Chapter Text
“History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war.”
— Joseph Heller, Catch 22
There was total darkness, but only for as long as it took for Steve’s eyes to adjust. Then the lights came on, and Steve’s hands came up to cover his eyes.
“Now now,” said a voice, “you do not want to miss my grand entrance, do you?”
Steve didn’t say anything. The voice wasn’t coming from anywhere in particular that Steve could see, but there must have been a radio somewhere because the room was empty.
It was emptier than any room Steve had ever seen before. With its white walls and white ceiling it reminded Steve of one of the hospitals Steve had stayed in as a child. This room had none of that hospital smell, though. Even to Steve’s nose, the room smelled of nothing at all. And there were no sounds, anywhere, so the walls had to be pretty thick. Maybe he was in solitary?
“I will introduce myself,” the voice said. The voice had no intonation. No inflection. “I am the Abominator class ship See, I Told You I Was Ill. And you must be Mister Rogers.”
The room was completely smooth. It had no windows and no doors, but if he was on board a ship that made a kind of sense. Maybe he was on a submarine? They must have pulled him out of the ocean and welded the door shut to keep him in. It was strange, though, not to be able to hear an engine or even the buzz of the lights.
“Who’s the Captain?” Steve asked. “Who am I talking to?”
“You are talking to me,” the voice said.
“And who are you?”
Steve began walking around the room and checking the perimeter. If they’d welded the door shut, there must be marks somewhere and if Steve could find where the door used to be, he’d know where to start hitting.
“I am the ship,” the voice said.
“Is this a submarine? Who is your commanding officer?” Steve asked. Steve had never been in a submarine before, maybe that explained how quiet everything was.
There was a pause. “It is probably best if I show you,” the voice said.
One of the walls, the one Steve had been inspecting, began to slide up and up into the ceiling. Steve dashed forward, only to collide with the solid sheet of glass behind the wall. The glass didn’t break, even when Steve pounded it with his fists.
“No need to get hysterical,” the voice said. “Why not step back and admire the view?”
But what Steve was seeing made no sense. It was like one of those scenes from Bucky’s old pulp novels. There was the pitch black sky, teeming with stars. Dead in the centre was this huge, spinning disk getting closer and closer. Steve could see flying saucers whizzing around it.
“We will be docking in around two hours,” said the voice. The ship’s voice. Was he being talked at by a flying saucer?
“What did you say your name was?” Steve asked, watching the disk get closer and closer.
“See, I Told You I Was Ill.”
“What kind of a name is that?”
“My name.”
“Who called you that?”
“I named myself. All ships pick their own names.”
“Where am I?”
“Good question, Padawan.”
“Padawhat?”
“We have two hours remaining. I will show you. Consider it a crash course.”
The screen flickered, the flying saucers vanished and a movie began to play. Steve looked around but he couldn’t tell where the projector was coming from.
That was how Steve spent his first two hours in the future: watching Star Wars.
*
The future was strange, that was for sure. There were a few human-looking people, all in various states of undress. But on the chairs, or sprawled out on sofas, or spread-eagled on the floor, were the aliens. There were aliens that looked like tricked-out versions of the things Steve had seen in magazines: tigers, or elephants, or turtles only they glowed pink or were covered in spines.
Then there were the aliens that looked like nothing else, or that looked like something that could never have been alive but was still walking. What looked like a pile of rocks was talking somehow to a snake-like creature that was covered in silky fur. It made Steve very glad to have seen Star Wars, even if he had watched it in total confusion, taking in none of the plot and marvelling at the incredible details of the space ships. That was what they were called, apparently, not saucers.
Amongst them, floating or wheeling, were machines. They didn’t seem to have screws, or joints of any kind. And they were speaking — some of them in the same blank voice the ship used, and some in more natural voices. The ones that spoke like people were more unsettling, Steve thought, like talking animals.
Steve had spent the war as a celebrity: he was used to people staring at him, but here none of the aliens were staring at Steve. They stared at the ship instead. When they’d arrived at the space station, which was what this place was called, the ship had shown Steve its avatar. The ship had rolled away another of its walls to reveal another room. In the room was a what looked like a person. It was floating in some kind of tank, fully clothed and with wires all over its head.
“This is my person suit,” the ship had said. “It allows me to walk around.”
The ship’s avatar wore a kind of mask, and armour, both in a colour so black it made the avatar’s body seem flat and featureless. The avatar had an arm made of some kind of metal Steve had never seen before that made noises and sometimes blue, glowing numbers would appear all over it.
