Comparing Notes
Scott marched back up to his office, leading Skye by the elbow. He blew past the others and made for the landing bay. The sun had to have been up by now, and he brought the scared young woman to an emergency door on the far corner of the large room.
“Agent Riley…” Coulson started, having followed them.
“Sir, I’ll explain in a second. Right now, I have to do this.” Scott said, as he unlocked the door and pushed it open, leading Skye onto the roof of the building.
“Recognize anything across the river?” Scott asked
“Is that…” Skye started
“The Empire State Building? Yes, yes it is. Welcome to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Told you this is New York.”
“But what are all those other buildings?”
“Those ‘other’ buildings are 70 years of development. The big one to the south is One World Trade Center. At one thousand, seven hundred and seventy six feet to the tip top, it’s the tallest building in the western hemisphere. Over there is the Stark Building, right next to Grand Central. The Avengers used to work out of it, then things got, well it’s a long story. Then, to the north, we have 432 Park Ave off by itself there; you can actually look down onto the top of the ESB from there. And if you look, even Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City now have their own skylines of condos and office buildings.”
“Why would he allow the city to change so much? If he...” Skye started before Scott interupped, trying to stay calm “I told you, he was frozen in the arctic for most of the 20th century. He was the one on that plane. He saved the world. To all those people out there he’s still just ‘Captain America’. He never had the chance to run because he was frozen before Roosevelt died.”
“So… He’s dead?”
“No, he was just sleeping. And I’m not being factious or sarcastic, when SHIELD defrosted him, he woke up. 70 years on ice and then went right back into being a hero. You get some fresh air, Daisy will stay with you, I’ll be back in a second.”
“I got her to spill the beans on everything.” Scott told Coulson and company, “Sir, would you like to remind everyone what happened to Steve Rogers on his last mission during the war?”
“He crashed that giant bomber that Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, had sent to attack America.” Coulson said “He was frozen in the Arctic until SHIELD thawed him out. I was there when it happened.”
“Right, now, here’s where things get interesting. In Skye’s world, he wasn’t on that plane. Because in that world, Hydra found Sergeant James Barns at the bottom of that canyon a whole lot sooner and turned him against Captain Rogers during the war. They made him into a sort of prototype version of the Winter Solider, using much the same techniques like they used on people like poor Agent Palmas.
“When Rogers and the SSR stormed Schmidt’s base, Barnes was there, waiting for him. And they were still fighting when the plane took off. On that Earth, it was Agent Peggy Carter and Howard Stark who ended up on the plane. They caused it to crash. As it was the Eskine Serum that saved Rogers here, they unfortunately died. In his grief, Rogers stormed Berlin and killed Hitler himself. He ended the war in Europe a good six months early. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the threat of Rogers by himself was sufficient to convince Japan to surrender without the second bomb at Nagasaki or the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.”
“So Rogers didn’t end up frozen…” Coulson muttered “interesting.”
“But the damage to his psyche was enormous. He was forced to kill Bucky. He’d lost the woman he loved and his best friend, along with the mentorship of Howard Stark. Once he saw what the atom bomb could do, he absolutely lost it. He ran for president in 1948 without any external backing, won and has held the job ever since.
“The worst part of all of this, the man blamed science and scientists for everything that had gone wrong in the world. Rodgers threw everyone who worked on the Manhattan project in jail save Albert Einstein since he was the only one who tried to stop Truman from using the bomb.
He’s used his influence and the fear he instilled in people to put a stop to nearly all technological and scientific advancements. No space program, no personal computers, restricted medical development. Anyone here ever play the ‘Fallout’ franchise? It’s set in a world where they didn’t develop the transistor, and everything got stuck in a 1950s “THE FUTURE” vibe for more than a century until the US and China got into a nuclear war in 2077. From what I can tell, Rogers enforced much the same in his world. Kids are still watching westerns on black and white TVs. The only area they seemed to advance was civil rights.”
“Steven Rogers was always the non-judgemental type” Coulson added in. “He saw the good in everyone.”
“He completely ended segregation immediately after taking office and passed universal civil rights act by 1950. He even legalized same-sex marriage in 1977 after one of his aids talked to him about it. But at the same time, Congress is little more than a rubber stamp on his agenda, and the Supreme Court hasn’t heard a case in ages.”
“What’s this 'Chimera' group Skye mentioned?” May asked
“To quote our guest; ‘A terrorist organization that wants nothing more that the ending of our way of life and everything the SSR stands for’. The best rough translation I got from talking to her is ‘Mensa meets the IRA’. They would seem to be mostly intellectuals who want to restore the progress of the human race along with anyone Rogers has pissed off, which we can assume is quite a lot of people. When Skye told me my computer was contraband, it was because she thought it was a color TV, which are controlled under the idea of restriction of using them for intelligence gathering. She didn’t understand microprocessors; the idea of cell phones, let alone a smart phone, blew her mind and when she saw that poster of the helicarrier I have in the hallway I think she nearly fainted.”
“Why did you decide to show her the city?” Couslon asked
“Because before she got zapped here, she was in the basement of SSR headquarters, which they built in the exact same spot that we built the Triskelion. I wanted to prove to her she wasn’t in Washington DC.”
At this point, Skye and Daisy entered the room, Daisy seemingly having calmed down her double.
“Ok. I told you everything.” Skye said “Now it’s time to keep up your end of the bargin.”
The others looked at Scott.
“I promised her more clam chowder…” He said sheepishly.