Genius Sets Out Again (Part 1)

After night fell over New York, the lights across the city gradually began to go out. Only the top few floors of Stark Tower still glowed faintly. Pepper, who had been busy all day, stepped into the elevator. When the indicator lit up, she took a deep breath, but she did not fully relax.

The elevator doors opened, and the ceiling lights came on one by one with her footsteps, guiding her to Stark’s laboratory, a place she had not visited in a long time.

The laboratory doors slowly opened without making a sound. The entire lab was pitch-black, with only the faint lights of the instruments still glowing. Stark was slumped over the workbench, apparently asleep.

Jarvis turned on a little soft lighting, enough for Pepper to see where she was stepping without waking Stark. He was sleeping deeply, but when Pepper approached, she found his brows tightly furrowed.

She saw the pile of documents on his workbench. In the past, they had always been experimental data that Pepper could not understand, but today, she saw several books that should not have been there.

Social Engineering, Game Theory, political science, international relations, and more. Pepper even spotted several textbooks from her own college days. They showed signs of having been read, and several lay open facedown on the table, clearly unfinished.

She moved closer and picked up the documents. Most contained intelligence related to the military, Congress, and S.H.I.E.L.D., especially information on their personnel.

Pepper had just started around the workbench toward Stark when he stirred. He coughed dryly, then woke up. In the hazy light, he saw Pepper standing before him and thought he was Dreaming.

Stark shook his head and blinked hard, looking utterly confused. Pepper had often seen that expression on him, usually after a drinking binge or an all-nighter in the lab.

"Oh, you’re here. Are you done with work? How have things been lately?" Stark seemed somewhat at a loss, as though he had not seen Pepper much these past few days and had become unfamiliar with her. He made awkward small talk.

But Pepper was not affected by him. She walked over and said, "What’s going on with you? Why did you start reading these books?"

Stark glanced back at his desk. He looked like a child caught by his parents playing video games in secret. He twisted his neck uncomfortably and said, "A friend recommended them. He said I should read more of this kind of thing, or I won’t be able to handle all those troubles."

Stark paused, then lowered his head. His voice was low, carrying a seriousness rarely heard from him before.

"S.H.I.E.L.D., the military, and Congress have basically gotten what they wanted. Next comes the final negotiation over this whole affair."

"I represent Stark Industries. I know that this time, no one will handle these troubles for me anymore. I have to learn to deal with all of it myself."

"I’ve never attended any proper negotiations. Even when I did, all I had to do was sit there and wait for Uncle Obadiah to finish everything. I was just a symbolic figure. Everyone knew I was a genius, so even if I acted impatient or left early, no one dared say anything…"

"I know, I was absolutely awful. I made a huge mess of things. I once mocked the representative across from me as an idiot, or deliberately spilled coffee all over the table just so I could leave sooner."

"I can’t even remember how many times I did stupid things like that, but I know that this time, I can only do it myself."

Stark rubbed his eyes, then scrubbed his face with both hands, trying to hide that sad, lost expression. He said, "No one will do these things for me anymore. No one will solve these problems for me anymore. No one will even look at my inventions or listen to me talk about my brilliant ideas anymore…"

Pepper had to admit that this was the first time she had seen Stark look so sad. In the past, whenever he made a sorrowful face, it was always to clown around or deliberately amuse someone. But now, he was genuinely sad.

After recovering for a moment, Stark clapped his hands and said, "All right, then that’s that. I can handle all of this, right?"

"I’m Stark. How could I possibly fail? How could this be harder than building armor? Just watch. Once I finish reading all these documents and books, I’ll still take them all down by myself in the negotiations a few days from now…"

Pepper felt a pang of sadness. Before this, whenever Stark acted spoiled and refused to do something, she would get a headache. She felt she wasted too much time coaxing this overgrown child, hoping Stark would mature sooner.

But now, when Stark calmly accepted that he had to do something he did not want to do, Pepper suddenly wished he could still be as willful as before.

She did not know what was wrong with her. Stark becoming more mature should have been a good thing, but Pepper knew only too well that such growth was bound to come with intense pain and sorrow. She would rather Stark never experience that pain and live forever in a utopia.

Pepper choked up just as she was about to say something, but the phone in her pocket rang again. With no choice, she had to leave to answer it. Before she could even chat with Stark, she had to return to the seemingly endless work.

Stark watched Pepper’s departing figure, and his pain and helplessness reached their peak. He braced One Hand against the workbench and covered his eyes. Never before had he felt that New York’s night was so long.

