After waking up, I checked the clock and realized I’d slept for two hours.
I dressed, left the bedroom, and was immediately greeted by the wonderful aroma of the dinner Kathryn had cooked.
We ate together, talking about 2000s pop culture. And afterward spent an hour more on more enjoyable activities. Then she called a taxi and left. When I began preparing for the very long Worm day.
[Worm — 14.01.2011 — Friday]
Among the maps I'd bought at Cruel Intentions' bookstore was a topographic map of Earth.
After I compared it with the 1982 Worm maps, it turned out that the two worlds differed geographically only in one location - by the bay occupied by Brockton Bay and its "real-world" counterpart, with a small port city of Portsmouth.
Such a difference means that Brockton Bay was only a 1.5-hour drive from Boston, a city with 700,000 residents. A 2-3 hour drive from 5 cities totaling roughly 800,000 residents. And only 4 hours away from New York with its 8 million residents.
While coin shops weren't a particularly popular type of shop, within just a 2-3 hour drive from me, there were still over 100 large coin shops and many hundreds of smaller ones.
Which, despite my lingering mental fatigue, I intended to make full use of today.
After a cup of strong coffee, I checked the prepared sets of clothing again, applied camouflage makeup, and drove to a car dealership, where, just in case, I rented a different car.
Next, I touched up my makeup, inserted cheek plumpers, and then visited two coin shops in Brockton Bay. From there, I traveled to Boston, stopping along the way at 3 coin shops in small towns and 4 more in Boston. The last part of the trip took even more time: four towns near Boston and along the return route, with 9 more coin shops visited.
Late in the evening, I returned fully mentally and physically exhausted, yet with a fortune of over $150,000.
All 12 fucking kilograms of it.
[Worm — 15.01.2011 — Saturday]
Throughout the previous week, I'd requested replacement copies of my documents from various government agencies while simultaneously using them to gather information about the legal identity created by Gate.
To my complete surprise, the part of Localization that provided me with a legal identity wasn't half-assed.
My legend was very simple, logical, and plausible. The orphan wasn't me, but my mother. A religious, reclusive woman who raised me in a trailer somewhere in the wilderness, then left the USA in pursuit of some spiritual journey.
Naturally, I also questioned my landlord. But when I cautiously apologized for being drunk while signing the lease, he looked surprised and replied that he couldn't remember anything unusual. Even joked that if his most trouble-free lease signing had been with a drunk client, then he really wanted to see what my normal behavior is like.
Whatever my official legend, by Saturday morning, I possessed a complete set of documents, including official employment ones from a client desperate for my help untangling his spaghetti code.
With them, I drove to two banks where — using the story about my previous work on a project under a nondisclosure agreement — I secured two home loans of 20 and 25 thousand dollars.
Creating at least some believable legal explanation for the source of my money to buy a house.
Afterward, I spent the rest of the day touring houses for sale. Trying to find a good balance between low dilapidation, good privacy, and distance from any ghettos.
Which was much easier than I'd expected.
Again, "in the real world," Brockton Bay corresponded to the small port city of Portsmouth. The same Portsmouth where during the Cold War residents mainly revolved around two major military installations... one of which built nuclear submarines, while the other housed nuclear bombers.
Brockton Bay's military history was more modest. Yet, the northern part of the city was still dominated by a continuous industrial corridor stretching from the shipyard, through the rail yard, and up to an enormous former military airport.
In the mid-1980s, the military facilities were shut down, and thousands of service members left the city.
North-eastern neighborhoods, where at least some industrial jobs remained, gradually declined into ghettos.
But the north-western part? Near the rail yard and the massive airport? Only a portion of the houses were still inhabited by airport employees and retirees, while at least a third had become vacant.
Predominantly very old, but rarely ramshackle. Built by military contractors in the 1950s, so spacious, with excellent fences and deep basements. Cheap, too.
With so many attractive options, I found myself suffering from choice paralysis.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
I spent Worm's evening and Cruel Intentions' morning building a 3D printer.
One of the biggest sources of chagrin about Gates' superpower was the fact that, by Gates' logic, the "no empowerments" rule applied to everything I could relocate and qualitatively change in another universe.
Which I named the Adam Smasher Rule.
Because it made the most sense from the perspective of Adam Smasher's armor: if his armor is indeed a part of him, then improving a detached part of it is the same form of empowerment as genetic modification or biological adaptation.
Thus, alas, I couldn't just take Worm materials, process them in another universe, and return them to the Worm universe as Worm materials. Which, together with the limitation on the complexity of local materials, was...
