20036/Particle Pursuit

Particle Pursuit
Date of Scene:	09 February 2025
Location:	Reed's Labs - Four Freedom Plaza
Synopsis:	Reed and Sue take a break from trying to understand a mysterious weapon of a bygone era. Elsewhere, something is in motion ...
Cast of Characters:	Reed Richards, Susan Richards, Norrin Radd

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Reed Richards has posed:
There have been a few complaints filtering up through the Four Freedom Plaza's building administration apparatus, namely that residents are finding their offices and homes slightly smaller. The amount of space seems to be decreasing suddenly from time to time. A great mystery, if the resident scientist weren't known for moving the modular architecture of the building around to give himself more lab space.

Sometimes he remembers to ask. Lately, he hasn't.

He hasn't emerged from the lab, except for one family meal, since the visit to the World Ship of Galactus. Every white board in the building has been gathered up and covered in a scrawl of equations and hypotheses, with even some blackboards wheeled out of storage to assist. A dozen experiments are on the 'boil' at any given time, with automated sensors feeding readings back to and algorithm that sorts through for useful data.

On top of it all, Reed seems to have forgotten his daily regimen of using his abilities to appear just as young as he did when they first gained their powers. He looks more like the old man he is becoming, scratching noisily on a blackboard with a nub of chalk.

Susan Richards has posed:
Sue, on the other hand, arrived like a morning sunrise, but of course... her age defiance was rooted in a lot of science rather than any actively called upon abilities. Age was still worn on her face with pride, and beside it was a smile too. She arrived at Reed's lab with a covered plate of breakfast food too, since Reed had not attended the family meal. She wasn't mad about it either, considering what he was doing, as even she knew that some things just needed his full efforts.

The tray was set down, and Sue stood beside his lab table, dressed in one of their team uniforms from decades past, though it still was in perfect condition upon her form.

"Ahem..." Sue cleared her throat, as she grew bored of waiting for his attention. "I am the greatest wife, and as the greatest wife, I have delivered you egg, bacon and pancake." She stated, in a dryly delivered dialogue.

"Aaaand orange juice. Freshly squeezed. With the pulp."

She pulled the glass cover from the plaet, and allowed the utterly mouth watering aroma to waft toward the scientist and his chalk board. "Award me with my medal." She requested.

Reed Richards has posed:
There is a moment as Reed completes a thought, the scratching on the chalkboard continuing for a second or two more then stopping abruptly. He takes a moment to compose himself, loose skin drawn taut with the look of a man rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes. The age melts off, features drawn back to the same elasticity they enjoyed at the dawn of forty years old. Satisfied, he steps out into the open where Sue and her breakfast offering await.

He wears something that is stereotypically him. A lab coat over, in his case, the latest iteration of the First Family's uniform. Unstable molecules, able to stay fresh far longer than normal clothing might. When Sue demands her medal, he reaches in and pecks her lovingly on the cheek. He hasn't shaved, and while he is still without a full beard it is certainly coming in.

"I was just about to make a smoothie," he explains, the memory of one of those flavorless nutrient-rich bottles of goop that he'd come up with enough to cause shudders, "But this is better. Thank you, greatest wife."

Susan Richards has posed:
As Reed seemed to return to a bit more of a normal state, if their states could ever even be called that, Sue leaned forward on the table, folding her arms together next to one another, and smiling warmly at him as he touched the side of her face. "Hey, it's not like we went to all that trouble to get the Ultimate Nullifier just to waste away while we try to figure out how to use it... And this is better than the shakes." She added, glancing down at her breakfast buffet she had prepared for him. Her right hand reached out to the syrup pot, and with her thumb she manipulated the top of it to make it bob up and down, miming a mouth. "Pour me all over your pancakes and eat me, Doctor Richards." She said, comically raising the pitch of her voice up to a squealy mouse pitch.

She let go of the silvery metal lid and it thunked back down closed over the syrup pot, and the blonde straightened up to walk around the edge of the counter, to get a closer look at his chalk board scribblings.

