The third option.

"This!" Kang gasped, looking at the box before him.

"It's a universe! You made a pocket universe! How did you even achieve this?"

"That's not all!" I smiled proudly and clicked a button as two holoscreens popped up above the microverse.

"It's expanding?! AND it has ... Is that sentient life?!" He swooned.

Ah! Now that's the reaction I like to see!

Only a scientist can appreciate certain aspects of my invention.

"Yup. One upped you on that front, didn't I?" I said, smug.

But he didn't even flinch.

"Honestly, I am just amazed at it. Not even jealous. You have to teach me how to do that! And these lion people, they have opposable thumbs! How did that happen?'" He said, examining it carefully.

He seemed genuinely happy about it, seeing something new.

Something I don't see often.

Is this why the Doctor takes people along on his adventures?

That happiness is infectious.

I smiled softly.

"Yeah! I nudged them in the right direction when they were first evolving and guided them to tool making.

And I even helped them fast track to the industrial age. See that. Clean, 100 percent sustainable industrial sectors. They're mining metal for me right now. And in return I help them get a technological leap every now and then to improve their lives. Not to mention, I have another one where they make some of the best ice cream you've ever had. Here try a cup!" I said, snapping my finger as a cup of vanilla ice cream appeared in his hands.

He looked at it curiously for a moment, before digging in.

"Mhmmm!" He moaned, "This is some good ice cream! What do you put in it?"

"Genetically modified vanilla beans. Not only do they taste like vanilla, they also have chemical in them that make your taste buds go cuckoo over it. And it also works as a functional antidepressant!" I explained.

"No wonder this tastes addictive." He said, shoving another big spoonful into his mouth.

"Just one problem. That thing. It sounds like slavery. Not that I'm against slavery per se. I mean we're all villains here. I do a good bit of that with my employees at the TVA myself."

"What? No! It's not slavery. They work for each other and pay each other money and I trade with them for technology ocassionally. These resources are just the royalties they pay me for the tech I gave them.

Look, I just use them for extra storage space so if they decide to stop making stuff for me tomorrow, I wouldn't really get mad. Their universe is just a storeroom for me.

I may have created their universe but I don't usually pay much attention to what they do. I have my own stuff to do."

"That just sounds like slavery with extra steps. But what do I know, I've only lived a million lives." He shrugged, and finished the ice cream, chucking the cup into the garbage bin by his desk.

"You know what, let's just agree to disagree on that. Back to the topic-"

"Oh look, they're worshipping your statue. How cute!" He teased, pointing at the holoscreen.

I looked at the holoscreen as a parade walked past, carrying a giant statue of me.

I cringed away, hiding my face in my hands.

"Oh my god, that is so embarassing. And after I went through all that effort to tell them specifically not to worship me."

I hurriedly shut off the holoscreen and sighed.

"I was hoping to create an atheistic society that believed in science above all, but they ended up worshipping me as the God of science."

Kang laughed at my misery and patted my shoulders.

"You created them. It's only reasonable. Besides, I've found that sentient life tends to evolve in the direction of belief surprisingly often." Kang assured.

"I suppose you're right. But their reasonable actions cut into their other tasks- aaaand I just realized I sound like a slave driver.

Well shit."

Kang burst out laughing, hunching over as he shook, slamming his fist on the desk.

"Oh this is the most fun I have had in eons." He said as he looked up at me then the microverse and fell down laughing again.

"Yeah yeah. Laugh it up. Tell me when you're done." I huffed in annoyance.

"No. Okay..." He gasped for breath, "No. No. Sorry. Go on.Tell me your solution."

"Alright. So what you did was isolate the timeline and then prune difficult individuals manually.

Not a bad choice, just tedious.

I have a better idea."

I gestured at the fish tank and patted the microverse.

"So is this your solution? Stuff the universe outside into a fish tank? Or maybe migrate it in. Because I don't think that will work. See, even in that one there's going to be branches in their timeline. Unless of course .... You have a way to deal with that?!" He exclaimed in realisation.

"Took you long enough to catch on!" I chuckled, "Yeah. You know about quantum immortality?"

