November 2016
Flashback
A tall, lanky, bespectacled seventeen-year-old boy was at MIT, earphones and holding the handles of his backpack. The teenager was wearing a blue shirt with a white Saturn outline on it with khakis and shoes as he bobbed to the music that was playing.
This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name
He entered the cafeteria, taking off his earphones, getting his food and looking through the ocean of people hoping to find somewhere to sit in. He saw a teenager of similar age. He was Romani, hailing from the country of Latveria, wearing a green sweatshirt with a long-sleeved white button-up shirt underneath, writing something.
He asked, "Uh, is anyone sitting here?"
"Feel free," the Romani student told him, noticing the books and the messy papers he had been carrying around, plopping them onto the table. He noticed his handwriting was horrible, the worst he had ever seen, yet he could still make sense of it.
"I see you're working on astrophysics," the Romani student told him.
"Yeah, cosmic strings, exotic matter, dark energy, hopefully won't be science fiction any longer.
"I see. I assume you are the youth who got a PhD at sixteen, yes?"
"Yeah, though it was more on the Jovian system," he shrugged. "Figured out everything that could be figured out about it without having to actually go there manned."
"Quite different from what you are doing now. Still, quite impressive," the student in green rubbed his chin.
"Well, yeah, I-I don't just wanna stay stuck in one area of space science, I wanna do all of it, well wherever I'm interested. Not interested in stars and galaxies, though, as of now."
"That is not impossible. Victor von Doom," he reached out his hand.
"Reed Richards."
"An impressive doctoral dissertation, I must say, though I very much doubt that there would be life elsewhere in the Jovian system other than on Europa. I'd very much say that one could have had life form on Europa, perhaps when Jupiter was still undergoing gravitational collapse in its earliest days, when the heat from such may have kept the moon's icy surface liquid."
"I'm inclined to think otherwise, there is definitely life in Jupiter's clouds." The two continued to chatter, debating over the content of the young astrophysicist's thesis.
May-June 2029
Baxter Building
Four intrepid explorers were relaxing in their living room. Many things had befallen these four, from a wormhole that mutated them after finding aliens in the Jovian system, to them revealing all their discoveries and starting a new age, stopping a robber with their newfound abilities not too long before, and them going on strange adventures and fighting villains. And not too long after the conference, the release of various spin-off technologies. New disinfectant technology, anti-radiation measures, anti-bone degeneration, etc. The world had changed, indeed.
The youngest among them was sixteen years old, on a gap year from high school. He still had to go back to school come September. His older sister had nagged him to do his homework come school, or else he wouldn't go on adventures. Like he was listening to anything she had to say. The astrophysicist was now 29 years old, and across him was his best friend, a giant rocky being composed of time crystals.
The four were relaxing, not doing anything, when suddenly, they were teleported to somewhere, somewhere where they could see the ambient orb of a celestial body undergoing gravitational collapse. One could see its various yellow, orange, and red granules. Its day side was illuminated by the smaller orb, and one could see its night side was also hot as well, and its granules changing and bubbling.
The atmosphere of wherever they were was a bluish one with a few white clouds here and there, many of them wispy. The water ocean looked okay, and one could see the distorted reflection of the planet and Star amidst the ambience of the water, as well as chunks of ice big and small. Further out in the distance, in the background, one could see white ice chunks and landscapes, mountains and large swathes of ice. The four were currently standing on one such block of ice, with a great view around them.
Further out in the distance, they could see the small, yellow orb, one 25 times fainter than the Sun as seen from Earth, unable to keep the place warm enough to prevent the formation of an ice shell billions of years into the future . For a while, they remained there, just watching the sight, no one knowing where they were or why they were there.
Time progressed rather quickly as they watched the day and night cycle pass, watching the smaller orb and the orange orb move through the sky. The sky darkened, then lightened. He took the time to absorb all the details. The flow of time stopped, and they were back in normal time. One could see a brighter colored sliver on the larger orb illuminated by the smaller orb, showcasing the colors the larger orb would display billions of years into the future. Another orb passed in front of it.
Another rapid progression of time, a whole day and night cycle had passed. They saw the larger orb, once again its sliver illuminated by the luminous yellow orb on its right, and the clouds had changed position. The scientist had figured out where they were. He remembered that it was the first topic he and his old friend from college had discussed. The orange orb, the watery surface of where they stood on, it all made sense now.
Before long, it was moving - the sky lightened again, and the big orb they were looking at moved. The two orbs had moved again, the water changed, clouds moved across the sky, it was all happening in fast motion.
Until…
"So, we meet again, Richards."
"Victor?"
"Victor?"
"Oooh, my god, what's up?"
"Get your hands off me!"