“It's actually, technically, dark matter," I said as gesticulated to Hansen, who was sitting in a lotus position on a lab chair. The paint in the SWORD research rooms was still fresh enough I could smell it and Gideon Malick, one of the idiots who would have launched a nuke at New York given his continuous seat on the world security council, already had me trying to crack into the box that held the door to his alien god. I was doing my best to figure out how to lock it shut.
"That's a rock," my co-worker said, pointing at the black stone in the middle of the room ensconced in a cage with more sensors than most people knew existed, "And it's observable. So if it's dark matter, it has a funny way of showing it."
The Monolith was literally a solid black orb that swallowed anything that touched it and spit out… elsewhere. I had the Abstract propped against my knee as I stared at the damn thing. The Abstract was a manual for invention, for creation, and it was old and powerful. Out in the depths of space, there was a Gibborim civilization that would make us look like cavemen. They may have been fighting some other alien. For all I knew, the ROB that had summoned me and made me could be a Gibborim.
Still got killed by bullets though, so I suppose at the end of the day things had worked out for me.
The Monolith was old, older than human civilization, but it too was an aspect of wacky out there tech. Whoever had made these things in the original time was a Stark of tech substantially above 21st century humanity. "I don't know, any kind of description of this in terms you would understand is probably gibberish. But there's a dark matter element that has kept it active for millennia. I'd love to be able to put that into our power systems."
"Always thinking in terms of energy huh?"
"Not always," I said, walking around the monolith, the stupid sphinx box. I needed to find a way to alter the trajectory of its portal but it wasn't really a programmable machine the way that most of our stuff. "But at the end of the day, it's an irrelevant question - I might be able to move this kind of dark matter around but I don't think I could align the cascade of technological innovations necessary to harvest this stuff and stabilize it."
"So, what, put it back in the dungeon? Feels like you've been circling the nothing on this one. Nobody knows how it works, just give up."
"No," I said irritated. I didn't have much choice. Had to find a way to turn this thing off. I had no idea how it worked or what the alien god of Malick's favor was doing in it, but I wasn't going to let him get to Earth. Earth was, if nothing else, mine and I didn't want to share it with an alien god that hadn't seen its surface in a thousand years.
"Up to you."
"How's the procedure going?" I asked
She held up a hand and started heating it, the warmth of her hand casting a glow over her brown hair and long face. It might have been a good look if it weren't for the fact that I could feel the heat off her thousand degree hand from here.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
"That's good," I said. We'd finally cracked how to turn Extremis off while people were in the process of blowing up and we'd straightened that out. Soon, we'd be putting that procedure forward to governments to cure serious injuries - Although Hansen reported that the anesthetics did absolutely nothing while the body was going through adaptation. Rough procedure, but it could give you back a leg or fix broken elements of your genetic code. And since we could turn it off, it wouldn't qualify as a 'lethal enhancement' like the Super-Soldier Serum did. It would probably require close monitoring but I could live with that.
"Not looking forward to it wearing off, even if it means Earth is safer." Most patients never exploded under the effects of Extremis in the first place, so if the present Extremis patients made the full duration of dose without needing the off switch, that meant that we could give it to the Super Soldiers.
"They're not going to let you dose regularly, Dr. Hansen," I said bluntly. SWORD research contract or no, cooperative witness or not, Maya Hansen had worked for AIM. Dosing her had been illegal and I was fire-proof in terms of losing my job, but it was unlikely people would be overly sympathetic to a non-field usage of the Extremis again.
"Can't say I blame them," she said, shaking her head at the box. "I wouldn't trust me either. Why do you?"
It would've been fundamentally unwise to say that she was practically the best person I had a regular relationship with now that Tony and I were on the outs. It didn't feel like it would be permanent, Pepper had sent along a card, and Tony had sent back a thank you card he'd probably picked out a CVS or something when I sent along an apology card. Not an apology back, but still not nothing. Tony couldn't possibly be able to stay mad at people for getting mad at him, it would've made no sense. But a month had gone by, so I wasn't expecting immediate reconciliation either.
"Dr. Hansen, I've cut my share of corners," I said instead. "No conspiracies to assassinate the President, but it isn't like Ellis is my favorite person either."
"Alright, well, good luck with your box? Rock? Dark matter?"
"Mm," I said after a moment, closing the Abstract and its bizarre luminous interface. "I'm working on this problem all the time. Needed to try to explain it to someone."
"So I'm your ducky?" Hansen said, representing the ducky that computer programmers sometimes kept
"Don't take offense," I said with a sigh. The monolith was relentlessly disagreeable, resisted prodding. "But I don't have a lot of peer advisors in the subject of ancient non-terrestrial portal rocks."
Hansen laughed, "Fair enough. Good luck Michael."
"Thank you, Maya," I said as she walked out the door.
It would take me another three weeks to figure out how to mess with its inner portal without provoking the damn thing. Tony was just lucky I was a duplicitous opportunist. I never got any credit for the stuff I did so my close allies couldn't achieve their most fundamental goals.