The rusty janitor mech pushed its cleaning cart down the busy thoroughfare outside of the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium. It homed in on the small, non-descript, fabrication service business across the street. It knew that this business was much more than it seemed.

The mech abandoned its cart and opened the door. Its sensor picked up the wireless alert as it closed and locked the door behind it. A short Korean woman rushed out from the back of the store. Her athletic form was covered in black lacquered armor. The mech recognized her immediately.

"Ah. Sorry to disturb you, Miss Lee. I was told no one would be here."

Lena Lee, aka the Samaritan with the nickname Samurai. She was one of the more famous of the group. She'd founded the custom body design corporation BodyWerks. She played to the crowds, sponsored the Diamond Man competitions, and starred in several movies about the formation of the superhero group at the end of the Ought Fifty global turmoil.

"What? How'd you get in here? We are closed. If someone sent for you, it's an error." the woman snapped. The mech noted hidden gun ports opening in her palms and shoulders. Her hand hovered over her iconic vorpal katana.

"No mistake, Lena. Is the room disconnected from the net?" The mech asked.

Lena's brow furrowed, almost drawing her blade. Her info-pings hadn't revealed anything special about the mech. She probed with her highest hacking attacks, determined to I.D. the mech's AI driver. She gasped as her info-peel skill was rebuffed. Flustered she answered, bringing up her full suite of weapons to readiness.

"We are not connected to the net here. If you're looking to interface here, you're out of luck. Who are you?" she asked.

"Peace, Lena. Sorry for the subterfuge. I'm trying to remain invisible but I'm not a natural at this like Gabriel." the mech said, its mechanical voice morphing into a very human, and recognizable, timber.

"Fuck! Sebastian, I was told you would be stopping by. I'm sorry. I should have anticipated the disguise. You arrived much earlier than I expected, I just finished setting up the Venus - Jakarta portal here."

"Excellent! I go by Bill Mitchell now by the way. So, Miriam gave you the full sitrep?"

"Some scary shit, old man. The world was quiet for decades while you were retired. I think you are bad luck. The second you come back from your deep space tour; the shit hits the fan. Animal uprising, AI protests, and an ASI mastermind. Give me a break!" Lena said, finally relaxing her combat stance.

Bill triggered the slow process of reconfiguring his form back to his normal simulacrum of the basic human form. He had done a deep shift, changing all his internals; rather than just cosmetics. Lena continued her playful chit-chat.

"I must admit the recent combat with the Tiger clans in India was spectacular. If it wasn't for the collateral damage, those uplifted tigers were real fighters. Such killing intent! I hope they don't hold a grudge. I'd love to square off again with them in a fighting circuit."

"Well, I'm glad you're enjoying the global crisis. Remember, those animals are just like us. Maybe a little confused and looking to establish their place, but people. Don't forget that." Bill said.

"Fuck! Don't get me wrong, Boss. They are awesome. We've gotten soft, but they're fresh…primal. I hope we can be friends…with occasional bouts." Lena smiled with her trademarked crooked grin.

"Right. Look, as much as I'd like to catch up; I'm not sure what's waiting for me on the other side of that portal. Can you lead the way?" Bill asked, his form shifting still into a more human shape.

"Fine! Always business with you! Let's go! But do me a favor; try to learn how to take it easy and enjoy yourself. Nothing like a little crisis to really strip off the rust. The world has been way too boring lately. This is an interesting change of pace. Okay. Follow me, big guy."

Lena led him deeper into the recesses of the gloomy office. A large back room revealed a pulsing circle with slight crackles of electrical discharge, tape on the ground showed the safe approach path. A nervous man sat in a shielded booth nearby. He looked up in surprise, his jaw dropping.

"Gah! Oh, I'm sorry Lena. I was seriously just checking it out. I know you said to keep it off, I was just checking my access rights. Really!" the nervous man gulped, and his mouth snapped shut. Lena sighed.

"And there we go. Ah, Bill, this is Harold my Hand. Although, if he doesn't make his probation period I may demote him to finger. Seriously, Harold, the room hasn't even been suffused with security foglets yet. Shut it down!" Lena snapped.

She turned to Bill, while the flustered Harold commanded the portal to close. He rushed to the matter compiler to finish its setup. Bill's form was getting close to his normal human shape, and he raised a rough sketch of an eyebrow.

