4. Carl Sagan

. . .

Daisy watched Ross eat, noting this was at least one hour where he seemed perfectly content to pile a gob-ton of delicious food onto his plate. This was just some sort of hot appetizer, the aforementioned kibbeh. There was still a giant mixed grill meat platter on its way, and she could have just stopped where she was and sack out for the night feeling pleasantly full. But hey. Rock on.

Loki was eating with his usual nimble mix of genteel nobility and lack of giving a rip, people-watching between bites in a way that made her think of the first Terminator movie, where the audience got to see through the cyborg's eyes and read all the bits of tactical assessment and choice-making Schwarzenegger was doing. Since this place was a Place to Be for some reason, she felt like this was a good parallel. It'd make for an interesting report from him later.

They hadn't talked to each other much since reaching the restaurant, at least yet, and Daisy was glad for the faux-companionable silence. So she cringed in reflex self-defense when Loki opened his mouth.

"How did you first come across this place, Agent Ross?" The question was calm, amiable even. They had a private nook, so even though they were still illusioned, there was no harm in using their real names.

Oh god, he's trying to make normal conversation. Daisy swallowed down hard on a piece of pita. It was, on the surface, actually weirdly nice of Loki to try and be pleasant at dinner, but he had to know it wasn't going to be taken the right way.

Ross paused, his eyes widening at his fork. Despite eating with gusto a second ago, he put the fork down, as if considering all the angles of his answer. As if the wrong answer meant Loki would unleash a hell of tabbouleh onto his life. "Um."

Daisy sat, watching Loki, who was watching Ross, and she had no way to rescue anyone.

Time stretched into an awkward silence, then became a longer, greater silence that felt like a papercut on the brain. She snuck a look around, hoping a waiter would show up to refill the water pitcher, move the spice shakers around, anything.

Then: "Counterterror meeting with the Jordan Special Forces, in 2013. Been back a few times since."

Relief hit Daisy like a balloon farting its way free from explosive pressure. "That's cool," she said. "That's kinda neat. I read in the brief they're a big deal in the Middle East."

"Some of the best operators in the business." Each word dropped like a weight. Ross didn't pick his fork back up. "Critical ally to the US."

"So, like, why the big defense expo? Why's Jordan always hosting it? You probably read my file, I'm not that big on world powers trying to kill each other and stuff, and I always thought Jordan and its king were supposed to be, like, these guys that tried the hardest out here."

"They do try. It's- It's not exactly easy stuff, and there's things going on here I'm not gonna say I agree with. Media, internet, you know." Ross licked his lips and dropped his hands into his lap like he was done eating. "The King of Jordan is a huge fan of the military and special ops stuff, and it's, yeah, it's like taking your gun fan uncle to this insane level, and it's… it's not great stuff sometimes. Look-" He faltered. "I'm not the guy to talk politics with. It's a mess all over the world. All I do is try to make sure people hurt each other less."

Ross's hand came up, waved at the table in a vague way. "SOFEX is above board. It's freaky. I've been before, yeah. It's all this high impact stuff and yes, I've read your file, and no, you are not gonna like this show. It is a comic con where the scariest guys you've ever met geek out about new ways to kill each other. But…" He hesitated again. "Here we know their names and faces, and who's buying from who. It's cheap comfort. We get to make lists. We watch other countries and what they do. It helps, long term, if it's out in the day, and it's fair if you don't think it helps much. The problem, the problem is…" He began to trail, his face pinching.

Loki, for whatever reason, helped him out. "The problem is, and it's the very likely outcome, if our vibranium 'clients' use the show to make contacts, and then do their sales under the table later, illicitly. With fewer daylight records. Like many such men have, for decades here, for millennia elsewhere."

"….Yeah." Ross sighed in a tight puff and picked up his fork. "Exactly."

The meat plate arrived. Daisy, who had gone through a brief fad of vegetarianism in her teens and still respected the concept in general, realized she was staring at the giant platter as if a new deity had been born right in front of her.

Loki looked unusually pleased at it, spearing neatly a few choice bits with a small grin that looked less pointedly sardonic than his usual one. "That's the most Asgardian thing I've seen outside of Asgard in ages."

"Coulson and I took you to that churruascario last year!" Daisy pointed her fork at him before digging in.

"And it was quite good, but as I told you then, nobody wheels food around like that in Asgard. The only mealtime benefits to being in the palace is that there's silverware on the table in case you're feeling quaint and the servants don't throw meat at you like you're a bunch of wolves. Anyway. This was a good suggestion, Agent Ross. I'm enjoying this rather a lot." Loki didn't look at the man as he dropped the surprise compliment.

Daisy managed not to stare at him. Apparently it was a major holiday in his own private Lokiworld?

Ross was doing that frozen pause of his again at the compliment, as if freshly reminded how weird this whole thing was. Then, as Daisy watched him waver, grunt agreeably enough and then go for some perfectly charred beef, he seemed to relax again.

They munched quietly for a while, distracted by their enormous dinner, until it was Ross's turn to make Daisy nearly jump out of her skin. "I have a question." It came out in a somehow lumpy staccato, jerking its way towards Loki.

