The Think Tank

Unreal city.

Unreal people, like Ben Grimm. There was a time when he couldn’t just walk out for groceries. No longer did he hear light whispers, hurtful gasps or quiet insults. No one stared, they didn’t even recognise him and he appreciated that.

There were only two people he wanted to look at and he was making his way back to them. Back to the warmth that shed off the cocoon he was trapped in.

Unreal building. Just over the bridge, right in the heart of Manhattan: the Baxter Building, the former Think Tank, a symbol of hope whose crystalline exterior reflected the light of the sun, leading the righteous to progress.

Those days seemed long gone by then. Ben was smarter than most, he had to give it his all to wear the dark green uniform with his tag on it, but he didn’t want a life of research.

Susan did. She was something else and there were too few left like her. Once Ben reached their floor, he found her tinkering with some kind of hologram.

“That looks an awful lot like what we saw in Wyoming.” he said and Sue knew that voice too well to be startled.

“Bingo. Little shining spheres playing tag… or whatever that was.” as she replied, he was putting down the many paper bags he brought in.

“Now whatcha doin’ that for? You never needed visual help or nuthin’.” he said, confirming yet again what Sue always believed: that he would have been a terrible actor, he would never be able to mask his accent.

But she liked that, it was a part of him.

She allowed him to come closer and let him hold her in his arms.

“It’s not for me, it’s for Coulson. We need to make him understand the situation without over complicating things. Here we are now, making presentations for a little financing.” she then sighed, remembering how boring presentations were in school, before the Think Tank.

Ben rested his head over her shoulder, he looked at the little Earths floating around the room and asked: “And what after that? How are you gonna save the world this time, Ms. Storm?”

“We already did that once. We can do it again.”

She led his arms around her waist and turned towards him. What a way to save the world, they both thought. They almost laughed but then they heard a boy shouting from the other room and a little bundle of purple energy flew right in.

A man shaped flame gave chase and they made daring twists and turns around the ceiling, harmlessly phasing through the recreation of Susan’s memories. At first the couple was left speechless at the scene, then Ben took a stance.

All of a sudden he was no longer made of flesh, rather of a mysterious purple energy, perhaps the same cosmic rays that came out of the portal to the N-Zone in the distant past, turning them into personifications of the elements. The bright light above turned her attention to him and in an instant Ben had his little angel in his arms, everyone’s tiny saviour.

In the meantime the flying torch was blocked right in his tracks by some invisible force and then stumbled a couple feet back. Once he stabilised, he slowly descended, the flame subsided revealing a young man with the same eyes and hair as Sue’s.

“Lil’ Mary Molly learns new tricks every day!” he said with a smile on his face.

“I don’t know if I’m ok with that. I mean, she’s so small and all...” said her dad, still colourful but that didn’t scare the toddler at all.

“I say that’s radical!” he exclaimed with his tongue sticking out, making Mary giggle.

“You seem to like this babysitting gig.” Sue said but deep down she predicted that.

The boy’s heart rate must have turned back to norm as he slowed down. “Of course I do. Maybe now that I have a little niece, I’ll know how you felt taking care of me.”

Johnny received a hug that made him feel much warmer than when he flamed on. Ben just smirked as he held Mary in his arms, when Johnny saw that he made a face and his brother in law smiled.

All of a sudden they heard a doorbell. Problem was, they didn’t have a doorbell. They noticed a little robot, maybe half of Ben’s height, floating behind the entrance to the room. He was holding a drive and after a look of approval he made his way in.

The silence was unnerving as Susan kneeled to the visitor’s height. A little smile appeared on his interface as she accepted the drive from his tiny spiky hand.

As if there was someone on the other side she asked: “Couldn’t you come here in person?”

Ben seemed to feel the same way. Johnny, not so much. After a moment of hesitation, another smile appeared on H.E.R.B.I.E.’s face then he flew away. That didn’t feel like a smile at all.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sue stood right outside the entrance to a small building in the desert. She was waiting, annoyed under a shadow. It was too darn hot to stay in the sun and too darn early to go inside.

