Star City
August 8, 19:22
Cloning technology in Cyberpunk was more advanced than I initially thought. It made one wonder how it hadn't been highlighted much in the mediums I consumed.
I mean, there were options in the game and lore that let people regain their "meat parts" by way of cloning, but comparing that to the peak of what actual cloning could do in the setting revealed some stark differences.
Corporations or whoever had the facilities, money, and resources to actually use cloning to the limits were capable of growing people wholesale. Sentient people who could go on to live normal, full lives.
These were level seven clones, as explained by the datapad, and they were completely indistinguishable from normal humans. It was frankly amazing when I imagined the possibilities.
I already had good help, but I could always have more. And in this case, they would be mine to program as I saw fit. They would be dedicated and loyal workers with the precision of computers.
Of course, it would be quite hypocritical of me to go down this path with stage six clones when I'd been so critical (still am) of Luthor and his treatment of his creations.
No, if I truly wanted to put my money where my mouth was, if I wanted to be better, I'd have to take a step down. Stage five clones were the way to go if I truly went ahead with this idea.
Being a step lower than their level six counterparts meant their mental faculties were nowhere as developed. They were more like animals in their way of cognition, engineered to never obtain higher reasoning and self awareness.
This made them perfect for my idea of a populous workforce and Nabu's clone.
The ancient, helmet-bound sorcerer's immortality cheat code didn't need to have the ability to know it existed nor think for itself. It was a glorified meatsuit to be worn and paraded about by a grouchy, magical old man who refused to die.
To do that however, some modifications would have to be made to it. These were separate modifications from the obvious genetic ones that had been made to the donor sample we'd used to engineer the clone.
Dr. Spence had done all the work on producing the blob of cells gestating in the artificial womb, packing the nascent clone full of the genetic advancements she'd assimilated from the datapad.
By the time it was fully grown, this clone would be a biological specimen. Big, tall, strong, fast, and hardy to the extent that it could live for over 200 years and maintain its physical prime for over three fourths of that period.
There would be more mods by the time it was fully grown. Those would buff it up and harden it even more, but these and whatever adjustments Nabu and Kent were making would be okay for now.
For a moment, I stopped working on the tablet Dr. Spence had passed me upon our arrival and activated my ability to perceive magic. A few paces ahead of me, Dr. Fate levitated, golden cape flowing behind him by some unknown means while his outstretched arms held a golden ankh over the artificial womb.
Even without using my magical eyes, I knew they wanted to tune the clone's body to Nabu's soul such that only he could inhabit it. They also wanted to work on its brain when they found out the clone would only have animal-like intelligence.
In theory, that should have no effects on the possession. Nabu would still be his sucky self, but they wanted to make their own tweaks to ensure that on the moment of possession, the helmet's magic would temporarily elevate the clone's grey matter.
This came with its own complications, so they had to put in numerous safeguards to prevent the situation of the clone slowly or in the most unlikely case, suddenly gaining awareness.
However, even in that case, it did not have a soul. That much we'd confirmed. So these worries were about extremely and highly unlikely cases. Nabu, I had no doubt was being thorough.
Once he finished, the clone would become the equivalent of clothes only he could wear, as morbid and disturbing as that imagery was. I shrugged off the discomfort and stopped peering deeper into the magic happening before me.
I brought my attention back to my previous endeavour; the smart dissemination of the medical advancements that had gone through the checks and verification of Dr. Spence and her team.
When you put aside the matter of unforeseen incompatibility between realities, the most obvious problem with what I wanted to do was one, trust, and two, the source of the information. Because some were truly outrageous and would attack the sensibilities of modern doctors and scientists.
Considering these advancements came from literally decades in a future where corporations and consequently, science had run unchecked and unmoored to ethics, I'd say those reactions were understandable.
That didn't mean I had to sit on this treasure trove of information. So I had devised a couple of ways to get them out there.
Apart from the projects we were working on in-house, I had commissioned many external projects, funding numerous teams of scientists around the globe anonymously, giving them the data on various conditions and degenerative diseases.
A not insignificant number of them had been cured in the harsh reality, but even the rich denizens there that suffered from the select few that hadn't had access to drugs and treatments that made their illness more than manageable.
The goal of these teams was to work on these advancements, confirm them, produce actual results, publish papers and whatnot to the wider scientific community and then submit the applicable ones to a branch of Rath International that would basically be a pharmaceutical company.
Another of the dissemination methods involved outright posting of the information on open data repositories. Those online spaces were frequented by scientists worldwide, mainly to keep up on new stuff, analyze some of the stuff there or even go further to verify them.
Attached to all the posts made on these repos were links that led to a website hosting the bulk of the information and more of the advancements for those who wanted to know more. If you knew scientists, this was most, if not all of them.
There were more methods I had come up with such as contacting prominent scientists directly or forwarding some pertinent data to the teams working on already existing projects like cancer research, and things were going smoothly.
This was all done anonymously of course, and the website, apart from my personal and Shield's systems, was the most unbreachable thing on Earth. I don't think even Batman's batcomputer could come close.
Anyway, the dissemination had begun, and I fully expected the coming weeks to be unbelievably hectic. The airwaves were going to be abuzz with news of the strange phenomenon, and the sheer thought of the numerous upheavals made me smirk.
My magical senses picked up the dial down of mystical energies in the vicinity and I looked up. Nabu slowly descended and touched the ground. He gave me a wooden glance I'd long grown used to and took off the helmet.
Dr. Fate vanished in a swirl of magical lights and Kent Nelson remained, the old man looking tired and weary, but also… eager. The man's slowly impending demise made him all the happier and chipper.
I wished I had this outlook when it was my time.
The helmet in Kent's arms turned into a swirl of yellow magic and recondensed into his cane, an implement he promptly leaned on. "What's with the look kid?"
