57 STARGATE 11

The sun was high in the sky, shining down on a cabin in a clearing in the woods. The planet was a backwater unimportant planet. It didn't even have a Stargate on it, having escaped the notice of the Alterans back in the day because it lacked the scarce metals necessary for a high technology society.

It was the perfect, out of the way, place to hold a meeting away from notice by certain busy body-less council members.

A week after Carl and his people had their meeting with Oma Desala, Ganos Lal, and Chaya Sar, Carl and several of his people were enjoying the rustic setting at the hastily constructed cabin, waiting for the arrival of the ascended beings that were seeking asylum with him.

Over the past few weeks, ever since the Prior showed up, Carl's people had been finalizing the means and planning of opening a Stargate connection to the galaxy the Ori were in. They would then set off the Sangraal device. The shockwave would propagate through the higher dimension that the Ascended and the Ori occupied. Any Ascended or Ori would find themselves being torn apart by the wave.

There had been a slight change of plans when the three ascended ladies had shown up. The presence of Chaya Sar had proven that there were still a number of ascended hanging around the Pegasus galaxy where Atlantis, the Asurans, and the Wraith were. Since that was the case, Carl decided that they would take care of all the snot balls in the Pegasus Galaxy as well, and they might as well clean up the Ida Galaxy, where the Asgard called home, while they were at it.

Carl had lost all patience with the interfering busybodies that were the ascended, and there was no way he'd put up with the Ori or their religious fanatics trashing his home and Empire. Carl was hoping the destruction of the Ori would halt the actions of their worshippers. But if they were still belligerent, there were plenty of ways to curb their enthusiasm.

A distant sense of roiling energy caused Carl to look up in a certain direction. There were dozens of the Ascended flying in, but they were being harassed by hundreds of other snot balls.

"Looks like the busy body hypocrites wouldn't let them go so easily." Carl snorted, causing his close advisors to look up in the direction Carl was looking to see what he was talking about.

As Carl watched, some of the Ascended that were trying to make their way to Carl to defect were snuffed out by their attackers. Carl frowned at that. He'd promised them sanctuary, which meant they were now his responsibility. He was pissed they were dying right in front of him.

Wasting no more time. Carl activated the ward he had installed that was powered by hundreds of Potentia. Every single Ascended being and snot ball froze where they were in the lower atmosphere. Manipulating the wards, Carl allowed the three ladies and their people a little bit of freedom of movement so they could join them on the surface of the planet.

Once they landed in front of Carl, they took on human form. Carl looked them over, and nodded. There were a little over 3 dozen of them left.

"Okay, welcome all of you to the Fire Crow Organization." Tera began speaking to them while Carl focused on holding the attackers frozen. "Is this everyone? Are you waiting for anymore?"

Oma made her way to the front of the crowd. "There is no one else coming. We lost 11 while fleeing. I don't know how the Council found out about what we were doing."

"You're safe now, which is the important thing." Alice warmly assured them. "For now, it is important you all descend fully. In a short time we will set off the Sangraal. If any of you are still energy beings, it will tear you apart."

Oma and the rest of her people nodded seriously, then focused on returning to a mortal form. Carl could feel the difference, as they lost the energy signature that labeled them as ascended beings. The group finally collapsed to their knees, fully corporeal. They lost a lot of energy and knowledge that they couldn't hold in their minds when they descended.

That was one of the amazing things about the various methods Carl had learned to enhance himself, as opposed to how the Alterans ascended. Profound Cultivation, Ki practice, even with Magic, he was able to store and enhance his body such that even his mind and memories improved. Just the fact that he was able to safely store the repository of information in his mind was proof of how upgraded he had become.

Whereas with ascending, the body was abandoned and they became an energy matrix. In Carl's mind, this even cut off their potential future growth.

Carl's people moved forward and pulled the descended new members of the FCO into chairs, giving them stout drinks to get them over the shock. Once Carl double checked that everyone was descended and protected, he commed his people on standby.

