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| Issue #11 November 2009 |
"I Think Therefore I Am" Written By David Golightly |
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PREVIOUSLY IN FANTASTIC FOUR:
The Fantastic Four have gone missing! Before Ant-Man, Machine Man, She-Hulk, and Nova can investigate, the mysterious Mad Thinker has taken over the Baxter Building with a small army of his Awesome Androids!
“Anyone have any bright ideas?” Scott Lang, the incredible Ant-Man, said wistfully. He hovered above his three allies aboard a tiny air scooter, hoping that his gauntlets would be able to supercharge all of his bio-blasts. “I’m a little short at the moment.”
“Cute,” She-Hulk replied under her breath. She had just come back to the Baxter Building that afternoon, barely an hour ago. She had been late for court and was still wearing most of her expensive Italian suit, as opposed to the others who were dressed more appropriately for the occasion.
In the lowest sublevel of the Baxter Building, which was used by Reed Richards largely for the storage of confiscated neural analyzers, outdated HERBIE robots, and even the original Fantasticar, five hulking brutes of artificial intelligence surrounding the four heroes. The long corridor ended at a frictionless elevator, their only means of escape up into the higher levels of the building.
A building now under the complete control of the Mad Thinker.
“I’ve got one,” Nova, the woman infused with a portion of the power cosmic, said urgently. Without hesitation, her fingers dazzled through the fiery energy at her command.
She sent a scorching lick of flame directly at the head of one of the Androids, forcing it to rock backward. It’s block-like ‘head’ was singed although there wasn’t much sign of actual internal damage.
The attack prompted the other four automatons to advance, closing ranks on the four heroes clustered together. They pressed against the telescoped arms of Machine Man, which were holding a small perimeter around them.
“My servo motors will not withstand all of them,” X-51 said. “I suggest we evacuate and regroup immediately.”
She-Hulk ducked underneath Machine Man’s arms and came back up with an uppercut into the block top of the closest Android. Taking the initiative was something she had learned as an Avenger, something that Captain America himself had urged when caught between a rock and a hard place.
The struck Awesome Android, a miracle creation of evil science, stumbled back into one of its brethren, knocking them both over. She-Hulk pounced on them, first kicking one and then slamming the palm of her fist into the other.
Following suit to take the fight to direct contact, Nova rushed up behind one and gripped it’s block ‘head’ other either side. Willing her cosmic flame to life, compressed into the palms of her hands, the concentrated energy seared through the synthetic flesh of the Android and melted through its circuitry.
“Make a path!” Ant-Man shouted.
Sweeping in low on his air scooter, Ant-Man pulled up when he was just behind one of the Androids. Activating the Pym particles that gave him his size-changing powers, Scott Lang grew to full size in an instant and kicked both of his feet against the upper back of the Android. It had leaned forward to catch him as he had gone through its legs and was now off balance. The momentum that Ant-Man had added to it toppled it over.
He immediately shrunk back down and was caught by the air scooter, just in time to evade a swipe from another Android. “We need to get upstairs!” he said as he headed for the elevator.
Machine Man used his extendable arms to fight the Androids away, keeping them at a distance from the others as best he could. Seeing that Ant-Man had made it passed the Androids, he extended one arm out around She-Hulk and pulled her away from the half-crushed Android she was battling.
“Hey!” she exclaimed.
“Fighting here will change nothing,” X-51 explained. “Scott is correct. We need to take the fight upstairs.”
Nova quickly followed, taking only a second to blast the legs out from under another Android. As Ant-Man zipped into the elevator on his scooter, the doors sealed behind them.
An Android’s fist pounded against the titanium door, shaking the elevator car. “Going up now would be better than later,” Nova said.
“How do you expect to get through an entire building under the Mad Thinker’s control?” She-Hulk said as another Android punch rocked the car. “Hell, how do you expect to even get this thing working? He probably shut it off already if he’s as smart as they say he is.”
Machine Man slid back a panel on his right forearm and removed several wires that were connected to his internal operating system. “Is he as smart as they say I am?” X-51 said in his closest attempt at sarcasm.
---- 4 ----
“Reed, that big brain of yours better be workin’ on a way of getting us out of here.”
Ben Grimm, since his transformation into the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing, could barely use facial expressions to get his point across. The orange rock that covered his entire body no longer had the musculature to contort his face into different expressions of happiness, sadness, or irritation. Since their teleportation, however, he had doubled in size. They didn’t know how, they didn’t know why, and even though Ben would never say it, he was worried.
Still, he was able to make himself understood with the stare he fixed his friend with.
Reed looked around their confinement chambers. He had no clue as to how they had gotten there, or even where there was. He scratched his chin as he looked over the solid, white walls. There was seemingly only one entrance and exit, which was covered over by a force field.
“Obviously, we’re in a prison of some sort,” Reed finally said.