"Ah, Sorry. Miriam gave clear security protocols to help isolate any gateways. I believe you were concerned about infiltration by Alpha Papa Echo Xray." Lena said. Bill snorted and answered.

"Huh, sounds like me. By the way, Lena; Apex is a goddamn super intelligence. Do you really think spelling out its name will fool it? Maybe we should shift to pig Latin?" Bill laughed. Harold dropped the power cable in shock as he saw his terrible mentor bow.

"Fuck, sorry. I've been soloing too long. Sorry for being snappy. Look, I'm sure Apex knows all about the portals. What he doesn't know is how much connectivity we are planning and what we intend to do with all of them. Ok. Let's finish setting up security, then I'll be your first customer."

The tension was broken, enabling the trio to work together to finish the portal's security precautions. The dead network lines were reconnected, with security sandboxes to filter all incoming and outgoing signals. The whole building was filled with dense clouds of foglets to prevent any curious nano-trackers from migrating inward. Soon, the portal hummed back to life and Bill sighed.

No more delays. Bill thought. With a nod to the Samaritan and her Hand, he stepped up to the portal platform and stepped through.

Bill laughed as the portal space alarms sounded and locked him in. He probed the system's access security, sending a tight cloud of motes that swirled about the small globe while he waited. A dense cloud of ionized foglets pushed back and a full spectrum scanner thrummed.

It took a full thirty seconds until the portal egress opened. He floated out of the portal's space and almost cried as Miyamoto's holographic avatar greeted him. Wireless access requests pinged him, and he accepted the invite, but the connection stalled with only an open line and a carrier signal.

"Bill-San, welcome to Venus. You and your other selves have much to discuss. You have the honor to be the one copy with the most independence and divergence. Your other selves have found a better method than clone merging. They want to welcome you into their group mind but think the experience might be more intense than they have experienced so far. I was sent to pilot your body to the crèche room while you and your others get caught up."

Bill smiled, looking about in wonder at the busy passage beyond Musashi's flickering body. The passage was constructed of transparent diamondoid with a conveyor floor to help travelers to their destination. Outside the Jakarta tunnel, he spied multitudes of similar tubes, crossing and winding in a riot of connections. It reminded him of a fungus or nervous system. He refocused on Musashi.

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"Miyamoto, my friend. I've missed you! The hardest part of my assignment was working without any of my team. Wow! I had expected a lot of progress, but this looks amazing. Casa and I have been busy. So, I've formed a group mind then? Dr. Luca's work, I presume." Bill inhaled deeply, his nervousness abating with Musashi's serene expression.

"Alright, best to dive right in. I need to know what my…our progress has been. Thank you for helping. I've already opened the line." Bill said. With a smile, Miyamoto flashed over and he merged into the busy mental network.

He walked, with help from Musashi, as he accessed the current thought streams. He added his recollections as quickly as he could. He experienced quick but stunning surface memories of all of "his" clones' work while he was on Earth.

Bill marveled at the feeling of his thoughts as they joined and combined with the threads from the multitude of other Bills. He could feel the tree-like structure of thoughts with all his major concerns plain as day. The major branches of thought mirrored his own.

The plans for Venus's hub, Casa's speed of light breakthrough, the massive boost to Mars terraforming, the first Shadowgate transit and the stunning view of the dying stars and the dead world, his pair of clones and their health crisis from exposure to the other dimensions. He struggled with the merge attempts to update his longer-term memories; a task better suited to the crèche and being asleep. He pushed out his own efforts into the gestalt for their review.

He was rewarded as major new branches in the mind space grew and bloomed. He shared all the suspected Apex servers he had unearthed. The details regarding his precautionary mining of the bio-tree groves, should it be necessary to cut them off from the global net. His work to target the artificial groves with Ragnarök anti-nano should Apex try to physically escape. He only needed to finish the job. He queued up new tasks on the group server.

He added taking out the EarthNet Satellites to sever Apex's ability to flee over the wireless nets. He included his added cautionary plan to disable the Finger of God satellite weapons using the Luna messaging lasers. His investigations had confirmed that Apex had stopped the MIT gate's breach event by using the secret RUSA orbital weapons to destroy Boston.