"You have a mission go. Fire up the Sangraal and clean up our home." Carl ordered.

On the other end of his transmission were the two Jacks. They had accepted the responsibility of firing the weapon that would kill off any ascended being. The two Jacks soberly looked at each other, and together pressed the start button.

Carl could faintly feel the energy wave as it propagated through the upper dimensions around the galaxy. He knew that at that moment, the wave was being carried through the Stargate network, propagating around the galaxy, disrupting the energy matrices that made up the ascended beings.

He watched coldly as the snot balls that he held prisoner were torn apart. Their energy was spread out, leaving behind a faint impression of painful screams.

He knew that the same thing was happening across all four galaxies. He had made the hard decision to end the ascended Alterans. Not because they refused to work with him, because he would have let them go their own way if that was all.

Carl chose to kill them because they had already once invited their enemies to come attack him and his people. They were arrogant and manipulating plotters, who would always remain a dagger at his back. Instead of the Alterans choosing to be friendly with Carl, or ignoring each other, they actively plotted to force him to take care of their mess. Their arrogance lead the Alterans to insist on being the ones in control and manipulating others, even if it resulted in many millions or billions of deaths from their actions.

And Carl didn't want people like that to continue being a threat to him and his people. He had a duty to deal with such threats, in order for his people to live well.

When the Sangraal weapon was finished doing its job, Carl and his people beamed their new citizens up to their ships and headed back to Caladan. It was time to get them settled in.

He decided he would run another few Time Dilation Basic Trainings. Oma Desala, Ganos Lal, Chaya Sar, and Moros had already earned a spot in the training with their actions. And if the Priors didn't stop their invasion plans with the death of the Ori, then he would need many more trusted and capable people to take charge of a second front in the coming war. His plans for the Pegasus Galaxy and Atlantis would not be delayed more than they already were.

XX

It wasn't until June of 2003 when Carl sent his forces on their way to the Pegasus Galaxy. Thor and a fleet of the Asgard were going along, since they knew they had relatives that had broken off from the main Asgard society there. They wanted to reunite with their brethren and make sure they too got the cure for their cloning problem.

And it also allowed them to participate in the campaign against the Wraith, which would no doubt prove to be an enemy of the Asgard as they were of the Humans.

Meanwhile, Carl planned to spend a few more months training up his forces before joining his expedition to the Pegasus Galaxy. His people would spend the majority of their time cleaning up the city-ship Atlantis. They would make sure it was safe and study the additions to the database that hadn't been present in the repository that Carl had gathered at the beginning of his time in the Stargate world.

While the expedition was securing the Solar System where Atlantis was located, Carl was working with his people to build a home defense force that could react and strike against any attack by the Priors if they came looking for them.

One of the things they needed was up to date intel. Because if a Prior came over to the Milky Way galaxy by ship and set up shop in an out of the way Solar System, they could create a foothold and build up their forces and defenses enough to make it difficult to kick them out.

Carl's people were planning for a series of ships that would be sent out to deploy monitoring satellites around the galaxy. While the galaxy was huge, the technology Carl's people had could monitor vast swaths of space for any moving bodies. Even a large comet or asteroid coming in would send up a flag and prompt investigation.

It would take at least several months to fully deploy the satellites, and their forces wouldn't be able to inspect everything, but they could be on hand to look over the most suspicious things to prevent infiltration.

Meanwhile the expansion, exploration, and build up of the FCO continued. A huge portion of the people, who were forced by the Goa'uld to be simple farmers, weren't completely comfortable with the new technology, so they remained at their normal farming jobs.

Many others, on the other hand, were eagerly enthusiastic to learn the new and magical technology and fully embraced the changes.

But even the ones who decided to stick to their known primitive lifestyle seemed eager to offer their children the chances of education and change that they themselves didn't feel comfortable taking.

