Extremis

by Marie Jevins

  “Maya, I’m not sure this is going to work. I really need something wool. How about we go see if you have something made of wool in your hotel room? I think I read in the hotel brochure that the beds have wool blankets.”

  “We’ll have to hurry. I told Sal we’d meet him here in the bar in half an hour.”

  “You have an alarm on that watch, don’t you?”

  Tony smiled as Maya slipped off the barstool and headed toward the elevator. He turned to follow, but stopped first to hand the glass back to the bartender.

  She slipped him her phone number on a ripped napkin. He winked, and turned away to follow Maya up to her room.

  F I V E

  “We had the new handset couriered to JFK with Happy. You have it there?” Geoff, from Stark Enterprises’ board of directors, spoke for the group of five men and women around the conference room table back at headquarters.

  “Yeah, Geoff,” said Tony, speaking in the direction of the videoconference screen. He idly turned over the smartphone he’d found sitting on the desk of his plane’s mobile office. Looks like a phone, he thought, but it’s clunkier, and the casing is too generic. Geoff and his engineering team had no style. “Listen, I have notes on an ocular control system. It’s partly how I run the Iron Man suit.”

  “Tony…”

  “It’s a spray of very low-power lasers that read changes of motion and pressure in the eye. Basically, it can tell what you’re looking at. Jarvis knows what Iron Man’s about to ask before I say it.”

  “The phone, Tony.” The other four board members looked blank and emotionless next to Geoff. They’d put on their best poker faces, trying not to let Tony know that they were unhappy with his decision earlier in the year to cease military contracting. Trying not to let on, yet, that they were siding with Geoff over their CEO.

  Tony realized his long disappearance into the Coney Island garage probably hadn’t helped the situation.

  “Yeah. This is the Stark 99?” Tony turned the phone on. He made another mental note: He couldn’t see the screen while sitting next to the plane window. He pulled down the window shade. Add anti-glare screen, he typed into the note-taking function of the phone, trying out the onscreen keyboard. If this phone had ocular controls, he realized, he could eliminate typing so long as he held the phone directly in his line of sight. Send memo to engineering test department, re: ocular keyboard, Tony typed. Also, test projection keyboard with ocular use. The responsiveness of the existing keyboard was adequate, if clunky. He liked the edge-to-edge screen, the fingerprint unlocking, and the waterproofing, but this phone had been rushed. Why did those idiots use plastic? Anti-glare glass wasn’t invented this morning.

  “You’ve been out of touch. We’re calling it the Stark Beam 01 now. We agreed with you to build in messaging functions that circumvent network settings. Phone companies will hate us, but there are a lot more consumers than there are phone companies. Your test handset there has a special stage of functionality. It connects directly to the Stark Zipsat Constellation.”

  Tony considered the five executives around the tremendous wooden table in the conference room, as seen on the plane’s monitor. He smiled, just a little. Some of his directors had ended up on the board through corporate acquisitions or management expertise and, like Geoff, were lacking in what Tony thought of as Stark style. But the hardware engineers working on the guts of Stark products were truly visionary.

  “It has satellite Internet access?” He was marveling at this ugly little plastic device now.

  “Once we—well, I mean, Iron Man makes a few adjustments to the motherboard on the main Zipsat satellite, yes. The mobile will have Zipsat broadband access, faster than any phone network. You can stream Seven Samurai in less time than it takes to hit the ‘buy’ button. Or download an entire season of Billionaire Boys and Their Toys in thirty seconds.”

  “You’re all right, Geoff. Do you have a plan for getting me up to the Zipsat, or do I need to work that out myself?”

  “Mrs. Rennie negotiated complimentary passage for you this afternoon on a suborbital space flight with Galactic FLX Inc. You’ll be positioned at the upper edge of the mesosphere. You’re on your own to get to the thermosphere from there.”

  “Mrs. Rennie is quite the negotiator,” said Tony, truly impressed. Getting a last-minute seat in a private space-launch wasn’t easy.

