“Dynamo says even with you, we won’t beat Tribes on design and programming, but the superconducting chips mean everyone will want our hard product,” Hill went on, and pointed emphatically at the Fixer. “A Schmot Guy good at taking design and making it working reality might be able ta do that. Girl can handle the product design. We need the production tech ta actually make it.”

Norbert puffed on his cigar, moving into his element. “How’re you handling the Isotopes?” he had to ask.

“If we guarantee sales to them, floater interest says no problem securing the raw. Rare earths aren’t in high enough demand yet ta compete, so it’s like digging up sand and being able to turn it inta money for a lot of places. Just gotta be careful, Murican government’s not gonna want anyone else buying the tech if they can help it. ‘Sensitive national secrets’ or some shit,” Mr. Hill snorted.

“Luddites. They don’t realize just how far ahead the Atlanteans, Wakandans, Russians, and Tribes... Hells, even the Lemurians and some of the Subterraneans are ahead on tech,” Norbert scoffed. “And you two aren’t even Staters, they think they can monopolize the tech?” He waved his cigar at the two of them. “What’s this about microwaves?” he digressed, plans already spinning behind his eyes. Spinning up production tech would normally be boring, but this was the most cutting-edge stuff he could work on, with wonderful alien shit thrown in on top.

He could probably lose himself for days in that shit!

“Ever seen the schematics for Jenkins’ suit?” Dynamo asked him.

It was a rhetorical question. “He’s not that dumb,” Norbert shook his head. “He did that, I’d be selling the design out from under him for being an idiot. I sold him some battery tech and polymers for the wings. As far as I went.”

She nodded and flicked up what was very, very obviously the entire and extraordinarily detailed schematic of a Beetle suit at least a generation or two past the last one he’d seen. Despite himself, Norbert couldn’t help leaning in, eyes gleaming at some of the designs. The muscle-following servos there were particularly elegant...

The design zoomed in on the head and particularly the antennae. Norbert frowned, took another drink, and the combo of energy drink and booze really tingled in his eyeballs.

“That’s...” he muttered, looking over the diagrams and design, eyes widening a little. “From Jenkins?!” he protested in disbelief, his world overturned. “He’s just an engineer!” he complained.

“He stumbled inta sumthin’,” Mr. Hill interjected, pointing his cigar emphatically. “A million average guys can do what one Schmot Guy can’t, and vice versa. Numbers have a genius all their own, and that’s how tech really improves over time. Geniuses break the deadlock, average folks fine-tune it all.”

Norbert puffed on his cigar, fixed on that microwave-harvesting tech in the Beetle’s helm. “So that’s how he got around his power supply problem,” he muttered, shaking his head. “What’s the yield on it?”

“Those two antennae generate enough juice to run the suit indefinitely outside of combat operations,” Dynamo informed him calmly. “It’s like being constantly plugged into a normal wall socket all the time.”

“From Jenkins, of all people...” Norbert muttered, shaking his head. “How’d he stumble onto that?” he had to ask.

“Moment of inspiration. He just had this idea of melding some Isotopes of Selenium, Iron, and Copper, found an alloy, and lo, stuff turns on and converts loose microwaves into electricity down in the bug bands.” Dynamo gestured at the rest of the stuff. “He’s got real talent as an engineer, top one percent in the country without a doubt, but that was his big moment. He just didn’t realize it.

“You want a pair of hands to do the boring shit with you, he can definitely do the job. We’d love to get a production system for the Antennae System working. It’s not fusion cells, but you can set it up virtually anywhere, it doesn’t require fuel, and it’ll start the wave of conversion from petrochemicals to electrical and broadcast power systems.” She took a drink herself. “Got some BIG backers who’d like to see that happen. Environmentally friendly and high-tech is awesome.”

“How secure is that alloy?” Norbert asked, zooming in on the important part.

“I ran it by Doc Richards, and he spent a day or two trying to figure it out. He got the composition, but the methodology is the important thing, as it’s Weird Science. He got nowhere. He figured anywhere from six months to a year of devoted attention to puzzle out how to make it, and he’s got better things to do.”

Norbert puffed on his cigar, thinking. He didn’t like to admit it, but Richards sat up there at the top table with Doc Bronze and the best Tribal, Russian, and Wakandan institutes. Some of the things Richards stumbled across were so radical even he had problems wrapping his head around them, the man setting up the waves of the next generation of tech that everybody else rode.

His own gifts were more towards improving and refining existing tech than making utterly new stuff. The Fixer fixed it and made it better. Making a Wave Motion Gun whose math just boggled even him was not what he did, but he’d made a lightning projector out of a toaster before as an intellectual challenge.

Doing it fast had been a bigger one...

“Any chance I can work on some of that gating tech?” he asked, the words just kind of blurted out.

Dynamo and Mr. Hill exchanged glances. “You know that shit is literally world-threatening, right?” Mr. Hill grunted. “You fuck it up once, you die. It’s a toss-up if the world dies with you.”

“Yeah, but I just wanna know,” Norbert grinned, eyes gleaming. “And using that shit against someone who thinks they are clever just sounds too good to be true.”

