9357/About That Asteroid

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About That Asteroid
Date of Scene: 30 December 2021
Location: W.A.N.D: Triskelion
Synopsis: Oh, so THAT guy caused the death of everything! Solution, make a wormhole and put a bird on it.
Cast of Characters: Jane Foster, Jonathan Sims
Tinyplot: Path of Glory


Jane Foster has posed:
For a woman with Things to Do (TM), Jane has plenty on her plate. Several screens around her suggest W.A.N.D. actually belongs to SHIELD, or they use the technology common to the main division and its sister branches. Partially holographic projections circle around her, while a plethora of feeds coming from multiple different hotspots crowd four desks and too many monitors for one person to humanly track. Cyborgs, magic users who can calve their presences in three, sure. Her? No.

On the other hand, several of those fluctuating readings aren't really going anywhere fast. Telemetry from the LRO, Artemis, Yutu 2, Chandrayaan, Chandra, and even the speedy James Webb punch their graphs, respectively updated through secure back channels. A slew of projections wash over Atlantic and Pacific trajectories, while the updated dotted graphic spinning around off her shoulder indicates any number of about a thousand scenarios punched into the flight of supercomputers stored in the Triskelion. All of this is fed by critical data.

All of this doesn't matter to a thrilling game of Animal Crossing, where Jane is thoroughly engrossed by burying bells in the sand and ignoring the piled up Venus combs, several motes, and multiple chunky Moravian stars glowing on the shore beside her. Hot water on the boil in a kettle beside her awaits to be handled, and she listens haphazardly to the conversation in her ear.

"<Yes, I'm aware. We potentially need a scattered array. Imagine this shatters into chunks, projectiles starting at 15 tonnes before entry. What's the diameter you anticipate?>" she asks /someone/ in a language composed of a highly complex syntax, complete with the regular application of a click consonant to round it off. Wakandan Xhosa is unique as its people, and the earpiece hidden by her hair relays a response.

A pause, then she laughs bleakly. "<You were having too much fun with the earlier simulations, they were too easy. And yes, you can shake the coconut trees. You should be set up to pick a few black cosmos, too. Ah, sorry - windflowers.>"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    There's a knock at the door. Or a chime, bell, whatever it is that lets someone in a WAND office know that someone else is coming in. Then Jon Sims, the WAND recruit, the Archivist, sticks his head in through the door and then comes in properly.

    "Ahh... sorry to interrupt, Dr. Foster, but could I have a minute of your time...? It's about that... 'asteroid.' 2021-JF09?"

Jane Foster has posed:
A chime, probably some ward, and a blip to warn Jane to put the Switch away. She could shove it straight in a drawer, but what fun is that? She sets the device aside, and then murmurs into her earpiece, "<Forgive me, I have an incoming call. Respectfully, may I seek your blessing to-- Ah! This is why you are the very best.>" The warmth in her voice rises on the bubbling of true appreciation, a smile widening as she turns toward the incoming figure. Not Bobbi, Fury or Carter; this is a plus. May would about be the end of the world.

The rainbow-clad excitement of the Archivist poking his head in coincides with the whistle of the tea kettle. Popping a button atop it silences the shrill, and she gestures with a greeting. "Proper time to come collect a cuppa. It may not be to Jemma's exacting standards, but going wrong with Harneys is a rarity. Need me to clear the discovery team in the back or this fit for consumption?"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Ahh... well. Probably best to clear them, yes, just until you know whether or not it's... 'fit for consumption?'" Jon rubs at the back of his neck as he comes all the way in, eyeing the kettle.

    "I have standards, but they're likely not so high as Simmons' nor Martin's. Higher standards for masala chai; with regular tea I usually get impatient waiting for the kettle to boil. Martin lectures me about it constantly." A fond smile.

    He hesitates, fidgeting /just/ a bit, waiting for things to be cleared out. What he has to say is... potentially dangerous. Worrisome.

Jane Foster has posed:
Nothing like flexing a bit of rank, pressing three buttons, and a group gets up from their desks to evacuate to a conference room. Tablets, laptops, and an actual fragmented clay table in a nice box all go with them, but the department is so small that an exodus takes minutes at most. Neither anger or frustration greet them, since they might well be busy trying to determine what the Assyrian and Hittite references imply regarding the release of a minor storm demon. Sure, the world is ending in a week, but the problems of tainted meat and electrical shocks are happening /now/ in Arkansas. It's probably the only exciting thing in Arkansas since the Clinton Administration admitted it was from Little Rock.