Whenever he immersed himself in experiments, a whole night seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Before he had even finished a small portion of an experiment, dawn would arrive. Back then, he would always complain that those pure, happy hours were too brief.

But tonight seemed endless, as though no matter how long he suffered here, the sun would never rise.

In the dim, dark room, Stark thought that the books were right. Not everything in this world could be bulldozed through while wearing armor. Human beings could not live apart from the rules of society. As long as he lived in this society, he had to follow some of its rules.

Before, Stark had thought he did not need to follow any of them, that he did not need to think about anything and could live however he pleased every day. But now he realized that someone else had merely paid the price of following those rules for him.

They had paid that price first so Stark could keep living inside this warm eggshell, without having to think about anything.

Stark actually knew that Pepper worked until midnight every day handling his scandals, and Obadiah had cleaned up all kinds of messes for him more than once.

But after the kidnapping, reality was like a heavy hammer that smashed open this fledgling’s shell, letting the cold wind blow over his still-undeveloped feathers. It knocked him head over heels, covered him in mud, and still forced him to struggle back to his feet.

After those warm wings he had clung to left him, he had to face everything himself. The nest perched on the cliff howled with cold wind, but Stark had to learn to fly on his own.

After a while, Stark seemed to accept the fact. He slowly gathered up the scattered documents on the table, bookmarked the various books and set them aside, then picked up one of them and continued reading.

In truth, Stark did not know whether this would help. When Schiller told him that the various sides had almost prepared all their Chips, leaving only one final negotiation to divide up all the benefits, Stark had never felt so anxious and flustered.

For many years, he had never considered these things. But at least he knew that if he did nothing, it would mean giving up Stark Industries entirely, giving up all the hard work of his father, his uncle, and himself.

If he could not take this step, Stark Industries would only retreat again and again until they had picked it clean to the bone and divided it up completely.

And now, no one would turn the tide or save the day in such circumstances except Stark himself.

For most of his life, he had never needed to consider anyone else’s feelings. Yet now he was about to take part in what might be the highest-level negotiation in the country. There would be veteran politicians who had dominated the political scene for years, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who hid behind the scenes and strategized from afar, and aggressive, insatiably greedy military leaders.

And Stark, in that situation, was like an elementary school student suddenly joining a doctoral forum. He had no theoretical knowledge or practical experience. He could not even read the room. Stark could already imagine that the unreasonable tantrums he used to rely on would achieve nothing except give those wolves an excuse to make a fuss and tear off another piece of meat.

He had to learn to stay calm, to hide his emotions, and to use strategy and skill to fight a war without smoke on a battlefield without gunfire.

It would not be easy, nor would it be any easier than starting a real war.

Stark was like a newborn baby. At Schiller’s suggestion, he could only start by learning the theory.

Not all those politicians knew these things, but they had abundant practical experience instead.

Stark, however, was a blank slate in this regard. Fortunately, he was the genius Stark. His brain allowed him to memorize all the knowledge here in an extremely short time. Even though there was no longer enough time for him to practice or fully absorb it, having the knowledge in his head was better than not having it at all.

Stark thought Schiller was right. Since he had already decided to lower his head and study these theories he had once disdained to even look at, dismissing them as nothing but empty talk, he needed to finish them as quickly as possible and try to understand them.

The first part was not difficult. Stark’s genius brain let him memorize several books in nearly a single night. When his mind ran at full capacity, he practically had a photographic memory.

But finishing them, memorizing them, and understanding how to use them were entirely different matters. After memorizing them, Stark still had to compare them against the dossiers on people and relationships and consider how he should act.

How would each of those people react to certain topics? What tangled subdivisions existed within the same faction? Which relationships could be exploited? Why were some people’s bottom lines lower than others’? Why were some willing to offer higher Chips than others?

Those questions nearly drowned Stark. Even as a super genius, he could not learn the essence of human knowledge overnight.

More importantly, Game Theory and psychology sometimes seemed more like mysticism, because human nature was always mysterious and impossible to grasp. Analyzing everything through theory would only produce increasingly wrong answers. Everything still depended on one’s reactions in the moment, and that put enormous pressure on Stark.

At last, in New York’s deep night, Stark muttered, "You’re a genius… Stark, you’re a super genius… No one in this world is smarter than you. Of course you can do this…"

Then, as his voice gradually faded away, he drifted into Dreamland. At that moment, a streak of purplish-red dawn had just appeared over New York’s skyline.