Everyone in this universe is dicking around with ultra-high tech moonshot power solutions with cool names while I'm just printing ultra-cheap solar panels in Detroit and selling them at 400% of cost. Does that make them crazy? Does it make ME crazy? Well, it certainly means my cash flow is more of a cash torrent.

I was churning out plants just about as fast as they could be built or refurbished, the abundant labor market and the high wages I could afford put us in a dominant position. The internal dynamics of my company put our productivity doubling time at roughly every two months for the four years when the market would hit saturation and drive us out of the solar panel business. I was integrating wind and battery development to push those technologies forward as well.

The core thesis of my uplift strategy had been, first energy then computers then robots. Now I wasn't so sure - There were natural language UI programs in this setting (not just in Tony's labs either) and there were experimental visual recognition systems already online, capable of accessing information on photographed objects in real time. Together, those seemed sufficient to run most menial jobs with relatively basic robotics add-ons. Yet nobody had done it.

Some of the difficulty seemed to be straightforwardly economic - You need to invest money to implement any new tech and labor costs were substantially lower than the machine A.I. in some areas. Some of it was a reasonable caution about mass disruption to, say, check-out clerks. But that didn't explain the whole problem and I had a very sharp sense of the general economic climate. Alarm bells were going off in my mind. Why weren't the developments making money? I had to know.

That's why I was going to see Whiplash's father. I hadn't actually remembered Ivan or Anton Vanko's name or that they'd worked on the arc reactor - look Iron Man 2 wasn't good okay - but the Russian aide to Howard Stark who got deported? Yeah, I knew who that was. U.S. Patent law in this universe was actually thirty years, in total defiance of reason and common sense, but the patent for original Arc Reactor had STILL expired two decades ago. Anton or Ivan should've been rich oligarchs if Ivan was able to miniaturize it and they weren't and I didn't have any idea why.

That was how I'd found myself on a cold street in Russia, my mind locked in on the Russian language, knocking on the door of a complete stranger. His son came to the door. Ivan Vanko was a decade older than Tony. "What do you want, boy?" he asked in Russian, glaring at me. I didn't grin. This was Russia.

"Mr. Vanko, my name is Michael Trent. I'm here to see your father." I held out a check for a hundred thousand dollars in rubles to the man.

"Why?" he asked, glaring at the check. "He is not for sale. Or for hire, not any more. He is an old man and he is dying."

"I know, Mr. Vanko. I'm afraid the subject of my visit will not be a pleasant one, either. But that check should cover hiring a personal nurse to take care of him, maybe give you another month with him, maybe just keep him comfortable for the rest of his time here. I just want to ask a few questions." It was actually substantially more money than that, but flattering his filial piety was more important than being strictly accurate.

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"Fine. If he will see you." He stalked back into the house, a decent middle class home by Moscow standards, but not a rich one. He came back eventually, jerking his head at me to follow. The house was incredibly dirty and I found myself hoping that Ivan would spend some of that check on a maid. I was not so gauche as to say this out loud.

"So you are the rich man," the father said, lying on the couch, his voice hoarse. "You have questions?" I felt a softness toward the man, who really was dying and I sat down across from him in a tattered chair.

"I wanted to talk to you about the Arc Reactor."

"Bah!" he scoffed, "I told the Soviet Union I couldn't deliver anything cheaper, now some American expects me to do better for a few million rubles?"

"I think you could, actually." I said, trying to sound as sincere as possible. He gave me an appraising look. "Mr. Vanko, you're a luminary. One of the brightest minds of science, whatever Mr. Stark said about your motives. I think I am right in thinking that it would be possible to miniaturize the Arc Reactor with modern technology, to increase its power output a hundred fold, to make units that were cheaper than coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear power. But you didn't do it, even now. Why not?"

The old man sighed, "You flatter my genius. My son," he looked over toward the door his son, grinning, "He is the genius. But to answer your question, maybe you are right. Maybe the right person could build a power system that would put out of business all the black gold profiteers of the world. It seems plausible. You are paying me quite generously for these questions, so I shall simply suggest to you that not look into these questions much further."

"Stark gets away with it," I pointed out.

"His whole life is under a stage life. It is hard for those who work in the dark to reach out and touch him. And his vision is smaller than what you say, at any rate." Only as far you know, old man, I thought silently. "They are everywhere, like a many headed dragon. Some of them are here, some of them over there. It hardly matters. I am old now."

I asked him a few more questions, the shape of what he was saying became clear. Some group - Or groups? It was unclear - of shadowy figures had leaned on him domestically, to stop him from building anything since Perestroyka and Stark's death. I didn't know if he was talking about Hydra or the Hand or something like the Hellfire club or some obscure Russia specific organization. I didn't know any of those things. He was warning me that they would kill me.

"I've taken steps in the event of my death," I said gently. "If I die, my knowledge will be disseminated widely."

"And is it only your knowledge for which you have reason to fear? Is there nothing else for which you care?"

I shrugged. I was alone in this world. My family didn't exist, my friends didn't exist, I had employees and loan officers and that was about it. "There's not much."

"Well, you are young and unburdened. Perhaps you'll achieve your goal. Perhaps you'll perish and no one will know your name. But I am old and weary, I've told you all I may. Please, leave me Mr. Trent."