  “She had leverage. You’ve agreed to autograph 1,750 Iron Man photos for the Rocket FLX Com staff. You leave in fifty-two minutes from McGregor, Texas. Happy loaded your specialized space armor on to the plane alongside your regular armor.”

  Tony glanced down long enough to shoot off a text to Maya. Might be a few minutes late, have to run an errand for work.

  Tony looked back at the screen. “What other surprises does this phone hold for me?”

  “You can also hook it up to any computer, wirelessly or tethered. Click on settings and you’ll see options for different operating systems…”

  “If we had ocular control, we wouldn’t need to click on settings,” muttered Tony. Geoff ignored him and kept talking.

  “This phone is going to storm the consumer end of the market, once we make a deal with a telecom company.”

  “Who’s going to want to make a deal with us if we don’t need them for half the functions on our phone?”

  “That’s a sticking point,” Geoff admitted.

  “Buy a telecom company, then.”

  “Tony, we’re running low on funds. Your little televised stunt with the military contracts halted all our projected revenue streams for the next decade. Why do you think we got you a seat on a space launch instead of sending you up on your own plane? Which brings me to just one more thing.”

  “Oh, come on, Geoff. Don’t start again.”

  “We understand that Stark needs new revenue. We’re willing to work on new projects, forget the weapons, even though the weapons funding made it possible for us to advance the causes of science, engineering, and chemical research. But a CEO needs to be in his office.”

  “I have to go to Austin. An old friend needs me.”

  “You know that’s not what we’re talking about. It’s Iron Man, Tony. He keeps you busy—search and rescue, crime-fighting, on call with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers. But we all know there’s no Stark Enterprises without you. And there’s also no Stark without you tinkering in your garage. You know that phone would be done already if you’d been involved. And it wouldn’t be so ugly either. The engineers are good, but they’re not Tony Stark.”

  Tony slid the plane’s window shade back up so Geoff couldn’t see him roll his eyes in the glare of the sun. Don’t I pay these people? he thought. How come they’re telling me what to do?

  He pushed the “intercom” button on his armrest. Time for lunch, and he’d spotted a couple of sandwiches on the passenger seat when Happy had driven the car on board. That mango smoothie was a distant memory.

  Geoff was still talking.

  “Taking a Chief Technologist role doesn’t remove your control. But it’ll let someone else run the company.”

  “You think I trust someone else not to take on military contracts again?” Tony let the board see him roll his eyes this time.

  “You still design for S.H.I.E.L.D., Tony.”

  “Not weapons. Tracking devices. Safety equipment. Rescue vehicles. It’s different.” Tony held the Stark Beam 01 up to the monitor. “We’ve just invented the best cell phone on earth. We don’t need military money anymore.”

  The staff sat quietly on the other end, back in New York. They all looked down, shuffled papers nervously. Those papers probably showed them some unpleasant numbers that supported Geoff’s concerns. Tony had seen the numbers, too. He’d even worked some of them out. That didn’t change his core beliefs.

  After a minute, Geoff spoke again. Tony could see that his fists were clenched, and the other board members were still intently studying the top of the conference room table.

  “Tony, we’re hi
p-deep in research and development on thirty different projects. Eighty percent of which won’t realize any money in the next three years. Military money is the easiest way to improve cash flow.”

  “Give me another solution, Geoff. All I’m hearing from you is regret that it’s no longer the past, that we can’t do something we used to do. Look, it’s very simple. We don’t do that anymore. No more military money. Stop clinging to the past. Tell me about the future. Our future. All I am hearing is can’t can’t can’t. Tell me something we can do.”

  “Okay, we could license technologies elsewhere. But we need you to sign off on those. And when you spend six weeks in the garage…”

  “We can’t license out. Our tech being exclusive and unique is what gives us our mystique and our edge. Besides, if we let others use our tech, they’d just do the same things we used to do, but not as well. Endgame? Lots more faulty weapons going off when they shouldn’t. Stark-clone munitions destroying the unindustrialized world. I’m not prepared to be responsible for that.”