“Yeah,” Dynamo agreed. “Interdictions just stop ’em from coming in a small area. Can’t shield everything, everywhere, yet, and higher-end tech relies on some dimensional hijinks, so Interdicting the whole planet is basically just shooting our own development in the foot.” Norbert nodded along in agreement, while Mr. Hill just grunted. “That whole episode in Texas with the Portal and stuff. Thor re-opened it with magic, but the Shi’ar brought in a Stargate connected all the way to the Andromeda Galaxy, and powered it up with the ship’s reactor before blowing it up.

“I made some inquiries. That Stargate cost as much as a battle cruiser of theirs.”

Norbert leaned forwards. Dynamo had electrical powers and hypersensitivity to stuff around her. He belatedly realized she probably had the designs for everything in his technopack worked out, just from him sitting this close to her. “You got the plans for the Stargates?” he had to ask, almost drooling.

“Stargates have two tiers, one-way and two-way. Two-way Stargates cost the same as a Star Carrier.” She took another drink. “But I did get a damn fine look at the receiving Gate out there on M’Kraan,” she smiled thinly. “With the right materials, you might be able to make it. If not, it’s because we’re a generation shy on the tools.”

“And you could reverse-engineer the other side?!” he pressed eagerly.

“I could help. Dr. Richards is going to start working on that now. They use some esoteric Isotopes making the stuff, and the power requirements are exotic in particles and frequencies, up in the Dimensional Bands. The Shi’ar tech bands are definitely strange, too.”

“What’s that, now?” Norbert asked, sensing another tech secret.

“You’ve seen Kree and Skrull tech, right? Lemurian? Works kinda wonky, right?” she replied, following his train of thought easily.

“Trying to replicate the designs and getting equal performance is almost impossible,” he agreed scornfully. “It’s like the tech is fighting you.”

“Not a bad allegory. Isotopic alloys resonate with the prevailing akashic field when you start putting them together. So, the same damn Elements put together by the Kree exhibit slightly different characteristics when put together by a human. We don’t have the resonance required to duplicate Kree technology, and can only use it as guidelines for our own.

“Likewise, they consider high-end Human tech a load of crazy idiocy, and Skrull tech some unnatural heretical gunk and what-not.”

“Huh.” Learning that, it sounded so simple, and it actually cleared up a lot of doubts he’d had about his own ability to synthesize technology out of their stuff. “Is there any way to duplicate that resonance, bring multiple types of tech together?” he had to ask.

“Gotta be able to adjust your Kirlian field and your psi signature together. There’s Skrulls who can do it; it’s how they absorb other races and their tech, given enough time. Dr. Richards can do it, and I can do it.” Arcs of electricity danced around her dark locks for a moment, making them redder, the tips of her hair going white for a moment. “Dillon could probably do it, but he’s not smart enough to make use of it.”

At Norbert’s envious expression, she just snorted. “Yeah, yeah, for empirical research and messing with their tech, it’s useful. How useful is it on a practical basis for Terran tech?” she prodded him, taking another drink.

He puffed on his cigar, knowing the answer instantly.

It was totally fucking useless. Since two other people on the whole planet could replicate it, what good was anything the trio made? Nobody else could fix it or duplicate it. Even understanding it properly would be nigh-impossible.

His mind formed a mental aside that anything dealing with Isotopes for any other race would be like redoing the science all over again. He boggled at the immensity of the task. Was there no end to science?!

“So, you got tons of designs and schematics of alien technology and stuff, and most of it is totally useless?” he asked, eyes gleaming despite himself.

“It’s all got to be converted to Terran tech. We bought some machines that’ll give us a jump on certain things, but the whole thing is that we have to take them apart, completely rework them to a new Terran standard, and make our own if we really want to go anywhere with things.

“Terran superscience is up to us. Alien stuff is just ideas and stepping stones.”

“There’s a lot of brainpower working at the Baxter Building, and across town at Ferrus,” Ebersol pointed out, only a little... ironically.

“There is. There’s tons more in the Tribes, Wakanda, and Russia.”

“Equal to the likes of us?” he had to ask, his ego wounded. It was a big concession to acknowledge she might be as smart as him.

She considered him levelly, and he fidgeted, picturing the oversized woman who had beaten up the likes of the She-Hulk with her monstrous hand speed... and that was without her Gear!

“Norbert Ebersol, you live in the United States. This place does NOT take care of its people like any of those three locations.

“All three of those nations look after their kids. They identify their personality types and their Talents using magic or psionics when they are still very young, and they guide them into paths where they prosper.

“You are one of those rare cases of natural smarts and natural Talents coming together, making a Schmot Guy who can make the rules, and you actually were able to go into a tech field and thrive there.

“There’s plenty of people out there who are smart, and there are plenty who have Talents, but there aren’t a lot who have both overlapping.

“The difference is that those three nations find ALL of them, and put them where they are best at going. Dumb people get things to keep them happy, and dumb people with Talents get to work in places they normally couldn’t. People can work in areas below their smarts where their Talents shine, or just ignore them if they choose.

“It’s like Jenkins, lucking into something, except their luck is an order of magnitude higher because everybody knows what they are Talented at and can build on it. They have zillions of Jenkin-equivalents around, fine-tuning and raising the floor of things, and anyone and everyone who could be a Norbert Ebersol is found and raised right, instead of probably getting hugely frustrated with the basic education system and average smarts people with non-brainy Talents around him.”