Another mug can be pulled out and tea poured the proper way, hot water to steep and a selection of teas in tins in a drawer popped open after a moment. "Masala chai is a thing of beauty. I've since found a rooibos chai that agrees with me, though I probably care for too much milk or cardamom." Her eyes are probably perpetually stained behind the sepia tint, since the oncoming demise of a planet, a star system, a galaxy or creation itself vibrates every bit of soulstuff that she is. No amount of hiding in a cryo chamber would fix that.

"Interesting how 750,000 metric tonnes divides fifty thousand ways, isn't it?"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon narrows his eyes as he goes to sit down in a nearby chair. "...You know very well that asteroid isn't made of diamond, don't you? Did someone from SWORD already go out and look?"

    He swallows, fingers drumming on his knee as he sits and peers at the astrophysicist. "Fifty thousand. Good to know. I... had presumed that it's the vanguard of the Host, what will be arriving on the 6th. Your interview was fascinating, no less so if you were obfuscating. Which..." He smiles widely. "Is par for the course around here, hmm? But we do need to know what we're facing, if there's data. I mean. The Justice League Dark does, and the others facing this threat."

Jane Foster has posed:
"Do you truly think the scientific community is going to pull together to a consensus about being attacked by an architect of creation or the great assembly of a battalion last seen when..." A pause, and Jane tips her chin higher. "It depends on if you follow the Tanakh or Talmud, Bible, Quran, Book of Giants, and various other apocrypha that are totally outside my paygrade or experience as an astrophysicist."

On this point, she raises the kettle and pours out a fair stream. "We tend to have a curious view of cosmology, given our fundamental ability to stare back to about four hundred million years since the Big Bang and, past that, it's all faith. In a sense. Prove the theory, after all." Her lips tilt up slightly. "Correct on that, and the Prince of Heavenly Hosts is at the front. Accounts for the unnatural magnitude that we would not normally see with a body like this. I am starting to wonder if the Director needs to call up the Pope and the Metropolitan, have them on board, among other faith leaders, with the prayer approved by Pope Leo XIII. It's there," she gestures to a smaller monitor, a post-it note of sorts limned in blue, "if you need to familiarize yourself."

Her head tilts slightly. "I have no idea of what the insertion of even /one/ angel into the atmosphere is potentially going to do. Rocks break up. Calculating density of an armoured angel got interesting without giving the game away."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "There's going to be a battle," Jon says bluntly. "I've already informed Chief Carter, and Manhattan at least will be evacuated. There's mystical energy /pouring/ off that thing, getting stronger the closer it gets." He hunches his shoulders. "Starting to get so I can feel it even now. Or, well, it's partly aimed at /me/--perhaps that's just my own paranoia getting to me."

    He leans over to peer at the monitor for a moment, at the prayer there, and comments, "I don't know what good the Pope can do, but if he could turn them back... I'd welcome the chance." He sighs. "The prayer... may be of help. It may not. If nothing else, perhaps it'll give him pause. It's worth a try. /Anything/ that isn't more potential violence is worth a try. I would strongly agree with a suggestion someone call the Pope."

    A beat, then, "Presuming the people doing the praying wouldn't just wind up fighting /alongside/ him. Some of them are already lining up to do so."

    He sighs and sits back. "I left the fold long ago; Michael wouldn't hear my prayer. I serve..." He taps his foot on the ground. "The Great Mother, through the gods of Egypt that are one group of Her children. I did hate to hear that the archangels not only exist but are, at least right now, /precisely/ what the Church thinks them to be. But that doesn't mean they're worthy of my worship."

    He smiles. "But that's hardly, ahh, a scientific question. So 2021-JF09 is made of fifty thousand armored angels, I take it?"

Jane Foster has posed:
"I don't pretend to have any idea of what turns the heads of anything beyond our fellow agents and people here. Loki's actions made no sense. Zod's actions made no sense. A sky full of terror when something tried to intrude on our reality through Metropolis last year proved some motivations cannot be possibly understood in fullness. Or they're exactly as they say on the label and trying to get deeper than that?" Jane raises her teacup in a mock salute, taking a sip without stopping to think of the temperature. Bloody hot is what. Flavourless is another, not fully steeped. Spluttering from the former and latter both, she tries not to reflexively drop the cup. Hot water will hit things other than the screen.