She swore that if the person she was waiting for was chugging down any bottle of alcohol as he usually did, she would chug that same bottle up his… you know what.

Instead of something zipping across the sky as she expected, she heard a mundane engine in the distance and noticed the purple sports car it was coming from.

Once it stopped in front of her, the only two doors opened upwards, leaving her just as unimpressed as before while the two latecomers stepped outside.

“You literally created a super sonic flight suit and you still drive?”

“It’s Italian. If I didn’t use it now and then, I wouldn’t be me.” said the man with the little moustache, though his brown eyes seemed almost tired. He wouldn’t say it and Sue couldn’t put her finger on it either but it was as if he already went through this charade with someone else long ago and he was waiting for her to understand his character.

The blonde shrugged and replied: “I guess I should have learned by now. What I can’t really understand is that Tony’s habits are somehow latching onto you, Dr. Wilson.”

“What can I say? Flying is fun and all but I don’t wanna burn to a crisp like another winged boy you may have heard of.” said Sam, then he groaned: “Speaking of burning, why does every single base need to be in the middle of the desert?”

“Coulson’s old school. I guess he just likes the Area 51 aesthetic.” Tony replied.

“Screw that. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I miss Fury.”

So Tony scoffed and said: “Gee, I hate these annoying untrustworthy bureaucrats, I miss the old annoying untrustworthy bureaucrats.”

Sam sighed: “At least, at the Triskelion, we were cool.”

“I’m still cool!” he hastily retorted.

He didn’t even get an answer out of that statement, just disappointing silence as they finally walked in.

A brunet with sunglasses sat by a plain white table on the opposite side of the boring white room, with a half empty bottle of water and somehow wearing a suit despite the sultriness.

“Future Foundation.” he simply said, then looked at the three and pointed out: “Part of it, at least.”

“Don’t worry, I’m here.” they all heard a raspy voice say and noticed some wires and shining purple pieces float out of a grate. After they twisted and turned, they took the silhouette of a man.

“We wouldn’t want it any other way, Machine Man.” said the man in black. “Now, can you tell me what’s so important that you need to take my precious time?”

“What else could it possibly be with us, Coulson?” Sam asked, rhetorically. “Let’s start from Wyoming, a couple of weeks ago.”

“A close call, if I’ve ever seen one.”

Sam smiled: “Wouldn’t have said it better but it’s not about that day itself. We’re here to show you what we saw that day.”

Coulson seemed reasonably perplexed by the seemingly redundant phrase as Tony fixed a projector on the table. He didn’t remember anything weird about that day. At least nothing weirder than a mutant beyond Omega level.

The same presentation Sue was working on at the Baxter started and Coulson lightly rubbed his chin. “What are those little b– …spheres supposed to be?”

Sue tried to ignore his stutter and she replied: “We’ve thought about it for some time and we’ve agreed that those are Earths… as in, multiple versions of Earth.”

“They are…” Coulson was interrupted when a blue one and a red one crashed, turning to holographic dust. “When did you see this?”

“When we touched the brand new teleporter. Supposedly, we saw through his eyes and, thanks to him, we know there’s a new danger on the horizon, maybe closer than we thought.”

“Didn’t you all… well, now that I think about it, didn’t the baby already save the universe six months ago?”

Sue answered: “It could be something completely unrelated, possibly even larger in scale.”

“The whole multiverse.” Tony pointed out.

Sam jokingly said: “You weren’t planning on resting when you formed this team, right?”

Coulson stepped up. He took a short stroll around the table, something that the others thought had seen before in similar types. “What's the plan, Little Einsteins?”

Machine Man stepped up and he seriously replied: “We need funding for an expedition to the edge of our universe.”

Coulson stayed silent for a while, thinking that, when he was younger, that would have been absurd. “So, you want to explore?”

Susan promptly replied: “I call it ‘challenging the unknown’.”