"My precognition," he explained, "is not a clear window into the future. It does not show me stock market figures or political elections. But it does provide flashes of high level danger to the planet, or to our collective mission. It is... a smoke alarm. I know a fire has started, but I do not know if it is a campfire or a forest fire. It gives us a direction to look, but it provides no answers on its own."
"The smoke alarm!" Tony exclaimed, snapping his fingers as he seized upon T'Challa's point. "That's the missing piece."
His fear was being rapidly replaced by the familiar thrill of a complex puzzle falling into place. "It's a two part system. T'Challa's power tells us that we need to look at something." He then looked at Aryan. "And the other toy, the 'Omniscience' query, is the high powered surveillance drone we send in to see what's actually burning."
"A billion Origin for a single answer still seems... inefficient," Namor stated.
"It's not about the money, Namor, come on," Tony said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "A billion is a rounding error on my quarterly R&D budget and T'Challa here probably loses that much in the palace couches every year. The real issue is that it's a single shot. One question, one answer. You ask the wrong question, or you phrase it poorly and you've wasted your one clear look in the dark. That's the real cost."
"So we treat it like our most valuable strategic asset," Tony declared, a plan already forming in his mind. "We establish a protocol. T'Challa gets a warning, a 'vision of smoke.' We use our collective intelligence to formulate the most effective question we can possibly ask. 'Is there a clandestine, hostile, non human presence on Earth?' That's a billion Origin question. 'Will it rain next Tuesday?' Not so much."
He looked around the table, making eye contact with each of them. "And to authorize the expenditure, to actually ask the question, it requires a unanimous vote. All five of us must agree. That's how we ensure we don't waste our shot."
"But what about the larger threats?" Wanda asked. "The ones that might not be 'imminent'? The slow burning fires that T'Challa's power might not register as an immediate alarm?"
"That's where the old tool still works," Tony said, a flash of his old entrepreneurial spirit in his grin. "The future viewing panel. It's not a long range map anymore, but it's still our primary income source. I can still pull up next week's global stock market data from the original timeline and make a few hundred million to fund our operations. As long as we're looking at events that our current actions haven't significantly altered yet, the data should be solid. We'll use our short term crystal ball to pay for our long term sniper scope. It's a self funding system."
They spent the next hour hashing out the details.
"If T'Challa foresaw a plague," she asked, "could we ask the system for its cure? Would that be a worthy question?"
"Without question," T'Challa answered immediately. "Our purpose is to protect this reality. Preventing a pandemic is a core part of that duty. The benefit to all life would justify the query."
"Okay, harder question," Tony posed. "T'Challa sees a vision of a devastating war in ten years. We narrow it down. We believe a certain ambitious general is the cause. Do we ask the system, 'Will General X start a war?' What do we do if the answer is 'Yes'?"
"We eliminate the threat," Namor said. "To know of a coming fire and to possess the water to douse it, but to choose not to act, is a failure of will."
"No," Tony countered immediately. "No, we can't do that. The moment we start executing people for crimes they haven't committed yet, we become no better than HYDRA's Project Insight. We find another way. We expose him, we remove him from power, we counter his plans. We don't become murderers based on a cosmic 'maybe'."
"It is not a 'maybe'," Namor argued. "The system provides a definitive answer. To ignore it is to condemn millions to die for the sake of one man's 'rights'."
"This is the line we must hold," T'Challa said. "We are protectors, not arbiters of fate. We can be a shield, but we must never become the sword that strikes first. If we cross that line, our purpose becomes corrupted."
Aryan listened, allowing them to forge their own chains, to build their own ethical cage. Their discipline, born from their own character, was a far more effective tool of control than any command he could ever give.
"This still leaves the biggest blind spot of all on the table," Tony said finally. "2025. We still don't know what it is. We know your power awakens then. We know it's a universal self defense mechanism. But we don't know what threat it's meant to defend against."
"The event is too far in our 'new' future, so the panel is a foggy mess. And asking the Omniscience feature, 'What happens in 2025?' is probably too broad. It'd probably just say 'Lots of things' and take our billion Origin."
"We must prepare for the unknown," T'Challa said, his voice a calming presence. "Assume it is a threat of the highest magnitude. We have fifteen years. We must use that time to turn Earth into an impenetrable fortress."
"We will," Tony said with grim determination. "We will."
PS: Come on guys, we just need 18 more Power Stones for a bonus chapter. Let's push it, haha.
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