Infinity

Chapter 14

June 1946

Eddie's POV

The Tesseract glowed brightly in the makeshift clear case on my main worktable. It has been the possession of Stark Industries for eight months now. In that time, it has become obvious, that this cube is not from earth. Its composition is not made up of any known elements. I have been conducting  thorough diagnostics of the cube in the hope, that it may give me more of an idea of its composition and purpose.

Even though we've had possession of the Tesseract for eight months, I've only been able to study it for the past six. After finding the Tesseract, Howie and I continued to search for the Captain for two more months, but eventually had to reconcile with the fact that he may never be found. It was hard letting go of the fact that the Captain will never be found, but he would have wanted us to move on with our lives. Howie and Peggy have definitely taken it the hardest.

I'm the only person that Peggy will let see her pain. The first few months after it happened weren't that bad because we all had the distraction of the war. Pangs of sadness would come and go during briefings and in late night reminiscing. It wasn't until after the war ended that she really let herself grieve. She is trying to move on and during the day she seems fine, but at night I can still hear her crying in her room.

Since the wars end my life has changed a lot. Howie has made me head of the research and design at Stark Industries; he has even given me several shares of the company; and he even tried to make me his CFO, but I wasn't interested. I'd much rather be in the lab than in a meeting. About four months ago I moved out of Howie's guesthouse and into an apartment with Peggy in New York. Even though we live together Peggy and I hardly see each other. She is kept busy at her job at the 'phone company', which is actually New York's SSR agency, and I take long hours at the lab and leading my team. There are several nights that I will either get no sleep or just crash on the small couch in my office. Sometimes it pays off being so small, I fit easily on the small couch.

Howie has stayed pretty busy these past months too. He has been working on the post war events concerning Stark Industries and its partnership with the American government. He's been busy traveling all over the country and Europe delegating and finalizing deals for Stark Industries. I believe that it was the pressures of the needs of his company that really convinced him to stop looking for the Captain.

Howie is grieving in his own way, by keeping busy. If he isn't doing something for Stark Industries, he is busying himself in the lab working on different personal projects. Howie and I are very similar to each other in that way. We are both fixers and the only way we can fix this situation is by trying to make the world the Captain left behind a better place.

I leave the Tesseract on my worktable and head towards my office. I might as well get some work done while I wait for the results of my diagnostics to come back.

I walk into my small office that is attached to my personal Stark Industries lab. My lab is a large open room with high ceilings and large windows that over looks the city. In the northern corner of the room there is a small kitchenette with a stove and a refrigerator for me to use on my longer days and nights. In the center of the room there are three large worktables that create a 'U' shape. It is here that I do most of my planning and detailed work. There is also a large open space for bigger projects and equipment. Finally, the southern corner of the room is made up of my large computers and the door to my office.

My office is a rather small room, which consists of an oak desk, a filing cabinet, and a small couch. The walls of both the lab and my office are a light blue because I read somewhere that the color blue helps to stimulate the brain's intelligence. I sat down at my desk and started going through all the paperwork that I needed to complete for other Stark Industries projects that my team was working on.

I must have fallen asleep, because I'm suddenly jarred from sleep by my office door being shut loudly. I don't know when I fell asleep, but I do not appreciate the interruption to my sleep.

"What do you want Howie?" I look up at him.

"Well, that's no way to greet your best friend, who you have not seen in a week." Even though I was happy to see him I was not in the mood for his antics. I just glared at him.

"Sheesh fine, I'll get straight to the point. I came down to first make sure you've eaten, which I see you haven't and secondly to check on the diagnostic on your little project." I just roll my eyes.

"I haven't checked the results yet. But since you're here. Would you like to join me?"

I don't wait for his response. I just get up and brush past him out of my office and into my lab. I go over to my worktable and look at the recorded data printed from the machine. Howie follows me into the lab and leans against the side of the table and waits for me to finish the reading.

"Well?"

I look up at my impatient friend. "This thing is definitely not from earth. Its entire composition is made up of dozens of both known and unknown elements. The power levels of this thing are off the charts. We don't even have a machine that is capable of measuring this amount of power. And it appears that the source of this power is centralized within the cube. Whatever it is we don't have the technology to fully study or understand this."

I hand the full report over for Howie to look through it, but he can't make anymore sense of it than I can. I wait for him to finish.

"I may not be able to understand it yet, but I would like to. I believe the information that I can gather from this thing could open the doors to infinite possibilities. If I could just understand the power source, then maybe..." I stop speaking when I see him giving me an amused look. "What?"

"Oh, nothing its just fun watching you try to figure something out." He pauses. "You know you've changed a lot since we first met. Who knew that the shy girl, who walked into my lab would become this confident stubborn woman?"

I just give him a shy smile. "It helps when your best friends are the two most confident stubborn people on the planet."

Howie gives me a big smile but quickly turns serious. "Just be careful Eddie, we don't know much about this thing. I don't want to see you get hurt." I give him a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry Howie. I got this."

Author Note

I just went back to the character page and added pictures of how I would picture Eddie and her family. You can picture each of them however you want based off of my written description. I decided to include the pictures for those of you who like having a visual idea of what they look like.