Yeah...
Still. Such limitations weren't absolute. Any damage, of course, didn't register as empowerments. Small, non-functional changes, too.
Making a few holes in an aluminum cube didn't register with Gates as an "improvement," only turning it into something complex or useful. And relocating complex components between universes after dividing them into many simple pieces with dozens of edges each wasn't forbidden, either.
Therefore, after spending a few hours in Cruel Intentions' metalworking workshops, I returned to Worm with dozens of — made from native and non-native materials — useful parts that made building a 3D printer a breeze.
My original temptation was to create a universal CoreXY CNC machine for different heads, including an aluminum-processing head. But after some reflection, I decided that before something complex, I need a typical, yet precise, Cartesian 3D printer.
With the help of parts of office printers and aluminum profiles — bless the souls of their inventors — I assembled the kinematic in just 15 minutes.
Building the heated bed from glass, aluminum, and resistance wire took even less time. Creation of two extruders — one for filament produced by me, with laser measurement of filament thickness, and a second for nylon trimmer line — took 30 minutes.
The main challenge lay in the electronics and software. But bless the Internet inventors as well; despite the low popularity of DIY 3D printers and open-source software in the Worm universe, there were still a few projects that spared me the need to create everything from scratch.
Overall, building a completely new 3D printer design took me approximately 1.5 hours. Which both amazed and scared me. The former because of my increasing capabilities, and the latter because of a question: where, exactly, do my own ideas end, and the Inspired Inventor's begin?
Once I'd confirmed the printer was working, I began sketching and printing the parts needed for another important tool - a five-axis CNC machine.
Needed for three very important things:
First, to 3D-scan objects and save me time on modeling.
Second, to verify the dimensions of printed parts.
Third, to use as a milling machine for fine-tuning the tolerances of printed parts.
Despite its greater complexity, this CNC machine was also fully functional in a few hours. Just before bedtime, giving me the ability to produce nylon parts with tolerances of no more than 0.4 mm.
With such tolerances and using such plastics as Nylon 66, polycarbonate, aluminum-substitute PEEK (which I already knew where to find and how to reinforce with carbon fiber), I could theoretically manufacture not just almost anything mechanical, but even fully functional fighting equipment. Up to frames of nimble exoskeletons.
With an enormous quantity of drawbacks, of course, yet still...
[Worm — 16.01.2011 — Sunday]
On Sunday morning, I returned to the Cruel Intentions universe.
Before visiting the trio, I stopped at an internet café to check something.
During my previous visit, I'd registered on a sci-fi forum, described my Gates ability as a hypothetical scenario, and invited people to suggest interesting ways such a Gates could be used.
So far, I'd received only four replies.
Three contained ideas I'd already considered, or worse.
But the fourth?
The fourth was about a story that intrigued me so much that I immediately headed to the restroom, jumped back to Worm, and began avidly verifying information that seemed far too convenient to be real.
But no, it was real.
Now, I know A LOT of similar universes. One of them was very similar to the proposed one—
—except for a few fully unexpected paragraphs about the physical manifestation of the Christian God at the end of the story—
Yes, I know a great many potentially profitable universes. and EACH of them had at least some caveats. You know, stories require unique drama, and drama means unique dangers.
What was proposed just didn't have any caveats or dangers — not even a need for complex preparations — only pure profitability and nothing else!
Even more.
Among its many advantages, the proposed universe also reminded me of another one, an extremely complementary universe that I hadn't seriously considered before because of its too much bizarre retrofuturism.
But now...
If things really aligned the way I thought they did...
'This. This is why people shouldn't interfere with healthy procrastination.
If you procrastinate, your subconscious has probably detected something suboptimal about the task or deeds. Their uselessness, flawed assumptions, redundancy, the possibility of finding something better, and so on.
Humans aren't made for constant action. They're made for constant rest, interrupted by either very short improvisational bursts of activity or very long, careful execution. Two types of hunt.
When people try to exchange rest for faster execution of 'good ideas,' ignoring their subconscious's assessment that something is wrong, they usually just deprive themselves of the opportunity for something better. More suitable for them.
3D printer? CNC? PEEK? Perhaps in just a few days I won’t need them, like at all,' I thought.
Before now, my main strategy and philosophy had been very simple: "Rashly guarding against every conceivable risk is even riskier than very slow horizontal development; therefore, just stick to what you know and accumulate resources. At least for the next 3 weeks from 6 before the winged bitch attack."