"I don't think people praying are willing to lose their lives. Funny thing, survival and human nature." Jon does not get the laughter or teasing that might accompany the usual conversation topic.

"Essentially, yes. Moving at Mach 15 steadily on a trajectory likely to strike where I have indicated. Though supposing you move around, that could change things. Stay away from active fault lines, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, any unstable basalt traps. Continental cratons are your best bet. Though if they decide to impact us en masse, it probably makes no substantial difference. We aren't talking space rocks. Your turn."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "They're not directly aimed at /me/ in that sense. They're coming for St. Patrick's, Midtown. But I'm one of the targets--Michael has a grudge against me, and I've been chosen out as important for this whole bloody business." Jon waves a hand. Irritably, maybe? Not happily, at all.

    "The Justice League Dark is leading the defense, so, fifty thousand, good to know." He reaches up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "I have to presume it won't be a simple impact--that they're going to phase through the atmosphere magically... somehow. A crater does not leave room for a battlefield, amd Michael's coming looking for a fight. And you're right--if they just impact, not much we can do regardless."

    He eyes her for a moment. "I had come to inform you what the asteroid was... or what I presumed it to be. Do you have any questions of me? Anything that might help... knowledge is important. Understanding is important. And whatever SHIELD does in this whole business rests on other shoulders than mine. So if you have questions about this business, I'm willing to answer."

Jane Foster has posed:
Jane mops up some of the spilled tea using a cloth probably meant to clean off screens, but the choices are that or her sleeve. Her sleeve isn't going to cut it. She likes that sweater too much, apparently. A bit of blotting keeps the worst of the spillage from reaching a keyboard or staining the desk. Paper towels come later.

"Fifty thousand by a pretty reasoned guess, though optics at this distance have their limits." Jon's concerns are confirmed in a roundabout way. "They are heat resistant by the looks of it. However until they reach the atmosphere, whether they experience friction like any body on re-entry is a best guess. We are facing an unprecedented situation and I am not Superman, Thor or Captain America. Great tactical advantages against overwhelming odds and powers require experience I don't have. I need data and basic information on how we survive."

She gestures, the planetary arc all over the Eastern Seaboard identifying trajectories of skimming the Earth, hitting it, insertions at various points. "How do we keep them alive? What information are we missing to present a functional response? Even saying 'an army of angels is coming' draws the immediate question, what do we do? It's not huddle underground to wait it out. There's no launch to the Moon, no Planet Lifeboat, anything like that we have."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon sighs. "I'm still figuring out what we do, ultimately. This is... supposedly there's a multiverse, and our universe is... pulling at others, feeding off them. We'd normally be simply re-formed from elemental chaos, but we get some kind of chance to bring it back into balance ourselves."

    He smiles. "I know that's of little help to data and information. For now--we get civilians out of the way. We prepare to fight angels, using Nullspace energy or demonic energy or normal weaponry--that /will/ work but it just takes longer. We prepare to neutralize any mortals who wind up fighting for Michael."

    A long, slow breath. "And then... I think, ultimately, we go to Heaven and get my friend down off the Gates so we can force Michael back where he belongs. But that's speculation. Perhaps... perhaps we pray. Encourage kindness, and love, and compassion, and sacrifice for others."

    He frowns briefly at Jane. "...Is there any way for /science/ to encourage that? I mean that wholeheartedly. Altruism is good for one's mental health, and an evolutionary advantage. Love and compassion are /good/ for us. I just don't know how to spread the message."

Jane Foster has posed:
"A world of possibilities within a countless world of them. It blows your mind the first few times you start playing with it," Jane's affirmation has a bit of a chuckle to it. She pulls the little earpiece from her ear, setting it back on its charger. "Returning to the cosmic stew? It could be worse. Once that happens, comparatively, it's instantaneous. Makes me wish I accelerated my bridge work, though controlling the outlet for the wormhole becomes a problem. Perhaps in another universe, several of me did."