"Nothing," I said, quickly switching the focus of my curiosity elsewhere. "Just wondering about Nabu. I don't know, he seems oddly… what's the word, accepting, of all this…"
Kent chuckled. "Ahh don't worry. He likes you, that's all. Don't tell him I told you that."
Woah woah woah. Let's backtrack a bit. What did Kent mean by this?
"Uhh are you sure old man?" I asked, recalling my hostility and the thinly veiled insults and threats I hurled at the Lord of Order.
"Don't be so surprised," Kent smiled and nodded in the direction of the gestation chamber. "On one hand, you're literally strengthening Order's claim on Earth by doing this. Conceptually on the other hand, is a different matter. Something you're doing—I don't know what—is lifting the scales in Order's favor. It's slow moving, but Nabu can sense that sort of thing. He can also sense its endgame. You, whether you like it or not, and whether you know it or not—well I guess you know it now—are a lynchpin. You are vital to the balance of the two forces and a good chance for Order to reign. Do you get it now? Why Nabu was so accepting?"
It had to be Shield. It was the only thing that made sense.
"...I do now," I said. "But I'm not all orderly though. I've done a lot of things to upset—"oof, almost slipped up there and said timeline. "...how things were before."
Kent maintained his smile. "True. That's why I said the scale is moving slowly. In fact, something you did a few moments ago on that thing in your hand shifted things in chaos' favor slightly. But it's all good, because in the end, Order is what it'll lead to."
I gazed down at the tablet and thought of the dissemination and the chaos in the coming weeks. It brought a sheepish smile onto my face and I looked at Kent in slight embarrassment while I recalled my smirk at the notion.
"...Ooops."
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Providence
August 9, 10:07
"You think this'll finally make him believe magic is real?"
Rob chuckled at Roy's question, same as Grace. Kaldur, Ron and M'gann had no reaction, though the latter seemed a tad worried as she gazed down into the massive chamber I'd constructed with the help of the genomorphs for this very purpose.
What purpose you ask? Fixing Wally's faulty connection to the Speed Force.
There had been enough time between my first mention of the multiversal repository of motive energy to the Flash and now that he now boasted a complete understanding of the source of his impossible abilities.
Of course, in this case, complete meant everything I could remember, which thankfully was a lot. I still remember when The Flash tv show first came out. That whole roster of CW shows had led me to dive deeper into the comics, mainly for more details on their original lore and how their powers worked and whatnot.
Especially Barry's.
Man, those were the days. I still remember the goosebumps when I watched him save Joe and Eddie from flying debris and then proceed to unravel a tornado by running in the opposite direction it spun in.
It almost made me wish for a reset so I could rewatch the whole thing all over. That sentiment didn't last long as I chuckled and shook my head. My life was the real thing now, and it was way better than I ever imagined.
"You okay there young man?" Jay Garrick asked, prompting the other to turn and look at me.
"Yeah," I answered the senior and original Flash, the iconic WW2 helmet and his red and blue suit overlaying his current mundane image in my mind's eye. "Just thinking about the past."
"Helloooo! When are we gonna start? All this hocus pocus is starting to get a bit unsettling to look at."
Wally's shout drew everyone's attention to him. I gave the extensive magical inscriptions of which he sat right in the center of a glance and answered him. "Should be starting soon. Less than a minute."
"A minute," he muttered to himself. "Shouldn't be that long. Calm down wallman. Just a minute until I'm the fastest thing the world has ever seen."
The team's new member crossed her arms and stepped closer to the observation window. "Does he ever stop talking?"
Rob chuckled while Grace groaned. "Don't let these fools lie to you. You DO NOT get used to it."
"You haven't been here long. Just give it time," Rob said, doing his best to defend his close friend.
Artemis was not convinced. "Time huh…"
"I'm ready."
I peered beyond the middle of the chamber, at the very edges where Flash stood at the start of a race track, wearing the specialized suit put together for today's endeavor.
Everyone went silent and looked to me. Behaving as if I couldn't feel their waiting gazes boring into me, I raised an arm up high and gave Flash a thumbs up.
"Alright," I said, this time through a PA system. "We are about to begin. Flash, you are a go in three, two, one..."
The red clad speedster took off on the runway, a trail of dense, yellow electricity chasing him like a tail. He ramped up speed so quickly we all lost sight of how my laps he'd run in the first few seconds, becoming a solid gold band that encompassed the track.
After discussing it with him and analysing both his and Wally's connection to the Speed Force, we both settled on this method to fix the latter's connection and subsequently, his fault powers: recreating the incident that gave Barry his powers.
Apparently, that's how Wally had gotten his own powers—by replicating it with household materials. It sounded crazy to think about, much less say it. But hey, this was the nature of this universe, so rolling with it I did.
My next question after finding that out was obviously, "the lightning bolt too?" I was waiting to hear an ingenious application of high school level science only to get my hopes dashed.
Wally, the idiot, used the car battery of his dad's car to replace the lightning bolt. Good god. Teenagers were truly in a league of their own. Though adults weren't that much different, so I cut him some slack.
Without needing me to point it out, Flash himself realised where the problem with the whole equation came from. Wally's inferior replication of the accident, particularly the high amounts of electrical energy, had led to his unique condition.
From there the path forward was clear. However, in that clear path stood a stumbling block; Wally's age and his safety. Superheroes with mega street cred or not, we could not go blasting kids with lightning bolts.
Unless said lightning bolts emanated from the realm you drew your powers from. That's right. In place of turning ourselves into Thor and smiting the idiotic teenager, we settled for Barry running and generating enough electrical energy to rival the energy levels we needed.
Even with this ingenious and safer alternative I suggested, there were still risks. Speed Force energy or not, that was too much energy. This is where magic entered the picture.
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