Post by The Wonderful Wachter on Sept 28, 2012 6:21:56 GMT -5
Road to the Future
"Fourth"
"Fourth"
By The Wonderful Wachter[/center]
23 Years Ago
Space, the final frontier, it has been called that time and time again. Countless hours, trillions of dollars, the manpower of humanity’s best and brightest, had been spent reaching for the heavens… To explore the vastness that has no corners. And today, they would take their next step into touching other stars.
Yet it would also be the day he learned that there was no such thing as finality in exploration.
Today new paths would open to him. The chance to explore different universes and times, to reach the depths of the oceans without risk of being crushed. He would journey to the center of the earth and back. Today, he truly would become a child of tomorrow.
Emptiness floated in front of the shuttle. Stars burned more brilliantly than they ever could in the polluted skies down below. The three couldn’t help but experience a moment of satisfaction at being so close to achieving their dreams. Mere minutes from now, they would be the first humans in history to achieve faster than light travel.
The pilot was a big man, stretching his blue space suit tight across bulging muscles. He didn’t look much like a scientist. Didn’t look much like an astronaut either. Yet he had the true heart of an explorer. He knew the thrill of taking risks, the joy of going where no man had gone before. And it hadn’t taken much for him to be talked into this expedition. His fingers flew across the controls, checking the gauge levels of his shuttle. She indeed was his ship no matter what her designer said. After all, he was the one who dubbed her the Fantastic.
Beside him, in the copilot’s seat, sat a woman that was as much his difference as night was to day. Tiny and willowy, her suit clung snugly to her lithe form. It would have been a distraction back on earth. However up here, there were far more important matters on the mind. She stared out at the openness of space, her mouth slightly open in amazement over its beauty. It was all new to her.
The third and final occupant of the vessel was tall and as thin as a twig. Could have taken three of him to match the pilot despite their similar height. He sat behind them in the navigator’s seat. His eyes took in all the readings. His fingers never hesitated as they put in his calculations. Yes, the Fantastic was his friend’s ship but this… this was his mission.
“We’ve achieved escape velocity,” Sue Storm said unable to hide the wonder in her voice.
“Save some of that awe for later, Suzy.” The pilot laughed. “This is nothin’.”
“Indeed,” agreed Reed from behind them, his tone even more excited than that of Sue’s. “Only a few more moments. I want to run final batch of calculations just to be sure.”
Ben nodded, crossing his arms to lean back in his chair. This wasn’t his first trip into space and he certainly didn’t want it to be his last just because a scientist was too hyped up with himself. He’d spent enough time at the Baxter Building to know the dangers of that. But until then… “Oi, ya can come out now!”
Only silence met his shout. Across from him, Sue gave him an odd look as if he was crazy. But he wasn’t. He knew the ship like the back of his hand. More than that, he knew how boys thought. He had been one once. Got into more than a few scrapes for being too curious.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked.
“Jonathan if I had to guess,” Reed answered without looking up from his monitors.
The cockpit was cramped. It was designed with four people in mind even if there were only three at the moment. The fourth member of their party had the misfortune of becoming ill within days of launch. And there wasn’t much need to replace him. Yet still, with the fact they were missing one and there was an open seat, there was nobody else the eye could see.
“Johnny?”
Ben hit a button on his control panel. Behind them, a latch sprung open and a various research instruments began to float out. That was wrong. They should have been locked in. A muffled yelp sounded an instant later as a small figure lost his hold and legs poked out into the open, kicking uselessly in the lack of gravity.
“Johnny!” Sue tried to stand before remembering she was still strapped into her seat. She fumbled with the bonds and floated free, fuming with anger.
“Hi… sis…” Jonathan Storm pushed himself out of the compartment and bounced off the floor. He was a young man, a boy really, barely a teenager. He wore the same suit as the rest of them yet the helmet looked more bulky.
“Dad is going to kill me!” his sister shrieked.
“C’mon… Dad won’t mind. I’m finally showing an interest in science, aren’t I?”
Sue glared at the other men. “You two knew?”
Ben nodded while Reed pointed at the monitor to his upper left. “There were four life signs aboard. When you narrow down the possibilities where one could hide and the size needed to be in order to fit, it was either Johnny or a very large dog.”
“Hey!”
“Don’t worry, Suzy. Perfectly safe. Reed’s sent dozens of monkeys into N-Space and back again. They all came out safe and sound. And if Dr. Storm has a problem with it, he can take it up with me!” Ben thumped his chest in utmost confidence.
“But…”
“It’s not like you can just turn it around,” Johnny pointed out.
“Her, Jonathan,” corrected Reed. “If you two would, please resecure the instruments. We’ll be able to jump any time now.”
Sue gave her brother a look that said it wasn’t over but nevertheless floated towards him and began gathering up the supplies. She took her time while her brother hastened to carry out Reed’s orders. Looking at the boy and recalling how she felt moments ago, she couldn’t fault him. Space was so cool.
“Reed…”
“Yes?”
“Reed…!” There was a sense of urgency in Ben’s voice.
The other three looked to the fore of the vessel and suddenly knew why. For some reason, space wasn’t all black and filled with specks of stars. A wave of multi-colored energy swept through the emptiness, coming at them. Where had it come from? What was it? How in the world could it appear just like that? All those questions echoed in Reed Richards’ mind and more.
“Cosmic anomaly…” despite the very real fear in his tone, Reed was absolutely amazed.
“Opening gate to N-Space.” Their pilot stated without an ounce of hesitation. “Ya got ten seconds to strap in!”