Loki didn't miss a beat, still working along a piece of steak with delicate grace. There was a knife in his hand. It took Daisy this long to realize it wasn't the restaurant's offered knife. Of course Loki had his own eating knife. Of course he frickin' did. Probably it was another compliment of some sort, this one towards the food itself. He didn't look at the agent. "Certainly."

It was like Ross hadn't expected the easy response. "Er." He stared at the ceiling, recovering with a fast blink. "All right. You're, uh, alien. We know vibranium doesn't have a natural source on this planet. So do you know where it comes from, and why the whole galaxy isn't dropping on us for Wakanda's meteorite?"

Loki looked oddly pleased again. This one, Daisy understood. He loved being put on the spot for scholarly things he could hold forth on. He put down his knife, leaning back to organize his thoughts. "These are good questions. There's two answers to your latter question, and the first question is difficult and intertwines with the second answer to your latter. So, let's start with the easy bit. Earth is under a layered set of rules that don't impact it much from your view, but do help protect it meanwhile. Asgard itself looks over it, claiming galactic protectorate as one of our Nine Realms. And Nova Corp, let's call it another organization like both of ours, Ross, only out there, has declared much of the solar system off limits until Earth puts itself 'out there.'"

"I doubt a pinned up notice stops everyone." Ross put his elbow on the table, listening. "Doesn't work like that here."

"Certainly not, but, and this isn't meant to be insulting, Earth isn't a huge draw for most civilizations at this time. So you're fairly safe, by virtue of being essentially a distant village, and then there's the other reason I need to explain.

"So, very well. I'll be brief, too much of anything is dull. You understand that vibranium is not a locally formed element. Here's the dropped shoe: No one knows where vibranium is formed, not at all."

Ross blinked, rearing his head back slightly. Then he leaned back in, looking intrigued. "So it's from far out?"

"It seems." Loki pushed his plate away and did something with his hands. A small sphere formed on the white tablecloth, a glowing, tennis-ball sized Earth. Wakanda flared green on the continent of Africa, and then Jordan elsewhere, and then the US. Then he pulled his hands out, and a stylized rendition of their solar system replaced it, the Earth shrinking into a small pea. Now the Sun was the tennis ball, with flecks of brightly lit planets spinning out across the table. Daisy, used to magic, found herself still gawking at the effect, staring at Saturn's tiny rings. Then Loki pulled his hands again. Their sun shrank into the slowly spinning galaxy of the Milky Way, disappearing into one of the spindly 'arms' of the disc. Pinpricks of light, dancing together, eternally separated by the vast gulf of space. "We're currently in the Orion Arm, as your scientists term it, which is a bit like pointing at the ocean and saying there's a drop of water that you used to know floating over there.

"Now, this galactic region in its entirety is quite busy. Hundreds of known civilizations sprinkled across this scrap of space alone. But, and I'm not trying to horrify anyone with the grandness of space, even this is barely your local neighborhood."

Loki pulled out again, and now the disc of their home galaxy disappeared into a strange, spongy cross-cut piece of space. Galaxies speckled within it, lone stars, slices of void that hurt to look at. "This is the local quadrant, and worse, it's not even a bullion cube's worth of known space itself. Known space - hear this and tremble. Even I do. None of us in this region can even imagine what's in the universe just a scant couple of these 'cubes' worth of space away, and it will still take all of our lifetimes combined merely to explore fractions of the region we have. There are a few places beyond this quadrant that are known, of course, but at that point, this grows too confused to explain neatly. So let's stay close to here.

"Life is spread throughout this rough quadrant, some of it interconnected through spacelanes and jump technologies, or portals, or things it would take me hours to explain. Some of these areas are intensely isolated, truly alien. Not all of it is frightening and deadly, but all of it will be strange to you in some way. There are mysteries with answers being slowly picked away at by minds greater than mine, like why this specific region is populated by so many carbon-based humanoids, so much similar oxygenation on such a large number of life-bearing worlds, and so on. And in none of it that I know of, even in the great galactic library we name Omnipotence, because no one likes to admit that greater mystery when they're trying to sleep at night, are there answers to every question we have. One thing is known that I can say. Vibranium is not natural here. Perhaps not anywhere."

Ross kept leaning forward. Daisy realized he was absolutely enthralled, his eyes huge. For a moment, he looked like an older, ruffled Luke Skywalker just now meeting a hologram that was telling him how intense things were about to get in his life. Daisy thought it was kinda cute, honestly.

Loki fluttered a hand over the cube, zooming it in, meteor showers sparking gold throughout the galaxy. "Like other elements, and mysteries, and flecks of life, it's from somewhere outside. Beyond what we've ever known. And it's a remarkable material, Agent Ross, it truly is. There are a few books of esoteric theories about it, one suggesting it's the leftovers of some long ago, tragically lost civilization. That its properties are so intense and easily harnessed because it is, in some sense we can't understand yet, already processed."

"Memories of the dead," muttered Ross, arguably a bit pale against the light coming from the illusory slice of the universe.

