Is Reed Richards actually useless?
For those not familiar with that specific trope, it describes the idea that any given mad scientist or genius inventor will never actually use their inventions to meaningfully change the world they live in (in fiction). Sure, you might get orbital death rays or teleporters, but when it comes to solving more mundane problems, or even just patenting and selling their work, nothing. The world I had arrived in was mostly the same as the one I left, socially and technologically. Well, on the surface anyway.
The trope was often expressed in fiction because the writers of a given work want fantastic elements in their story, but not have it change the setting they're working with. Of course, the Doylist reason doesn't really work when you're living in a real, actual superhero universe (…hopefully. I am the Lampshade of my- no, stop it). So the question was, just what was the Watsonian reason for all this super-tech existing but things are mostly the same?
And the answer, as you might expect from a realistic look at such an issue, is complicated.
To start with, there are frequently some general problems with super tech that don't lend themselves to mass production. Most power armor designs that exist and have been used have been far too materially expensive to actually make several of, even for Special Forces. And for some technology the material itself is incredibly rare or limited, like the White Dwarf fragment used for all of Atom's technology (and no, don't ask me how you can have a fragment of a White Dwarf star the doesn't instantly explode).
On the villain side of things, there's a lot of people who simply don't care to go through the process of getting their technology patented. Even ignore the difficulties criminals would have dealing with the patent office, a good number of them lean heavily on the 'mad' part of Mad Scientist. Either they're not in it for the money, or don't care for society in general. As a result, a lot of villainous tech ends up gathering dust in police lock up.
So, what about taking that tech and reverse engineering it like I did? Legally speaking, that can be done… but the unfortunate death of one Edward Lytener marked the last time anyone had tried. The man was an aspiring engineer in the early nineties who hit upon the idea to reverse engineer the light technology used by the then imprisoned Doctor Light. And he made some good progress, seeing as how all modern hologram technology on the market is based on his work. But, unfortunately, Doctor Light escaped prison and swiftly made it clear how he felt about other people cribbing off of his notes.
Since then the public has had a… wary view when it comes to villainous super tech. It doesn't help that it's hard for many people to mentally separate villains' technology from the heinous deeds that are committed with them. Companies would have a PR nightmare trying to market anything connected with supervillains, and combined with the threat of reprisal from said villains mean none really try. I suppose tech from dead supervillains might be more viable, but cultural inertia is hard to overcome.
Superheroes can get around several of these issues (though some still don't care for dealing the bureaucracy and tedium of spreading their own tech around), but they also have some of their own. One of which being that you have to give the government (or a lawyer with your power of attorney) your real name in order to patent things, so it can get really easy for people to track you down.
And then, even if you don't care and get your stuff patented anyway, sometimes the government will actively prevent you from spreading it. Case and point, the Zeta Tubes.
I was honestly surprised when I learned that the Zeta Tubes were invented by a human scientist, in the 1950's. The man could barely get anyone to pay attention to his theories until he finally just made the prototype himself, and browned-out three states by accidentally teleporting J'onn to Earth. Needless to say, that got the various governments of the world worried, and kicked off some immediate research restrictions and having all the governments argue about it for half a century. The tech remained in limbo until the Justice League was founded, and the U.N. agreed that they were impartial enough to use it. Bit of a waste in my opinion, but there was rampant paranoia that someone would miss use it and call down an alien invasion that would wipe out all life on Earth. Or, as I imaged some politicians feared more, that a country would gain a massive advantage in the form a technically advanced ally and assume world dominance.
Somewhat ironic, considering recent events.
In any case, sometimes some advanced bits of technology make it through all of these barriers. Small, but noticeable. And I the moment, I was making my own contribution to that.
I floated at the edge of the stratosphere, the blue sky just starting to give way to the black of space as I drifted over the Rhelasian peninsula. This was the highest I could manage to fly with the aerokinectic core; there just wasn't any more air for me to be buoyant or push off of. Still, it was high enough to make it significantly easier for payloads to reach orbit if launched from up here. Such as the ones I was carrying.
I carefully arranged the array of small rockets in front of me, my mechadendrites spacing them and pointing them upwards. Each one contained a small satellite with as strong a radio transmitter and receiver that Ted and I could manage for its size, along with some advanced networking equipment I had been working on as I tried to improve the Team's comm equipment. They weren't anything special on their own, but each was meant to connect with each other along with the others already in orbit to form a wireless mesh network that could be accessed from the planet's surface. It wasn't particularly fast, but using this the whole country would have access to free wifi.