She measures him through that direct stare. Don't look too deep or the death's head looks back in a man with a ticking, suspended time bomb over his hair. To her credit, no staring at Jon. "I have no concept of what Nullspace energy is, but I'll take your word for it that does something. What does SHIELD do other than keep humans out of harm's way and anticipate the risks and dangers to a civilian population? Prayer is one thing. In the end times, you have hospitals ready for casualties, keep roads open, have secure points and fallbacks. Except this time all of us streaming to Nebraska or the Dakotas won't really do anything. Horrible to be helpless in a matter of this. Science encourages love and hope by collectively striving for a way to address the oncoming problems. Have your medical staff on standby. People stationed at dams, major checkpoints and interstate intersections like you would on a scale for a hurricane by a magnitude of three. Activate the military, National Guards, every emergency protocol we have to ensure safe harbour for the population of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, probably Pennsylvania. Like we should have for Gotham when No Man's Land erupted. You draw a line, you put the Justice League on evacuation of Metropolis up the line. Avengers and Fantastic Four keep guard over New York along with whatever other support you can get. I'm going to say this, but you have Namor and Arthur Curry hold the lines on the sea; you get Doom's mind to dealing with a common threat to humanity. The Titans have shown themselves capable, turn them on dealing with part of New Jersey and Philadelphia while supporting the JLA. That's how I would start, anyway. Showing a willingness to save your fellow man is all religion has ever been about. Community. Love. Faith in one another, in a higher goodness than just crawling out of the soup of atoms. You'd hear differently from many of the alien races, but I can't save them today. Most of them. Maybe two."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon nods thoughtfully. "We're doing a lot of that, coordinating with other groups. The government has been informed, so FEMA can be activated. I think Chief Carter wants the military kept out of the fighting, but the National Guard will likely be called up for evacuations. I don't know the details, of that."

    He frowns. "Unity. Unity, compassion, balance. A sacrifice, maybe, to bring people together?" He shakes his head, that death's head terribly visible. He knows about it, now, that doom, but he's running from it. Trying to avoid it, any way he can. Twisting and turning, which will only tie those strings about him tighter.

    "Bridge work?" he asks curiously. "Wait... do you have a way into another universe? Is that even a viable option, in case I fail?" A beat. "In case /we/ fail?"

Jane Foster has posed:
The dry amusement in her laugh doesn't find her eyes. Jane is beyond that, though definitely not sleep deprived as some of their colleagues are. A total lack of bruising on that. "Then why are you here, talking to me, when I'm throwing darts at a board with one arm behind my back and the vaguest description of round target?" Jon's got things in line, at least, with the officials who count.

His frown has her quiet. He can think almost as long as he likes.

"Nick Fury dispatched Coulson to grab me because of my work refining Einstein-Rosen Bridge theory. It functionally links different locations in spacetime by a wormhole, rather than colocation, which would be functionally superimposing them over one another at the same time. To put it in its basest terms, yes, I've been able to verifiably create bridges without an event horizon with inherent stability long enough to transport matter through them. Several cannisters of a biocontaminant able to kill humans, anyway, several months back, so yes, people are possible. Stationary traversable wormholes lasting more than hours are unfortunately difficult to achieve, on the order of... A big rainbow bridge commanded by the All-Father levels of difficult. He can direct them. Yes, to places that aren't here."

She inclines her head a little and sighs. "I hope Thor knows about this and I hope Odin All-Father has clued in."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Because you had information I didn't, and because maybe you'd see something I'm not, if I gave you the piece I thought you didn't have." Jon regards Jane quietly. "Because I'm trying to save the bloody universe, and if I can get a last-minute assist shot from one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, I'll take it. And before you say anything, I'm contacting Strange and I'd /like/ to get hold of Richards and Stark if I can." He smirks. "But 'things in space' is rather your area of expertise."

    He follows the 'Einstein-Rosen Bridge' bit largely by dint of being enough of a nerd to at least have heard of the concept. It still leaves him blinking owlishly. "Is, uhh... is the multiverse part of the same... spacetime? This... /isn't/ my area of expertise." A pause. "Wait, rainbow bridge--Bifrost? Do you think Odin could..." Could what? Evacuate the entire population of the universe, if it came to that? Even just Earth?

    Then he blinks. "Wait. Could that... go to, say, the edge of the universe entirely...? We may need a way into the Silver City in Heaven. It's an idea, anyway."

Jane Foster has posed:
"Let's be frank, I am not that brilliant and thinking to point a camera in the direction of the big shiny object was one shared by hundreds of people. I merely cashed in favours and promised a meet and greet at the Asgardian Embassy after all of this to possibly more people than I care to admit." Oh Jane. Why. Thor is too good natured for anything else. She winces a little at that, then chuckles. "Wish I'd known when I saw Reed the other day. Unfortunately his work won't help us much if there is no space to operate in after a due date. OK, so this is our Doomsday Clock."