"Maybe." Loki inclined his head. "But all of this means vibranium, in the end, is so rare as to be virtually useless to the greater local quadrant. It's invaluable to Earth, of course. It may well help all of you towards that future day when you step onto the galactic stage on your terms. But it simply isn't available in any reliable quantity as to change anything greater than that. Ship fleets relying on it will one day fade into irrelevancy, unable to replace its parts. Weapons will always be countered sooner or later, though the Dwarves have made small artifacts to honor the material. Vibranium is too niche, Agent Ross. Everything it can do, another world has had to find more reliable ways to get some similar effect.

"Your world was granted a marvelous gift, by the whim of an unknowable universe. But vibranium can never be the entire answer to the questions of your species. It has too many questions of its own." The illusion of space vanished. With a small bow of his head, Loki pulled his plate back towards him and went back to eating as if he hadn't just dropped a whole-ass special episode of Cosmos on his dinner company.

Daisy and Ross found themselves looking at each other, temporarily blanked out. A shadow passed over them, startling Daisy out of thoughts of deep space mutants and more. "May I bring your table anything?" asked the waiter in his rich accent, innocent and unaware of the mysteries of existence that had just been dumped on the table like so much icewater.

Ross sounded strangled. "Can we please get a to go box?"

. . .

Okoye lounged on the ratty linen chaise that ate up a comfortable corner of SHIELD's common area, sipping at an oversugared chain-brewed coffee, and watching an episode of some Western reality television so awful she was pretty certain her frontal lobe was going to rot out right there. And yet, this was one of her own not so terrible secrets, a love for a little safe foolishness. "You're never going to get a risotto done before the timer. In the name of Bast, every time I watch this show, you people make the same ridiculous mistakes."

She looked up as she sensed the approach of someone else, still relaxed, not sensing any threat from the shadow. "Agent May."

"Okoye." A pause. "Oh god, tell me someone's not doing another risotto."

"That's what I said. You would think they would learn eventually." Okoye leaned forward to turn down the volume. "Is something amiss?"

"Nah, came down to make something to drink. Didn't know you were back on site."

Okoye shrugged. It was a simple matter to return to Wakanda once a day, or check in at a local embassy if necessary. So far it rarely was, but she did it anyway. She didn't care for being away from her country and her king for long, but at the same time she was aware she had been granted by T'Challa an opportunity for a sliver of light work - the same as a vacation for her - and she decided she was grateful for this gift. The people here were pleasant, businesslike, and she had few reasons to watch them intensely as their field team found their feet in Jordan.

Oh, she still paid attention, of course. But there was no harm to be found here, so she came back with the disgusting coffees that she loved and stayed out of the way. She watched Agent May set off a cup for herself out of the cheap machine, and wished she'd thought to offer to bring back an extra drink. An interesting woman, Melinda May. "You are between shifts?" asked Okoye, making idle conversation by way of some personal apology. On the screen, a small round man had burned his risotto in trying to hurry it and was being shamed by the professional chefs, which she thought he thoroughly deserved.

"Yeah, not on again until sometime tomorrow." May puffed a sigh. "Her Highness is driving the science department into despair."

Okoye laughed. "She lives for such reactions." She turned the TV off and leaned forward, her wrist flicking delicately for emphasis. "They shouldn't feel that way. There's little need, and mostly she is showing off for the Westerners. But it is also a compliment, in my experience. Shuri must believe your scientists can handle it."

May chuckled, pouring a small amount of cream into the bottom of her mug. "They can, they just gotta go through the soul-sucking despair first." She leaned around the cabinets to tip Okoye a wink. "Which is fine with me, it keeps them in line."

Okoye dropped back into the chaise cushions with another laugh, delighted. Then she got up, wandering over to the beverage counter, out of the way of the business of coffee-brewing. She leaned her elbows on the cheap formica, her hands clasped together as the bracelets she often wore clinked lightly. "I am to understand you are a martial artist. What is your fighting style?"

May smirked at her coffee as she stirred it. "Messy."

Bracelets chimed again as wrists wrung around in thought. Okoye's eyes crinkled, otherwise amused. "Good answer. You've earned Eastern belts?"

"Some, yeah. I'd call my style adaptive, if we were going to be serious."

"Spar me." Okoye tipped a wink. "After your coffee, if you like."

May shook her head, but Okoye could tell it wasn't in disagreement. "You'll kick my ass."

"Kicking ass won't be the point. I find a good match to be better than a conversation in many situations. Less useless meandering chitchat, more getting the measure of an actual person."

May kept stirring, nodding softly. She had caught the undertone, that it was another type of potential compliment. Good woman. "All right."

Okoye pointed at the mug and its picture of a grimacing cartoon cat. "Or we leave that nasty coffee here, and I buy you a better one after. Whether I kick your ass around the ring or not."

May put both her hands flat on the counter and laughed. "Okay, but I get to recommend a local coffee house that we actually like in this place. Especially if you kick my ass."

"I like an artfully bad coffee." Okoye considered that. "But yes, I do like a good coffee better. It's a deal. A fight and a better coffee. Lead the way, please."