Chapter 17
“Jane, stop worrying about your technology and enjoy yourself”
“But Darcy, the tech is so close to working. I didn't know Washington DC could have so many tech inspirations!”
“Jane, we are at the inauguration ball for the first female president in United States history. Enjoy the night.”
“Why are we here?”
“Because you're renowned astrophysicist Doctor Jane Foster and officially the first person in written history to have contact with an extraterrestrial.”
“Official?”
“Technically I ran over Thor and then tased him first,” Darcy said, neglecting to mention her father. Jane didn't have to know.
“And you?”
“I, Jane, am going to go dance with my boyfriend because some guys look perfect in suits,” Darcy said, and walked away, leaving Jane at the spot in the corner of the room the not very social scientist had chosen to sequester herself in.
Jane reluctantly left the corner a few minutes after that but was extremely thankful that when the ball was winding down, Darcy found her to go back to their place that they were staying in for the last few months, as terms for the next research grant.
When they arrived back at their place through absurd traffic, Jane rushed to the technology immediately, not even bothering to pause and take off her makeup, undo her hair, or switch out of her ridiculously expensive dress Darcy had pulled her along to shop for.
Darcy, sighing in fond exasperation, followed suit.
It took all of 3 minutes for Jane to fulfill the idea her boredom-fueled mind had gotten during the ball.
“There!”
“Remind me what this does again?”
“It's a video call without requiring a device on the other end, it latches onto energy signatures, and since we have Thor's well documented, we can connect to him!”
“Great. Well, turn it on.” Darcy said.
“Stand over here” Jane motioned, “so you'll be in the camera.”
Darcy obeyed, making sure her bottomless emergency preparedness bag was with her in case this communication involved an artificial Bifrost. She could never know.
Typing the final commands into the computer, because anyone educated knew basic coding these days, Darcy realized, like they had known Latin centuries before.
Jane pressed enter, and the large screen flickered to life.
There was a lot of gold on the other side, but Darcy was nevertheless relatively unimpressed at her first glimpse of Asgard.
And there was Thor, smashing some sword fighting dummies, Darcy recognized the Asgardian technology for what it was, a dummy for fighting practice that would always rebuild itself, given Lilith had a few.
“Did it work?” Jane asked.
“Well, given we have a video feed that has to my knowledge never been recorded, yes, we have contact, though the lag must be enormous.”
Thor suddenly froze and turned in their direction. “How is this possible?” He asked, and Darcy sighed in relief that his Allspeak was turned on, given she wasn't supposed to understand Asgardian.
“Thor!” Jane exclaimed. “Is this live? Can you see and hear me?”
Thor turned away from him fighting the dummy, rubbing his eyes. “Volstagg, Sif? Am I the only one seeing this?”
The two had obviously been out of the cameras range, but stepped in, and both earthen women could see them.
“No, if you are also speaking of seeing your lady Jane of Midgard and her friend Lady Darcy, you are not the only one.” Volstagg said.
“Aye, I can see them too.”
“Question is, can you hear us?” Darcy asked.
“Yes. How is this possible?”
“Jane made a thingamabob that latches onto your energy signature and connects us like a video call. Live, it seems like.” Darcy said.
“That is brilliant, and unheard of marvelous technology.”
“Well it can probably be done on earth, but nobody does it.” Jane said.
“Well, guess the first official interplanetary video call will evolve into Thor and Jane having a virtual date.” Darcy mentioned.
“Lady Darcy, Heimdall has mentioned his sight of you is a little muddled.”
“That's the guy who can see everyone everywhere all the time no matter what t without consent right? Yeah, thank goodness for small mercies.” Darcy said.
“Thor, how does travel between Asgard and Earth work? When will you be able to come visit?”
“I am afraid not for a long time. It turned out the Destroyer had been a malignant scheme of my brother Loki to take over the throne of Asgard, and when I went to stop him, the Rainbow Bridge and the Bifrost were broken.”
“So how long until it's fixed? A few months?”
“Nay. It is not in living memory how it was built, so it may take decades or even more.”
“Decades?!” Jane exclaimed. “Thor, is there any way you could send the blueprints, maybe we can work on it on this end?”