Reed glanced down at his readings. “We don’t have ten seconds…”
A swirling red hole in space and reality opened before them, relatively close to the wave of cosmic rays. Ben put full power to the Fantastic’s thrusters. There wasn’t enough time to strap in. Nowhere to hide. Nothing they could do but rush forward into the abyss.
Sue held onto her brother as tightly as she could, one arm gripping a railing on the side of the cockpit. The inertial dampeners weren’t enough. She screamed in pain as she felt the limb getting pulled out. Yet still she held, protecting Johnny… Protecting her little brother.
The Fantastic vanished into the wormhole as the cosmic wave crashed into them…
Present,
Foundation
They called it N-Space back then. Reed had the brilliant idea that if you couldn’t reach faster than light travel in this universe then why not try another? His portals to another realm had been born then. Instantaneous travel between two points – making the ends of a string meet by bending them in the middle. Something like that. Over two decades later and John still didn’t have a complete clue how the concept quite worked. He just knew that in hundreds of trial runs before with animals and the inanimate before and in the hundreds since, there had yet to be another freak accident like that.
Now they knew the truth of the matter. N-Space had a new name. The Negative Zone. The combination of the cosmic wave of radiation and the rearrangement of their molecules at the most basic levels had caused instability in the four of them. Reed had lucked out, became Mr. Fantastic with the ability to literally have no limits with how far he could stretch his brilliance. The Storms were a little less. Sue had turned invisible while John burst into flames, a human torch. Neither one had been able to turn off their powers back then. But at least they weren’t like the final member of their party…
John glanced up at the podium, his eyes focusing on one of his oldest friends. Ben Grimm the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing. That bald dome… those craggily features… being that ugly… Well, thankfully, he had ears now. That had been John’s own personal mystery… How in all the known universes did Ben hear for all those years?
Ben was the captain, commander, headmaster – take your pick – of the Foundation. He wore his crisp uniform, somewhere between a cross of a science officer and that of a military one, without the hint of a wrinkle. His pale skin reflected more light than all the white in his coat combined. Sue should have convinced him to wear a hat. John was blinded down here by the brilliance in that chrome-dome’s shine.
How were the cameras supposed to focus on his sister with that ugly mug next to her?
He should have stayed orange.
Crossing his arms, John leaned back in his chair. He was the only member of the original Fantastic Four in attendance not up there on the podium in front of the press. Hell, he was the only member of his family not up there. He didn’t quite have a place in the Foundation. Not that he really wanted one. He was here for support. Valeria and Franklin, his niece and nephew respectively, stood behind their mother in dress clothes instead of uniforms. Behind them, sitting among the staff, both educational and technical, were John’s parents; his father in the white science uniform that involved adding a coat to the body suit and his mother in a slightly more flattering double-breasted shirt and loose pants ensemble over hers. Reed’s choice in style didn’t lend much in favor of accenting the traits of a woman in her later years.
And there, between his parents in the buffer zone, the picturesque image of a sixty-plus Franklin in the form of Nathanial Richards. Reed’s father made the gray and white in Johnny’s parents’ hair stand out ever more. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard laughed in the face of aging. His face refused to wrinkle. John could recall all the times his father would start drinking and begin to lament over the other man’s luckiness.
It was a Baxter Building reunion.
Missing only one man.
John twisted in his seat to alleviate some of the pressure on his butt. Why they couldn’t splurge on the foam-form chairs for this was beyond him.
Sue, still resplendent after all these years and two children, stood at the front of the dais; the voice of the Future Foundation. Like her children, she chose a style different than the staff. Her light-blue dress and its matching coat was so similar in color to their original suits that it could be no coincidence. Her blond hair lacked a single strand of gray. Wrinkles knew better than to mar her skin.
Lucky.
“… foundation for the future. Reed Richards’ vision is too grand in scale to be limited to any single nation, to any single race. We will embrace new ideas, dream of new innovations. We will go where no man has gone before as we have time and time again. Free thinking. Always exploring. We will find the solutions to humanity’s problems. Cures for diseases, Salves for intolerance. A cleaner, self-recycling energy supply available to all. There is nothing the Future Foundation will give up on. We will be the embodiment of hope. We will teach the children of tomorrow so that there will be a tomorrow.”
Almost before she had opened the floor to questions, the scavengers flocked in as they always did. For the most part, John tuned them out. In this grand assembly room with its domed ceiling displaying swirling galaxies and burning suns, they couldn’t help sound even more petty. Yet a few did grab his attention.
“Where is the Dr. Richards?”
“Oh,” Sue began wistfully, “You all know how Reed stretches himself thin and gets tangled up in his projects. I knew it when I married him and I know it just as well now, there is no getting him to shave and look presentable enough to not look like some mad scientist when he’s in the midst of discovery.”
There was laughter. Twenty years later and they still laughed at the stretching jokes.
“What is your response to the claims that this ‘Foundation’ is in reality Captain Fantastic’s attempts to carve out his own personal empire and prove him and his kind to be humanity’s superior?”
Who the hell was Captain Fantastic?
Behind her, Franklin and Valeria shared a glance. The former took a step forward yet stopped when his mother raised her hand. “I would ask them what would they do if they had his power and compare it to what he has done.”
If they only knew just how powerful Franklin was… they’d realize this station was so beneath him that it’d be nothing but a footnote if he wanted to carve out an empire.
John sighed all the way down to his toes. Space used to be so cool. And now he couldn’t wait to get back down to Earth and away from these vultures. He caught a wink from his nephew, directed only at him. At least he wasn’t the only one bored… The Fantastic Four were stuck here together.
Just like family should be.
You have been reading Road to the Future: Torch.
The wait is over, True Believers.
The Fantastic Four are here.