  “Then I don’t know what to tell you, Tony. If you want to make the world a better place, you have to let someone help you. We’re trying to give you ideas here, and you’re not helping us. Even Bill Gates—”

  “Stark is unique among corporations, and I do not look to other businessmen for guidance on how to run my company. Find me other solutions. Talk to Markko in Engineering about his plasma-powered space heaters—they’ve got AI, and they follow you around from room to room; if you step on one, it screams as it shuts off. Talk to R&D about their progress on underwater turbines. We can replace coal and oil in about twenty-five years between that and our plasma power, but we need time to work out what to do about the marine life that keeps swimming into the turbines. Give me something we can work with now, not in three years.”

  Enough, thought Tony. He clicked the “off” button in his armrest and watched Geoff open his mouth to speak again just as the monitor went dark.

  “Mallen, can you stand up? You’re supposed to be different now. Super-powered or something, like a redneck Captain America in jeans.”

  Beck reached a hand down to help pull his buddy to his feet. Mallen took Beck’s hand, accidentally throwing him straight to the concrete slaughterhouse floor.

  “Ow. What the hell’d you do that for?” Beck sat up, rubbing his chin where it had grazed the wall.

  Mallen shrugged. “Sorry. Weird. I feel…this feels real good.” He stood on one leg, testing out his knee, then switched to the other. He jumped in place a few times. “Legs are good. Nothing feels sore. My right knee used to get kind of stiff and made cracking noises when I bent it. Now, nothing.”

  “Can you, I dunno, fly now?” Beck was standing, looking expectantly at Mallen. “Let’s figure out what that shot did to you. It sure as hell didn’t make you any better lookin’.”

  Mallen pointed his hands in the air and jumped. He landed quickly. “No, no flying.”

  Nilsen looked his friend up and down. “Well, you’re not glowing or anything. You don’t look one bit different from how you looked before. Aside from not wearing anything. Argh, my eyes are burning!”

  “C’mon, we’ll work your new powers out later. Let’s get you some clothes and get movin’. Nilsen has some in the van,” said Beck.

  “What’s Nilsen doing with clothes in his van?”

  The larger man looked sheepish now. “I, uh, I couldn’t pay the rent last week on my room. So, fine, I live in the Econoline now. Been catching up on some reading and some TV. Have you seen Billionaire Boys? Man, what a bunch of worthless crap. There really is such a thing as having too much money. This country is so out of whack right now, people like that so rich they have robot dogs while I can’t even come up with money for a crappy boarding house.” He shook his head. “It’s no big deal, me livin’ in the van. Gives me time to do stuff instead of looking for rent money. I showered at Beck’s yesterday.”

  “Just like old times.” Mallen chuckled. “I used to shower at Beck’s back when I lived in that old shed and worked frying chicken at Rocket Dog’s Snack Shack. Remember that? That time I decided I wasn’t going back to the group home?”

  “Which time you decided you weren’t going back to the group home?”

  Mallen ignored Nilsen’s snide remark. “Back then you didn’t need paperwork to get a job. You just walked in, asked if they needed help, and they hired you.”

  They reached the van.

  Beck walked around to the far side and hopped in, pulling the door shut behind him. Mallen slid the back door open and climbed inside, while Nilsen took his usual spot in the driver’s seat. Nilsen started up the van’s ignition, pulling away from the slaughterhouse toward the town center.

  “So long as you said you were over sixteen—which you weren’t—nobody asked any questions,” Beck said. “Stupid law. If you need a job and someone needs a dishwasher, it shouldn’t be that hard, y’know? You don’t need to be sixteen to know how to wash dishes. What’s that about? And I can’t even get a job now, since I don’t have any ID. It’s none of the Feds’ business how I make money.”

  “When Snack Shack asked for my phone number,” continued Mallen, “I gave them the number of the pay phone at the 7-11. When they called to tell me my schedule for the week, they’d get that dope dealer and he’d write the message on the inside-front cover of the Yellow Pages. What was his name? The guy with the headband and the Van Halen shirt?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t remember his name,” said Beck. “What do I look like, a friggin’ dictionary? Like I’m a member of the Dictionary Family?”