This was one of the better ideas that Ted and I had workshopped when we were coming up with ways to bring North Rhelasian infrastructure up to spec. The ideal we wanted was to create infrastructure that the populous was capable up maintaining and upgrading themselves, but we quickly realized that most of the North Rhelasian population was just too spread out and not technologically literate enough to make anything reasonable. So to start with, we decided it would be best to have something that was as wide spread and easy to use as possible, along with a few educational information campaigns over the next couple of years.
I… may have borrowed the idea from a certain billionaire who didn't exist in this particular universe.
"Serling, is the telemetry set up to sync with the last batch?" I asked over the radio.
Far down below me, the scientist replied. "Yes, yes. This system is mostly automatic. You don't have to keep checking in with me."
My mouth quirked. "Someone has to. Everyone else here that's not Ted is intimidated by you."
I could hear a hint of irritation in her voice as she responded. "I just have high standards. I'd like to think I'm keeping this whole exercise on schedule."
Some might say that you're trying to hurry things along to get back to your own work, I thought. I was still a little surprised that Serling had insisted on coming along with me and Ted, but she had nearly panicked when we told her we were going to Rhelasia for a few days. She said that she was very close to finally cracking the encoding for nanites and making a functioning compiler. I pointed out that she could just wait a few days, but she was adamant that it be done as soon as possible. So much so that she volunteered herself to help with the infrastructure project just so that she could be near me to finish her work.
Which I would have found very touching if there hadn't been something unusually manic about her behavior.
With the last checks done, I sent the signal to the rockets, and a moment later their thrusters fired and they shot up into the black. My eyes traced their trajectory for a few seconds before my gaze was brought back down to the horizon. The sun had risen several hours again, but it was low enough the light still framed the curve of the Earth. "...If you get the chance Serling, I highly recommend seeing the Earth from orbit. It's still one of my favorite things since becoming a superhero."
"I suppose I wouldn't turn the opportunity down if it came up." She responded, though there was something odd in her tone. "That said, I'm worried that if I saw the sun cresting over the edge of the planet, I'd have 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' stuck in my head for a week."
"Actually, for me it's Fat Bottomed Girls."
"…dare I ask why?"
"What else would I think about when I see the rocking world go 'round?"
An exasperated sigh. "Just get back down here so I can finish up this experiment."
I snorted before I flipped backwards, diving straight back down to the surface. Considering I was about 40km up, it would take me a while before I reached the ground. Part of me wanted to see if I could fall fast enough to break the sound barrier, but my discretion told me that it would be a bad idea for a super-sonic object to suddenly appear on the North Rhelasia's radar. They knew I was here, but it was best not to make the North Korea expy nervous.
Ten minutes later I touched down at the edge of a small village nestled in a countryside valley, walking towards a large tent with the Kord Tech logo on it. It was one of four set up in an open meadow, and a few Kord Tech employees waved to me in greeting as I passed by. Opening the tent flap revealed a haphazard mess of electronic equipment and computers, and a somewhat harried Serling looking at a monitor intensely. I could also tell from a glance that it wasn't the rocket telemetry on that monitor. I rolled my eyes and walked over to the terminal she was supposed to be at. "You know, if you really don't want to do this, you could have just stayed back at the main encampment at the parallel."
"But you're out here, so I am too." She replied, and when she turned to look at me she saw me giving her a scowl. She rolled her eyes. "Oh come on, I just need you for one more thing. I just finished up the latest analysis program."
I looked back at the screen in front of me, checking the progress of the various rockets as they reached the apex of their arcs and deployed the satellites. "And you're sure this will do the trick?"
"Of course!" She exclaimed as she fully turned to me, her hands full of those multiphase signal prongs I had become unfortunately familiar with over the past few months. "I told you earlier I had a breakthrough, didn't I? This is going to work, I'm sure of it."
With a last look at the screen to make sure the satellites were doing what they were supposed to, I walked over to her and started plugging the various prongs into my body. "You still haven't told me exactly what this breakthrough is."