She swivels and rises from the seat. In a desk she pulls a pair of simple gloves, the kinds with receptors in the fingertips, used for negotiating cool holographic technology. After pulling them on, she taps her way through a menu and comes up with a drawing program. "To speculate, Odin commands power far beyond Thor and Thor commands power far beyond us. Midgard is Odin's protectorate so I could petition him as Midgard's representative in the Congress of Worlds to pull us out. Would he do it? I have absolutely no idea, and it would be a lot better coming from his favourite firstborn son. I can ask. Failing that, I can probably figure out a way to call. At least present the idea. If he listens, that's another matter."

Awkward, really. But it's better not to dwell on getting the One-Eyed's attention. His only mortal Valkyrie turns to what she knows, space. Hands rise and she draws a grid in front of them. "Space. The classic idea Einstein had was that you could create a wormhole by folding it like this, into a C," and she gestures, making space do just that, "to join a point up here to down there. The refinement is the 'throat' of the classical wormhole, so matter passes through and ends up intact on the other side. What Rosen and Einstein didn't account for was the quantum property, and... easier to ignore the space foam. Suffice to say, everything you do conceivably coexists in /multiple/ universes, as countless options, until observed. The moment we define where or what, that's what becomes. So if you decide to leave point A in Universe A, but see yourself in Universe B, you end up at your destination in that universe. Universes A through Z still contain a variation of you, but you functionally exist in B. And knowing how to put the setting onto 'Jon goes go B, Martin goes to B, Daisy goes to B' is the tricky bit of science but it can be done. So, yes, that's the fundamental bit of how you have not only space travel across enormous distances not taking eight million light years, but also how you end up in alternate universes. The Shi'ar conquered a galaxy, they have almost certainly got a variation on the bridge theory. The Asgardians have a variation, not only the rainbow bridge. I've developed a pinhole structure for it that I can run from a phone. Give me relative coordinates to your Silver City and I could potentially do it, yes."

Or she can just talk to a talking horse with a love of smooth jazz and bourbon but awkward, too. "How long do you need that gate to open to the Silver City in Heaven, and have you considered something might come /back/ through the same entrance? The instability would make a two-way trip hard, especially with matter already travelling through, but it's less of a white hole effect than you think."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon frowns at all of that. He's following along, mostly... but it takes him a little bit longer than it takes Jane. "So... okay, so we could /potentially/ all go in the wormhole on one end... and wind up in different universes on the other? Is that what you mean? Good /lord/. That... would /not/ be ideal." Understatement a bit, there, hmm? "But others have, umm, fixed some of those issues. And you... represent Midgard in the Congress of Worlds? I did not know that. Hunh." Filed away in the Archive, quietly.

    He moves on. "I'm not certain, in terms of time. Something coming back through? That's a possibility, yes, although admittedly they're /already/ coming here. And the other options we have include things like 'going through Nullspace' which is... Anti-Matter Universe? Umm... pure entropy. The oubliette of reality. The Shi'ar know about it. When last I went through there we accidentally turned our universe offline for a moment so I am, hopefully understandably, wary of doing it /again/. But we can scry ahead, we've already done it once. It's getting there bodily and getting my friend home that'll be hard."

Jane Foster has posed:
Jane shakes her head. "No, no random. It's all a matter deciding which universe you want as part of the parameters for the destination parameters. If I say you are going to Springfield in the US, which state?" she asks. "If I put down Springfield, California for everyone, everyone goes to California. There is no going to Illinois or Vermont or Alaska, to say nothing of Victoria in Australia." She gestures lightly. "That is why you set everyone up to go to Universe B or C or X or whichever you want. Otherwise other civilizations would never travel, and they certainly do. And yes, I do represent Midgard in the Congress of Worlds as the first human they'd bothered with in a very long time. Apparently it means I get paperwork and an invitation to hide from jotunn every now and then."

Still wait.

And then her gaze settles square on Jon. "That's why it ended?"

....Right.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "I'm a bloody idiot and dragged Michael Demiurgos, the being who shaped the matter of our universe, backwards through the Void because I was trying to stabilize an entropy binding that probably didn't actually need the stabilization."

    Jon put both his hands out. "He has telepresence. One of him was here," he shakes one hand, "the other was here," shakes the other, "and we bound him in both places. It was /supposed/ to mean that anyone near him would be in two places at once, but something went off and instead..." He pulls his hands together. "All wound up in one spot." A sigh. "The path through /to/ that spot? Was nothing and nowhere. As Strange put it, a VCR after being unplugged and plugged back in."