A new combination of potential universes still didn't change that strategy or the related plans. What it mostly did was move some of my later plans forward.
Despite the enormous joy, instead of acting rashly, I once again handed the matter over to my subconscious analysis — which should have peaked during sleep and, after it, to reveal things my conscious mind couldn't detect despite any efforts — and returned to my original plans for the day.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
I returned to the Cruel Intentions universe, where I spent a few hours discussing the details of Elis and Half with the trio.
Among other things, I showed them a working prototype of the Half website and gave them preliminary versions of our Elis Codex. So far, included just the basics of Social–Emotional Learning, a list of the most important Evolutionary Psychology causations, and my attempt to reconstruct The Cognitive Bias Codex ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lntFJVzIoWU2cYWyBJ4vF3VLNxFw9GAMnOw5MM-yx3k ; https://bias.wiki/?lang=en)
When I really loved and appreciated LessWrong, the biggest mistake, or even sin, I saw in it was its inability to demonstrate the practical usefulness of such knowledge for ordinary people, while additionally scaring them with excessive pseudo-elitism.
What I was trying to do with Elis and Half, at least from the beginning, was to demonstrate practical usefulness.
Therefore, for each cognitive bias, I add 8 examples of situations where such knowledge could provide an advantage or save money. Of course, because women's brains were more attuned to the search and control of mental factors, with at least two examples that were useful for women during social interactions with other women.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Afterward, I returned to the Worm universe and spent Sunday afternoon with Madison.
First at the movie theater, then in a parking lot, generously rewarding her obedient behavior throughout the week. Among other things, for opening up about Taylor and one's own doubts and first signs of guilt.
Despite this being only my second face-to-face meeting with Madison, I was already very close to earning her complete loyalty. And for fairly good reasons.
Over the course of the week, I'd essentially given Madison a fast, powerful course of psychotherapy combined with equally powerful emotional positive reinforcement.
At first, I attentively listened to her ramble about her life.
Then, about the basic facts concerning Emma and Sophia.
And next, I helped Madison organize her thoughts about the bitch-duo.
Because they had been the cornerstone of Madison's social life, there were A LOT of such thoughts. And all, just in days, was structured into, created by our cooperation, neatly psychological profiles of both of them. Deconstructed bitch duo probable desires, fears, traumas, shortcomings, and the reasons why they were almost certainly never going to become successful.
Which sorta spoilered to Madison all Emma's and Sophia's plots and made them too simple to interest her anymore. That made Madison even more interested in me.
You want to make women wet up and down? Just safely prove that you understand her and other women better than she does.
Yep, for many reasons, predominantly men could hope to find "second mother" qualities in a romantic partner. But that didn't mean women don't want the same thing. To have a "second father" with the advantages of a "second mother," including excellent social wisdom and intelligence.
Which, again, was almost implausible...
But not with my 20-year-old body, over 30 years of sexual experience, and 50-70 years of psychotherapeutic knowledge.
By miracle, which was even more so for a social butterfly who was nearing the expiration date of her social hierarchy, and who had no fucking idea what she wanted from her life. And to whom, on top of today's emotional rewards, I also hinted that, before long, she'd be able to tell her parents that someone had offered to buy her cape autographs for several thousand dollars.
If you strip away all the bells and whistles from "Lust," "Romantic," "Love," "Marriage," everything comes down to the connotations of the word "Partner." And if you strip it too, what remains is the connotation of "Obtainable Usefulness."
Before meeting me, Madison's brain hadn't even considered someone with my level of Usefulness and Obtainability — as a theoretical possibility.
So when both anomalies suddenly appeared and gradually began to improve, her subconscious very tightly grabbed her consciousness by the throat and, in a very dangerous voice, began telling it that if it loses the attention of someone so absurdly unique, there would be VERY serious and long-lasting consequences.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Evening and for part of the night, I read about my new two-universe combination, becoming increasingly convinced that it would be criminal to let such an opportunity pass.
[The Worm — 17 January 2011 — Monday]
Instead of spending new charges, I devoted Monday morning to driving around different stores.
Returning home, I didn't even unpack my new computer and immediately started mixing the main materials for my new Gate: road dirt and clay.
After making a consistent mixture, I added a pinch of coal to it and began spreading it over ten circular saw blades that were embedded with synthetic diamonds.
One by one, I dried them almost completely in the oven. Then I stacked them together and dried them again, ending up with something resembling a filthy wheel.
