M: Like 5% complete. This book is longer than War and Peace

A: No it isn't. Besides I know how fast you read.

M: Yeah, but I only read a few chapters a night because it gives me so much to think about.

A: Ugh! Thinking! Well, hurry up and finish, I want to talk about it.

The Phoenix Protocol turned out to be a political sci-fi novel, like Atlas Shrugged, Looking Backward, or The Turner Diaries. It was fun and engaging, but preachy and near as long as War and Peace. The core concept was straightforward enough - A rogue agency survives a nuclear war initiated by a populist president, the main character investigates the neighboring communities incognito. The communities are political straw men and the main character forges a conspiracy with the sympathetic characters. In the end, they form one great, unified government called the Agency for Mankind.

Why had Hydra given me this book? My going theory was that the book was an ideological temperature test. I'd already signed on to a backslapping "friend" network. But that wouldn't have made me Hydra - It now seemed obvious to me that there were probably more "friends" who were out for personal advancement than there were people who dedicated their life to a synarchist utopia. And I'd roped myself in further.

M: At nine percent and wow, these zealots in Neozion are scary.

A: They're right that some knowledge is dangerous.

M: For sure. But then they do crazy stuff like the stoning by lot. Wish me luck on my meeting

A: You don't need any "dangerous superstition" 😘

Maybe it was unfair to criticize Hydra for maintaining a secret organization, since I too had future knowledge I was keeping under wraps. But on the other hand, it wasn't like I had ambitions of ruling the world with an iron hand from the shadows. I just wasn't sure how to share information without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, lunatic, or spy. Certainly, "Broke into SHIELD's core database" was just a more plausible theory than "This entire universe is fictional where I'm from, I know the future, and there are Hydra moles at every level of the government. Yes, including Nick Fury's best friend, Alexander Pierce." Every third conspiracy referenced "Hydra" still being alive, which was very flood the zone with garbage tactics, but there's no point complaining when the enemy is smart.

I got out of the van and gave my driver a tip so my team could start unloading. The computer system I used to build the Stagemaster program was the size of a filing cabinet. I could've made it smaller, but that would've been too cutting edge for me to put within range of Hydra. We wheeled it in and I shook hands with a handful of investment capitalists from Hollywood and Silicon Valley, "Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Stagemaster..."

M: I "directed" a performance of the Tempest, got so much money thrown at me I don't quite know what to do with it.

A: That's great to hear, but no surprise. Our friends deliver even for people less talented than you. How's the book?

M: Sixteen percent. These National Union Party fascists suck, but it was an interesting choice to use Lincoln's party.

A: Right!

Alright, set aside getting rid of Hydra. I could survive if I threw in my lot with some government that wasn't infested with Hydra agents. Just move to France, settle down in Paris, live in a box with enough protection to guarantee Hydra didn't kill me while I churned out miracles for France. That wasn't such a bad idea. But did Hydra have agents in France? I had no idea. I knew the Winter Soldier was Soviet, I knew that Hydra was here in the United States. There could be Hydra agents anywhere in the world.

I had a cab drop me off at a relatively low rent bar and, after engaging in some preparatory work, I headed inside with and sat down at the bar. The place wasn't rundown, but it wasn't nice exactly. Mostly wood interior that looked a decade out of date by local standards, the main appeal was the big windows to the Los Angeles street. The guy at the bar was in his mid twenties - I actually knew he was working through his philosophy degree. The amount of random knowledge that I'd had crammed in my head was sort of impressive. His name was Garret. I sat down and held a hundred dollar bill out, "Alright, a Dr. Pepper and a few minutes to bend your ear."

Garret, a skinny guy in plaid shirt, laughed, "We don't sell Dr. Pepper here, but for a hundred dollars I can solve that for you."

"Ugh, California. Don't bother," I said, "Uh, coke, I guess. And I don't need change."

"Coke it is," he said, marching over and grabbing a coca-cola out of the fridge and popping it into my hand. "What do you need to bend my ear on?"

I reached down and clicked the control button in my pocket and the power cut out.

"What the heck?" he said

"Probably just some routine maintenance," I said, popping the can and taking a drink. "So, I need some advice. You ever hear conspiracy theorists rant about the Illuminati and wonder why they don't try to sign up instead?"

"That's a weird thought," Garret said, but then laughed. "Not too weird for ninety eight dollars though. I guess I just figure they think they're morally better than the Illuminati."

"Maybe," I admit, "But the illuminati are supposed to be this ultra-powerful organization, right? They move the course of nations. Why not try and get in on that?"

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"Does the average conspiracy theorist seem like the sort of person who ascends through the ranks of powerful organizations?"

"Yeah, okay, but imagine they were."

"We're reaching now," Garret said, leaning against the bar in consideration. "But okay, I guess I would think people don't 'try to get in on that' because they view the cause of the Illuminati isn't worthy of their labor."

"Sure, but people join organizations to spy on them or for personal advancement, right? I mean, I don't think Vladimir Putin was serving The Cause of Global Communism when he joined the KGB."

"Maybe not," Garret said, thumping the bar top with his hand. "But he was serving the interests of the KGB. You can't advance in an organization without serving its interest rights?"

"But, I mean, how would you take down the Illuminati from the outside right? You have to have some sort of leverage if you're inside right?"

