Industrious: Engineering Marvels - Chapter 22

The Red Skull ripped a secure table from its moorings and threw it across the room to impact harshly against the stone wall. “IMBECILES!”

 Zemo stayed where he was, hands tucked behind his back and his face a mask of discipline to shield him from the fear he felt at seeing his leader in such a towering rage. The only way to make himself more of a target was to cower, though. Were he to display the lack of composure in truth, the Skull would no doubt rip him limb from limb in his current mood.

At this stage, though, it was better to simply allow the Red Skull to take his frustrations out on a more convenient and durable target.

“I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEEDED! To create an ARMY of vampires! Of the UNDEAD, capable of shredding the corrupt leadership and decadent populace of these pathetic nations we are arrayed against!”

The Red Skull screamed in fury as his cybernetic arm glowed intensely and fired off a blast of blue light at the destroyed table.

Zemo forced himself to stay still instead of running for cover.

Baron Blood, the near-crippled vampire who lay at his master's feet, gasped in pain as the Skull kicked him.

“And the moment I turn my back, the entire fortress is destroyed! Virtually all of the fledglings you have spawned, killed! The command staff of the SS I had suborned, butchered!” Shmidt spat in disgust, his crimson features sneering. “And you come crawling back to me, daring to ask to be rewarded for your failure?! For more resources which you will doubtless only squander?!”

The oversized cybernetic hand came up without warning and fired a compressed beam of alien energy down at the vampire, reducing him to ash in mere moments.

With the glowing scar on the floor all that remained of his fellow subordinate, Zemo was even more aware of his tenuous position under the Skull's command. But that was the price one paid for being able to do their work without the scruples of weak-willed oversight and the filthy hands of the impure dirtying your experiments.

“It is so hard to find good help these days.” The Red Skull sighed, his anger spent as he looked over Zemo's shoulder. “Send the remaining vampire troops to wreak havoc among the Soviet lines. Even if that simpering fool Hitler is a waste of a proper war machine, his armies are still useful in shielding my plans from the Allies.”

“Hail Hydra!” The guard snapped, giving off the salute before turning to carry out his orders.

“And now, sir?” Zemo dared to ask. “What of this... task force that the Flag-Bearer has put together?”

Shmidt was silent for a moment. “Retask Project Sleeper. Position one of each of them at the remaining bases and give the commander the activation codes. Should the Flag-Bearer or the Assassin show themselves, they are to be activated immediately.”

Zemo felt his mouth dry at the thought. “Sir, the potential casualties-”

The cybernetic hand came down hard on one of the lab's remaining tables, denting it. “We will lose the base anyway, Zemo. Captain Rogers and his merry band have already proven themselves adept at being a thorn in my side. One of our research stations is a small price to pay for ensuring the remainder continue to operate until the Great Work is finished.”

Zemo hesitated a further moment, then snapped a salute. “Hail Hydra! It will be as you command, sir!”

The Red Skull scowled and glared at the cooling metal floor. “It had better be, Doktor. You promised me these robots would be unmatched engines of destruction in the world to come. I would see them live up to your specifications.”

“I assure you, they will!” Zemo promised, inwardly praying he was right.

As the other man fled to ensure the orders were carried out, the Red Skull stared out at the snowy vista of the reinforced windows. “What are you doing at this moment, my worthy foes? Training? Or has the decadent spirit of democracy allowed you to believe you may rest on your laurels?”

…

“I can't believe you told Joseph Kennedy that you wanted to break his jaw,” Peggy growled at me as we drove along the remote country roads. “Especially after you gave Steve that talk about how important politics is.”

“He's a defeatist asshole who wanted to kowtow to Hitler, had his own daughter lobotomized, and runs his family like a political training camp for higher office,” I replied dryly. “Unlike Steve, who has Bucky as living evidence that producing another super soldier is not only possible, but an eventuality, I'm almost certainly a unique resource and can afford to be rude to people who deserve it. Especially to their face.”

“Steve said you wouldn't tell that FBI agent anything about J. Edgar Hoover, but you didn't seem to have much of a positive opinion about him,” Peggy stated irritably.

“I don't, no. But unlike Kennedy, who has essentially exhausted his personal political capital outside of a few scant favors and now likely owes me the lives of at least three of his children, if not four, J. Edgar Hoover is a cold-blooded sonuvabitch that won't stop at political punches and I'd rather not send whatever leg-breakers he throws my way back in pieces. Or deal with the fallout of having to do that.”

Peggy sighed through her nose, a long and drawn-out noise. “You are a very frustrating man, Ray Winston.”

“Considering the other frustrating man in your life and your relationship with him, I'll take that as a compliment,” I replied with a grin.