Using the same clay-and-dirt mixture, I attached twenty-four single-point-diamond-dressers (steel rods tipped with large synthetic diamonds, normally used to sharpen grinding tools) around the wheel's circumference. Then I added more muck, making the spiky wheel resemble a gear.
After another round of drying, I placed the gear in a dirt-stained canvas bag and immediately felt that I could confirm the Gate creation.
Which — for the sake of SCIENCE! — was what I did.
The visual effect of the Gate's creation was almost identical to the previous one. I checked the bag and found that it remained perfectly flexible. So I turned it inside out and discovered that the filthy gear had fused to the bottom of the bag by one of its teeth. And, just like the bag, it had become much dirtier, but lost the ability to leave any physical residue on other materials.
After changing into the most suitable clothes I could find at a theatrical costume sale — a dark black linen jacket and matching trousers — I confirmed the transition into my second universe.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Only to be hit by an unbelievable stench.
So overpowering that I nearly vomited over the nearby parapet.
Stagnant water. Rotten eggs. Decaying meat. Human waste. A nauseating blend of sour and sweet industrial chemicals.
Holding my breath, I glanced around, then forced myself to adapt to the smell rising from the black waters below — black not so much because of the nighttime as because of what they contained.
Once I'd adapted a little to the smell, I took another look at my surroundings.
I stood beside the stone parapet of the River Thames. Every 7 meters or so, it was dimly lit by streetlamps and, from the right, by the distant multicolored lights of Waterloo Bridge.
Behind me was a broad cobbled pavement that ended at a sparse line of trees and the stone façade of a very long building.
Despite it being late at night, two men stood nearby. About 10 meters to my left stood an elderly man smoking a pipe. Farther to my right stood another person, whose features I couldn't make out.
With a hint of anxiety, I opened my status window. And immediately relaxed when I read the line, "Herbert Wells left work later."
Trying to look like just another man taking a late-night stroll, I walked away toward the second man.
Soon, by his worn coat with its raised collar, I confirmed that the second man was exactly who I needed: the scientist from the short story written in 1894 by Herbert George Wells.
The Diamond Maker.
The story told of a man who, one night, was approached by a hobo offering to sell him an enormous diamond at an absurdly low price.
Soon they began talking, and the hobo recounted his own sad story.
According to the hobo, from the ages of seventeen to thirty-two, he had spent fifteen years searching for a way to grow large artificial diamonds.
Eventually, two years before that night's encounter, the scientist packed a steel cylinder with a carbon mixture and explosives, a light-up deferred fuse, and, in case the cylinder would fail to contain the blast, went out for a walk for a few hours.
When he returned and found that the cylinder hadn't demolished the crowded building, he became delighted and spent the next 2 years very slowly cooling it down to maintain the diamond crystallization process.
So slowly that it consumed all of his money.
Shortly before meeting with the narrator, the scientist's neighbor called the police and accused him of being an bomb-making anarchist. That forced the scientist to flee with his enormous diamonds. So enormous that each potential buyer either assumed he was a swindler or tried to take the proposed stones away from him.
Not wanting to reveal their true origin out of greed and fear, scientist kept the secret of their origin. Up to confession to someone who wouldn't believe him anyway.
As I approached the scientist, he visibly tensed and began casting discreet, suspicious glances in my direction.
"Good evening," I said as I stepped up beside him and rested my hands on the railing.
"Good evening," the man replied, clearly expecting some ruse from me.
I couldn't help but chuckle.
"Do you find something amusing, sir?" he asked.
Much as I wanted to discuss a great many things with him, what I really needed wasn't conversation, but a speedrun strategy.
"What do you think London will be like two centuries from now?" I asked, looking toward the bridge.
"I hope with less smoke and stench," he answered cautiously.
I nodded.
"I couldn't agree more. But don't you think that's a problem worth solving within fifty years, not two hundred?"
"And what, in your opinion, is worthy of two hundred years?" he asked, now showing a flicker of curiosity.
"London, where people can travel back to the past."
He snorted. "Sir, I don't wish to be rude, but one could ever read about such things only in books."
"And what if I could prove otherwise?" I asked indifferently.
"You? In what way?" he asked skeptically.
"Just ask me anything you like about the exact sciences," I answered confidently.
Judging by the way his posture stiffened, my statement significantly increased his paranoia, though still not enough for him to flee.
Apparently deciding that, because of his appearance, I'd mistaken him for an ignoramus and was trying to swindle him, he began asking increasingly more difficult questions. At first about mathematics, but when, instead of deception, he received consistent, accurate answers, he cast aside his caution and began bombarding me with questions about chemistry and, occasionally, physics.