"Oh! You're going for the quantum collapse route?

Select a timeline as a frame of reference, then canonize the choices people actually make as reality and collapse the quantum possibilities for the choices they could have made but didn't.

Nice choice, pun intended, but I have tried it before. 3008 times to be exact.

It works in your microverse because their level of technology hasn't reached the point where it can affect the space time. And even then, with the limited approach of the fish tank boxing it in, there's no scope of an expansion.

On a free system though? It doesn't work. Ever.

Someone manages to screw it up one time or another. Sometimes it's through time travel. Other times some idiot thinks quantum tunneling is a great idea to base phasing tech on and then suddenly they are messing with the fabric of space-time. And sometimes, Tony Stark just blows it all to hell because he wants to make a point. He's a real pain in the ass. Well him and Reed Richards. Though Richards isn't around too much these days.

I had to prune him from the timeline. Because Stark is one thing, but Richards? And his daughter? They are on a whole another level.

Just make a total mess of things.

There was one time he tried to kill a Celestial with a dimensional strike!

Nearly collapsed reality.

And then when I pruned him he had the gall to look at me accusingly like I was in the wrong there." Kang shook his head.

"Heroes, I swear. Hypocrites the lot of them." I nodded in agreement.

"They kill millions of innocents and that's fine but you justifiably kill one of their own and suddenly they're all up your urethra about justice and the value of life and blah blah blah.

Life didn't hold value when they were cracking skulls but as soon as you try to stop them, it's suddenly, 'Foul villain! Stop in the name of justice!'." I scoffed and pulled up a schematic.

"But no. I think what you did was you inlaid the mechanism onto the world like a circuit board, with each individual person's decisions being mapped as a node.

The tedious approach. It's safer yes, but it's too clunky. And prone to malfunction because if the system is inside the universe, then inside factors like time travel or quantum tunneling can affect it. You have to put the collapse system outside the universe and then make inroads for the detection algorithms."

"That doesn't solve the quantum tunneling issue. If someone destabilizes the fabric of reality from the inside, at that level, there's no saving the universe, even from the outside. It'll be gone before any measure you put in place can react."

"True but if you stabilize the quantum- oh!"

I realized the problem.

One solution to the problem of quantum tunneling, i.e. Ant Man and the pym particles, is to stabilize the quantum realm. Only one problem with that though. The moment the quantum realm stabilizes, lower energy states become available for every particle in the world.

And if you know basic chemistry, you also know that every particle desires to reach a stabler configuration.

It's the whole reason bonds and molecules form.

So a stable quantum realm equals immediate drop in activity.

That is, the instant heat death of the universe as everything comes to a screeching halt and all particles become still at their newer, lower quantum states.

"Yeah. Now you see my problem." Kang tapped on the desk, and chuckled.

I scratched my chin, and thought for a moment.

"Hmmmm... that's a tough one. The plan is solid. But this issue....." I nodded when a realisation struck.

"Oh! Oh! I got it. A save state filter! That's it."

"Like a save file in a video game?" Kang asked, confused.

"Yes. Exactly. Based on the same principle as above, but on a universal scale. We'll make it so that it is continuous.

And wherever there happens to be a break, we'll just reload the file and restore the universe to the point where it was working fine." I replied, pulling up the logs of my time space fuckery detector.

Just then Kang interjected.

"That'll just trap the universe in an infinite loop of restoration and destruction when the same actions are taken again and again leading to the same outcomes. That is if it is even possible to make a save state and reload it."

"No. That's where the quantum immortality comes into play. We can make it so that there are two systems working simultaneously. One will create a continuous save state and the other will collapse unused possibilities." I explained, "When one stops working the other immediately activates and fixes the problem.

And I even have the prototype for the detection setup ready.

I made it to catch time travel and prophetic shenanigans at first but it'll do just fine here too." I pointed to the logs I had pulled up.

"For example if someone destabilizes the quantum realm and destroys the universe, we just reload the save state and this time, the quantum possibility of that destruction can be pre collapsed to sustain the timeline."

"That would require the reversal of causality. At a scale that large.....

