Marvel At What Could've Happened

Chapter 23

"While Elon Musk is out there trying to get humans to Mars as fast as he can, we're sitting here with the technology to do it tomorrow and a bank of knowledge on the whole universe." Tony's eyes were sparkling with excitement.

Loki leaned against the counter in the lab and crossed his arms.

"So, when do we leave?"

"Obviously not soon," Tony said, flustered. "There's a lot to calculate...I said we had the technology, not that we were completely ready."

"Mars doesn't sound like the practical first destination," Bruce said with a grin. "There's got to be better places to go than a barren, red, rock planet."

"That's all Mars is?" Loki looked disgusted. "There's whole universes humans don't know about, all of them better than a cold, dead rock."

"Which is why we have you," Tony said, facing him directly. "How do you travel through space? Like what do you do about, like, oxygen? How do you get so far so fast?"

"Mostly we just use the Bifrost," Loki replied.

"Okay, but what is your Bifrost? How does it allow for travel?" Bruce asked.

"It's...like a portal. That sucks us up. It lets us travel millions of miles in seconds."

"It's like a wormhole," Tony murmured.

"I think that's exactly what it is," Bruce said in awe. "How do you control it? You've managed to focus and utilize a wormhole to travel to and from anywhere you want. That's unheard of." Loki stared back blankly.

"I don't know what a wormhole is," he said. "But that's right, if that's your word for what's happening. I don't know how we control it. It's ancient magic."

"Magic is just science that we don't understand," Bruce said. "Arthur C. Clark."

"Exactly," Tony said. "There's an explanation to how it works. Jesus, instantaneous travel to anywhere, and it's actually controllable. And you've been doing it for thousands of years."

"Can the Bifrost pick you up and send you down anywhere?" Bruce asked. Loki shook his head.

"Just to and from Asgard and any of the realms in its system. Like, Earth, Jotunhiem, a few others."

"That's disappointing," Tony said. "So back to my original question, how do you travel through space without the Bifrost, I suppose?"

"Ships," he replied. "Build for space travel, sealed to keep in oxygen. There are jump points, like small... wormholes, all over the known universe. You fly through one to the next, like traveling down roads. There are different routes through the jump points to get to all the places there are."

"Fascinating," Bruce breathed.

"We're so far behind the rest of the universe," Tony said, almost laughing.

"That's not true," Loki said. "Your ancestors, both more recent and long ago, have figured much of this out. But, it's either been lost in translation over thousands of years or kept a secret for fear of the possibilities."

"He's right," Bruce said. "There's stories, legends, that were passed off as just that. Or experiments by organizations like NASA or SHIELD, or the government like Area 51, that are kept extremely top secret. There's evidence everywhere of "magic"," (he did air quotes around the word 'magic').

"That's right... hell, SHIELD figured out how to open a portal without even trying."

No," Loki said. "I opened it. And they did it by accident."

"Fine, but Erik Selvig had it set up so that it was possible. And they had figured out how to make weapons with its power. They made weapons out of it even during World War II, in the forties."

"The point is," Bruce interrupted, "humans have been working this stuff out forever, even if we're a little behind the rest of the universe. But every time we've worked out how to travel through space, or create weapons, or whatever, it was determined to be too much power, too dangerous for everyone to have. So, they covered it up. Moved on."

"But here we are with the technology to make it work, the knowledge from Loki, and the wisdom to use it the right way."

"Do we really have that? Wisdom?" Bruce asked, grinning.

"Yes," Tony said defiantly. Loki and Bruce exchanged looks.

"We still have to be careful," Bruce said. "Do what everyone else has done. Keep it to ourselves, for a while at least. It can't get out that we're doing this. We'll have SHIELD, NASA, everyone up our ass, trying to get our tech, our plans, pay us for our information. The media will be even worse."

"You're right." Tony rubbed his face, thinking. "Yeah, yeah, we have to keep this quiet, unfortunately..."

"That's never been your forte, has it, Stark?" Loki asked, grinning.

"You'd be surprised. When I was dying a couple years ago, I kept that from everyone, even Pepper, for months. But I wanted to keep that to myself. This is more exciting." His eyes shined. He was thinking hard. "Bruce, we're about to be the first people to figure out how to make Star Trek a reality."

"That's really all you care about, isn't it," Bruce laughed.

"Obviously," Tony replied. "It's all ten-year-old me ever wanted."

************

A/N: So here's a chapter continuing the story... only about 2 months late.  I just didn't have any inspiration or desire to write, but this chapter just kind of happened while I was bored in class, and now I've got a lot of ideas for things that can happen and more characters I can bring in!  I hope everyone likes this chapter- it is a bit of a filler so I can move on to what we'll call "Part 2".

Thanks for reading- Enjoy!

-Anna