Each time, hearing not only the static answers about what he already knew, but also dynamic, detailed explanations to ANY of his clarifications.
Just as it had been with Madison, almost without any delays.
Human memory operates not very differently from a PC's digital storage hierarchy. So when you expect the responsiveness of a typical computer but instead witness the performance of something with a terabyte of CPU cache...
Before now, enchanted by my answers scientist had finally stopped his barrage of questions and, with great trepidation, asked the most important question of his life. "Who are you?"
"I'm someone who's decided to give you a chance you were never supposed to have, Diamond Maker," I replied calmly. And his body shook with shock and hope.
Partly causing my pity, but partly — because in the original story he'd been portrayed as a greedy and morally dubious man — caution. The very last thing I needed right now was for a man this desperate to start believing that somewhere on my body he might find a time machine.
"Y-ou a-re..." he tried to say something, but I interrupted him.
"Not now," I said, and immediately steered the conversation away from metaphysical matters toward the solution to his practical problems by showing him a cloth bag filled with fragments of battered and flattened gold coins.
"I cannot transport objects through time and don't have much time, so here's the ONLY deal I can offer you right now. We can probably discuss something more once you're no longer a vagrant.
Inside this bag are fifty grams of gold.
Along with a note listing the addresses of three nearby scientists renowned for their kindness, honesty, and honor. Two physicists and a physician. The note also contains the solutions to the problems they're currently working on.
Visit one of them. Show him the solution. Then ask him to contact the other two. At their questions, tell them that they will receive an answer only if they agree to act as your advocates before the Royal Society regarding your claims about your diamond-growing method.
I know this isn't exactly what you want, but it's the best path toward it.
No one is going to pay a homeless drifter large sums of money for large diamonds. And you don't have either money or time to restart the experiment from scratch.
In exchange for my pouch, I want every diamond you have except the smallest one."
"But... why?" he asked, unable to understand why someone from the future would want his diamonds. "So you can return?" he added almost immediately, asking a remarkably perceptive and greedy question.
"That isn't important right now. Do we have a deal? Yes or no?"
"I... yes. I agree..." the man answered uncertainly, obviously largely out of belief in the most favorable interpretation of my hints about future meetings with such a genius as him.
Soon we exchanged bags, I wished him all the best, and walked away along the railing.
After a minute of walking, I stopped and began waiting. Hoping to avoid an awkward encounter if the scientist happened to head in the same direction, as well as any greater problems in 19th-century London. Fortunately, I returned home without incidents.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
After returning, I immediately sat down in my chair and, before examining the diamonds, tried to relax and relieve some of the stress.
Everything had gone smoothly. As it should have. In stories, everything often goes wrong because the main purpose of stories is to showcase anomalies. When reality doesn't showcase anomalies; it avoids them.
The only thing that still bothered me was the consequences of strengthening the British Empire.
But I firmly decided in one-off universes to leave time stopped. Not the best solution, but every alternative was worse.
Don't check the results of your own influence, and soon you'll be plagued by powerful doubts and neuroses.
Give Britain something like penicillin, and before long, the anti-colonial movement perhaps would be dead.
Start controlling things from the shadows, and after just a few months, you'll become even worse than Cauldron.
Keeping time stopped postponed a dilemma I had no answer to, and that was more than enough for me.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
After I opened the canvas bag and spilled the diamonds onto the table, for a few seconds, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
The "smallest" diamond — like all the others, with a unique smoky hue and an almost spherical shape — was roughly 2 centimeters across. The largest was 3,5 centimeters.
The stones weighed 28, 36, 42, 108, 120, 142 grams.
A total of 476 fucking grams. Or 2380 carats.
Over the next half hour, I tried to estimate their value using the Internet, but in the Worm universe, the record-breaking uncut lab-grown diamond weighed only a paltry 5 paltry grams, 25 carats. And, had a publicly unknown price.
Picking up the smallest diamond, I concentrated on it and sensed that, yes, I didn't need anything else to create another Gate to the Diamond Maker universe.
Next, I evaluated the value of the diamonds for constructing a Gate to the second universe.
And received an absurdly optimistic price for the nanotechnology universe: the five largest diamonds could cover 11%!
At 2 trips per day, I would need only 5 days.
I laughed and looked at the diamonds again.
"Not weeks. Just five days," I muttered in awe.
"Before The Diamond Age. Indeed."