damage or destroy him in some
way as being one trillion to one, you might feel relatively safe. However, if this hypothetical statistic was true, he had already expanded into enough
star systems to have potentially come into contact with 2,384 such threats. Hopefully, the chances of meeting such a threat were much lower than one in a
trillion.

Not expanding as he had would not prevent encountering such a possible threat. The threat could come to him as Leader 1*'s species had come to Earth, but
the expansion to so many star systems made it much more likely. He had felt that Earth's need had made it worth the risk.

Unfortunately, there was another risk or problem that he had not thought of until after the meeting between Kim and Wendy. His central consciousness was
saddened and angered somewhat by Wendy’s decision but only slightly. It was then that he realized that the vast number of bodily extensions was diluting
his overall emotions and thoughts.

Most of them were just contentedly gathering energy most of the time so his average emotion was contentment. Individual extensions like Kim could
experience strong emotions, but his central thoughts were hardly affected. Some of this filtered back to the individual bodies like Kim, but to a much
lesser degree. It was this lessening of emotion even in an individual extension that he had noticed in Kim. It was something that had to be factored into
his dealings and actions.

There was another parameter though that he now realized would have a larger effect. After he had developed a good understanding of their language and
thoughts, he had tried something with the aliens while they were on Earth. The aliens focused their attention on the barrier and on the duplicate organism,
Leader 2*. While they were distracted, he had eliminated the ship’s second in command and taken its place.

He had all the knowledge and memories required, from a life pack that the second in command had been keeping up to date. He used a copy of himself and then
altered its body and brain structure to be completely that of the second in command except for the tiny piece of mutated brain tissue that allowed him to
connect with the portion of him that gave him his abilities.

This was different than he had done in creating Leader 2*. Leader 2* was not one of his bodies, he just passively monitored it or controlled it by direct
manipulation like a puppet sometimes. The duplicate alien second in command was actually him with an alien body and brain connected to the rest of himself.
This allowed him to still be him and have his abilities but to experience the world through a different brain structure and senses.

He did this for two reasons. One was to gain a better understanding of how Leader 1*’s people experienced the world, and their brains functioned. The
second was that he knew his human brain structure had built in blind spots and limitations and was curious if experiencing things through a different brain
design might allow him to see into some of those blind spots.

It was a fascinating experience. There were things that were evident with the alien brain structure that he had not noticed with his human one, and the
reverse was true as well.

He had since destroyed that alien version of himself when he had eliminated Leader 1*’s species and now kept tabs on their actions through a body located
in their planet’s core. He noticed, however, that the thoughts of that alien body had made a small difference on how Kim had felt about the Wendy
situation.

His experience already spanned thousands of years of a wide variety of human cultures and thinking. His own thoughts and views of the world were the result
of the various thoughts and viewpoints mixing and challenging one another in his mind. The best survived and the losers fell by the wayside on his journey
through the millennia.

This accessing of alien cultures, thoughts and brain structures was likely to continue on a much larger scale. His expansion to so many star systems
brought him into potential contact with millions of intelligent species. He expected over time to repeat the process of learning the thoughts and cultures
of this multitude of alien species and to experience them through different brain structures. The ideas, viewpoints and ways of thought would intermingle
in his own central consciousness and create an ecology of mind such as had never before existed as far as he knew. Thoughts and ideas would exist side by
side and compete for dominance and be selected within his overall mind just as living organisms did within the ecosystem of a planet.

He hoped for the best forms of thought to result. It would be a contest resulting in the survival of the fittest, but with ideas and forms of thought as
the contestants. His power had grown greatly, and he no longer felt his human viewpoints were sufficient to guide it. He felt the need for more wisdom for
lack of a better term.

He had not fully realized that this would likely happen until noticing how Kim had reacted to Wendy’s declaration. The process would bleed over into the
thoughts and actions of all of his bodies. His overall thinking would become more and more inhuman. This would greatly affect the role he had taken on as a
protector of Earth. Fortunately, another discovery was allowing him to alter his original plans for Chris and create a partial substitute for that role.

With the greater knowledge, he obtained of medical science in the twentieth century; he could identify the part of his organic brain that was different. It
was a growth about half the size of a kernel of corn. This tiny area of mutation seemed to be the only difference between him and everyone else. He had
recently decided upon a theory that this small area of his brain used the energy of the initial lightning bolt and all later energy sources to create an
extension of his mind in a dimension beyond or above what was perceived as the universe with our senses. He had postulated that the portion of his mind in
this higher dimension could then manipulate things in this dimension in a way, which resulted in his powers.

