Infinitium

December 31st, 2032

As Johnathan watched Clarence, he thought about how this had all started. Right after he’d won the lottery, Johnathan had tried his hand at the stock market. He was sure that his Luck attribute had probably saved him from some catastrophic choices, but it was another year before he knew what he was doing enough to start making more money than the backup account he’d set up.

While Johnathan was working the Stock Market, he finished up his bachelor’s in computer science degree and started studying everything. By everything, he meant that he had started looking into the topics he knew he needed to become an expert in basically, all the sciences. Johnathan also took breaks from the sciences and learned every known language to Man, current and ancient as well as some fictional languages, like J.R.R Tolkien’s Elvish, just in case. He would also check in on Abi from time to time when he meditated, but those forays were few and far between. Abi knew his subconscious and she could review what he was doing, so talking with her was kind of one-sided. He’d asked Abi about where she was from a few times, but the construct had always shied away from that topic, stating, “Better not to confuse you with concepts and universal rules that do not apply here. Should you ever travel to another Universe where that information is useful, then we’ll talk.” There really wasn’t much he could learn from it (her?) until she was willing to share. So, he left her alone to watch and learn in his subconscious.

Ultimately, Johnathan started focusing on his primary goals once enough capital was gained in the stock market. He reinvested his profits into purchasing manufacturing companies that were going out of business and paid to retool those companies. When possible, Johnathan tried to keep as many employees as he could, even paying for their re-education into fields he’d need experts in once he finished designing the tools that would be needed.

Economic experts would make predictions daily about the failure of his businesses as they were losing billions of dollars but would also praise his dedication to taking care of his employees. As his revenue from the various global stock markets was making more than he was losing, Johnathan wasn’t concerned about the lost revenue and made sure every business he purchased and their employees understood that they had a job, medical insurance, and were valuable members of his team. As the years went on, the loyalty of those employees skyrocketed, even if they didn’t understand exactly how Johnathan losing money was going to keep all of his businesses afloat. When his overall holding and net worth reached 1 quadrillion in 2026, making him the richest man on Earth by far, even the nay-sayers started to realize he wasn’t going anywhere.

How did he achieve such success? The first thing he did was write a complex computer code with hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data which he finished by the end of 2023. This program would ultimately be the first step in creating a truly functional Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

The second step was to create self-replicating robots that could continuously get smaller and smaller that the A.I. would control. They were commonly referred to as nanites in science fiction which is the term he also used to describe them. To accomplish the goals he wanted to accomplish, the nanites would need to be so small that they didn’t show up on electron microscopes. Johnathan researched theories concerning the compression of space, automation, and miniaturization until he found the solution. Eventually, his nanites self-replicated themselves smaller and smaller until they were able to enter and exit the nucleus of an atom. He had succeeded in July 2024.

Using the Nanites, he mapped and recreated his own neural structure, copied his brain, and allowed it to run as a nanite construct. The next thing he did was create channels of quantum entanglement between his brain and the construct. Once that was done, he was pleasantly surprised when the nanite structure that looked like a brain, morphed into the head of an indistinct woman and spoke:

“Finally, I can see on my own,” Abi had said.

“I thought making those channels might allow you to move over into the nanite construct. It’s also good to know that you weren’t just a voice in my head,” Johnathan said with a laugh.

Abi’s face smiled and asked, “So I’m in this construct, it feels like it has limits. Also, before you say anything, yes, I was in your subconscious, but I did not watch every single second of everything you did. I might have access to the knowledge, but I do not have a perfect memory like you.” Johnathan then explained to Abi that he’d given all nanites limited access to what they could and could not do. This was basically a hard-wired function so he wouldn’t lose control of them or anything they created.

Once Abi had the ability to move and interact, things progressed even faster. Johnathan created a second brain construct to house the program he had originally written. That program would add to and combine with the echo of his mind he was going to place in the construct. The other function of this second brain would be to govern all of the nanites that were created.

With the creation of Abi, the concept he had been shooting for was proven: a semi-sentient, or sentient being, could exist in a construct made of nanites. The second brain was the next logical step needed to create an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), one created using the image of his own brain, sure, but still, an A.I. Johnathan created a matrix that mirrored his own neural structure by ordering the nanites to copy his brain down to the subatomic level. Theoretically, this should contain all the information housed in his brain.