Serling waved her hand. "I've been having a lot of inspiration lately. Working on this problem has caused me to look at algorithms in a new way. Especially ones involving a distributed quantum state machine like yourself. With the way your nanites interact with each other, it's like the state machine itself was changing moment to moment. Once that clicked, it's just a matter of finding the right waveform equation to parse what's going on with your machine code."
I nodded slowly. I… mostly understood that. "I see. And this is going to find that equation?"
She nodded back. "And once it does, it should slot right in the compiler we've been developing. It's the last piece we need." She grinned and gained a far off look in her eyes. "And then we can do so much with it."
She was like that for a long moment before she noticed the look I was giving her, and her face flushed. "A-anyway," she muttered, turning back to her computer and typing away at the keyboard. After a few seconds the screen switched to a diagnostic display, and I felt a myriad of sensations along the back of my mind. We had long refined this process to the point where it never hurt me, though now it felt like pushing two ever shifting shaped blocks against each other, each trying to slide into the other but not quite managing it.
"Right, that should do it," Serling said as she leaned back. "Now we just have to wait. If I did this right, it will be five minutes tops before we get a result."
"Right. And since I'm a bit tied up at the moment," I said gesturing to myself, "Perhaps you could take care of the telemetry now?"
Serling sighed. "Fine, fine," she muttered as she moved over to the console I had been standing at. "You'd think Ted would have one of his own people handling this grunt work."
I gave her a look. "Since when is he 'Ted' to you? I think this is the first time I've heard you call him something other than Kord."
Serling blinked for a moment before she realized what she said, and groaned while she put her hand to her face. "Ugh… alright, look," she said as she turned back to me. "You can't tell him this… but he's not as bad as I thought he was."
I leaned back against one of the tent pole. "To be honest, I don't understand why you thought he was bad in the first place. What was up with that anyway?"
Serling took a breath before she said "How much you know about Kord Tech? I mean, before Ted became CEO?"
"Not much. If I remember correctly, the company was founded in the late fifties by his grandfather and gradually grew in size over the decades. It wasn't until Ted took over that it really took off." I paused before I said "I think I remember something about there being legal troubles just before that happened."
Serling nodded. "Ted's grandfather was a decent businessman and scientist who managed to get into the silicon transistor market early, and founded the company's identity as a tech company. Ted's father on the other hand leaned more towards business, and when he saw the chance to take the company international, he did everything he could to boost his reputation. Including claiming other people's work as his own."
I raised my eyebrows. "He plagiarized scientific discoveries and inventions?"
"Mostly those of his own employees. He wanted to give the world the impression that he was some kind of genius scientist and inventor." She made a vague gesture. "No one could prove anything in court, but as things went on more and more of these rumors started to get around, to the point it was causing bad press. Thomas Kord saw the writing on the wall, and as soon as Ted graduated college he handed the company over to his son. A month later Ted revealed the company's new Robotics division, and the rest is history."
I gave a small frown and tilted my head. "Alright, Ted's father was an asshole. But what does that have to do with him?"
She gave me strange look. "Do you have any idea how advanced Ted's robots were compared to everything else on the market? It was absurd, and he claimed to be the sole designer of them. It was obvious to me that he had to be doing the same thing as his father, just being more subtle about it. So every time he came around the university looking for a nanotech expert I told him to get lost."
"But now I'm guessing you've changed your mind on that?"
"Well, I talked with every scientist of his I could find to confirm my suspicions," Serling rubbed the back of her neck. "But… it turns out he actually is a genius scientist and inventor." She sounded just so annoyed by that. "The reason that he is the primary credit on most of his projects is because he does most of the design and integration work himself. He comes up with solutions to cross-discipline problems that should take an entire team weeks in a couple of days. I honestly wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't helped me solve a claytronic modularity problem with fluid dynamics, of all things."
My mouth quirked a little. "Well, good to know that you two have stopped bickering, at least."
She snorted. "Hardly. For a man who's so smart he can jump to some pretty dumb conclusions about things. Particular things he should be deferring to me on." Serling then blinked and shot a scowl my way. "And I do not bicker! It's not bickering when I'm right!"
Before I could argue that point, I felt a slight shift at the back of my mind. It was like the end of a thread had been found, and someone had started pulling on it. "Something's happening…" I said as I looked back at her console. In one portion of the screen I saw a set of wave function diagrams morphing and changing parameters as they tried to match the ever shifting on in the center.