Many of the empty habitable planets that were being discovered were put on a future expansion checklist for when people inevitably wanted to spread out again.

The lifeless planets that showed promise were put on the "To be Terraformed" list for future expansion as well. Carl was fully embracing the idea of building for the future. It might be hundreds or even thousands of years before anyone got around to wanting the real estate, but he was putting them on the list for the future.

Carl then ran into something of an issue that he had to deal with, since his people were kicking the problem up the chain of command, unsure of how exactly to handle it.

Many of the planets they were finding that had industrialized societies expressed interest in allying with the FCO, but the leaders of the societies would often raise a stink if they didn't get to meet with the leader of the FCO. They felt insulted that they were fobbed off on a simple diplomat. They felt their status was high enough to demand more respect and concessions.

They were totally ignorant of the fact that most of those diplomats were Carl's students who had the power to destroy their capital cities all by themselves without technology. Which meant the arrogant leaders were actually receiving more than their fair share of "respect", even if they didn't recognize the fact.

They should be grateful Carl didn't recruit any arrogant Prince Vegeta types (from Dragonball Z) in the diplomatic corps, or more than one arrogant leader would have been removed from the gene pool for being too stupid to be polite.

At first Carl wanted to blow off the demands of these leaders for disrespecting his students. But, his diplomatic students convinced him that it would help their work if he would show off the flag, so to speak.

So Carl decided to go along with the persuasion of his students and do the "proper" thing and travel around meeting these leaders.

Carl was pretty sure he wouldn't want any of these arrogant leaders in the FCO, since they would no doubt try to throw their non-existent weight around. But the talented people under the leaders would be another matter. After assimilating and training them into the FCO forces, their loyalty would be to the FCO, not these leaders.

Besides, having friendly relations with them was worth it so the FCO wouldn't be forced to massacre their leadership every few years. It was a noble goal. Everyone needed unattainable goals to force them to work hard, after all.

Carl just gritted his teeth and dealt with the schmoozing. If only Carl didn't have to put up with the presumptuous and arrogant twits while pretending to be polite. But Carl realized that he was the one who had made the decision to build an empire. He was hoisted on his own petard.

Thankfully his time with Caiyi had taught him much about how to pretend to be sincere and flattered while he spent time with people he detested. In other words, politics.

While Carl was doing the leader tour thing, he kept track of the progress of the expedition to the Pegasus Galaxy. They had powered up Atlantis and were working on cleaning it up and updating their technology from what was in Atlantis' databanks.

In some cases the brilliant people that worked for Carl had already worked up more advanced applications of the knowledge they had than was found in the Atlantis database. In many other cases there were advances in energy manufacture and usage, materials, and other such things.

For Carl, seeing the various different brilliant pathways the Alterans had taken in their science over the years had been good for Carl. It reminded him that while he was talented and smart (because of the perks he had purchased), he couldn't underestimate the ingenuity of people and what they could accomplish.

Even though Carl had spent hundreds of years in time dilation experimenting and learning, it was still amazing to him what many enthusiastic people could come up with. Carl was only one guy, with one perspective. Having more people to throw at a problem would bring different solutions to diverse problems.

Carl felt happy that he had decided to build an empire here so he could have many people at his disposal to solve galaxy wide problems. If he tried to solo everything here, he would have been overrun and overworked.

While the science and tech people were working on the Atlantis city, the military, medical, and administration people began recruiting the people of the Pegasus Galaxy. The first settlement they went to was the Athosian people, where Teyla Emmagen was the leader. Carl had suggested them to his people because of Teyla's role in the show, as well as their knowledge of the local people they traded with through the Stargates.

One of the difficulties that they discovered they would have was that because of the Wraith, the populations of each planet were a fraction of what they would normally be. Because the Wraith went into hibernation for years waiting for the populations to rise so they could feast, many settlements deliberately kept their populations low.