As an analogy, picture a race of beings that exist totally on a flat piece of paper. The creatures perceive things in only two dimensions. A
three-dimensional being comes and picks an object up off the paper and moves it to a different area of the paper, and sets it back onto the paper. From the
perspective of the two-dimensional creatures on the paper, that object would appear to have disappeared and then suddenly reappeared somewhere else without
having traveled between the two points. This analogy can help in understanding how a faster than light, or star drive might work by accessing dimensions
beyond the three we perceive. As well, the only part of the three-dimensional being that would be visible to the two-dimensional creatures on the paper
would be the part that was in contact with the paper. They would be blind to the rest of the three-dimensional being. The two-dimensional creatures are
amazed and astounded by the powers that the three-dimensional being can exhibit.

When examining the mathematics of Leader 1*’s species and of the star drive, he had noticed that combining them with some of the newer advances in human
mathematics, allowed an extension of both into new areas. Using his linked quantum computers to pursue them, he came up with an interesting theory. His
expansion to far-reaching star systems allowed him to test it. Testing required vast amounts of energy applied to many points over a very wide volume of
space. This was something that his network of bodies situated in stars allowed for.

He had shifted the atoms to create the devices he needed and had begun to pour energy through them. He had not been totally sure it would work, but his
awareness shifted.

He still experienced everything he had before, but he now had another perspective. He launched part of his consciousness up several dimensions. The energy
required was substantial, even for him. He estimated he only had a couple of hours before he should shut down the devices. The power drain was spread over
Trillions of stars but even so, this was not something he wanted to operate continuously. It would with enough time, manage to drain the power of even
those sources. A couple of hours should be fine though and perhaps short periods in the future, as long as he did not overdo it.

The mathematics involved, and the calculations of his quantum computer additions had prepared him for the change in viewpoint, but it still took him a few
minutes to adjust his mind to what he perceived. Not only could he sense whole new dimensions, but he could physically act on those that were below his
current level. It was like looking down on a vast table with different levels and being able to reach out and move items on the table or to transfer them
from one level to another.

He could see the higher dimensional construct that gave him his abilities and analyzed it in detail. His theory that the small mutated piece of his brain
had been using energy to create such a construct was wrong. The construct was whole and complete at the start. What his brain had been doing with the
energy was to widen the connection to the construct and cause the increase in his abilities, like a wider pipe would increase water flow. Some of the
energy from the initial lightning strike had formed the connection to the construct, but it was already there, waiting.

His new perspective was high enough dimensionally to view time as well, and he could see it stretching back from his current reference point. From this
viewpoint, time seemed relative. He could view and even affect what was the "past" to his current reference point but the "future" relative to that point
was blocked to him. The reference point kept moving as his "present" moved.

If he had done this a year ago he would not be able to perceive this most-recent year, and he could not perceive anything "future" to this point, but if he
waited, he could view whatever became the "past" to his reference point. Perhaps the "future" too would be visible to a higher level, but he did not know
and this had been the limit of his current mathematics to calculate.

He examined the construct that gave him his abilities closely, and he could see his mark upon it. The symbol he had first used thousands of years ago to
identify himself or his work was clearly perceived from this dimensional viewpoint. He looked back along his timeline and finally reached a point shortly
before his birth when the construct appeared in the past. It had been waiting for him and the lightning strike to connect to it and make it operational.

All those years he had agonized over the why and how of his abilities. He had wondered if some god had been using him as a tool, and it had turned out that
he had been the cause of his own abilities.

He shifted his focus and looked further back into time to the beginnings of life. He overshot and could see the time that seemed before all life in the
universe. His perspective was limited to the volume of space that he now inhabited and had built the devices to do this in. There was much more to the
universe beyond his perception but within what he could see, there was a period before life of any kind. He pulled slowly back until he noted life on
numerous planets and focused his attention to see what was happening in more detail.

What he found were thousands of robots with quantum computer brains and star drives that were manufacturing the initial DNA chains and creating early forms
of life. The robots also had his mark upon them. He watched them spread life throughout this area of the universe, jumping with the star drives from system
to system. He also saw them move on to new areas of the universe beyond his view once their work, here was complete.

He pondered these observations for a few moments. It seemed that he was the source of life, at least in this portion of the universe, and he was also the
source of his abilities. Some of the implications flashed through his mind. He was worried about the risk of his vast expansion bringing him into contact
with something that would kill or destroy him. Logic suggested that as long as he held off from creating the construct that gave him his abilities and the
quantum robots to seed life in the past, then he must be free of the risk of death, as he had yet to create these items in the past.