  “The Dictionary Family! They always thought they were better ’n us. Even though they lived on the same block as your grandma, drank the same water, had to share the same air as us.” Mallen hadn’t thought about these old times in years, and he looked forward to putting things right, making them more like they were before. It felt good to laugh with his friends. “Remember how that one girl was always walking around with library books? We’d be sitting in the yard, practicing our swearing and pitching whisky bottles at squirrels, and that little girl would go prancing by with her stack of library books. Remember the time her sister threw the bottle back into the yard and it cut Beck’s head open?”

  The men howled with laughter. The van drifted to the side, and Nilsen pulled the steering wheel hard to swerve back on to the road.

  “I still got the scar, look here.” Beck pulled his baseball cap off and parted his hair. He leaned over the back of his seat. “Remember how the cops came, and we ended up making it look so bad they took her downtown?”

  “You gotta know how to play the cops,” said Mallen, serious now. “Deny deny deny. They don’t tell you that in library books, do they, Dictionary Family? When the cops show up, you get your story straight and say ‘I didn’t hit anybody.’ Works every time. So long as you’re consistent and your friends don’t blow it on the witness stand, there’s not a damn thing they can do. None of their business anyway, what you do in the yard. How the hell did it get to where you get busted for hanging out with your buds in the front yard? Hey, I wonder if any of the Dictionary Family ever did anything other than work as a salad-bar girl at Rocket Dog’s Snack Shack.”

  “My cousin ran into the Book Girl last Thanksgiving,” said Beck. “He always thought she was kinda cute. She’d give him extra refills when he brought his own cup. Let him sneak pickles from the salad bar. Said she’s in New York now. Something to do with magazines or kids’ books or something.”

  “Pretentious losers.” Mallen looked disgusted. “Thought they were better than us, but Book Girl had to work right next to me at the Snack Shack back then. I used to spit in the lettuce when she was busy flirting with the customers. She had to wear that stupid T-shirt with the beagle on the firecracker. I wore whatever I wanted cuz I worked in the back. I coulda gone to New York, too, but it’s everything wrong with the world today, there and in Washington. ’Sides, I wouldn’t leave my buds, ’cause we’re
a team.”

  “Look, there it is,” said Nilsen. He pointed at a building on a corner. “Now it’s another gourmet coffee shop, like everywhere else.” He shook his head. “Used to be the Snack Shack, right there. There’s a ladder on the side, back by the Dumpsters. I used to climb up to the roof at night sometimes when I couldn’t stand sleeping another night at the group home. It was nice to be alone once in a while.”

  They drove past it in a kind of reverential silence.

  “Wait. I hear something,” said Mallen, suddenly alert.

  Beck and Nilsen listened, but shook their heads. They heard nothing.

  “I think that injection fixed up my senses. I heard you guys back at the slaughterhouse before you were even inside the building. I’m sure I just heard a woman scream.”

  Beck stared at Mallen for a second. “Well, that lab guy that gave us the Extremis shot said it was supposed to improve your senses and make you stronger. Let’s find out if it worked. Where’s the scream coming from?”

  “Hang a right, then go halfway down the block. I think it’s near the old roller rink, over by the supermarket.” Nilsen took a right. “Park,” said Mallen. “Let me out. You’re too slow.”

  Mallen jumped from the back of the van and sped off down the block. He could still hear Beck and Nilsen as he ran. He heard them as clearly as if he were still in the van with the two men.

  “He’s fast, and he’s got super-hearing now,” said Beck. “Not bad for three days spent rolling around on the slaughterhouse floor. Wonder if there’s a way to make money on this.”

  “What, you want to have Mallen do tricks in the shopping-mall food court while you pass around a hat? The point’s not to make money, dimwit. We’re going to free America from its shackles.”

  “I get that, Nilsen, but don’t we have to eat while we free America? And we can’t all three live in your van, you know.”

  At the end of the block, Mallen found a prone woman lying on the sidewalk. She’d been carrying a grocery bag that had fallen, scattering food across the ground by her side. Mallen remembered seeing this before.