The Tragedy of Living

08

"I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?" Bruce wondered.

"It's a stabilizing agent," Tony answered, walking in with Coulson and said to him, "I'll fly you there. Keep the love alive. Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." He said to Thor, "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing." He then referred to the Iridium. "Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants." He said to the group, "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." Steve looked around as Tony covered his eye, and looked around. "How does Fury do this?"

"He turns," Hill answered.

Tony looked around the monitors and placed a button size hacking implant under Fury's desk, without anyone noticing before saying, "Well, that sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component they still need is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"

"Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve questioned.

"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Bruce replied.

"Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect," Tony said.

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet."

"Finally, someone who speaks English."

"Is that what just happened?" Steve muttered.

Elsie glanced at Steve and laughed softly.

Tony and Bruce shook hands. A glimmer in their eyes shined as the mutual respect for each other showed.

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner," Tony said. "Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

Bruce looked down and replied, "Thanks."

Fury walked in and said, "Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."

"Let's start with that stick of his," Steve suggested. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Thor repeated. "I do not understand."

"I do!" Steve exclaimed. "I understood that reference."

Elsie smiled lightly. "I understood it as well."

Tony rolled his eyes while Steve looked proud of himself. Elsie still had a light smile.

"Shall we play, Doctor?" Tony asked.

"Let's play some," Bruce replied.

As Bruce and Tony walked out, the Galaga player turned ever so discreetly, watched as everyone else dispersed and went back to playing.

INT. BRUCE'S LAB - NIGHT - LATER

Bruce continuously scanned with a gamma ray detection scanner on the scepter for radiation. Tony looked at his monitors, shifting and solving as many algorithms and equations.

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract," Bruce said. "But it's gonna take weeks to process."

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops," Tony told him.

"All I packed was a tooth brush."

Tony smiled. "You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it, it's candy land."

"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke... Harlem."

"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises."

Suddenly, Tony poked Bruce with a miniature electrical prod. Steve and Elsie walked in on them, pissed at Tony.

"Ow!" Bruce cried as Tony looked at him closely.

"Hey!" Steve yelled.

"Nothing?" Tony asked.

"Are you nuts?"

"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?"

"Funny things are."

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, Doctor."

"No, it's all right," Bruce said. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

"You're tiptoeing, big man," Tony told him. "You need to strut."

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark," Steve retorted.

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?"

"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." He pointed to Bruce. "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"

Bruce, bobbling the words, replied, "Uh... I just wanna finish my work here and..."

"Doctor?" Steve and Elsie called.

Bruce paused a beat. "A warm light for all mankind, Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."

"I heard it."

Bruce pointed at Tony. "Well, I think that was meant for you. Even if Barton didn't post that all over the news."

"Stark Tower? That big ugly," Steve said as Tony gave him a look, "...building in New York?"

"It's powered by Stark Reactors, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?"

"That's just the prototype. My name's kind of the only name in clean energy right now."

Bruce, referring to Tony, said, "So, why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secure files."

Steve, taken aback, asked, "I'm sorry, did you say...?"

"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever tried to hide, " Tony said as he held out a bag of blueberries. "Blueberry?"

"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?"

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not possible."

"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them."

"Following is not really my style."

Steve smiled. "And you're all about style, aren't you?"

Tony, with a nerve hit, shot back, "Of the people in this room, which one is; A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?"

"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Bruce said.

Steve took in the possibility, but as an obedient soldier, shook it off and ordered, "Just find the cube."

Elsie looked between the group with a frown and glanced at Steve, then back to the others.