(Chapter 24)Priorities

The Yorkes and I were standing around the box in their stark white lab, frowning. "And that's all the alien DNA you could come up with?" I said, looking at scrapings with a skeptical eye. It was about the size of a shoebox and it was only half full.

Stacey looked a little abashed, "Oh, well, I dropped about a toenail's worth on the floor, so we put that in another box as a potential contaminant but yeah. It looks like the alien DNA was regenerating his body, but most of the body is human."

"I mean, that makes sense right? You said Karolina is a human-alien hybrid, I mean can you imagine the evolutionary convergence necessary for aliens that look this much like us? Much less cross fertility?"

I looked from Dale to Stacey and back again before shaking my head, "You'd be surprised," I said, tilting my head to the side as I stared at the box.

"Are you an alien?" Stacey blurted out, getting a glare from Dale.

"You don't have to-"

"I'm a human," I said, waving it off. Technically speaking, I was an alien, but most people here didn't know that.

"Did you grow up on another planet?"

"Stacey!"

"What, he doesn't seem to mind."

"I grew up on Earth," I said, laughing. "It's fine Dale, I'm not offended. It's almost more plausible than the truth." It was really more plausible than the real truth, that I was from another world where this world was represented through fiction and had been granted powers by a godlike being for its amusement.

"We were wondering," Stacey said, looking at Dale with reproof for his betrayal. "Because Jonah had all this tech knowledge and you have all this tech knowledge and we thought maybe this was like…" She leaned in, as if to keep a secret, "a gang fight."

"Nah, I just got lucky to spot him. I'm very good at that sort of thing."

"And very good at biology!" Dale said, "That file drive you gave us is amazing. We have so many new ideas."

"Aren't you worried we'll… use it for evil? You know, with the whole PRIDE thing?"

"I'm not worried about that," I said. Dale and Stacey were wracked with guilt about the human sacrifice thing. Not that that was an excuse, of course, but all in all I was taking Nicole's death better than they were their victims. "Our deal gives me more than enough knowledge to put a stop to really bad idea." I picked up the box and put it back into the lab fridge. "How're the gloves coming?"

"We're working on it," Dale said. "Healing at a touch… The applications are literally limitless."

"Let's go get something to eat and you can tell me some of your ideas."

"Oh, food! We were thinking that we could design some meat-replacement cultures…"

—-

"Little guy bit me again," Victor said, showing me his hand as we got into our observing seats. The great asphalt sea before us was as yet unclotted with Nemo cars.

"Yeah," I said, acknowledging his grievance. "But if you use lambs you won't know if you've avoided the negative mental aggression issues."

"How're we supposed to tell they're not just panicked from being shrunk to the size of thimble?"

"Well, they do get used to it after a few hours if you put them in those shrunk rooms."

"Why haven't you gone public with this for materials, though? I know it's expensive per dose, but you could cut running costs on things like aircraft carriers to a tiny percentage."

"I strongly suspect that there are government agencies that have already cracked it and might not be enthusiastic about the release." By that, I meant that I didn't want to be socked in the jaw by a six inch tall Hank Pym or whoever he hired to thwart me.

"Makes sense," Victor said. "You've got your sequence picked out?" He waved his tablet at me.

"Yeah, obviously," I said, waving it back.

"Alright," he flicked on the cameras and recording device, lowering the Nemo cars. "Hopefully we don't wreck another car like last time."

"It didn't hit the model pedestrian and the crash dummy survived, so overall, still a win." I didn't want to deal with his anger issues like I had to last time.

"If you say so," he said through gritted teeth, and he hit the green light.

Two cars bolted out, drove around the concrete seat without coming near each other at and settled down. I looked down at my tablet and clicked confirmed to show that it had landed where it belonged. Victor's had too, I saw as my green light met a red one.

"Well, I think you were right about the quantum realm. It should allow us to muck about with one of the most fundamental forces in the universe." Two more cars bolted out of chambers and all four were swirling around the concrete sea. "Very impressive if we can get it to work."

"Yeah, let me know if anything weird happens with the fruit." One thing I did not want to miss is if he had the glitch that reversed aging.

"I keep everything in those handwritten notebooks like you asked. You can read them whenever you want. Gives me a hand cramp," he complained as the four cars came to a stop.

"Round three," I said, watching four more cars join the dance. "After I hacked Wizard to clear Jonah's cache, I'm never trusting electric storage again."

"Don't need an explanation for why time travel shouldn't get out, at least not initially."

We watched the cars swerve around each other at eighty miles an hour. The sensors were external and still pretty gaudy - It was unlikely that people would want their cars to look like that, but it was a good sign for inter-Nemo co-ordination nonetheless. They came to a finish and I got a light that confirmed they were in proper position.

"Sixteen?" Victor asked, his mind back on the cars.

"Sixteen," I agreed.

Sixteen was easy. "Model pedestrians?" I asked and he nodded. "Twelve?"

"Sounds fair."

I released the little robots on stands and we set the cars going. No problems.

"If our position were reversed, you'd still be the one working on the cars."

"I've got some other major projects," I said with a sigh. And I did - With how butterflies were working out, I wasn't sure Captain America would be found, so I was looking into technological improvements that would help us deal with Thanos. But also, time travel and I have… complex moral issues. The way it works in the MCU, you're basically creating worlds, which I suppose from the perspective of the abhorrent conclusion is perfectly fine, but seems… iffy to me as a moral decision. Still, it would be fun to go back in time and pass off my existing researcher to my initial self. Form a Council of Trents, ah funny pun for an Mdiv, be sure to tell myself that one.

"What're you working on without me? Aren't broadcast power and time travel enough?"

"Weapons," I said simply. Although I had a broader definition in mind. I wasn't enthusiastic about being the Thirty Seventh person to try to crack Erskine's formula, but if I just left it to fate they probably wouldn't find Cap at all and that was, frankly, really unacceptable. "Clean power, medicine, all of that isn't worth anything if the Gibborim show up and invade us." Really, I should've started on it earlier, but I had been hoping that Pierce would put me on the Cosmic Cube project. No luck. I was "too high profile for SHIELD" and "I think you'll be more productive elsewhere."

"Do you think that's likely?" Victor's voice actually shook with fear. I suppose he knew better than most that the aliens were way out ahead of us.

I shook my head. "But the tail risk is very high."

"Damn right," he said as we released another sixteen cars.