“Meaning one of our enemies brought us here,” Sue added. “Last I talked to Nick Fury we weren’t in any kind of trouble. Unless…” She turned to face her brother.
“Hey!” the Human Torch said defensively. “Don’t blame me! I haven’t done anything to ol’ sourpuss in months.”
Ben tightly gripped Johnny’s shoulder, pinching it between his bulky fingers.
“Okay, okay! Weeks. But, still. All I did was soap the windows on his flying car…”
“No, this doesn’t look like a SHIELD complex to me,” Reed said as he gently brushed his fingers over the edge of the door frame. “There’s something familiar about this laser grid. I’ve seen it before, I know I have.”
“Excuse me, but don’t we have bigger concerns than just who brought us here?” Sue said as she gripped her husband’s chin and turned him to Ben. “Look at him, Reed! What happened to him? An hour ago he was normal, but whatever transported us made his mutation worse!”
“I’m sorry, Sue, but as I said before I don’t have the equipment to analyze the obvious genetic changes in Ben. It would be better to concentrate on escaping for the moment.”
“Ben’s always been this ugly anyway,” Johnny said.
A hologram formed on the far side of the room, away from the Fantastic Four. The solid light illusion formed a head that hovered over top them like a godly being come to look over his subjects.
“Oh my God,” Johnny said. “Seriously? I was running a list of alien bad guys through my head that might have shanghaied us and I had it narrowed down to the Skrulls.”
“It is the genius of the Kree that has finally captured you, boy,” the hovering head of the Kree commander said. “I would advise you not to utter a word of our hated enemy while on board my ship. One of our top scientists, Bartos, is responsible for your presence.”
“What do you want?” Sue demanded. “We’re on peaceful terms with the Kree.”
“Silence, female! While your powers may have been altered, you will still adhere to the orders of your new commander!”
Sue blinked. “Altered?” She looked at Ben and then Reed. “Did…did something change with all of us?”
“It matters not,” the hologram said. “Bartos!”
The force field slid open behind them, revealing a short Kree man in a blue bodysuit standing in the doorway. In his hands was a small silver device with several small orbs bubbling out of the side. The Kree scientist smirked before pulling the trigger on his device, aiming its widespread nozzle at all four heroes.
The minds of the Fantastic Four went blank.
---- 4 ----
The Mad Thinker, as he had been dubbed years ago, was deluded with his own grandeur. So few of his fellow villains appreciated his genius. So few respected him for the terror that he was.
For years he had dedicated his study to the creation of the perfect synthoid, the most flawless of artificial lifeforms. While dabbing in other fields, he had quickly discovered ways to increase his own mastery over robotics, including a new field he credited himself with establishing: cyberpathics.
With a little surgical grafting, and even a touch of plastic surgery, the Mad Thinker was now actually able to plug his own brain into computer systems. He had heard of other people doing similar things, such as when the Tinkerer created an exoskeleton run by the wearer’s thoughts, or when the Red Ghost mentally controlled his super-apes through the use of a helmet.
But this was different. Not only could the Mad Thinker, now plugged directly into the Baxter Building, control the very defense systems of the building, but he essentially had possessed both the software and the hardware associated with those systems.
The security cameras were his eyes. The titanium infrastructure was his skeleton. The routine sub-programming that sent his commands around the building was his lifeblood.
He chuckled as he watched the substitute heroes battle their way through the third level of the Baxter Building. Their plight was hopeless! He activated the adamantium capture arms in the hallway where he had trapped them, snaring the green woman and the purple robot.
He had seen the robot before. X-51, he believed it was called. Perhaps when this was over he would study him more carefully.
It would, of course, be impossible for them to reach him all the way on the roof. The antenna array had proven to be a weak point in Richards’ design, as he had easily proven. What surprised him, however, was the fact that he was not alone in this realization.
Someone else had hacked into the Baxter Building before him, taking stock of the same weapons and equipment that he was after.* Once he killed off the annoying heroes trapped within his new building, he would uncover this person’s identity.
* (Check out the note at the end of the issue – D)
The Mad Thinker ‘looked’ back through the various lenses of security cameras in the Baxter Building, happy to see that the elusive fire woman had also been restrained by the suppression foam he had discharged into the hallway. That only left the tiny bug man, who so far, had been able to avoid most of his traps due to his size.
He heard a sudden whooshing sound and spun around, taking care not to rip the wires out of his head that were plugging him into the antenna array. “No!” he exclaimed. “It’s not possible!”
She-Hulk stepped out of the roof access doorway, followed by Machine Man. The Mad Thinker, dumbstruck, again ‘looked’ through the security cameras and strangely saw that nothing had changed on the third level. The heroes were still captured.
“You didn’t really think you were smarter than an actual machine, did you?” Nova said as she soared up passed the lip of the roof’s edge and hovered over the Mad Thinker. “That’s just…naïve.”