Peggy's heated face morphed into a scowl as she turned away and muttered, “Perhaps it isn't so great a thing that women have achieved so great an equality in your time that you're so cavalier with the personal relationships of one.”

I snorted and shook my head. “Everyone wants to be a cat until its time to do cat things.”

Peggy blinked and turned back to me as the car bumped its way through a series of potholes. “That's... actually very clever, if I'm understanding you right.”

I chuckled. “You probably are. It's essentially a criticism of the idealization of the lives of others when, in fact, they have obligations to see to themselves. Everyone wants to be a cat because cats always appear to lay about in the sun all day, but...”

“I doubt anyone would express a desire to chase after rats or mice in the crawlspace,” Captain Carter nodded, a small smile on her face. “Even mostly in jest, I never thought I'd be one of those old biddies who complained about the burdens equality would bring.”

 “The future is... complicated,” I sighed. “I tell everyone who wants a piece of me not to take my words for gospel. Just by informing them of what happened in 'my' timeline, I'm changing things.”

“At least it's a more creative excuse for being wrong than I've heard charlatans and fortune-tellers use,” Peggy smirked, her tone teasing. Then, obviously attempting to shift the conversation, she asked, “I heard you explaining to Steve that flying cars weren't readily available by the twenty-first century. He seemed quite disappointed.”

I allowed my eyes to trace over the rolling countryside as I nodded. “It's not a matter of technology, really. It's a matter of, well... liability, logistics, and licensing.”

“That's an interesting mix of problems,” Carter commented idly. “Care to elaborate?”

“Think about what happens when two or more vehicles crash into each other,” I replied dryly. “Now put the collision a hundred feet in the air.”

Peggy stilled, blinking rapidly as she processed the thought. “Ah, I see. I suppose that does explain things. You would effectively need to screen drivers as thoroughly as pilots and train them to match, then there's the problem of insuring both the vehicles themselves and the buildings within or underneath a flight corridor. A shame, really. I'd hoped Stark would figure out the problems with that jalopy of his.”

“A lot of things in the future are disappointingly realistic, I'm afraid,” I shrugged.

“Can I pick your brain about the computers that seem so common in the future?” Peggy asked, shifting a bit in her seat as the driver steered us down yet another long and winding road. While the English countryside was picturesque and largely untouched by the war, it also blended together after the first few miles and the back-roads of the time made me yearn for an American highway that wouldn't be built for another decade.

Great for a scenic drive, but awful for getting to your destination, in other words.

“Is it because you read HG Wells as a child or because you're probing for answers for your government?” I asked tolerantly, slowly turning to her with a smirk. “Or both?”

Peggy sighed, her red face turning away again. “You saw the recording equipment.”

“I saw the recording equipment,” I nodded, reaching over to tap the backrest of the seat. “Keeping in mind that I'm charging for this... computers?”

“Perfectly understandable,” Peggy muttered, clicking her tongue. “For the record, I disagreed with this entire approach, Ray. I'm terribly sorry, but... King and Country, and all that.”

I nodded understandingly. “At the risk of being too lenient, and for whoever reviews these tapes, I'll point out that burning a close friendship with a vital informant for the sake of immediate gains in intelligence is more than a little short-sighted when you stand to see far greater returns simply by being honest and forthright. But I suppose asking the English to honor that request would be the same as asking the French to be polite.”

Peggy snorted, hunching over in a sudden fit of giggles. “For the record, as well, I'm terribly offended on behalf of my countrymen and overwrought at the idea that you would impugn the honor of Mother England. Still, thank you for being understanding, Ray.”

The quiet look I gave her seemed to properly communicate the fact that, while I wasn't holding this little slip against her, it wasn't exactly forgiven or forgotten either. Still, I wasn't blind to the potential the knowledge I possessed held, and this was a far more innocuous attempt to get the upper hand than the British Empire could have moved forward with. So even if I wasn't going to let this pass entirely unremarked, I also wasn't going to go assassinate Churchill or something equally over the top in response.

Peggy gave me a grave nod at odds with the relatively perky question that followed it. “So, computers? I'll be sure to pass the bill along to my superiors.”

“Computers are good,” I replied bluntly, then huffed a laugh at the deadpan expression on the woman's face. “Fine, fine... globally, humanity is entering a new stage of the industrial revolution. In hindsight, my time period dubbed it the 'information age.' As should be obvious from the name, a newly-globalized world depends on effective information management... though I'm sure I don't have to tell a world-spanning empire that.”

“Such an admonishment likely goes without saying, yes,” Peggy snorted.

“Computers, as Alan Turing can attest, vastly simplify data-throughput. They allow you to process information faster, easier, and with fewer people being necessary for the task,” I explained. “Computers will be absolutely integral to dominance in the coming century and beyond.”