“Jane, a good speech and we can get like all the good scientists in the world working on it. Do you get how revolutionary this is? Concrete proof of not only instantaneous mechanical teleportation but also of an extraterrestrial sentient civilized life form, species, that conspiracy theorists can't logically ignore, this will definitely push through those plans to unite countries to just continents or regions, and at best even just one single planet earth, this will permanently alter the planets geopolitical scene, and I thought the presidential inauguration we were just as was exciting!” Darcy exclaimed.
“What?” Jane, Thor, Sif, and Volstagg asked.
“I'm going for a Masters Degree in Political Science. I know these things. For those who don't know basic politics, this could change a lot, if regular contact was established.”
“I do not know if your scientists could handle this, but I do know another way” Sif said. “Or rather, we all know where to find it.”
“Of course,” Thor exclaimed. “Loki made notes of everything, there must be one of his hidden passageways to Midgard.”
“A whatamajigies?” Darcy asked. She really needed to talk to Lilith, now. She would be the only one who would know how to handle this. An alert buzzed on her phone from JARVIS. Lilith had gone into labor. Dammit.
“Hidden passageways. Ways around the Bifrost to get to other realms.” Thor said, as he walked briskly to Loki’s study to find the notes.
Sif and Volstagg followed, as did the projection on Jane and Darcy.
Darcy stepped out of the camera for a moment while Thor walked through the halls of Asgard and Jabe oohed and aahed at all the endless gold.
“JARVIS, can you connect me to Tony or Lilith?”
“Missus Stark is unavailable, but Mister Stark is nervously pacing. I will connect you.”
“Darcy! Something is happening. Please tell me something’s happening. But nothing too long because the doc says another hour and I'm a father.”
“Tony. Relax and stop pacing. I have a bit of a situation here.”
“What? No more gunfire?”
“No. A different kind of situation.” She lowered her voice so only JARVIS enhanced sensors in her phone could pick it up. “The method he used to get from there to earth isn't actually blocked and Thor plus two of his Asgardian people are heading to it, ETA anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour.”
“Lilith is not going to be happy.”
“In other news Jane and I but mostly Jane made contact with Thor in Asgard, the Bifrost is broken beyond repair anytime soon, and he is dead.”
“Who, Thor?”
“The other he.”
“What do I do?”
Darc couldn't lower her voice anymore. “Tell Lilith as soon as you can, she needs to know, it'll get to her much more than me. I wasn't even a year old. She was 10.”
“Dammit, that he.”
“Yeah. So anyway, bye. I need to see what Jane is doing over there.”
“Bye.”
She walked back over to Jane and saw on the screen Thor had finished rooting through Loki’s notes and triumphantly held up a map that Darcy promptly snapped a photo of. It was backed up by JARVIS and sent to the Stark servers immediately.
It took another two minutes, but then Thor, Sif and Volstagg still accompanying him, were stepping through a rainbow-tinted cave, and then the projection of Jane pinged a location.
“You're in Norway.”
“How do I get to where you are now?”
“I can ping you, track your location by the location of the projection. I can give you directions but so far, head... Do you have north, east, south, and west on Asgard?”
“Yes.”
“Then go southwest for a couple of thousand miles, I'll redirect you from there.”
“Or we could fly out there.”
“That would take even longer,” Jane said.
“Give it a second,” Darcy said. A minute of awkward silence later, there was the distinct sound of a jet on the roof. “There we go.”
Jane hauled the technology up with her, onto the roof where the quinjet had landed. The last part up the quinjet ramp, the technology was pushed from behind by a very strong set of arms. Jane recognized Bucky when the ramp door closed.
“Private jet, built-in boyfriend,” Darcy said cheerily.
“I am not built,” Bucky stated, frowning merrily.
“Sure you are, cyborg man.” She said as she pressed a button and his left arm was revealed to be metallic from the shoulder down.
Jane squeaked upon seeing it.
When Darcy realized JARVIS wasn't piloting the jet, she smiled innocently at Bucky who was.
While they were flying, Darcy finally asked Thor the question she had been dying to ask for a long time.
//politsci