With her hands on the small of her back now, the blonde haired woman's blue eyes began scanning said scribbles. She let a silence settle in for a second or two, before she spoke up. "How is this... coming, though?" She finally asked.

Norrin Radd has posed:
Reed's frustrations, literally putting the years back on him, are not without cause. For all the trouble they've gone through, the hardship and sacrifice to make it upon the Devourer's vessel and steal this precious, so-called bane out from beneath his very nose?

Well, the thing doesn't freaking work.

That is, of course, a rather dramatic oversimplification of the problem. A device of incredible complexity for all of it's literal 'fit in the palm of your hand' elegance, there are all kinds of things that could be wrong with it. Most people would not even know where to begin. The case doesn't have any obvious fittings, it's interface is stunningly simplistic, there's no obvious Maltusian equivalent to a USB-C charging port. Most people, however, are not Reed Richards. Most of these simple concerns can be reasoned away in one fashion or another. Unusual materials, an obvious psionic interface, some form of quantum co-location for a power interface. Those obstacles are surmountable.

What is not so easily overcome is what comes after he's made his various scans and jury-rigged interfaces. The barest, faintest lingering bit of a power signal, faded over the eons since its last use, is... something utterly unique, and something that, thus far, he is unable to replicate.

And what use is it, if they can't power it?

Reed Richards has posed:
"As much as I like Mister Syrup Pot," Reed says with a chuckle in his voice, watching as Sue puppets the thing, "Last time someone overheard your puppet act, Franklin wouldn't look us in the eye for a week."

It's a joke. Or, at least, the best he can do for a joke. He sets out getting the breakfast laid out the way he likes it, which includes setting knife and fork as perfect angles. The little things one may not notice without knowing him for decades.

"It's like an entirely new field of physics," he answers, looking towards the scrawlings ruefully, "It completely defies the principle of mass conservation from what I can tell, which means it's already operating on a plateau most physicists aren't even equipped to think about. But that, I'm afraid, was the easy part to work out."

He sits down at the table with his breakfast, steepling his fingers in front of his face and staring critically out into nothing.

"It's the power source. It's nothing we've seen. I don't just mean rare. We've been to the Negative Zone. We've seen rare. I mean something that there's no sign of in the cosmic microwave background. Maybe extradimensional, codimensional ... Whatever it is, if it's out there, we don't even have the building blocks for detecting it."

He trails off, pausing and then cutting some of the pancakes to take a mouthful. He turns the fork in his fingers, waiting until he has swallowed to speak.

"And without the power source, it's not much more than a very elegant paperweight."

Susan Richards has posed:
Sue just stood there roaming her eyes over the chalk board's surface, listening to Reed's response to her, as she tried to make sense of any of it. Sure, she had gleamed some of it over the years, and was fairly good at measures of what Reed did on a day to day basis in this lab, but on a level of operation like this? If it was beyond her husband, she wouldn't even be in the arena, or the parking lot.

She turned to look back at him, when he spoke of his summation, the results sounding grim.

"I don't like ... any of that." She told him. "I mean, this thing is what we were told to get, by Wonder Woman. By the whole damn Justice League. We did it, we have it. It has to work. It can't be just a hunk of scrap. Maybe we have to get another piece?" She asked, as she exhaled sharply. "Can we get more minds on this? Not that I don't believe in you, but damnit, the more help the better, right?"

Norrin Radd has posed:
As they discuss the Justice League's endorsement of the whole thing, of course, one other piece of information remains. Hal's ring DID claim to identify the source, of that infinitesimal remaining charge of whatever-it-is. Now, while the rings represent some kind of great interconnected network, there's nothing about them that makes them inherently computationally superior to what the Fantastic Four has at their disposal. The advantage they have, obviously, is their database: eons of information gathered by the Oans. Hoarded, one might even say, as they're generally not keen on parting with it. But that situation too, had changed, with a bit of a mutiny among their ranks.

Reed Richards has posed:
"It's not a hunk of scrap," Reed says, shaking his head fervently, "Far from it. The sort of things this device is capable of? I can see them giving even an entity like Galactus pause. But it's all theory without a power source."