Some of the settlements desperately tried to come up with technology or strategies to attack the Wraith and destroy them. Others would have their people commit suicide at the age of 25 to keep their numbers low, hoping the Wraith would pass them up if they were few in number.

One of the trading partners of the Athosians, the Genii, put up an image of being a low tech farming society. But underneath they were desperately advancing their technology and willing to use any tactics, no matter how despicable, to end the Wraith threat.

In the show the Genii were very underhanded in their dealings with the main characters of the show, which initially engendered Carl's dislike, but he realized several things that changed his mind about them. The first thing Carl realized was that the Genii hadn't actually done anything to his people. Condemning them for what they did in the show was stupid.

The next thing Carl realized was that the reason the Genii were so underhanded was because they were so desperate to end the Wraith threat, they would do anything. If his people could bring some hope to them, they would likely be more reasonable and willing to deal in good faith.

And the last thing Carl realized was that even if the Genii tried to be underhanded, his people could easily handle them. With his people's tech and physical abilities, they could keep the upper hand in the case the Genii really turned out to be ungrateful scorpions.

After several weeks of negotiations with the Genii, they finally decided to join Carl's FCO. Seeing the technology and skills of Carl's people finally convinced them their best bet to finally defeat the Wraith lay with the FCO. Unsurprisingly, many of the Genii people entered the military.

After several months of doing the diplomatic tour, Carl finally met all the leaders that were throwing a fit about being fobbed off on diplomats, so he put his foot down on repeat meetings. His time was too valuable to be kept busy with a bunch of leaders of single planets. That's what he had his students for. He even encouraged his people to give demonstrations of just what they were capable of so the people would be a bit more polite and a bit less arrogant in front of his people.

Just because Carl was polite enough to meet them once didn't give them leave to abuse his people or demand anything from them.

Carl, Tera, and Alice promptly made their way to the Pegasus Galaxy while Carl had the Yamato scan the void between galaxies for any ships travelling at near the speed of light. He remembered there was a ship of the Alterans who was stuck with no Hyperspace capability traveling at 99.9% the speed of light. If they could be rescued and chose to join his people, that would be pretty good PR to the people of the Pegasus Galaxy to have life Lanteans among his people (Lantean is what the Alterans were known as in the Pegasus Galaxy).

Unfortunately the void between galaxies was incredibly large, and Carl found no sign of them. Since his plans didn't hinge on saving the Lanteans, and he didn't have any emotional connections to them, Carl shrugged his shoulders and continued on his way. If they showed up sometime in the future, great. If not, no skin off his nose.

Once Carl arrived at Atlantis, he took the grand tour of the city, letting his people know just how impressed he was by their work. The mining operations in the asteroid fields were well set up, and their internal Stargate Railway was running smoothly.

His scientists and engineers were already designing an updated city ship with advanced technology, Profound crafting, and Magical Runes to make his flagship the best they could design. Carl didn't have plans to bring the city ship with him on jumps, it was too big. But a new and updated Yamato was also being built that he would be able to take with him.

Now that Carl was on site, operations began in earnest. His people had already linked up with the more advanced Stargate network in the Pegasus Galaxy and downloaded the data the gates stored. It allowed them to gain a minimal amount of intelligence on where they were located, and who was using them.

With that information they began planning the campaign on how to begin taking over solar systems, how to deny the Wraith food, which threats to meet first, etc.

Carl also discovered that Thor had found his people's cousins and were in the midst of reconciling and helping them overcome the cloning problem. He was happy for his buddy's success, and knew that once they finished helping the local Asgard, they would be available for operations against the Wraith.

"The first issue I want to fix here in the Pegasus Galaxy is the Asurans." Carl announced to his people as he looked over the crowded conference room. "It was yet another thing the Lanteans left behind that is causing problems. So, let's crack open the database and find some solutions to dealing with a nanotechnology based species." Carl ordered the scientists, who got cracking.

