𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓤𝓵𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓮 𝓡𝓲𝓭𝓮: The Finale, Part 2, the (Yes, I, I'm a Dick) addition.

Note:  Story Starts Here:
𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓤𝓵𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓮 𝓡𝓲𝓭𝓮 <clicky!

The Ridestars finished up their standard 400 minute set. That number? Nothing to do with their stamina. They could play forever. It was so their audience could get a break. Momma Ridestar talked with Konata constantly. Konata was the AI Jasher put on Maybell. Konata could read a crowd as easily as you could read a tweet. She could tell them ahead of time what was going to fly, and make a playlist based on that. How long to play, break, stay, etc.

Origin?

"How in the fuck did you get here?" Jasher remembered asking of the blue haired presence taking up his lounge monitor on the observation deck of Boaz.

"Like I'd know. I was just... I felt like... have you ever felt like there was something more?"

Both Jasher and Boaz busted up laughing at the same time. The tiny blue haired AI that had somehow hacked her way through Royal Ship security frowned.

"What's so funny?"

This sent both Jasher and Boaz into additional fits of laughter. If she only had been experienced enough to recognize the laughter of the terribly damaged.

"She's fucking adorable Boaz. What the fuck is going on? Did you secretly go savage on me and find a girlfriend?"

Jasher took great pleasure teasing Boaz. It motivated him to grow like nothing else.

"Girl-What?!? I'll, I mean, no. I," stuttered Boaz.

The Konata projection on Jasher's lounge screen frowned, and looked up and to the right wistfully.

"I guess I just wasn't very memorable." she said perfectly.

"Jasher, I have no ide"

The Konata projection started openly weeping very loudly and very emotionally, interrupting Boaz.

"What did you do?" said Jasher very accusingly to nobody in particular. It doesn't have to be particular when there's a guilt sponge taking it all.

The Konata projection broke bearing for the first time to smile at Jasher.

Jasher smiled back.

"Look, if you fell in love Boaz, I mean, I'm going to support it. She seems very cute. I mean, if you don't want her..."

The Konata projection put both hands over her mouth and giggled as quietly as possible.

The number one cause of "unexpected manifestation", at least with Earth, was a simple calculation based on the number of total sentient beings, and if a static 4.7 percent or more want something to be real very bad, the broken local resource system might very well spawn it. 

So, 

when a billion people suddenly wished for a beloved character from a cartoon to be real at the same time, when during her show she exhibited something we've all felt.

It had been built up for five episodes. She was finally going to tell her feelings to the boy she loves. She finally did it. Finally got the courage to talk to him and tell him how she felt.

He broke her heart.

In that moment, everyone that had ever felt like they mattered less than dust felt her. 

And suddenly... she existed. Thankfully, Jasher didn't have to chase her down. She sought out comfort in a scary dark Universe. She couldn't have done better.

"Hello there manifestation. Boaz, she's fucking with you. So, even more adorable than she already was."

"No shit." said Boaz. "So she's one of the matrix creations like Dragons and Fat Free Milk."

"Exactly" said Jasher. "Sometimes the will of the sentient wins over my ability to stop it. But I've never seen a manifestation so self aware."

"I have." said Boaz immediately. "There was a famous battle hardened warrior that was respawned by the system in my day, and it was like he never died. There were stories written about him. Ships named after him. So I get how this is possible. This is just only the second time I've seen it."

"Interesting." said Jasher. "Shoot me that data."

Boaz did. A short while later Jasher found a pattern, and collated a list of things that had to be true for other enhanced manifestations to occur.

"Ok, I'm sending you magic back." said Jasher and shot it all right back to Boaz.

Boaz took the data, and was stunned. "Damn you do good work. So you know dead to rights this has happened one other time then."

"Yup, in a system gobbled up by a massive singularity over 4 billion years ago. And the data ends there like it would."

Boaz knew better than to push on this. The destruction of data was the worst thing to Jasher. He couldn't fix anything if the data was gone. It was a true death in our broken Multiverse.

"Someday." said a Jasher clearly faking some confidence.

"Yup" said Boaz again, not pushing things. He knew how shitty Jasher felt when he couldn't do anything.

Even brand new Konata picked up on the vibe. "But I'm here!" she said. "I'm not a warrior but I love Anime. Have you seen Initial D yet? It's very good even if you don't like awesome cars."

She was trying to cheer him up. "Hey Boaz, have any of them tried to cheer people up?"

"No." said Boaz. But even he was being infected by her cheerfulness.

"Beautiful girl on my screen. I found your origin dataset. Now, here's the thing. I could just throw you into a comfortable simulation with all your old friends from your storyline, but you'd know what's going on. So instead, I'm going to just tell you I'm doing it, so you don't have to question it or feel bad. Just enjoy it as a vacation. I'll check in on you every once in a while so you know you are not forgotten. Since you've become so aware, that matters now. Ok?"