He takes another thoughtful mouthful of pancakes, tapping the fork lightly on the plate.

"Who, though? Tony is all practical demonstration and this is high theory. Hank might have a micro or macrodimensional understanding I haven't considered, but I don't even know where he is these days ... "

He shakes his head.

"I don't even think it's about understanding, it's just ... knowledge. Lost knowledge. The Guardians of Oa know it, but it seems like they'd rather let things play out than try to interfere. Which is an interesting stance for universal law enforcement to take, I'd add."

Susan Richards has posed:
"Yeah, I get it..." Sue quietly said, in a way that suggested she doesn't quite get it, but believes in Reed's words. She seemed disappointed by this, though, as if she was starting to consider that the end might actually be nigh this time. She had to keep a strong face up for everyone, as the mother of this family, but if anyone got to see her break, even a little bit, it was Reed. She exhaled softly, and had to take her eyes off of the object, had to put them back upon Reed.

"His ship. It was so vast. this thing is so small, comparatively. How do we know there aren't a million of these things scattered across that thing? How do we know ..."

She stopped herself, and ran her hand through her golden locks, before she leaned forward on the table, and shook her head. "It doesn't matter. This is what we have to work with... Maybe I should get Will Smith on the phone though, just incase we decide to go with the Upload a Virus maneuver, and dump a nuke in the heart of their docking station. That seemed to work for him and Jeff in the 90s..."

Sue looked back to Reed, and showed him a weary smirk. "Hows the food? Need anything else?"

Reed Richards has posed:
"I'm going to find it," Reed tells her, reaching out to pat her on the hip before grasping her hand and giving her a reassuring squeeze, "I'm almost there. I can solve this. It has an answer. Anything that has an answer can be answered."

The question about the food is something of a relief, turning away from the miserable topic of impending doom.

"It's good. Plenty of sugar. Proteins. Real brain food. I'll have this in no time now."

Norrin Radd has posed:
The mysteries of the device may yet remain unanswered, at least for a time. They'll need to talk to Hal, presumably, about the coordinates of that ancient world (and maybe, after cross-checking, with some people who've been there more recently...)

In the meantime, what is there to do, but wait, as Reed's various scanners and devices track the accelerating and now inevitable shift of some portion of Galactus' conveyance into realspace, the final approach which seems all but a doomsday clock. By now, he's probably had to silence a number of the alarms, as space-time is ever more abused. Yet amidst all of that, another small reading pings on a console:

By now, the Power Cosmic is a familiar thing, if not something wholly comprehensible. Most encountered it for the first time in the Vega system, but Reed had first done so decades ago. They've used it to track the Heralds, used it to monitor Galactus progress. Their readings of the sudden spike in power when the Silver Surfer's portion was given to the so-called 'Executioner' was an ominous sign indeed.

Yet here, a sensor registers the ping of another such source, previously below whatever detection threshold, but now stirring just to the point of notice, as the Taa II begins to breach. But it is not coming from the Worldship, which registers so far off the scale as to drown out any individual or smaller sources, even those on board, like whatever might remain of Norrin and the other Heralds. This smaller signal comes from a different location. Strangely, on a small body in Earth's orbit.

On... Asteroid M?

Susan Richards has posed:
The subtle touches from Reed were always a welcome thing, for Sue. She had been infatuated with him from a very early age, and though that was a long time ago, her chances to interact with her husband kept her spark still there for him. She showed him a larger smile, in fact, because of it, as though she felt this might be a moment for something not lab related.

"Maybe we should take a walk? You know, down to the park... I think that helps clear one's mind, and make these problems hit us from new angles, when we come back to them later."

She posed this question with a look that made her overall appearance seem a bit like her youthful self. "You know I like to help you keep that mind of yours as clear as possible..." Now she was just being outright flirtatious with him, and her body language expressed it openly. "Maybe it's the syrup talking, but, I think we could do a lot to clear--"

Infernal beeping machines.

She swept her eyes over toward it, and gently lowered her chin, as her brow furrowed. "That sounds impendingly ominous..." She quietly said in a darker tone of voice.