“The man was a complete ass, by the way,” Peggy huffed. “At least until whatever you wanted to say to him got said. I swear I've never seen a man go so pale before.”

That's what happens when you tell someone they kill themselves after being forced on an estrogen regime when they're outed during the seventies for being gay.

“I don't remember the specifics, but the man was what we, in the future, would call 'neurodivergent.' Nowadays, people would just say he's weird. Or odd,” I waved her off. “His brain doesn't work like most others, is what I mean. But, as rude and antisocial as he comes across, he's also objectively correct as regards the usefulness of computers.”

“There seem to be a lot more... labels for lack of a better word, in your time,” Peggy stated awkwardly, the question implied.

“I did say it was the information age,” I replied, then elaborated. “It's a byproduct of how connected everyone is, in the future. Computers do a lot of good in breaking down barriers and facilitating the flow of information, but a result of that is that many people feel... lost in the sea of data they now have access to.”

“I can hardly imagine...” Peggy hummed, a faraway look in her eyes.

“By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century... so, about 2010 or so, smartphones were beginning to really proliferate,” I segued, holding out my hand demonstratively. “Think of it like having a small tablet, about this big, you can carry around with you at all times. This tablet can make phone calls, send messages to other tablets, access electronic libraries, take and share recorded footage, tap into... a kind of gathering spaces where people of like minds can discuss and mingle with each other, no matter how niche their topics... and so much more.”

“I'm beginning to see how that could become overwhelming,” Peggy grimaced. “Just keeping track of news from the war can be daunting.”

“That same feeling creates a need to, for lack of a better word, label yourself. Create an identity out of who you are and what others call you. In a world full of information, the most important is often your own. Which is why this conversation is sponsored by Surfshark VPN,” I stated seriously.

Peggy stared at me blankly.

“In case you don't know,” I went on, my lips twitching. “Surfshark is what's called a virtual private network. It's a product that allows you to hide your location on the world wide network of computers. This means you can pretend to be anywhere in the world and fool your service provider or content supplier into allowing you access to region-locked content. That pesky New York radio station not allowing you Londoners to listen in? Well, with Surfshark-”

 “Please stop,” Peggy begged, pressing a hand over her face even as silent tremors seemed to wrack her body, the joke having finally penetrated. “I suppose it should be something of a comfort that commercialization remains the same almost a hundred years in the future.”

“I'll drop the bit, but as much as it's a joke, it's also not, really.” I shifted in the seat and leaned back. “That was called an 'ad read.' The internet, a computer-to-computer sharing network for information, collectively got tired of companies putting product placement and advertisements into content that you couldn't skip or otherwise ignore. So they created methods that would block those advertisements. But the result was that corporations started paying content-creators directly to address audiences and make the ad itself part of their... skit, performance, whatever...”

“And that becomes relevant to our previous discussion...” Peggy pressed, sounding thoughtful but without understanding of my point.

“Because it's all information,” I stated bluntly, and she blinked. “It's about who sees what, when, and how they want it to be seen. It's about access to and preventing access from the information you're taking in and sending out through your devices. Even the product I mentioned, 'Surfshark,' was a real thing. It was designed to bypass protections on the streams of information coming into your device and being sent out, tricking the companies that control them into giving you access to material that is 'region-locked.'”

“Which I can surmise the meaning of easily enough from context clues,” Peggy nodded along, now intensely considering the point I was making. “That does actually illustrate the complexity of the world you're originally from remarkably well, now that I think about it.”

“And, just so the people listening to this tape think they've gotten their money's worth, this is also one of the primary reasons that the Soviet Union could never keep up with the Western Bloc long-term,” I stated, giving the backrest of the car the side-eye.

Captain Carter stiffened in surprise. “That does certainly sound like something which my superiors would find valuable, yes. Do go on.”

The Soviets kept up or even led computer production, globally, up to somewhere in the nineteen sixties. Then the United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan-” Here the Captain grimaced, so I amended my wording. “-which had been a loyal democratic and western ally for a decade and a half at that point, started to outpace the Soviet.”

“Why, specifically? If you don't mind me asking,” Peggy pressed.

“The real reasons have to do with the way the Union is structured on the macro-scale,” I temporized, “and would take a while to dig into, but one of the major contributing factors is that the Soviets saw computers as being solely a military-industrial resource that didn't need to be made available to the average worker. They were for computing factory output and plotting guided missile courses, not so that Aunt Mildred can look up cute pictures of cats-”

Peggy's lips twisted.

“Which was a thing. A big thing, actually. Cute animal pictures and videos with humorous subtitles was a mainstay of twenty-first century internet culture to the point it was largely unremarkable,” I felt compelled to add, replacing her amusement with a sort of thoughtful consideration. “But the problem is that, if you're not gradually making computers available to everyone, you're not seeing the kind of gradual commercialized improvements that individual competitive companies begin to spawn over the course of years and decades to cater to specific niche groups of the populous.”