    He shakes his head. "I'm well done trying to figure out the high magic, I don't know half as much as most of the people around me, just enough to get in trouble, clearly. I know people, and I know emotions, and I know..." He frowns. "Compassion and love and unity. I know who to put in charge of trying to figure out the magic, or the technology. The binding circles or the wormholes or whatever we're doing. But me doing that level of magic is a bit like you diagnosing a mental illness--not your forte, and you might mistake the symptoms and prescribe the wrong medication. Which... I did. And we're lucky everything came back online after."

    He frowns. "I'm still surprised the most flack I got for that was Strange coming to the bar to glower at me about it. Or perhaps that's why I got tapped to deal with this. 'You broke it, now fix it' sort of deal?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Silence is all that she can muster, because silence is all that would be appropriate. Jane's secrets are not her own to share, but the hysterical shriek from the sisterhood on her wrist and the storm behind it presents another balance.

Between that and running into Michael Demiurgos, it's been a week.

She pinches her fingers to her brow. "I get the concept of misdiagnosis and where it leads. One condition acting like another. Except in this case, if I understand, the issue was reality itself. Let's not reset things, please, I like breathing in this one and the people I care most about in the world exist there. Add the whole person I'd give my life to keep safe is here, not there. So right, no point being a grumpy nag."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon holds up his hands. "Like I said, I'm /well/ out of it until I've got a better handle on it all. Probably a good two decades at the least, if ever--it's not entirely my style of magical working. I will defer to the actual experts on the matter and focus on the things I can do. Shields, healing, telepathy, random knowledge when my ancestors see fit to offer. People keep calling me a 'librarian' in a derogatory tone, as if libraries aren't the core of academics." He shakes his head.

    "The problem, specifically? Is that I didn't understand what we were dealing with. I thought it was... a normal angel. Not some kind of key piece of the structure of reality. Which is making my job harder--the plans are all 'fight him, kill him,' but if he *can* be destroyed in any kind of final way, that /also/ destroys everything, evidently. So we have to figure out an alternative. I mean, it's like they're proposing destroying, I don't know... Newton's constant? That'd make everything fly apart, right?"

Jane Foster has posed:
The shake of her head follows and Jane replies, "I get it. I could have been a doctor of medicine, but went to astrophysics. That comes at a cost. Expertise in picking up another language or ever mastering food is going to take time." And some people master it like nothing, but they are not singularly focused on staying silent all the time. Them's the breaks.

Jon's reference tumbles back into the focal point. "Death is always the last resort. Always," she reiterates. "Gandalf had the reason right. No matter how misguided or angry this angel is, we shouldn't be aiming to kill. Not because of the detonation, because a default of 'kill it' is monstrous. Another solution has to exist because the choice we've got is unfathomable."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Yes," Jon says, softly. "I quite agree. And I rather think it's part of the point. I just... don't know how to get other people to say that--which is why I've been trying to underline the dire consequences for such thinking. People are rather convinced this is all out of line, as if it weren't the normal M.O. for angels to come destroy cities they disapprove of."

    A sigh. "Well... thank you for talking to me, Dr. Foster. Do you have any further questions?" A pause. "If you think of something after I leave, feel free to leave me a message. I live here in the Triskelion, I'm often about, and I check my phone regularly. I'm glad to offer my expertise, for whatever it's worth."

Jane Foster has posed:
"Anyone quick to jump to death isn't creative or they come from a place of fear. Start talking about other options and sometimes more will come of it. Roundtable it. I can't offer more than that. For now," Jane adds. It's been a long day. "Their speed is not varying. They will come unless something on the way stops them, by the way. Short of a miracle on the ground, I am not sure how we pull this one off."

She gestures slightly. "I do not live here, but I have a call to make and a very long antenna that needs to reach to another realm altogether. Old One-Eye and I have a date with... at least a voicemail."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon stands, and smiles. "Well, good thing I'm in the miracle business. I hear that magic's how they were done, back in the day." A beat. "I'm good with water. Shouldn't be /too/ hard to change the tension and make it easy to walk on."

    He's at the 'making ridiculous jokes at his own expense' point of this whole business. Maybe a good sign, maybe not.

    "I wish you well in that endeavor, Dr. Foster. We're hardly the only ones that have a stake in the continued smooth operation of the universe. I'll remember your suggestions."