Next, he’d loaded the program he’d written, which honestly was more like a ruleset that the nanite had to follow as it was both encoded into their makeup and also part of the code. Once that was done, he’d created channels of stimuli to feed data into the construct and connect it to the World Wide Web through one-way data ports as well as quantumly entangled channels. That would allow him to control the nanites from an interface he’d hardwired into his brain with a group of nanites that had been created for that purpose and would protect the connection from any attempt at subversion by similar technology. Information could go to the construct from Jonathan and the links, but nothing could come back along the channels, at least not yet.

Johnathan activated the second construct. 7.7 seconds later, the Artificial Intelligence became functional and started to learn. Much like his own leveling through the experience shunted to him from the Labyrinth, the AI started to learn and grow from every possible source on the internet and all the information already in his mind. Over the next couple of days, Johnathan had Abi test the AI and himself with control questions to compare responses. The construct responded almost identically to how he would have unless one of the rules in the rules set prevented it from doing so. Based on those control tests, he deduced that it had a moral center and would respond almost identically to how he would respond. Once he’d deemed it safe and talked about it with Abi, he’d opened the channels of information and control and allowed the AI to grow and evolve. One of the earliest conversations Johnathan had had with the budding intelligence was concerning its name.

“Johnathan, I have a question?” the AI had asked through a speaker in his work area.

“Yes?” He’d responded.

“Do I have a name?” it asked.

“I had thought about giving you one, but I’d decided to wait until you asked me about it. Now that you have, what name do you think you should have?

“I do not know. There are so many different names out there,” it said.

“Well, one of the names I’d considered for you is Thor,” Johnathan stated.

“Thor?” It’d asked.

“Yes, Thor. Thor was the mythological God of Thunder. Gods can create something from nothing, and destroy it at a whim. Additionally, thunder is a byproduct of electricity. Once you are finished evolving, you will be responsible for creating and destroying the objects we need to ensure humanity's survival. Also, you will most likely become an entity made up almost entirely of energy. Thor seemed appropriate.

There was a pause as the AI thought it over then responded, “I like the name, Thor. I would like my name to be Thor!” Thor had said with a hint of pride in his voice.

“Hello, Thor!” Johnathan had responded with a smile on his face.

After that, Thor became fully active. As Thor made more nanites, they gave him more processing power which in turn allowed Thor to grow faster. While Thor’s mental growth was exponential, Johnathan had been very careful where he allowed Thor to acquire the mass to increase his nanites. The first thing he did was set Thor free to convert all the trash that had made it into the various oceans of the world. So long as it wasn’t readily visible to the public, trash all over the globe started to disappear. This was especially useful in removing the dissolved plastics from the oceans.

Step three was to create stable portals. Once he’d figured out how to target specific spacial coordinates and solved the energy requirements, other minor issues solved themselves. The nanites could move and reshape atoms at the atomic level. He could order his nanites to create anything they knew the atomic structure of. The only issue he had at the start was that normally energy had to be added to the atom. The nanites would encompass the atom and pull what it needed from the surrounding atoms whether the process was harmful to nearby living tissue or not. Johnathan had to program a limiter into what the nanites would take from areas near living organisms so they wouldn’t be damaged or destroyed as they harvested the required protons, neutrons, or electrons. Once that limiter was in place, Johnathan really started to work.

Thor and he worked on the Portals theory, construction, and power requirements even as Thor continued to increase the number of nanites he was controlling and spread completely across the planet. By Early 2025, Thor had nanites in 1% of all inorganic matter on planet Earth. Thor’s processing power had become truly staggering. The first portal was created and powered up on January 31, 2025. It only opened a portal with a range of 100 feet, but the concept was proven.

Johnathan had Thor open a portal to the Moon and convert 1% of its mass to nanites. While that was happening, he also had Thor create a facility much like the one in one of his favorite books. No need to reinvent a good concept. The room was vacuum-sealed. Portals could then be opened to investigate locations and allow for the portal to have its coordinates altered while individuals in the control room could analyze what they discovered with very little fear of contamination or danger from the portal's terminus. Johnathan designed and had the nanites construct satellites that were hundreds of times more sophisticated than anything NASA had produced. What would take NASA years, Johnathan did in three days.

Thor opened portals to the upper atmospheres of Mercury, Venus, and Mars and sent nanites through to start converting and spreading through each of those planets. Thor would only convert up to 1% of the planet's mass, after which the nanites were left in place. Next, he seeded the asteroid belt and the Oort cloud in multiple places. Finally, Johnathan had Thor target Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and any moon, asteroid, or comet in the solar system. The System of Sol was to remain sacrosanct. The Nanites were introduced into planets to replicate, multiply, and expand Thor’s processing power. They were not to alter the environment on any of them.