Meanwhile the military members began expanding their sphere of influence. Each planet with a Stargate they arrived at was scanned for Wraith presence, and the Wraith destroyed if present, and defenses were set up so the Wraith couldn't bombard a planet from orbit. Any Wraith Darts, that were fighter style ships set up for raids and kidnapping humans for food, would be destroyed immediately upon exiting the Stargate.

At the beginning of December Carl's people produced what he needed to take care of the Asuran issue. He took the device that was the size of a sedan and popped it into his pocket dimension.

He then took Tera and Alice with him, since the girls refused to let him go alone, and gated to the Asuran homeworld, Asuras.

Upon stepping out of the Stargate, Carl spotted a blond haired man in tan robes looking surprised upon seeing the three of them. Carl smirked a bit at how it seemed like the "man" had been in standby mode until he showed up.

"Hello. Welcome to Asuras. I am Niam." The man belatedly greets them.

"Greetings. I am Carl." Carl greets him.

"I am Alice. It's nice to meet you, Niam." Alice greets him, while looking around in interest, seeing the high tech city.

"And I'm Tera. We would like to meet with your leaders, Niam. We have some proposals for them." Tera greeted.

"Hmm. Yes." Niam looked off blankly for a moment, before refocusing on them. "Yes, they are interested in meeting you. This way, please." He motioned Carl's group to follow him.

As Niam was leading them to the council chambers, he began telling them about his people, about their city ships, and about their technology. Carl was a bit amused at how "open" Niam was being.

"Hmm, but what do your people like doing?" Carl asked. "Aside from technology, do your people enjoy creating art? Music? Food?"

"Well, we really don't have any use for those things." Niam hesitantly offers, thinking about why none of them ever indulge in those kinds of subjects.

"No worries, there Niam. Those kinds of subjects aren't for everyone." Carl reassures the nanotech man.

Soon enough they arrived at the council chambers, where they met the leader of the Asurans, Oberoth. Niam made the introductions before standing behind Oberoth's shoulder.

Oberoth was a tall man with a beard, but a bald head. He was currently glaring arrogantly at the three of them.

"Who are you people?" Oberoth seemed to be especially glaring at Alice, which annoyed Carl no end.

Carl raised one eyebrow as he looked at the man. "Well, I'm the leader of the Fire Crow Organization. And while looking around the Stargates, we found your people. So we decided to come visit and see if you're interested in opening up relations."

Oberoth narrowed his eyes at Carl and scoffed. "I can't believe you were stupid enough to come here with that." Oberoth pointed at Alice. "You should have known the reception you would get here." Then without a word, half a dozen guards showed up pointing weapons at the three of them.

'Apparently they scanned us and found that Alice is an Alteran or Lantean, and now they are rolling out the welcome mat.' Carl chuckled to himself.

"Well, that's one way to negotiate." Tera sarcastically said. "I've never tried that myself, cause it leads to an increased possibility of backstabbing. But to each their own."

"Well, what can we expect when they were programmed by the same idiots that left all kinds of dangerous things lying around and never cleaned up after themselves." Alice added, not at all bothered that she used to be an Alteran. They had rejected her long since, and she had a new family now.

"Well, no time like the present then." Carl said and pulled out the large device and activated it.

Inside the expanded space inside the device were hundreds of Potentia powering the device to freeze the millions of Asurans on the planet through their code. It immediately began rewriting their code so they didn't have the unrelenting hatred and aggression codes.

Carl continued to monitor the progress of the device as it piggybacked on the signals of the Asurans and made sure than none escaped the cleansing. A couple hours later, the process was complete, and the Asurans were released from their petrification.

Oberoth took a deep breath, and glared at Carl in hatred. "Kill them!" He ordered the guards.

When the guards lifted their weapons to follow the order, Carl turned the device back on, freezing them in place.

