CHAPTER SIX

MEANWHILE…

In the audience of Terry Vance's lecture, Thursday Rubenstein and Harvey Schlemerman in their most mundane disguises possible were in the back row near the exit door, quietly discussing the lecture and the presenter.

"Did you read the book he's promoting?" Harvey asked. "For 11, he isn't a bad writer. I don't understand the TECHNICAL side very well. But I'm thinking he's already developing a knack for being a minor celebrity. He does local TV sometimes as a "boy genius science reporter," even was on a few game shows for charity. Our little conspiracy could really use someone with a clean record, to be a public face for us."

Thursday nodded, her computerized consciousness following the speech, Harvey's comments, and running several computer simulations as experiments for her own amusement. "I am getting tired of doing most of our public ambassador work, I am sure you are as well. Jerry and Arthur use their unusual appearance unfairly to get out of doing their fair share of THIS sort of thing."

They listened as the young Teaching Assistant went through his PowerPoint presentation, pointing out details of the chemical composition of FLEXO THE RUBBERMAN. "I meant to ask," Harvey whispered. "Vance's book lists YOU as one of the AI designers influenced by that piece of work. Was he right?"

"Some, I suppose. But it's a bit of a stretch. And did you catch how he worked in that bit of anti-mutant and anti-alien tech sentiment in his introduction? What do you suppose prompted THAT?"

"I have read his mind at a distance several times. His birth parents abandoned him as a toddler, left him to die in an empty apartment. They seemed to assume his teaching himself several languages by listening to the neighbors meant he was a Martian disguised as a baby. He was found before he died of thirst, but didn't say a word while he was in State foster care. When he was adopted, he started showing his intelligence again. But then the neighbors started going on a Mutant witch hunt."

"But he's baseline normal human?" Thursday asked.

"According to all the medical records one of our agents gathered. Nothing at all unusual in the DNA. No potential as a gamma ray or cosmic ray mutate either apparently, so radiation would kill him as surely as most humans. I was curious, so I asked some favors from my "friends on the other side," Harvey smiled slightly. "But he doesn't seem to have any unusual interest from anyone in the spirit realms either. Some potential for magic, but not much more than any average human. If I tried to teach him spells, it'd take him years to master even a few basic ones, same as most people. So no shortcuts, he just is a relatively normal human. Except for the eidetic memory and exceptional IQ, of course."

"So as a spokesman, that helps us with the baseline humans, hurts us with the 1 in 10,000 with mutant or mutate potential but that's minor. Any psychological instability? Racism, sexism, enjoys experimenting on animals too much? We can't risk recruiting a junior mad scientist that turns out to be a lot crazier than WE are…" She shivered slightly, thinking of the time she had met Nathaniel Essex to discuss an alliance and barely escaped intact.

Harvey thought for a second, dipping again slightly into the young man's mind, reading surface thoughts and some core traumatic memories. It made Terry Vance stumble over a few words, but otherwise went unnoticed. "He has a love of learning, seems to be interested in almost everything. Minor obsessive need to rescue other people, especially from irrational behavior. That's from his biological parents attempting to kill him… and his adopted younger sister affected him. Her parents were lynched by one of the more racist splinters of the Sons of the Serpent. A hatred for stupid, foolish and short-sighted people… but you feel that same way, so that isn't a problem," Harvey said with a grin. "A LOT of anger over his sister's trauma and loss. It's been generalized. If he WERE to be something greater than most humans, he would devote himself to destroying any one and any THING that even reminded him of those neo-Nazi snake fetishist weirdos. If SHIELD ever talks to him, they'd break their necks to recruit him in their fight against all things HYDRA related."

Thursday nodded, listening as Terry Vance shifted to discussing ELECTRO THE WONDER OF THE AGE. "That gives us leverage. Joining us helps opposed a lot of the various versions of irrationality that plague the world. What other things inside his head can we use? Does he want to be more than human? We can offer him that. Wealth? We can fundraise better than most Fortune 400 corporations. So what does he really WANT?"

On the stage, Terry flipped through several slides of the robot ELECTRO in action. Destroying Nazi tanks in France. Smashing through a wall to end a shootout between heroin smugglers under siege from an FBI tactical team in San Francisco. Assisting firefighters, digging out trapped miners… "For several years, Team : Electro fought forest fires, helped evacuate disaster victims, was used in police actions against drug rings, white slavers, Nazi spies and saboteurs. Zoglowski considered all this a test project, planning to have a Team : Electro in every state in the country after the war ended, to help save lives, keep the peace and protect America."

