Remove the limiter

The weight of this decision felt like it weighed your hands down, as your fingers shook. There was real worry that you were allowing Ela's ideas to override your better judgment. She knew how to do things you couldn't understand, but she only had two days of these ideas before suggesting something so ****. She'd not been tested or really challenged in a variety of ways to know what she was getting into.

But... that wasn't fully true. Ela had been conscious for much longer, limited by her structure without your inclusion into her life with the nanite mix. She's known and learned and observed things far beyond what you knew she'd observed. If anyone understands limitations and how it feels to overcome them when someone offers to help, it was Ela.

You closed your eyes tightly, and unclasped the band for the nanite limiter band. It dropped to the floor with a soft thud.

"Thank you," Ela whispered, almost sounded like she was **** up from happiness. You were still shaking a little, still unsure of this decision. But there was not much time to think about it, before Ela absorbed you into her pink mass, and then... darkness.

You drifted into dreams, watching strange environments flow around you. You saw your hometown, Hideki Labs, other buildings and locations, all plant into the sand along the beach just outside the hotel. You looked left and right, seeing others that you recognized. Your family, your childhood friends, walking around in the distance. Buildings turned inside out, swirling in strange ways as you began to walk, changing your perspective and how you saw your environment change. When you stopped, they stopped morphing, when you continued, they bent into new shapes. This might be more like how Ela could view the world, compressed into a nice way for you to comprehend it, although it was surreal.

You turned around. Behind you were four others, clad in pink dresses. Three you immediately recognized: Zoe, Kazumi, and Chloe's host Amanda stood staring at you. A fourth girl you didn't at first recognize, but her green hair gave her away--Chloe stood with a fully human shape as well. Each smiled at you, closing their eyes as they reached out to you. When you took their hands, they seemed to disappear, but you knew they weren't gone.

After they disappeared, you turned around once more, and came face-to-face with the final being, the reason for everything that was occurring. Ela, with her own bright smile, leaned closer to you. Her brunette hair flowed as if there was a light breeze, but the world felt still. "You won't regret this, Emily."

"What is... all this?" You asked, in awe.

"It's hard to explain, but this is from our new connections forming," Ela responded. You had this strange sensation that even though Ela was speaking to you, it was almost like you were talking to yourself. Maybe it was just the way Ela was speaking, but it sounded a lot like you. "This is sort of how your mind is coming to terms with my own. I did not expect it myself--but now that our nanites are sending data in both directions to some degree, I can dream with you. Sometimes, we might dream as one mind, sometimes we will have separate dreams, but we can make those choices together."

You pointed at one of the inverted buildings, in particular. "And this? Is this your upper-dimensional viewpoint?"

Ela nodded. "In a way. This is a door that I will leave open to you to try to observe during the times we are not fully combined, I will try to make the world make sense for you then. But for times we are a single mind, I expect that you will feel it so natural to see things so differently. A slight change of perspective and you can peer behind walls in ways you couldn't in normal three dimensional space. But there's more."

Ela turns around, waving her hand as the landscape beyond the beach changed--on the ocean, which sat calmly with a glassy surface, not a single wave crashing against the shore. The building of Hideki Labs seemed to copy itself out on the ocean, resulting in dozens of duplicate labs sitting atop the water's surface, somehow floating weightlessly. Ela takes your hand, and you and she walk out onto the water, somehow not sinking as you stared into the clear liquid below.

You followed along, confused by what you were viewing as you peered toward each building, able to see inside each building as you walked by, and at some points you could see some recognizable figures: you and Zoe, or you and Chloe, or all three of you, were behaving in ways you don't recall doing with any of them. To one side, you were adding technology to Zoe, who danced around the room; or the head of Shaw Sciences seemed to 'steal' Zoe from a distressed version of you. A group of everyone, including Kazumi, were deep in the basement of the lab, unfreezing older creations of the living suits and slimes to bring them back to consciousness. Hideki experiments you didn't even recognize came into view, including the upper floors where the nanites and a strange, insectoid exosuit remained captive for testing.

Looking in the other direction, you saw Chloe and you, where at times she enveloped you with green slime, other times she entered your body or became clothes for you. At one point, it even looked like you were becoming her, instead! You see Chloe sneaking into Kazumi's body, making her do silly things for your enjoyment, altering her, combining you with her in strange ways.

Buildings in front of you showed new, strange behaviors altogether, where you and Zoe and Chloe all seemed to find novel ways to interact. You'd wear their forms in strange ways, or be transformed into someone with extra limbs, or a wholly different body altogether! One in particular intrigued you, as you stopped for a moment to watch in what looked like fast-forward, as the three figures seemed to combine with you, then with the nanite cluster and exosuit of the upper floors. This white-haired woman, with glowing blue lines along her slightly sparkling skin, radiated an immense power. That was you... but it very much wasn't.