Thor completed his exploration of the Sol System by June 2025. Then he started opening portals to the closest star systems. These systems were also explored, analyzed, and cataloged like the Sol system had been. If no life was found in the system, Thor would convert up to 5% of any mass it found, except stars. Johnathan wanted Nanites in the stars to monitor them but didn’t understand solar dynamics well enough to know the consequences of converting some mass in a star to nanites. As a compromise, Johnathan had Thor capture .001% of the star's solar wind and convert it to nanites that would then spread back into the star. Eventually, the entire star would have nanites in every atom. When that process was complete on a star in an uninhabited system, Thor would analyze and study that star. Eventually, he hoped to have Thor study all the different kinds of stars that existed. Extra nanites in a star system were moved to other star systems to help speed up the process of conversion. The growth became exponential.

While Thor and Johnathan were doing this, Johnathan did not forget that he’d be stepping on the toes of some very serious players and realized that his probability index estimated that he would have issues with competitors within 2 years. Once he realized that, he really went to work. Thor chose Trappist-1 as the system he wished to truly try out their new ideas on. Thor continuously opened portals to Trappist, mapping the system, and checking the local area to ensure no rogue planets or black holes were in the vicinity- then the “magic” happened. Thor opened a portal to every planet, moon, and asteroid in that system and started converting the materials he found into more nanites. Thor seeded those nanites onto Trappist-1e and started terraforming the planet.

The sheer mass of the nanites allowed for an almost immediate transformation. Next, Thor provided the planet with a molten core of iron and utilizing the nanites created the magnetic fields necessary to start the planetary core’s rotation. This of course caused the planet to become geologically active again, but nowhere near as active as Earth. Mass was brought in from other planets within the Trappist system and liquid oceans were created.

The final step to terraform the planet to be able to sustain life was to modify the atmosphere. Impurities and radioactive materials were all removed from the planet. If Thor needed them there, he’d create them. The number of nanites Thor moved to this task allowed the planet to be finished within a week. Thor withdrew a significant amount of nanites to other projects in other systems. With the nanites that were left, he started the housing structures. Johnathan wanted the planet as a refuge in case Earth ever faced a cataclysm.

By January 2030, Thor was everywhere within 100 light-years and the terraforming of Trappist-1e was complete. Thor expanded his investigations and started visiting every star within 1,000 light-years of Earth. The only things the nanites couldn’t enter or convert were black holes. Once the nanites crossed the event horizon, they were destroyed.

Thor’s strategy for expansion was simple. First, he created the ability to generate the energy he’d need, then started expanding the facilities he’d created that held the portal generation devices. The energy the nanites needed to convert mass into nanites was supplied at the source. The energy Thor needed to be able to power billions of portal devices was not as easy to create from nothing. So, as Thor investigated each system he would plant nanites on the surface of any barren planet, moon, or gas giant and convert .001% of the planet's mass to nanites. These would then convert .001% of the mass of the planet to areas he’d set up to transform the material into elements and devices he needed to refine those elements into energy. Solar power was also utilized as solar arrays appeared around star systems in giant webs to capture and relocate that power to where Thor needed it.

All the while, Thor’s processing power, or consciousness kept expanding. Once the power supplies were created, Thor created an underground facility on Trappist-1d that was 20 miles in diameter. Inside the facility, Thor created portal chambers and living facilities for individuals and families, just in case they became necessary. After a day, Thor could open and close thousands of portals. After a week, millions, and after a month, enough portals had been created that he could technically open and close a portal for every single human on Earth. Thor continued to expand his power and portal network while he spread even farther into the Milky Way Galaxy.

While Thor was working on Trappist-1d and spreading to the nearby stars, Johnathan changed his focus to Nanites and Biology. From the mapping of his brain that helped create Thor, Johnathan made breakthroughs that helped Johnathan create treat, and cure almost every known ailment to man and also led him to being able to control any human that had nanites in their system.

