### A Grand Experiment
Before diving back into a real timeline, there was one last itch Tao needed to scratch. One final test. The real Loom hummed before him, a colossal engine spitting turbulent temporal energy like a star shedding solar flares. The pressure washed over his soul, but couldn't penetrate it.
*If someone in the engineering bay glanced at the Loom right now,* he mused, thinking about his form which is much like a hologram being in null state, *they'd just see a human-shaped shadow standing before the heart of all creation.*
"Funny," he muttered to the roaring silence in his mind. "I've never tried to recreate an entire universe at once, even though I've devoured the inner worlds of true gods mid-battle. But here, now? Why not."
He didn't need to be physically larger than a universe; the nature of space itself, and the creation energy he commanded, already arranged things more neatly than that. The fundamental rule of creation energy was its complete disregard for the scale or complexity of the task. Just has to be within his scope.
***
In one hand, he already held the recreated space-time stream and meta-structure he'd copied from the Citadel, a shimmering projection of cosmic architecture.
He opened his other palm. A thought later, a sphere flickered into being. Inside it, the TVA ~ every corridor, every filing cabinet, every single agent he'd observed ~ snapped into existence as a perfect, standalone copy. He'd recreated the core sixty seven -mile diameter of the bureaucratic complex, its secrets and blueprints now his to command.
All the partial constructs he'd been unconsciously mapping since his arrival now coalesced, stitched together into a seamless whole.
Next was the Loom itself and the quantum information streams it manipulated ~ the very memory of the universe that enabled it to function. By simply tracing a smaller circle around the branching threads where he stood, he captured its full essence.
Creation energy sparked again ~ bright, young, volatile. He layered this quantum existence, this memory of reality, into the space-time stream he held. The miniature Loom at the center of his sphere lit up from end to end, weaving its own, self-contained Timeline rapidly branching in his hand.
Finally, he layered an absolute spatial rule across it all, collapsing the entire micro-universe down to the size of a soccer ball.
♠♠♠♠♠
Holding a functional universe in his hand turned out to be a strangely mundane experience. It felt no more profound than being aware of the vast, chaotic world already thriving inside him.
The moment it became functional, his consciousness was fully engulfing every stream of information it released. The numerous existences, the versions of them, the ones he saw in movies, every possibilities gradually forming.
The LoHP instantly cataloged the stability, energy signatures, and quality of the system. *So,* he observed, *my divine dao energy is qualitatively higher than the law-energies making up this reality's strings, while my heavenly energy is only slightly better. But not everything... Psionic energy, infinity energy... they're in a league of their own.*
***
A pulse of crimson energy surged through the replica TVA. A second item materialized above his other palm ~ a hard-light clock, a bare-bones successor to the Tempad. A clinical, mechanical voice followed: "Everything done as per your instructions. Memory reset. TVA functional. Miss Chronica out."
It was an altered, recreated Miss Minutes. His own rudimentary AI.
### Crashing Down
For a few moments, the creation held. But before he could even have a 'Now what?' thought, the cost hit him like a tidal wave ~ the exponential drain of maintaining and error-correcting a self-sustaining universe. Energy from outside his shield was being drawn in vast, risky quantities, threatening to reveal his presence. He cut the power midway accounting for it through transforming his own energy.
He watched his new Sacred Timeline buckle. Minute variations triggered entropy spikes. Without a connection to a living cosmic law field to guide it, the laws began to glitch. The infinity essence that stabilized the universe exploded first. The micro-universe, isolated from the cosmic super-structures it needed, couldn't sustain itself. The Loom destabilized and pruned everything back to a single, degrading circle.
Even in the final remaining one, changes began. From Tony Stark inches away from missile to Sentry fighting against fantastic four, every one instantly began to unravel like threads without a pain.
At least a quadrillion recreated lives were lost simultaneously across past, present, and future. But before they could experience pain or even understand, everything froze.
< Pov Switch >
The LoHP whispered the analogy before my own mind could frame it:
1. **Offline Universe:** His creation was disconnected from the cosmic network. He built the hardware and basic software, but core functions required an "internet connection" ~ access to dimensions like the Superflow where dreams become real, and the M'Kraan Crystal, which houses the psionic life-source of the world: the Phoenix Force.
2. **Battery Drain:** The sentience of space-time, when restrained from the cosmic network, degrades rapidly. The battery doesn't last on your own.
3. **The Impossible Network:** Recreating these elements was nearly impossible as they are multiversal constants, interconnected on a level that required getting into the "mind" of cosmic concepts themselves. This wasn't a passive data port; the M'Kraan Crystal was nicknamed "The End of All That Is" for a reason.
I sigh. With one gesture, I freeze everything I've made in an absolute static field. Now it's just a pre-built template, sealed in divine creation energy, ready to be stored inside my internal world. It's spatially compressed, bigger on the inside than my own realm, but I can resurrect it later at a fraction of the cost.
A new thought occurs to me.
I use the leftover creation energy to recreate the universe-ball twice more. Looking at the four separate but identical copies in my hands, I see the consumption for the additional three was less than 1% of the original cost. *Template efficiency.*
I draw in the my energy bleeding from the internal world, refilling my depleted reserves. That experiment was too expensive. I won't walk into the unknown without my full strength.
### Exit
The point had been simple: could I harvest discarded timelines from a miniature universe to feed my power indefinitely? Even when being inside one? Answer: not really; not on this grand scale. But I did learn to replicate the Loom's core functions, analyze the high-dimensional nature of local laws, and create a template that could fuel my internal world's refinement for a long time. That alone was worth infinitely more than the cost.
"Hmm? Feeling distraught at my attitude for refining a universe and its trillions of lives?" I joke to myself, glancing back at the real TVA. "Hey, they won't feel a thing. It's all a grand dream, remember? They were unstable anyway."
I gather the original, sealed template for separate storage and guide the other three copies into my internal world. A split of my consciousness begins the quiet, long work of refining them. No rush.
### Travel to Outer Timeline
For one last moment, I look back at the sacred timeline construct outside, humming in its full, glorious intensity. Then, I turn my gaze outward.
This entire journey hadn't been deliberate; it was a process of acclimating, of finding my footing in a terrifyingly new reality. *Let this reality spin on without me for a while. I'll return if I want to.*
Since Psionic energy was the first native energy to spontaneously form within me here and still above my personal energy level, it makes sense to start in a timeline where I can witness its most famous host up close.
I cautiously re-enabled my cosmic awareness.
"...."
This time, the view was different. I saw beyond the confines of this universe. It wasn't the total chaos of a Kang war I'd imagined, but... well, the multiverse is just *big*. Overwhelmingly so.
I've mapped a path, a branch lying beyond the reach of He Who Remains and his guard dog, Alioth. I've finally figured out how to slip into a normal plane without setting off all the alarms like I did the first time.
Creating that universe gave me some insight into the sentience of laws, but I need more practical work.
A pentagon-shaped purple portal blooms before me, its edges shimmering with a light far older than the TVA's walls. It wasn't his portal ability but one conjured by manipulation of his intent - Tearing open a hole in universe by overpowering the will that held it - that which - no technology can tear open normally.
Without a backward glance, I step through ~ towards an Earthly plane once again not forgetting to heal it back again.