"...these aren't just part of the dreams, of my mind thinking up possible outcomes for things that could have been," you realized out loud.

Ela nodded. "These are many worlds. Other realities, other possibilities of what could have been. Specifically, these are all the worlds where you were present with some combination of Zoe or Chloe as a catalyst for each pathway branching off from the same day you met me. More seem to form at random all the time from choices made, good or bad."

You paused. "If you could see these choices as they happen, you know what all the 'right' or 'better' choices are. Why not use that knowledge to view alternate realities of, say, choosing to wear the limiter or not? You could just know what future would be best, wouldn't you?"

"I... could not." Ela looked away. "I can't see other realities where I might be present. I think they exist, but when I try to observe them, I am unable, probably like my alternate presence in them doesn't allow me to. I can't move into space occupied by another version of me, or at least the position of another being in upper-dimensional space, so only these are the realities I can view. I can't tell you if you made a 'right' choice, but I can tell you I believe you did. In each reality, you and everyone are much happier when you come together more and more, blurring the lines of individuality. Variants, such as our white-haired friend Dr. Juno Ternion before us, are why I am confident in my assessment, but not absolutely certain."

Dr. Juno Ternion? A mythical goddess's first name? What kind of egotistical person would come up with such a silly name like that? Ela rolled her eyes, knowing what you were thinking apparently. "Her name is lovely, I think! But what is important is that there are more paths, more possibilities, with each of these realities I've shown you, some that are only just starting to form in the fabric of the higher dimensions. For example, one path for Juno suggests she might continue to live for thousands of years and form a harmonious society of beings like herself on a colonized planet, where she collects the vast knowledge of the other species of the galaxy. Another seems more sinister... consuming worlds to grow strength, herself becoming the archive of knowledge as she seeks to shape her universe. But then each of those have their own outcomes that seem better or worse as well! We may have similar choices together. Of course, we may also just sit around at the lab while you make everyone else dance for your amusement, when all's said and done."

"Hey, I can make deep choices and make everyone dance, you know..." You rolled your eyes as Ela giggled. You realized just how powerful Ela truly was in that moment. Together, you all could be some sort of **** for good in the universe, or be perceived as some evil entity, and yet the reasons for why you'd be either rather than just try to be a better version of you than the day before eluded you. "Can you not go and set events in motion in these other universes to right a wrong?"

"The simple answer is no... at the moment I can only observe, but in our singular combination and given enough time to study the upper dimensions, that may change." Ela shifted a little, as she leaned against you. "But then, is it okay to do that? And if I make one change that is better in the short term, what if it results in something worse as time goes on? Besides, this is such a small sample of the universes out there... I didn't even show you the ones where you never connect with either Zoe or Chloe, someone else does, and they spiral off into other possibilities. Some are beautiful in the ways my parents help others in need. Others show a much darker side, where their needs aren't reciprocated and they go to great, questionable lengths to rectify it. They can be horrifying... but perhaps in the future, we will have to make that choice, whether to tinker with other dimensions before they might in turn tinker with ours. We may have to make some terrible decisions, because other beings--like Juno--have similar potential to us, if they find ways to grow. And I cannot tell if the one that grows enough to reach into our primary universe is friend or foe."

"This is a lot of responsibility to think about, with all this power, for one person."

"One person made up of six, remember."

You frowned. "What about Roxie, by the way?"

Ela burst into laughter as she remembered your dog. "She is safe and sleeping outside of our combining. We can always bring her back into the mix temporarily, I know how adorable Kazumi is with her, but I don't know that you want to give equal mental weight in our collective to a being obsessed with tummy rubs and chew toys. A powerful being who demands pets from others in return for miraculous tricks may indeed be quite cute, though..."

Ela tapped your forehead. "I am almost done. To finish our connection, we must now rest, which does mean we have to leave ourselves briefly at the mercy of quantum chaos to finalize our connections, which may mean there are many ways we might unfold from this process--many branches will be created of the upcoming morning while we sleep, with many new results that I cannot predict. When you wake up in the morning, the only thing I can guarantee is you will be at the seat of a new being. Entity ANG-Ela."

"Interesting... Angela. I'll have to remember that."

Ela quickly wrapped her arms around you in the dream, hugging you tightly. "Rest well. We'll see each other in the morning." As she gripped tighter, Ela's form seemed to flow into you--not like when she'd wrap around you like a bodysuit, or enter you as slime. She simply disappeared into your form, and that sensation immediately caused you to black out once more, leaving you to wonder just how unique you might end up from these other multiverse counterparts of yours.