Bill sighed as he felt his body fall into the crèche. His divergence was making the merge difficult. He could "remember" that the crèche helped, as the core minds would assist in assembling the group's thought streams and memories. He sank into the crowded mind-space, pulling in everything that he had missed. The crèche would speed up the process while minimizing the stress.

Bill relished in the power of the group think. Feeling, thinking, and seeing the combined cognition paths helped calm his feeling of being out of control. The group's focus was unrivaled, tackling many discordant issues in parallel. Along with the certainty of the gestalt's attention to detail, the newest addition to the mind bridge was freed to explore the peripheral, but not less important concerns.

Visions of Bo, Mira, and the message from Max bloomed. They were all helping in their own ways. Thoughts and plans to ensure their safety triggered his quick return to the main branches and the work to answer Apex's threat. Updates on Casa finding the first ark rolled in. She had already begun shuttling some of the colonists to their destination star system. Bill found he could easily stretch himself to encompass all the updates and append his own thoughts to the data she had gathered while burning up several probes during her parallax experiment.

He sampled the group's expedited plan to rescue the Bills that were still stranded on the Shadow Earth and specs for the Warship being assembled flooded in. With a thought, he fell into the planning session with a feeling he hadn't experienced before, massive surges in clarity and understanding of all the variables at play.

Bill smiled to himself as he joined the latest internal debate. The damaged clones had received uplift enhancements to their biological brain, but the group had been unable to coax them out of their catatonia.

They hoped to reboot the pair with another exposure to the expanded dimensional spaces of the Shadowverse, but the group felt something more was needed. Bill added his perspective, thinking aloud into the scrum of opinions and concepts.

We need an experimental control. We need at least one volunteer to join the uplift procedure as a precursor to entry into the enemy space. We can't just rely on those two spontaneously recovering. They might need help. What better way than having another to guide them?

Bill immediately volunteered himself, amplifying his logic with his unique position. As a copy, he was more "disposable". Lingering doubts about the "Ship of Theseus" theory still lingered in everyone's minds.

He added that he was just now being merged in unity with the group and would shortly represent the Bill-standard "common baseline" with no divergences. He was already in the medical crèche that would be used to administer the virus. And finally, his transit from Earth placed him in a unique task-free status for the briefest of moments.

Grudgingly, the group mind agreed. The entire gestalt had found the idea of uplift intriguing and desired to volunteer, but they also agreed that Bill's qualifiers made sense. They all knew, that if everything went well, a series of uplifts for all would follow soon enough.

Bill marveled as the plan literally fell together under the guidance of a combined expression of twenty-seven biological Bills and another thirty-three digital emulations. His merge would be done in seventy-one minutes. The uplift virus was already printing in the compiler.

He searched out Musashi to reconnect and was disappointed. The daemon's, all his daemons', artificiality was so much more apparent now under his multiplexed scrutiny. They didn't have true sapience, just a thin veneer of programming over an experience-laden neural net.

He hadn't grokked the current gestalt's opinion until just now. Consensus felt that encompassment of the experience sets was quicker and more efficient for now. In the future, perhaps the daemons could be merged with a nascent AI to give them more agency.

Bill was happy and sad in tandem as his growing mentality stripped another layer of ignorance away. His mind churned over the future possibilities and probably events. Gaining a true foothold in and comprehending the Shadowverse was the crux to all future states, and he would be front and center at the show.

Hours later and high in polar orbit over the Earth, the second Shadowgate began spinning up its energy cycle. The portal pair inside the stealthed orbital was disgorging a continuous stream of smart matter causing the hidden satellite to dynamically stretch, reform, and expand.

Weaponized modern smart matter starships were strictly forbidden to be manufactured in local space. All commercial matter compilers would refuse to fabricate anything on the proscribed tech lists. Most belter communities still managed to cobble together crude weapons, despite the prohibitions.

Bill's personal printers were built from the ground up, without such regulatory governance. He had plundered all the thought experiments and research on the subject to assemble the most effective war machine he could devise. The third and only conscious uplifted Bill, sat at the control board as the warship, Valkyrie, formed.