At the same moment the diagrams on the screen finally reached alignment, I felt those shapes in my mind finally align and slide together. A feeling of connection filled me, and on the other monitor I saw code scrolling down the screen. Code that I could understand. "It works…" I said, looking at something I had been chasing for the past few months.
"Yes!" Serling actually jumped in the air as she yelled this before darting in and looking at the code more closely. "Data integrity shows no sign of decay, error checking is green across the board, this is it! This is what I've been looking for!"
She then turned and actually hugged me in excitement, taking me completely off guard. It was a bit awkward considering I still had all the prongs in me, but I managed to return it. "You're amazing," I said as we broke apart and I started pulling the prongs out of myself. "I couldn't have done this without you. Now I can finally get back to programming."
"Me too! This is the last thing I need for it!" Serling said excitedly as she stared at the screen an odd glint in her eye. "This compiler gives me the last bits of functionality I needed. I can finish it!" I… actually wasn't sure what she was talking about.
Before I could ask though, I heard something on the edge of my hearing, the sound several engines running hot and getting closer. My brow furrowed as I turned to look out the tent flap. "Are were expecting any company?"
"Hmm? No, we're supposed to head back the parallel on our own in a few hours," Serling said. "Why?"
"Because someone's coming here awfully fast…" I said as I walked out of the tent, looking down the main road next to our little encampment. A few seconds later I saw several jeeps speeding down the road towards us, machine guns mounted on the back and men in army camo riding in the vehicles. My eyebrows shot up in sudden concern, and I walked briskly forward towards the oncoming cars, armor forming on my person. As they got closer, I held my hand up to flag them down. "Hello there!" I called out. "Can I help you with some-"
The turret on the closet jeep to me opened fire, and I was sprinting straight at them as soon as the first bullet slammed into my chest. The rounds were a little heavier than I was used to tanking, but it was nothing I couldn't handle, and every bullet that flattened itself against me was one that didn't hit the people near me. As I cleared the distance, my eyes darted around and I did a quick mental check of what I was dealing with: five jeeps with mounted guns, with three to four men armed with assault rifles each. Possibly armed with grenades, but unable to tell for sure.
My arm turned into a freeze cannon as I juked to the side of the oncoming jeep at the last second, freezing the front and side of the vehicle to the ground. It came to a sudden stop that flung the men out of the car, shortly before the jeep behind it slammed into it with a massive crash. The three behind it managed to swerve out of the way, but I was already jumping to the air over them and taking aim. Neutralizing their ability to harm the civilians was my first priority, so I fired several more freeze rays at the mounted guns on the remaining jeeps.
My aim was good, but not perfect. Three shots froze each of the guns solid, but I used wide beams to make sure I hit my targets, and there was some splash-freezing. Large portions of the jeeps were frozen solid, and one unfortunate solider wasn't quick enough to get away and had his arm frozen to the gun as well. He screamed in both shock and pain, but he would be fine so long as I could wrap this up in a few minutes.
Once I landed I ignored the men who had turned their rifles on me, instead focusing on those that were trying to get away or heading towards the tents. My other arm formed into a directional magnet and yanked their guns towards me. With everyone's attention firmly on me, I pulled the arm up and changed it into an overpowered floodlight, emitting a blinding flash that caused everyone around me flinch back and cry out.
After that, it was a simple matter to take down the rest of them. The ones stumbling around blind I took out with electric shocks, and the few that tried to run I reeled back in with grapple lines (and then took out with electric shocks). In short order almost all of the soldiers were unconscious, and the few that weren't I tied up with pilfered rope from their jeeps. A few had broken bones and cuts from the crash, but nothing life threatening. In total, the whole fight had only lasted about thirty seconds.
It was then I heard Serling yell from the tent. "Jacob! What the hell is going on?! Who's shooting at us?!" A glance back revealed her to be peeking out from the edge of the tent's doorway.
"Not sure." I yelled back before I crouched next to one of the soldiers, looking him up and down. At first glance I thought these were North Rhelasian soldiers, but a closer look revealed slight differences in the uniform. The accents around the collar and sleeves were missing, and in place of the North Rhelasian flag patch on their arm there was an emblem of a jackal's head "Who are you? Why did you attack us?"
The Rhelasian man didn't response, instead just giving me an intense glare. I sighed and stood, but before I could do anything else, I heard an explosion in the distance. I turned my head to look, but I didn't see anything. A few seconds later I heard another two in quick succession. Given how I still couldn't see anything, they must have been both miles away and massive.