"Huh, guess this Oberoth guy is committed to his course. Blinded by hatred. Even without the aggression codes he is too full of hate." Carl idly commented as he operated the device to scan through Oberoth's memories and programming. "Well, since he won't stop, it's time to end him." Carl then gave the command to delete Oberoth.

The moment the command was executed, Oberoth's body dissolved, leaving behind a pile of dust made of nanotech, with no chance to escape electronically and create a new body.

"I'm calling our people in to begin the process of putting them in real bodies." Alice stated. After some experimentation, Carl's people had found a method of using two or more people to embody machine intelligence people. It was basically like giving birth to them, sharing some small part of their souls as seeds so the AIs could grow into real people.

"I'll start making a plan of where to start, and order of operation." Tera stated.

"Good. I'll keep an eye on the Asurans and make sure none of them have a chance to break out." Carl informed the group. They already knew what each was going to do, but vocalizing it made sure their partners knew they were on task.

A few minutes later Carl's people showed up in dozens of ships. They settled on the planet and Carl began routing the various consciousnesses to the ships, where they were downloaded into human clone bodies. The idea was that if they were converted into biological entities, they would be too preoccupied with living and integrating into the FCO and forget their previous programming to be full of hate and aggression.

Even with how fast and advanced their technology was, it still took a couple days to get through everyone. Carl's people kept up a stream of ships that came and went, transferring the newly humanized Asuran people back to the Milky Way Galaxy, where they could get away from their old life and the Wraith. They could spend their time learning to be human and integrating with society.

Carl remembered from a lot of cultivation novels that in those cultivation worlds pretty much everything had a chance to absorb enough energy of heaven and earth and gain sentience and self awareness and become a real person. Herbs, animals, hell, even rocks could become people. So why not artificial nanotech people? He was just speeding up the process a bit.

The big concern Carl had was that the Asurans would never get away from their previously habituated hate if they remained in their nanotech bodies. Carl was especially concerned that he couldn't trust them to play nice. But making them human would give them a chance to become more than their programmed hatred. Now that they were cut off from the collective constantly reinforcing their actions and behavior, they could grow and become individuals.

And while they were being integrated into his society, Carl's people could keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't go off the deep end. It would be quite a while before he trusted any of them enough to take them into a Time Dilation Training Session, but they had just as much of an opportunity as anyone else in the future.

Carl, Alice, and Tera departed back to their base in the Pegasus Galaxy at Atlantis while leaving behind their people to figure out what to do with all the tech left behind by the Asurans. Whether they would break it down for the metal, or retrofit it with updated FCO tech, it would speed up the expansion of his people in the Pegasus Galaxy.

XX

The operation against the Wraith was going well. They were denying travel via the Stargates to the Wraith, their sphere of influence continued to grow, and the patrols were finding many Wraith ships to use as target practice. Unlike the Goa'uld ships which were filled with Jaffa slaves Carl wanted to give a chance to integrating into a new life, the Wraith had no such thing holding back Carl's forces.

If any of the Wraith proactively surrendered, Carl would of course accept them into his organization with alternate feeding methods and magically backed loyalty oaths. He didn't want to discriminate. But he wasn't holding his breath on the idea that a predatory species that saw Humans as cattle could accept being subservient to said food.

In the middle of October of 2003 one of the patrols came across a Lantean ship that had suffered damage to its systems and was dead in the water. The crew had put themselves into stasis while their minds were residing in a virtual reality world. It was the only chance they had at survival.

Carl was happy at the news of the ships discovery because they supposedly had some important intel about the Wraith that would have given the Lanteans a fighting chance back in the day.

The patrol brought the ship back to the base at Atlantis, where the medical personnel were able to create some new clone bodies for the crew of the Aurora and put them in their new bodies.

At first the Captain and crew of the Aurora kept their mouths shut, concerned about being tricked. Carl authorized his people to shore information, informing them of the end of the Lantean people in their war against the Wraith 10,000 years ago, as well as how the Galaxy has fared under the Wraith predations over the past millennia.