Causality is irreversible. Directly at least. Maybe with a bit of creative time travel...." Kang speculated, taking another bite out of his still conspicuously full apple.

I need to ask him how he does that because he's clearly not reversing time or anything.

Swapping the eaten apple with an identical one from the stored data of a previous iteration?

Maybe.....

But I focused on the matter at hand.

I wagged my finger.

"Usually that would be true but I have this!" I said, pulling out a pink crystal from my coat.

"This is...." He trailed off, pulling out a tool from the drawer that looked like a cross between a screwdriver and a laser pointer and scan the crystal.

"Crystallized xanthenite. Conducts electrons across dimensions. Preserves quantum states. Manipulates time. And with the right touch...."

"...reverses causality!" Kang gasped in shock.

"Where did you find this? Do you have more? This ... This is a miracle product."

I smiled wide and snatched it from his hands.

"Not so fast. First lets talk about what I get out of this."

Kang frowned.

"Of course..." He muttered almost accusingly.

"What? It's nothing personal. It's just business." I shrugged.

"You sound like every evil businessman from fiction." He laughed, "I can give you the throne of the universe. There's nothing more valuable than that. Are you sure you don't want to rule the universe? It's not fun, but it has it's perks. Lot's of time for research for example. I'll even give you my research notes. I have been at it for over a quadrillion years now. That's a lot of knowledge."

"At the cost of my freedom? No thank you! Besides, my true interest lies in research. The pursuit of truth!" I shook my fist in the air, looking into the middle distance dramatically, giggling all the way.

"And your research notes probably have a lot of similar observations.

Can't have that much difference from timeline to timeline. Not to mention things that are never tested, the true limits and applications of a lot of items won't be recorded there. Lots of ideas that never occurred to anyone at any time. So that's just more field research I'll have to do. Except, I won't be able to do it, because I'll be a prisoner in this citadel." I pointed out.

"It's a nice citadel. Top of the line amenities." He up sold his property.

I leaned back into the chair and looked up at the ceiling, ruminating.

"It is pretty nice. But a gilded cage is still a cage." I ultimately replied.

He threw up his hands and fell back onto the desk.

"I give up. I just want to die. It's pain, existence. I'm worn. Too worn." He cried.

I looked at him, lying with his head down on the table and felt pity for him.

He had suffered. I can barely imagine what it's like to do the same thing over and over again for millions of billions of years.

Sounds like a living hell.

I sighed.

"Fine. I'll do something about it."

Kang perked up and climbed over the table again, grabbing my hands happily.

"Does that mean you'll take my place and rule the universe?" He asked.

"Uh...no. Not doing that. But neither will you!" I exclaimed, patting his hands, "I will repair the cracks and isolate this timeline again.

A barrier around the universe to stop multiversal shenanigans.

I'll need your tech for that and a place in the citadel to set up and project the barrier from.

A stopgap measure, I know, but it will stop further branching.

In the meantime, I will put an android in-charge and start work on the two system solution. On one condition." I thought for a moment and changed my mind.

"Actually make that two."

"Just two conditions?" Kang raised an eyebrow.

"First, I want all your research notes." I said, lifting up a finger.

"I thought you said you didn't want my research notes?" He asked smirking smugly.

"Not if I have to be a caged bird, no. But I won't be. So yeah, I want them." I said frankly.

"If you can solve this problem? Done!" He waved his hands holding his scanner like a magic wand, and softly whispered, 'Alakazam!'

I smiled.

He was goofy. I like that.

"Secondly, I want a set of infinity stones. I know you have tons of them lying around. Give me a complete set and I'll consider it even."

He suddenly sat up straight and looked me in the eyes as if testing something.

"I can't do that." He replied, with a stern look on his face.

I frowned.

"What?"

_____________________

The extra chapter for 500 powerstones as promised!

Next extra chapter at 600 powerstones!

The regular chapter for the day, I will post later, maybe in the morning.

MC figures out how to repair the timeline.

Strikes a deal, but wait, there's a catch!

Find out next time in ITCOTM!

Till then, thanks for reading!

Also if you want to support me, buy me a cup of coffee or read ahead go to,

www.pat.reon.com/goldenfingers