Harvey nodded towards the screen. "THAT. He wants to do something like that. Help people in big ways, small ways. Whatever he can think of. If he never meets us, and one of the OTHER conspiracies out there somehow miss him, he's likely to pick up where Philo Zog left off. A scientific detective and first response rescuer, using the most high tech devices he can come up with. And if he lives long enough, he would want to explore space and be as close to a Captain Kirk as he can manage. Oh, we could offer him money, he'd use it to find ways to save people. We could offer him Captain America's super soldier formula and he'd give it to his adopted mother to cure her diabetes. If we ASK him to join us, as long as it feels like he can use our resources to make the world a better more rational and healthy place, he'd be more loyal to the cause than any of the four of us already are."

"Hmm. I suppose it's a good thing we've never really KILLED anyone. Even when we had The Defenders helpless, we just brainwashed them to get them to stay out of our way. It'd have been much easier if we HAD killed them, but we didn't."

"Well, we DID put my brain in Nighthawk's body so I could steal his company and his life as a superhero," Harvey admitted. "What a fiasco THAT turned out to be. I still don't know how I got talked into THAT…"

Thursday made a "harrumph" sound. "Oh, nonsense. Jerry planned to put the brain into a blank clone he and Arthur were developing. Poor Nighthawk was going to lose the fortune he inherited from his father and the superpowered body he got from some alien space god or whatever his story was. But we weren't going to KILL him. We are scientists and researchers. Murder is just…. Boring."

On stage, Terry Vance had moved over to the curtain blocking off view from part of the stage, and was clearly planning on unveiling something soon. "Anyways, onto my personal favorite, one of my role models, although he was arguably the LEAST successful person I discuss today or in my book. He created one of the greatest achievements in robotics and artificial intelligence ever attempted by a human being, and he did it with copper wire, vacuum tubes and beakers full of crude chemicals. His creation did more to win the Second World War than any individual soldier except possibly Captain Steve Rogers himself. And yet he died almost penniless, an alcoholic in Stamford, Connecticut working as an electrical repairman, murdered by a being that remains unpunished for it. What Vincent Van Gogh was to art, Phineas Thomas Horton was to the science of artificial intelligence. And I can tell from the lack of a reaction none of you remember the poor bastard…"

He pulled the curtain back, and on the table behind it were several elaborate pieces of equipment, surrounding a three foot high glass tank. Within the tank, unmoving and possibly dead, was a small monkey, floating in a slightly pinkish fluid. Several wires were attached to the small body via straps across the chest and skull, which ran out to the equipment around the tank. The audience gasped and muttered softly.

Terry turned, grinning widely at the audience. "Professor Phineas Horton was a genius in several fields. He created synthetic life, which he called "The Horton Cell." These were synthetic replicas of human cells using plastic and carbon polymers, they duplicate the structures found in organic human cells. These cells can be grown in a culture, and are compatible with humans, and could theoretically create replacements for any organ needed for transplant.

"Even in small clusters, they are capable of generating and storing a remarkable amount of power. Horton kept the exact method of making them a secret, and other than ME only about 5 other people have figured out how he did it as far as I can tell. The first time I managed it, the Petri dish exploded and I was electrocuted," the boy chuckled. "So NO, I won't be revealing how I did it. I won't be the one to blame for anyone ELSE blowing themselves up."

"That little lunatic, what is he doing…" muttered Thursday, her features slightly distorting across her nanotech head. "He recreated Horton cells?"

"I don't understand the significance?" Harvey asked, sitting forward in his seat.

"Horton was a brilliant lunatic," she replied. "His synthetic life was dangerously unstable. It's like… I don't know… building a house out of dry wood and painting it with gasoline and nitroglycerine? Even the first HUMAN TORCH he produced was almost an epic disaster, as has been every OTHER attempt to use that method at artificial intelligence."

"Damn, NOW I wish I'd brought popcorn," Harvey said with a smile. "This should be either amazing or turn out hideously awful. Either way, I don't want to miss a THING."

TO BE CONTINUED

AUTHOR'S STATEMENT

Please comment, I'm always curious what if anything people like.

Thanks again to marvel wikia, marvel appendix and writeupsdotorg for helping me work out chronologies, ancient continuity and so on.

If anyone WANTS faster updates, say so, I space it out just to be lazy. If I knew someone liked it, I could bang out the last 6 chapters in a week.