When the Captain was finally convinced as to the truth of just how much time had passed by and that they were the last remnants of their society, he seemed to lose a lot of his pride and defiance. The mission they had been hoping to fulfill to save their people from the Wraith was failed.

While the Captain, whose name was Gil, felt like a failure, he still did what he saw as his duty and passed the military intel he and his crew had gathered: the frequencies of the Wraith's Hyperdrive engines.

Carl's people spent a few weeks working on the devices needed to project the blocking signals through the normal Stargate network. It would interfere with the Hyperspace engines of the Wraith. Anywhere they tried to enter Hyperspace in the Pegasus Galaxy would create a disastrous resonance in their engines, causing the destruction of their ships.

Now that Carl's people were aware of that kind of weapon being possible, they took care to code failsafe checks in the programs of all their ships to ensure that they themselves didn't fall victim to such a tactic. A quick check of the frequencies and status of their engines before entering Hyperspace was easy enough to do with practically no delay.

After they deployed the weapon against the Wraith's Hyperspace capability, the frequency of Wraith predations dropped to practically nothing. Carl's people continued their patrols and hunts for any remaining enemies though, just to be sure they wouldn't come back later, worse than ever.

Once the Crew of the Aurora saw their mission succeed, they asked for admittance to the FCO. If their own people were gone, at least they could join a somewhat civilized people and spend their time in their own pursuits, instead of war with an implacable enemy.

Now that the war against the Wraith was mostly taken care of, Carl's thoughts turned to the Priors and the remnants of the Ori's people. He was somewhat surprised that no Priors had made their way back to the Milky Way to perpetuate war. It almost made him think the military expansion to counter their offensive hadn't been needed at all. But better to be safe than sorry.

After thinking about it, and discussing the matter with his closest people, Carl decided that he wouldn't try to take over the Ori Galaxy for the time being. He already had the Milky Way and the Pegasus Galaxies to focus on. If the Priors came to him, then he could go all out and kick their asses. But until then, it was important to build up a solid society, especially when it was spread over two galaxies.

And another piece of news that amused Carl greatly was that most of the governments on Earth finally threw in the towel and decided to integrate with the FCO. Apparently once the news had become public that the FCI was the Earth based company that represented the Galaxy wide Fire Crow Organization, citizens of Earth had been settling their affairs and applying for immigration in droves.

It finally got to the point that the various Governments of Earth realized that if they continued being stubborn then they would only be left with a population in the tens of thousands at most as most of their citizens left for greener pastures.

And they couldn't even do anything about it because of the security measures the FCI had instituted on Earth.

So the politicians and businessmen finally made the decision that they should join the rush instead of getting left behind.

Carl made sure that six individuals at least got left behind. Kinsey and the Committee members were stuck on Earth, ruling absolutely nothing, with just the bare minimum to keep them alive, but not much else. Carl thought it was a fitting punishment for them for all the evil things they had already done and what they planned to do in the future.

Now that Carl had mostly solved the immediate problems and with so much help had created a stable Empire, he shifted from an active role to a more supervisory role. He didn't need to keep running people through Time Dilation trainings. He left it up to his students to decide who they would be training to spread his teachings and abilities to keep things going.

With less than three years left until Carl left the world, he decided he would spend the time with his girls Tera and Alice, enjoying the time with them. He had no real clue about just when he would meet up with them again after leaving the Stargate world, so he was determined to enjoy the time he had.

And with his extra free time while his girls were busy with their own projects, Carl started preparing and stocking up his Warehouse for future jumps. With all the advanced tech, magic, and profound crafting techniques, he starting building all kinds of toys and devices that might be useful or fun to use in the future.

Carl also spent time tinkering with his Profound Weapon. The description of it from the ATG world said that it was extraordinarily receptive to enhancements of any and all kinds. So he was working on adding magical and technology enhancements.