Oh please let Stalin's spies get this tape! Please, please, please...

A Soviet Union that embraced computer culture was something that I would pay good money to see. They'd likely do their best to approach the entire system in the traditional authoritarian methodology their state was famous for, but the nineteen-fifties Soviet was not the twenty-first century techno-depostic Chinese Communist Party. Oh sure, the Russians were theoretically capable of instituting the same kinds of controls on whatever ARPANET-parallel eventually evolved from tying systems together, but if I'd learned anything from Soviet history, they'd inevitably set themselves on fire several times doing so.

In fact, the Soviets actually had planned something like ARPANET in my timeline. It'd been called 'OGAS,' which had a stream of Russian words behind it that basically meant the same thing. In classic Soviet fashion, the oft-forgotten OGAS had terrified American military and political leaders into dumping millions of dollars into subsidized computing projects, eventually culminating in ARPANET itself in nineteen sixty-nine...

...while the Russian equivalent had been shut down a year later due to lack of funding and general mismanagement.

<Insert Russian wooden mock-up plane meme here.>

Heh.

“Which means that unless the Russians actually reform their economy, they're unlikely to be able to keep pace with western-led efforts in this sector,” Peggy commented, nodding as she cradled her chin in one hand and rested her elbow on her knee.

“That's... the part we have time for right now, anyway,” I stated, looking at the large house looming in the distance. “I'm not going into technological specifications. If you want those, talk to... whoever FDR is putting on this mess. Doubtless some American company will be happy to partner with a British one to get things off the ground faster.”

“I was afraid of that, yes,” Peggy sighed.

“Ray? Ray, it is you!” I heard a young voice call from the step of the house, an elderly couple standing nearby as the boy raced towards me.

“Erik!” I grinned, opening my arms wide for a hug even as he crashed into me. “What's with the surprise? I told you I'd visit.”

“They didn't tell me you were coming,” he replied, his head tucked into my stomach.

“Ah, yeah. I suppose they just know I'm in the military. In theory, I could be called back, but...” I grinned again at the sign of worry on his face. “They'd better have a good excuse for interrupting my personal time. So, show me what you've been doing?”

Erik's expression shifted back to an easier smile, then he cocked his head. “You... brought something new. Is that for me?”

I rolled my eyes and dropped my backpack. “I was going to wait until tomorrow, but I guess it can be a reward for getting better at feeling out hidden metal. Can you tell me what it is yet?”

Erik grimaced, looking down. “I'm not that good yet. I can tell copper and steel, because they're everywhere, but-no, wait. This one feels like the old silver pieces Mrs. Huthbert has in a jar.”

I chuckled and pulled a wrapped object a bit longer than my forearm out of my pack. “Now, this isn't to show off or wave around, okay? I know you're not the type to do that, but I just need to make sure I'm not going to hear about any accidents if you send this flying through a wall.”

I'd thought about keeping the long knife as a trophy for myself, but the look on Erik's face as I unwrapped it was worth whatever bragging rights I'd lose long-term. His face cleared of some of the tentative surprise that was still lingering at my appearance and something like relief shown through. “Th-thank you, Ray. I... I miss you, a lot, when you go away, but... I know you're doing important stuff with the military.”

I nodded sadly. “The war will be over soon, Erik. A year, maybe a little more. I know it seems like a long time, but after that you'll come home with me, if you still want to.”

I nodded my head towards the elderly couple he'd been staying with.

Erik paused, then shook his head. “The Huthberts are... nice, but they don't... they don't understand. They treat me like I'm glass, like I'll break if they push too hard.”

I nodded understandingly and clapped him on the shoulder, gratified at the feeling of a bit more fat and muscle on his still-skinny frame. “We'll see how you feel when everything's over. If you're still of a mind to, there will be a place for you wherever I settle down. We good?”

Erik thought for a moment, no doubt disappointed at the wait, but nodded. “We're good.”

I grinned back at him, standing properly and hoisting my pack. “Alright then, introduce me to your guardians and show me around, then?”

Erik smiled back, a softer and more fragile one now that the emotions of the moment had passed.

~~~

Merry Christmas All! And a very Happy Hanukkah upcoming tomorrow! A Joyous Kwanzaa to everyone as well!

I've been swamped with family stuff, but managed to hammer this out in time for the holiday, so here's my Christmas gift to everyone. Hope you enjoy it.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe celebration, however you choose to hold it. I'll be working on... something once Christmas is over, so look forward to that on the weekend. Not sure what, but I'll have something ready.