Named after the mission, it would find his warriors, living or dead and return them. It unfurled and snapped together like a massive origami creation. Massive clouds of industrial utility foglets ushered globules of programmable material into position. Massive rods of diamondoid shot through the portal, snapping into position with active nano-assemblers finalizing their positions into the skeleton of the growing craft.

Once the ship's frame was settled, the poly matter oozed and formed around it. Power flowed into the material's quantum dot arrays and the exotic artificial pseudo atoms formed to create detailed electronics, mechatronics, and embedded sensors. All according to the digitized plans embedding in the ship models.

Bill grinned as his team of ten digital Bill emulations orchestrated the final assembly, the stocking of the ordinance, and the system checks. His mind was still linked with the group through the open portal, enabling him to take advantage of his multiple points of view.

The pieces of the first of the fusion power plant components snapped together and test fired. The pace of progress doubled as it took over feeding power to the construction. Massive maser cannons cycled through the portal and found their positions, lining the sides of the ships.

Clusters of fusion missiles, nano-chaff, and nano-disassembler bombs shuttled into the multiple weapons bays. The Bills knew that the subspace portal wormholes wouldn't be able to connect across the energetic barrier between the Earth and Shadow dimensions without an active Shadow gate, but the isolated pocket space devices would. He stockpiled offensive and defensive nano devices, precursor materials, and fuel in his array of PSDs to enable much greater resources onboard without the mass penalty.

His greater self was awash with satisfaction, with a touch of jealousy. His uplift had worked, and his thoughts were faster than ever. His newfound creativity had boosted the group's intuitive abilities by an order of magnitude. It enabled him to link abstract concepts to real applications with an almost instinctive certainty he'd never had before. His memory was perfect. All this without even using the crutch of his augmentation systems. He sparkled within the mentality like the centerpiece in a dazzling crown of gemstones.

The last of the Valkyrie's systems formed up and Bill and his digitized cousins ran through the self-checks and system tests. The fusion jets ignited as the shadow gate reached the threshold of its spin-up and breached the dimensional barrier.

The newly enhanced Bill had considered using Casa's space strider probes on the other side. He'd concluded it was too risky. He'd run the simulations and concluded that the only way it would be effective would be to construct one while embedded in that dimensional matrix. He had the plans and a printer. His rescue, rehabilitation, and recon plan were his only priorities for this mission.

Attempts to build one would require a secure gate to transfer enough power to create a shadow side tesseract. He didn't trust he'd have the time. The last gate had been attacked, resulting in its self-destruction sequence activating.

Bill's plans hoped to avoid that. A quick opening, his transit, and then the gate would close and relocate. He gave himself a three-hour window to find any surviving Bill scouts, make planetfall, pick up, and return. During this, he hoped his exposure to the ShadowVerse's altered dimensions wouldn't impair him. He was banking on the uplift virus to enable him to tolerate it. He had the skill Max had provided as a backup.

Even with his expanded intellect, Bill couldn't understand how Max had created the skill. He sent the advance scout drone missiles through the gate. He smiled as they were immediately bombarded with intrusive EM infiltration attempts. Max's skill resisted the corrupting signals from prying into the probes.

In the tense control cabin, Bill considered the medical pods holding his two damaged clones. It would begin efforts to stimulate and reawaken the pair the second they all transitioned. His body shifted to combat configuration, with hard external surfaces and complete physical boundary control. He nodded to his copilots, the comatose pair of damaged Bill's that had also been dosed with uplift virus.

"I don't know if you guys can hear me but hold on. We're going in!" Bill yelled aloud as he triggered a full thrust from the Valkyrie.

Despite the massive thrust from the powerful engines; the enormous warship still took twenty seconds to cycle through the gate. His eyes narrowed as his mind filled with the details of the local space that resulted from the probe's imagery updating in his mind.

The gate snapped shut and Bill's access to the group-mind vanished. His WorldMap targeted multiple wisps of energized matter, curled and twisting in the dim stellar light. Bill gritted his teeth as foreign whispers crept past his augmented hacking filters. He resisted the urge to activate Max's skill as he bent his mind to understanding. He cringed and gritted his teeth as his online systems reported multiple neural hemorrhages.

The crippling spike of pain came barely a millisecond later. Blinded by the pain, he heard an extra set of screams join his own as fire raced through his head.

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