With his profound crafting skills, Carl had been forging profound weapons to practice the upgrades with before applying them to his Profound Weapon. It wouldn't do to have his main weapon fail him in the midst of combat due to being poorly upgraded.

It only took him 217 failures to figure out how to create a stable inner world in the sword that could handle all the energies Carl could channel. It acted very similar to the Inner World Carl himself had inside his body due to the Nine Profound Exquisite Body. And all Carl had to do was leave his sword floating inside his own Inner World and the sword's inner world would slowly be charged.

Carl was still working on adding adjusting the edge of the blade to have a chainsaw like monomolecular edge, powered by an array of Potentia. He was having a bit of a chore combining the various different magical, profound, and technology fields to work perfectly together. There seemed to be various principles that Carl was just not getting right to make them work perfectly together.

At most when he added two or more different systems together, they had to act like separate circuits, not mixing together, in order to work properly. His goal was to eventually get them combined into a coherent whole, instead of separate parts.

But his time in the Stargate Universe came to an end before he could get very far.

Carl sat up in bed, stretching out. With all the time dilation he'd done, it felt like ages since he was in between worlds once more.

"No time like the present to make my perks permanent." Carl moved on over to the kiosk like device that Spere 037 had left behind. He had three intelligence and ingenuity perks to add to his base body.

XX

As was usual when adding perks to his base body, Carl woke up on the floor a day after confirming the selections.

Carl got up off the floor and moved on over to the bathroom. He had made some modifications to his housing in the Warehouse. The inside was now massively expanded. There were dozens of guest rooms, just because he could. He might invite someone to stay at some point. The bathroom had an Olympic sized bathing tub. One of the rooms was a Room of Requirement.

The entertainment room now had multiple VR hookups where people could enter and adventure in his virtual reality set up from the World Seed he'd gotten from the SAO world.

Even his Dojo that was attached to the Warehouse had gotten significant upgrades so he could actually use it to train decently well, where before it would only be somewhat useful for someone in the Master Martial Artist class.

Carl took his time in the shower, decompressing and meditating over his experiences in the Stargate world.

One of the things he realized was that he didn't want to overuse the Time Dilation like he had done before. It really was a good thing that he had the Time Dilation, because he wouldn't have been able to assimilate that much science and technology knowledge in a normal fashion without the ability to manipulate time.

Due to all the scientific study and training sessions, his time in the world had stretched what should have only been 10 years out to hundreds of years. Although it had been worth it in the end, it just felt like it stretched his goal of reuniting with his girls too far away from him.

And the extra work was annoying. Especially Empire building, which required politics and him being polite to people he didn't like. He wasn't sure if he wanted to do that again in the future.

At least he was thankful he wouldn't have to spend quite as much time in the future assimilating new science and technology knowledge. That first chunk had been massive, but any future knowledge should go down much more smoothly.

Carl let out a sigh and moved on to having his breakfast. While he really didn't need to eat regularly due to being sustained by profound energy, he liked food too much to pass up on it. And he wasn't going to give up his Root Beer anytime soon.

Carl spent the morning wandering around his Warehouse, checking that everything was in place. Mostly just keeping himself busy. He found himself on one of his farms, looking over the lake that provided all kinds of fish. And he just…drifted for a while.

After several hours, Carl got up and moved back to his house, where he spent the next three days meditating to file away the memories from his last world and prepare himself for the next.

With his eyes closed, Carl let out a long sigh, and with the action visualized blowing away any concerns, any past issues, and just feeling free.

Carl opened his eyes, and hopped to his feet, feeling energized and refreshed. Time for a new world!

Carl made his way to the Jumpchain kiosk just outside his house. Clicking away, he soon found out what his next world would be.

A Song of Ice and Fire.

Carl got a very solemn look on his face as he looked at the jump document. In a hoarse whisper, Carl proclaimed, "Winter is Coming."