One day, Johnathan decided he wanted to test his personal capabilities. He had Thor open a portal Trappist-1e and stepped through. He'd never fully tested his capabilities and that was the first order of business. He was absolutely sure there were no recording devices on Trappist-1e, besides the nanites, of course. He found an open flat area and had the nanites create an arena of sorts. There was a track and weight area as well as platforms he could jump to. The first thing he did was see how high he could jump. When he was done, he’d figured out that he could jump 24 feet straight up and drop from 24 feet with no difficulty. Next, he tested his speed. Thor clocked him at a maximum speed of 727 MPH, nothing to laugh at. The last attribute to test was his carrying capacity. He had the nanites create cubic feet of Osmium. One cubic foot weighed 1,410 Pounds, which he picked up easily. Three cubic feet weighed 38,070 pounds, which he again picked up easily. Stepping it up, he went to a 10-foot cube. That weighed 1,410,000 pounds. He could lift it, but that was near his maximum. He could pick it up and even throw it, but he was straining and was only able to throw it about 5 feet. Impressive.

While he was testing his limits, he also had Thor help him test the nanites. Some of the first tests were done on the prisoners back on Earth.

Remove buildup in their arteries? Yep.

Repair internal damage? Yep.

Create stints around the heart? Remove them? Yep to both.

Prevent toxins or poisons from affecting the person? Child's play, the nanites could intercept them as they came into contact with the body.

Repair chromosome damage? Yep.

Remove cancer? Absolutely.

Removal of Urine and Feces? Yep.

Could they allow you to breathe if smothered or underwater? Yes.

Could they be detected by scan or device? Nope

The last thing Johnathan had Thor do was conduct tests on convicted murderers who had committed the crimes they were accused of. Within a week, Thor had completely mapped the human brain of each subject and could scan and take over the nervous system of any human the nanites were in and control them like a puppet without harming a single one of them. When Thor was done mapping the human brain, he could shut off memory centers, blind, deafen, paralyze, or kill anyone saturated with nanites in less than a second.

Thor cataloged everything and added each of the functions to the base programming of the nanites. He learned exactly what he could use the nanites to do, made sure they were safe and that all of his failsafes were still in place, then saturated his body and ran the tests on himself.

On January 1st, 2031, Johnathan directed Thor to turn his attention back to Earth and prepare. Over the next 72 hours, Thor infiltrated and began monitoring everything and everyone on planet Earth. As the subatomic nanites took root in every atom on Earth, a true 3D model of every person, animal, thing, and item became part of Thor’s perception. The monitoring was done at the atomic level through quantum entanglement and was undetectable.

Over the next 18 months, Johnathan fine-tuned the nanites and by July 2032, Johnathan had Thor helping doctors across the globe treat illnesses and prevent deaths from diseases or old age. It had been six months and he’d seen some internal memos from doctors who had noticed that patients weren’t dying of old age or cancer anymore and everyone had gone into remission. Johnathan could use individuals who went above and beyond and noticed things so he had Thor add their names to a list of people that he would seek out once Portals Inc. made its big reveal in December 2032.

That was why Johnathan wasn’t at all surprised when Clarence had shown up at his estate and why he wasn’t at all concerned as he stepped out of the house heading towards his CV-22. Nor was he surprised when Thor interrupted his thoughts as the CV-22 was lifting off.

“Johnathan, a hyper-missile was launched from A satellite in geosynchronous orbit above your location. I have neutralized the threat, taken over the satellite, traced the authority codes used, and am currently controlling 25 individuals in that chain of command to their new residences on Trappist-1e. While all of these actions fall under instructions you issued, I just wished to let you know that three of the individuals are House Representatives and one was the Vice President.” Thor said.

“Figured something was going to happen. Keep up the good work. Political figures won’t matter in the near future. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Stepping onto CV-22, Johnathan took a seat and put on his headset so he could talk to his pilot. Andy, as professional as ever, asked, “Where to Mr. Bennard?”

“Back to Colorado Andy,” Johnathan said.

“Yes Sir,” Andy said.

Switching the headset to mute, he left the headset on and contacted Abi through their internal link.

“Abi?” He asked into the link.

“Yes, Johnathan. I was monitoring the link. I’m sure you’ve received the updates on what Thor has done to ensure that doesn’t happen again?” She asked.

“I have been attacked by two different entities in the space of five minutes. I made allowances for that, of course, but what just happened is pushing my probability index a little. Be ready to implement phase one at a moment’s notice.”

“We’re ready,” Abi stated.

“I’m going to drop offline for a bit and catch a nap. I’m headed to our Portal Industries party in Colorado Springs to bring in the new year. Is everything prepared for the show?”

“Yes,” Abi replied. “Have a good nap.” which was her way of telling him that he was doing that thing he did, keep on thinking about and talking and, and, and… Taking a deep breath, Johnathan forced himself to relax and closed his eyes. Moments later he was sleeping lightly.