"Dude," Garrett said, "The illuminati aren't like, fluffy kittens. Even if we leave out the blood libel and the obvious antisemitism involved in these theories, they're nasty folks who are willing to plunge people into ruin and suffering for their own benefit. They cull the herd. They don't respect human rights or dignity. They aren't doing this for everybody else. I think you're making it more complicated than it is. In a world where the Illuminati exist, it isn't ethical to join it. That's a whole organization dedicated to power above all else. There's nothing noble or decent or defensible about such a thing."

"But what's the point fo fighting them if you know you'll lose?"

"The simpering cry of every quisling. The enemy was too strong, what was I to do? It wasn't my fault, it wasn't the money, the power, the opportunity. It was Patriotism or Humility or Realism. If someone's worth something in, than they're worth something out. And the guaranteed rewards and costs are far more certain than some, 'maybe, someday, possibly, I'll do some good.' You're reaching here."

I sighed and thumped the wood of the bar with my thumb, "You're probably right. Thank you for your time."

And I headed out to the street and clicked the button again.

M: Getting on the plane.

A: How's the book?

M: Almost done!

I had made up my mind. I was getting out. Garret was right. This was just some attempt to serve my own interest. If I went to jail or if I got murdered in a ditch, it could not possibly be worse than handing my powers over to Hydra. I had the basic equivalent of google and every major research facility in my head, I was able to drag the whole world up by its bootstraps. Maybe in retrospect I should've handed myself over to Fury immediately, not messed around like this. Up in the sky, as I looked out the window, it was obvious to me how very small I was. How unimportant I was.

And what about the Snap, some little voice inside me said. But I shook it off - This was ridiculous. I'd messed up the timeline killing Obadiah, what proof did I have that I was getting any closer to averting the Snap? So far as I could tell, besides moving us towards of green power, I hadn't done a lick of good in terms of preventing anything from the movies. And if the freeware I had backed up made it onto the internet, which it would if anything happened to me, I'd be doing the world a much bigger favor.

M: Here! Finished the book.

A: Awesome! I'll come pick you up.

And she did. She looked beautiful. I hadn't thought of her as beautiful when I met her, but she looked beautiful now. Beautiful poison, I reminded myself. Andromeda was a sweetheart to me - But she was working to advance the purest form of authoritarianism possible. She believed in power, power unchecked and power alone. You couldn't wash that out with niceness in general, much less niceness to me specifically. The last chapter of the Phoenix Protocol revealed that the agency had been able to stop, maybe even precipitated, the nuclear exchange that preceded the book. That was who she was. She was someone who believed in the destruction of real lives in service to an authoritarian dream.

She kissed me and no truth could make it bitter. "It's good to see you babe," she said, "I missed you."

I smiled back, doing my best to make it reach my eyes. "It's good to see you too."

"So you finished Phoenix Protocol?"

"It was really good," I said. That wasn't even really a lie - It was a good read, way better than Rand. I just found it's politics horrific. "The Agency for Mankind, huh? I wish we had something like that." That was a lie. But I did wish my head to stay bullet free at least until we got back to my car.

"Right!" she said excitedly, "Oh, I knew you'd like it."

We chatted about minor plot points from the book as we drove back to her house and I did my best to act natural. It felt natural, that was the weird thing, the inner dissonance of my plan to pack my bags and live on the road, aggressively destroying existing technological standards while publishing what I knew of Hydra and the Infinity Stones. Just hoping Fury or Coulson found me before Hydra. It wasn't an appealing life, but I'd lived in my car before. Since I'd be joyriding, it would be more complicated this way but whatever.

We got back to Andromeda's apartment and I got out and pulled out my bags, "Alright, well, I think I need to get home and sleep. Jet lag and all that."

"It's two hours earlier in California."

"Yeah, my sleep cycle never recovered so I've been a few hours short."

"That's no way to show gratitude to your girlfriend," Andromeda said in the way she did when she was telling the truth in jest.

I leaned in and kissed her as passionately as I could manage, "Well, tomorrow, I'll take you out to the best dinner I can afford."

"Wow, alright then. I'll hold you to it."

I got into my car and drove back toward my barren apartment. The drone of the news was normal until I heard a line that I hadn't been expecting. "Tony Stark won the Monaco Circuit yesterday, having beaten his competitors." The Monaco Circuit was a big car race in, well, Monaco and I had thought that Tony had lost his race in California. But now that I was thinking about it, that didn't make any sense - Vanko wouldn't have been able to bring his big whip rig to the United States. I also thought we were moving towards the point where construction would have to start for the Arc Reactors to come online within the vague sense of time for when the Avengers came out in my timeline. So my mind seized on it and I tried to think what Monaco Circuit looked like and sure enough, it looked like what I could remember of the movie.

Doubt that this was the necessary course started to creep in. If I had altered that, it was to the good. Vanko's death was such a waste. I tried to push that doubt away.

When I got back to my house, I grabbed my ten thousand dollar grab bag, my clothes grab bag, set my cellphone to run out of power on my own desk (thank goodness my internal maps were better than Google's), and started spinning my keys. No problem.

But when it came right down to it, I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to give up and risk my life for a chance to make a difference, if Hydra didn't manage to put a slug through my brain. Even that was just an excuse. Walking away from Hydra meant walking away from my best chance at power. To take my hands off the wheel of history, which I had acquired a taste for. To let the world go according to its wishes and not be able to give my opinion. To be normal, as far as it went.

And I discovered I simply did not want to go back. I put the bags back where they belonged. I plugged the phone in. I threw my body onto my bed, my hands shaking. And I lay there at night, staring at the roof for what felt like forever.

I woke up to Andromeda saying, "I need you to stay calm, Babe," with the barrel of her pistol in my face.