“Damn you!” the Thinker yelled, reaching into the subsystems of the Baxter Building’s defenses to activate the rooftop weapons. He would blast the arrogant woman out of the sky.
He paused. Something was wrong. His access to the building…it had been somehow cut off. He went blind, his vicarious vision leaving him suddenly.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
Ant-Man grew to full size in front of the Mad Thinker, clamping his hands down on both his shoulders. “You saw what we wanted you to see,” Scott said. “Machine Man is much better than you at speaking to computers. You might even say he has a certain relationship with the Baxter Building. He kept you occupied while we simply made our way upstairs, uninterrupted.”
“No! That’s impossible! You insignificant—”
Ant-Man released a small bio-blast through both of his gauntlets, knocking the Mad Thinker out cold. The villain slumped into his arms unconscious and Ant-Man gently laid him down on the rooftop. He motioned for Machine Man to come closer.
“Think you can unplug him without giving him a lobotomy?” he asked.
“Assuredly,” X-51 replied. “In fact, I’ve already taken the liberty of remotely ejecting him from the systems by way of the wireless router. I should be able to dislodge the wires from his head without any damage.”
“What about the Androids in the basement?” She-Hulk asked. “I know you immobilized them with an EMP, Machine Man, but we should round them up before they wake up.”
“Fury will want to take them,” Ant-Man said. “Better call SHIELD again.”
“Is SHIELD like, your dumping ground on Earth for evil bad guys?” Nova asked. “I can’t imagine this Fury person likes playing clean-up so much.”
“The moment he stops policing the world,” She-Hulk said, “he’ll mind. C’mon.”
She-Hulk and Nova departed back through the roof access while Machine Man removed the wires from the back of the Mad Thinker’s skull. Ant-Man watched over them just in case, as he was uneasy about leaving when a villain like the Mad Thinker was alone with a robot.
Machine Man looked over the wiring carefully, as if captivated by it. “Interesting,” he said. “It seems that the Thinker created fiber optic cable that was able to transmit neurons. Amazing.”
X-51 slid back the panel on his forearm again and plugged the cable in before Ant-Man could stop him. Machine Man’s eyes went black as he looked through the systems as the Mad Thinker originally had.
“Are you okay?” Ant-Man asked.
“Yes. Yes, this is quite amazing. Surely Dr. Richards will want to examine this when he returns.”
“We have to find him first.”
“Scott,” X-51 said as he removed the cable from his arm. “I just looked over Dr. Richards’ laboratory while looking through the Thinker’s cable. The energy signature comparison I initiated then the attack happened has finished.”
“You matched the teleportation signal that took the Fantastic Four? That’s great! Where did the signal come from?”
“I believe we will need to get the others immediately,” Machine Man said as he stood up. “It came from Latveria.”
---- 4 ----
“Our results, Lord Doom, were inconclusive. I apologize.”
A beam of yellow energy burst forth from Dr. Doom’s gauntlet, instantly incinerating the robot servant where it stood at the foot of his throne. Deep within his castle in Latveria, Doom had been watching over his servant droids as they attempted to ascertain the true results of his subtle assault on the Fantastic Four.
He had looked over the figures himself. They were perfect. Flawless. Yet, somehow, something had gone wrong. He had analyzed the data and decided that a third party was responsible for the foul, but his servants were unable to determine that party’s identity.
He would not rest until the Fantastic Four were found and defeated at his own hands. Only he would be allowed to kill them, and for the insult of some unknown provocateur imputing on his near triumph, he would kill them as well.
As a man of science he had exhausted his means of searching. He had dabbled in mysticism years ago, but he was not too proud to acknowledge his inadequacies in that particular area of study. However, he did retain enough pride to reject any sort of help when it came to the black arts.
Help…
Any idea occurred to him. For all intents and purposes, the Fantastic Four were gone. He may have been their greatest enemy, but he was by no means their only enemy. Indeed, the list of antagonists that had fought against Richards and his friends was no short list.
With the Fantastic Four gone, perhaps he could rally their enemies under his command without interference. When they eventually returned, or he found them, it would become all the easier to destroy them with the competition heeding his wishes.
Perhaps it was time for Doom to issue a call to arms.
---- 4 ----
NEXT ISSUE: Ant-Man, She-Hulk, Nova, and Machine Man head to Latveria to confront the Fantastic Four’s deadliest foe! Of course, they have to actually make it to Latveria first, and if the Wizard has anything to say about it, they won’t get there in one piece!
SPECIAL NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Both in FF #10 and this issue I’ve pointed out that someone had been hacking into the Baxter Building computer network. Who was it? You’ll have to pay close attention to what’s going on in the rest of the Altered Visions site to discover the HUGE background event that’s going on right now. Perhaps take a look at upcoming issues of AVENGERS *wink, wink*. Of course, if you need more hints, maybe check out the AV message board J
- D. Golightly