I swore I caught a hint of motion at the top of a nearby hill as I scanned the area, but as I turned my head to look there was nothing there. Is the foliage slightly warmer at that spot, or is it just my imagination? I wondered. Either way, I fired a freeze ray at the location, but while all the plant life froze, I failed to see anything else.
I had no idea what was going on, and I did not like it. I turned back to everyone looking at me. "Everyone, pack it up. I'm not sure what's going on, but we need to leave as soon as possible."
Everyone hurried away to do as I said, and I started to call home base in an attempt to figure out what was going on-
…And scowled as the static of a signal jammer was my response. Not this time, I thought as my arm changed shape. The last time I had faced one of these, my shapeshifting had been on the fritz, but now was a different matter. Really, all a signal jammer did was emit a powerful radio signal that drowned out all other transmissions in the area. So, the simplest way to get around it was to just generate an even stronger signal.
My arm thickened and extended, forming a cylindrical shape with a large parabolic dish on the end. It wasn't quite a radio laser, but it could put out an extremely powerful signal in a specific direction. And that direction at the moment was south, down near the parallel. "Kord, this is Machina, come in. We've just had armed men attack our camp, and I'm not sure who they belong to."
There was silence for several long, tense moments before I heard Ted's voice on the other end of the line. "Jacob! What the hell is going on up there?! Are my people safe?! Is Serling safe?! How are you getting a signal out?"
"Everyone's fine, I knocked out or tied up all the men. Right now I'm sending out about a strong a signal as I can manage." I paused. "I take it you noticed the jammer, then? How wide spread is it?"
"I don't know, but a lot of people lost contact with several places just north of the border. The military is scrambling right now, but from what I've heard the North Rhelasians are swearing it's not them."
I glanced at the men I had tied up. "Well, the uniforms of the men I captured do have a couple of differences. But if it's not them, then who the hell are these people?"
"I'll have to get back to you on that one, no one's telling me anything…" Ted growled. "If I had to guess, given that we've lost contact with several places at once, I'd say we're looking at a coup. Probably some people weren't happy with the peace agreement."
"Shit." I muttered. "Ted, we've already had a group of them gunning after your employees. We can't just ride this out."
Ted grunted in agreement. "And I don't think going to the local authorities for protection is the best idea, all things considered. I'm going to try to get some U.N. forces to your position, but given how cagy the North Rhelasians are being, I wouldn't count on it."
I sighed. "Well, I'd be all for calling the Justice League in… if they were allowed in the country." While South Rhelasia was part of the U.N., the North was not, and the peace treaty between the North and South only went so far. "To be honest I'm still surprise you managed to get me into the country."
"…yeah, about that," Ted began.
"Ted." I said flatly. "The North Rhelasians do know I'm here, right?"
"Of course they do! I had to give them the names of all the people I'd be sending into their country." Ted insisted, before his tone became a little more sheepish. "It's just… given how easily they agreed, there is a slight chance that they don't actually know you're a superhero."
"Oh my god Ted I've been flying in and out of their part of the stratosphere for the past few hours!" I yelled. "If they noticed that but didn't know I was supposed to be there-!"
"It'll be fine! The people at the border saw you and didn't raise a fuss. So their superiors probably know! Just, you know, try to avoid them if you can. Just to be sure."
I forced myself to calm down. Panicking wouldn't help here. "I'll keep that in mind." I said tightly. "Either way, we can't stay here. Will we get shot at border if we make it there?"
Ted was silent for a moment before he said. "You won't. I'll make sure of it."
"Right, then I'm going to try to get everyone here back. You should make sure to call the League, as well. They should know what's going on regardless of what they can do about it." I hesitated for a moment before I continued. "And contact Starfire. She'll want to know too."
The League might not have been able to do anything, but this was just the sort of thing the Team was made for.
"Will do." Ted said firmly. "Don't worry, I don't intend to let any one of you down. And I've still got a trick or two up my sleeve."
I closed the comm and looked around at everyone frantically grabbing their things and pilling into cars. Alright, all I had to do was escort about a dozen civilians 20 miles across hostile territory, potentially controlled by an unknown force.
No pressure.
=====A=====
A/N: Cue Snake Eater theme.