A/N: Written for a prompt on Norsekink LJ, essentially: Loki and Thor visited severals planets over time. Some primitives there remember Thor as the good guy, others Loki.
Besides, as far as I can tell, Loki seems to be the closest to a god of crafts the Norse pantheon has. God of fire, builder of sheds, inventor of the fishing net, and able milkmaid (okay, they rather disapproved of the latter).
Disclaimer: Marvel's, not mine.
Music: „Space Oddity" by David Bowie
Gliese 581 d
Not long after the Asgardians had left New York, professor Foster, now working at the European Southern Observatory in Chile (ESO), made contact with an alien civilization. Sadly, it wasn't Asgard. Luckily, not the Chitauri either.
She and her team traced the mini-wormhole back to Gliese 581 d, a watery planet of approximately six times the Earth's mass in the constellation Libra, circling in the habitable zone of its red dwarf star, merely twenty lightyears away.
Once all readings had been triple-checked, and the dizzyness from the impromptu champagne breakfast dissipated, she wondered why the SETI people at Mauna Kea had not earlier found hints of intelligent life there in their optical scans. Whatever those aliens did for a living, it seemed not to affect their atmosphere. They also had not tried to make contact before. Or else those fools who had always ridiculed her at symposia scanned with their eyes firmly shut.
Communication proved to be easy, requiring no time and manageable amounts of energy, thanks to Mr Stark's donation of an arc reactor. The real problem was understanding.
After three months of sending messages to and fro, the operating crews on either side knew the masses and chemical composition of each other's planet, stars and bodies, the lengths of their respective days and years (given as a multiple of the fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom), and many other technical data, but could still not say a simple „Nice to meet you!". In all honesty, Jane's team did not even know whether the Gliesenians could speak. Maybe they were tactile, or telepathic.
Sitting in her tiny, cramped office space between stacks of books and coffee-stained papers, Jane took out her little black journal once more and stared at the worldtree Thor had drawn so long ago. Nine realms, he had said, but named only five of them. Back then, his clumsy, fumbled explanation had sounded so childish to her scientific mind she had not pressed for information. Now she could kick herself for that. Did they know of this newly contacted planet in Asgard? Did they know its inhabitants, could they have translated?
She wondered how Thor fared in Asgard these days. Had he forgotten her? He had not tried to contact her since Puente Antiguo.
The door swung open and, without knocking, the famous Tony Stark strolled in. „Hello Red Sonja. Pining for Conan, are we? Cheer up, here's Iron Man to the rescue – and, mind you, they call me that for a reason, if I do say so myself." Someone shoved him from behind.
„Stow it, Tony." An unkempt man in a crinkly shirt shuffled forward, extending a hand. „Hi Miss Foster. I'm Bruce Banner. Tony and I would like to help with your work, if that's ok for you."
„I pay most of it anyway" Stark grumbled. „Stupid ESO guys are always short of funds. Currency crisis, Swiss Franc exchange course, Greece, you name it."
Banner ignored him. „We would have come earlier, but things in Latveria kept us."
„A country of opportunity for scrap metal dealers these days" Stark interjected cheerfully, leafing through Jane's notes and paper printouts.
„So, your new friends. Roughly a third our size; higher water content. Way less calcium – no bones, that means – less iron, more copper. You're talking to some octopus here, mark my words. Kraken or kråken, Mrs Norse God, your expertise on the Ragetti question?"
With some difficulty, Jane closed her mouth. The man was a genius.
Looking at one of the cup-sized brown rings on the paper sheets against the light, the billionaire asked: „Is there coffee, Janeway?"
Some weeks of feverish working with the equipment shipped in two containers followed. Stark went for direct visual communication, but muddled with their linguistically handicapped data exchange as well.
Two hours of research and a twenty-minutes rant made it clear to everyone in the facility that the Gliesenians' „language" was not sound-based, so sending them a blueprint for a grammophone was the most stupid idea since non-alcoholic beer.
In short time, Stark got confirmation from the other side that „person to person information transfer on home planet" came in fact coded by „electromagnetic radiation" (adding a wavelenghts range largely within the visible spectrum for the human eye) and „four-dimensional relative position thereof".
In other words: colours, in patterns over time, as he informed the SHIELD agents who were by now swarming the facility. The scientists did not seem to mind them much, since all data were meant for publication anyway, and more people commuting to and from Antofagasta guaranteed a steady supply of fresh rolls, beer and other essentials.
Jane did mind. As much as she congratulated Coulson for having survived his near-death experience thanks to that healing stone Thor had given SHIELD for research, she was still angry about his dismissive treatment and confiscation of her equipment. She ignored him pointedly.
The Gliesenian contact person sent a data packet that took all night to process, twice wrecking the computer. Out came an 80+ pages printout of wavelength sequences and coordinates. Stark and Banner concluded it was some personal description, like a name. They called him „Spotty".
There was no way to encode a description of Jane in a similar fashion. Eventually, both sides agreed on „First Contacted Operator" for her and „First Contacting Operator" for Spotty. Then, they set a date and time for the first direct visual communication.