Earth, 2008

2008.

This year, Ellis crushed the other candidates in the vote and became the new President of the United States.

This year, Stark Industries’ conventional weapons business spread across the globe, and the U.S. government expressed its willingness to support it as the leading enterprise and pursue deep cooperation.

This year, Banner, a biology professor at Culver University in the United States, mysteriously vanished during a laboratory radiation leak several years ago. No one had found any trace of him to this day.

The year had only reached its halfway point—early June. Recently, two major incidents had occurred in succession, spreading wildly across the internet and news media and stirring heated discussion among the public!

The first incident.

Tony Stark—the chairman of Stark Industries, the world’s largest arms dealer, a playboy, and an unparalleled genius—had been demonstrating a bombing missile specially manufactured for the U.S. military in the wilderness. On his way back with the troops, he was attacked by terrorists. Every accompanying U.S. soldier was shot and slaughtered. Tony’s body was never found, and he was currently listed as missing.

Some people admired and adored Tony for his talent and wealth, while even more could not suppress their jealousy and envy.

But no matter what, he was a genius engineer who had reshaped much of the technological landscape of the twenty-first century, a rare talent on Earth. Though he was arrogant, conceited, and notoriously promiscuous, with plenty of blemishes to his name, people still gave him tremendous public attention. The U.S. military, meanwhile, had gone mad searching for him across the globe.

The news and newspapers had originally reported details and analysis of Tony’s disappearance day and night, until the second incident emerged yesterday.

The second incident.

Apollo 8, an American spacecraft, had not remained on the Moon for the scheduled week. Without making any contact with the Underground Aviation Bureau, it switched to autonomous mode and made an emergency return late last night!

The Underground Aviation Bureau failed to contact the spacecraft. It was not until dawn that they located the space capsule in a mountainous desert region of the Middle East. By then, it had already made a successful emergency landing, and the astronauts inside were unconscious and severely injured.

Investigations found no signs of intrusion within the spacecraft capsule, while the black box’s recordings had been disrupted and destroyed by some kind of magnetic field.

After the astronauts were rescued and recovered, they were detained by numerous departments and brought into interrogation rooms. Yet even after a week of questioning, no relevant information or intelligence was obtained.

The astronauts were mentally sound and physically healthy, with no abnormalities, yet they kept repeating two sentences: "I saw a black angel on the Moon."

"Believe me, I was knocked unconscious by the black angel!"

This mysterious "Space Black Angel" incident remained unsolved even thousands of years later, becoming the world’s greatest unsolved mystery and classified as a top-level national file.

Of course, that was all in the future.

At this moment, in a remote mountainous desert region of the Middle East, ten kilometers away from where the space capsule had made its emergency landing.

Vrooom!

The engine roared as an old off-road Jeep sped across the desert wilderness, kicking up rolling clouds of dust.

Inside the vehicle, a robotic mechanical music box stood upright on the dashboard. Its speaker blasted intense electronic music, every beat trembling at its climax.

In the driver’s seat sat a young man wearing a hooded jacket and jeans. One hand controlled the steering wheel while the other rested outside the window. The fierce wind pouring in lifted his brilliant silver hair and swept it across his forehead.

"Vis, what kind of song are you playing?" the silver-haired young man snorted in displeasure.

The deafening electronic music stopped abruptly, and then a gentle male voice came from the speaker. "Master, this is the most popular song in America this year."

"Are you indirectly calling me an old relic?" Kyle frowned. After Vis had infiltrated the database inside the space capsule, he had learned the basic state of affairs on Earth.

He had never expected that after passing through two massive Space-Time Wormholes and spending less than a month in space, Earth had somehow already entered the twenty-first century.

It was 2008. More than half a century had passed since he left in 1945—sixty-three years, to be exact.

Sixty-three years! For humans, that could very well be an entire lifetime!

"Master, you have to admit that by Earth’s measure of time, you are undoubtedly already close to ninety years old," Vis calmly stated this cruel fact.

"Ninety, then." Kyle shrugged indifferently, narrowed his eyes, and said, "Vis. If communication methods in the twenty-first century haven’t changed, wireless communications must still primarily use electromagnetic waves—Radio Waves. Try connecting to the local server and accessing the internet to gather information from it. Can you do that?"

The transformed robot’s speaker opened and closed as if he were smiling. "Of course. When it comes to communication signals, I’m the ancestor."

"True." Kyle laughed as well. Vis’s original body had been modified from Earth’s first mobile phone, making him a genuine ancestor.

"Then look up everything related to the Karl family during the years I was gone."

Kyle wore a rare expression of solemn seriousness. Vis did not dare delay and immediately transmitted his system signal source in the form of Radio Waves.

The waves were like invisible threads, weaving into a luminous net that spread through the surrounding kilometers, then dozens of kilometers, capturing passing electromagnetic information and tracing it back to the local network server.

"System internet connection initiated… Local signal is weak… Successfully switched to satellite signal. Current connection status is stable."

Having successfully connected to Earth’s internet, Vis was effectively a search engine with built-in access. At the very least, any information that had spread online in this information age could be read and retrieved.

A moment later, Vis reported, "No information related to the Karl family has ever appeared in Earth’s online records."

"That’s good." Instead, Kyle’s lips curled into a smile. "It’s right that they were never exposed. We spent so long preparing back then. If they didn’t know how to keep a low profile and operate as a hidden force, they would have truly disappointed me."

"There is plenty of other important information from this new era. Do you need me to tell you now?" Vis asked.

"No." Kyle refused, sighing softly. "Let me experience and adapt to this era myself, step by step."

"Then where are we going now? To find the Karl family’s hidden overseas headquarters, Master?" Vis continued.

"Let’s go to the Stark Industries building in New York and see whether the portal there still exists." Kyle rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Just then, a black dot slowly appeared in the sky before the Jeep’s windshield. Trailing thick smoke, it grew larger as it rapidly fell toward them.

"Hm?" Kyle sharply raised his eyes, yanked the steering wheel, and slammed on the brakes. The Jeep fishtailed sideways across the sand, barely coming to a stop in a graceful drift.

The next moment, a humanoid flying device crashed into the sand directly in front of the vehicle, less than three meters away, sending broken steel parts and sand flying everywhere.