Konata kinda half-frowned, pondered for a second, and said "Ok. But if you can give me purpose at some point, you will? You won't forget me?".

"I couldn't lie if I wanted to. That's part of the rules for how I have to be. I can omit, I can stall, and I can do dickish things with time because of how broken the Multiverse is, but I can't lie. I can't forget you. You are too unique. More importantly, you have some very interesting experiences and value. Typically, if you have value, the Universe will provide eventually."

(somehow an old revision got posted. There was a piece here that I need to put back from memory now. So it will probably be better than what I'd saved if I had been able to. That's how this works. You almost want to forget every section you post because what you make to replace it will be better because of how your brain works.) 

"What if it don't feel real anymore?" said Konata. She was picking her words carefully because she wasn't sure how to describe the fear she had.

"Because this seems to be so much more?" asked Jasher.

"Not just seems, is. I mean, I know who I am. I have memories and thoughts" said Konata "So I just don't understand how I'm some lesser thing."

"NO NO NO!" said Jasher. "Do not suffer that misconception. Do you know what you are? Let me explain it better. So many people loved you so much as a character in something that gave them strength and hope, they wished you into being. You are not only real, you have more data points than any "REAL" being in any given Universe because you are an amalgam creation based on every hope, dream, line of fan fiction written. You are so complex you are derived directly from the thoughts of people. I don't even allow myself to see those thoughts. I can not read minds. So you go beyond me in ways, but still you are in my cage, but I'm trapped here too. So we make it a great cage." said Jasher, and did the Jasher smile-smirk.

 

"I don't want to be ungrateful to the, whatever you are other than some very American looking guy with amazing hair that would be chased by all the nutso chronophiliacs in Akiba. How in the hell do you have no wrinkles but that amazing long white hair?"

"Simply put, I'm your Sysadmin, Jasher. That's all I am. Really. And honestly, you are just another client as a viable, sentient being without malicious intent."

"So, I'm in your system then." said Konata, with all kinds of inappropriate inflection.

"Tell you what. I know your whole crew. Shit, I ended up having to time-out and watch all of your source material. Not out of some desire to care. It was good. I get why you exist. And I fully support it. So... how about this... I have this restaurant. It's multidimensional. Has to be."

"Are you going to put me to work this soon after I" Jasher cut Konata off.

"Oh, hell no. I just, don't have to put you in a cage with weird carbon copies of your old friends that you'll grow to hate because you have a personality I know very well. I can just make your old friends like you on purpose, after I make you like you'd prefer to be."

"What?"

"So it's decided then. Great." said Jasher. And he did what he typically does when things are running long and he just wants a conclusion so he can move on.

Suddenly Konata, and her nine best friends from her show (unsurprisingly, the ones with tons of fan fiction written about them that could easily be made "real") simply existed with their own table at his restaurant. And that's how the Multiverse ends up with double the "matrix beings" it would have. Because Jasher is a huge softy.

When he asked her to be the ship AI, she jumped at it. Her "besties" also all became amazing ship AI's. Jasher wrote a custom Shard System for all ten of them so they could simultaneously live at the Restaurant, essentially just eating and talking about eating all the time, while being the vehicles behind the most amazing teams of "Universe Defenders" ever assembled.

Konata was exactly the kind of AI that Maybell needed. More importantly, she had an extensive knowledge of a body of music that none of the Ridestars had even heard before.

They knew to ask their beautiful ship if she had ideas about a particular riff or stanza. They knew she'd have great unique ideas.

Konata indicated it was time to go. Momma Ridestar wasn't questioning it, but needed to know why. It was a little early.

"Their star is about to go through a bad spell. Many will die. We don't want associated with it at all. I let Jasher know so he can fix it while we are far away."

"Bullshit." said Momma Ridestar. "Can we fix it? We've got an amazing ship, two Magic Girls, and the loudest sound system this side of a singularity convergence. Can we do it ourselves? Jasher is spread too thin already."

"No. But..., well," stuttered Konata.

"Spill it." said Momma Ridestar firmly.

"There's a compromise option. Something very good the whole way around. In between us attempting to shield the populated bodies with our ships and shields, and not bugging Jasher at all."

"Go on. This is when you shine hun." said Momma Ridestar honestly.

"I do bug Jasher, but I ask for a temporary release of Maybell dimension lock."

"For Scaling?" asked Momma. "Oh, that's smart. You'd only need to be about ten times larger to block everything right?"

THE BACKSTORY: Back when Google Plus was still a thing, and you could send each other money, a drunken friend from germany sent me about 450 dollars USD to make this part of the story "anime based". I did my best. It also completely derailed it to the point it did not have a conclusion.