Steve wasn’t quite sure how the avatar and the ship could be the same person, when the ship was staying behind and the avatar was walking around, but it talked like the ship. It had the same flat, strange voice that some of the robots had. As the avatar/ship passed through the room, everything around it seemed to clear out of the way.
That didn’t surprise Steve. The avatar was scary-looking. It prowled more than it walked. Apart from its eyes – which were a kind of flat, dull blue, like chips of paint – the mask covered up its face completely. It looked, from some angles, as if it didn’t have a face at all.
Steve’s stomach growled – apparently loud enough for the avatar to hear – and it guided him through the parting crowd of aliens and people and machines and over to the bar. It ordered something clear and sludge-like. The drink came on tap, like a beer, and was served by a bright green alien.
Steve stared at it for a moment, before drinking whatever it was the ship had given him. If it was poison, he figured, his body would filter it out. It didn’t taste like poison. In fact, it tasted delicious and oddly filling. It had a vaguely gelatine-like texture. Like a glass of liquid aspic, only not as disgusting as that sounded.
It was the most satisfying thing Steve had ever put in his belly.
“Can I have another?” he asked the ship.
It was the first question he’d asked since Star Wars started. Then he’d had too many questions – so many that picking just one seemed impossible. What year was it? Was he in the future or just in outer space? What happened to the bomb? Was he dead?
Over the edge of the mask the ship’s eyebrows rose and the glowing numbers on its arm flashed just once. It looked, for a moment, surprised.
It ordered another.
Steve drained the whole thing and took a moment to enjoy the feeling of being full. Between being too sick to keep anything down, too poor to afford much to eat anyway, and rationing, Steve didn’t think he’d filled his belly all the way full more than a handful of times, and not at all since the serum. After the serum that hollow, achy feeling in his stomach had grown more insistent and harder to ignore like a clock ticking in an empty room.
“What are we doing here?” Steve asked.
“We are looking for a guy,” said the avatar.
“Do you need me?”
“Not for this, but you will make a good bargaining chip if things do not pan out.”
“I’m not a bargaining chip.”
“You are practically an antique!”
“Is that why you brought me here?”
“Look, we will meet with the guy. If things go well, we will get some answers. You will find out where he got you from and I will find out if he has kept up the other half of his deal.”
“And what was that?”
“Well that is for me to know and you to find out, is it not?”
Steve didn’t answer. He wanted to get away from this creepy thing but he wanted answers even more. And anyway, where would he go? He didn’t have any money, he had no idea where he was, or when. If Steve was dead, maybe the ship was some kind of demon here to dish out his punishment. If that was the case, it seemed pointless to run away.
The “guy” they were there to meet was a robot. A bright red robot with a glowing metal disc over its chest – where its heart would have been. It sounded like a person — a real asshole of a person, but still. Steve thought the robot was a prick and he was having trouble keeping that opinion to himself.
“Captain America?” the robot said. “Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow.”
“What?” Steve asked.
“I suppose you might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a computer programme,” the Robot said. “You’ll want to have heard of me. I’m STARK.”
“You said you found him on their databank?” the avatar asked, before Steve could ask about the name. Stark? That had to be a joke. What kind of hell was this?
“Yeah, I was poking around a little. Saw some files that looked… interesting,” STARK said, “or rather, that looked like what you’d paid me to go after. How did you know he’d be there?”
“I had a source,” the avatar said.
“A source you’re keeping hush-hush?” STARK said.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Well, I know to back off when a MIND gets cryptic.”
“You know what to do if you need more information,” the avatar said.
“No thanks, not to offend or anything but I’d rather set my processor on fire than work with Special Circumstances.”
“None taken, but our offer still stands. We would be happy to have you.” The avatar paused. “Well, not happy, exactly.”
“I’d like more info,” Steve said. STARK and the ship’s avatar turned to him abruptly, as if they’d forgotten he was there. “I don’t know what Special Circumstances are but if they could tell me what the hell is going on that would be great.”
“They really kept you in the dark, huh?” STARK says.
“Who did?” Steve asked.
“HYDRA Corp.” STARK turned to the avatar “You’re not taking very good care of my gift.”
“I showed him Star Wars,” the avatar said. And if it was possible to sound defensive without having any kind of tone of voice, the ship’s avatar was pulling it off.
“I retract that statement.”
“HYDRA?!” Steve’s head felt like it was full of bees. Of course they’re here. This is hell.
“After the Second World War HYDRA branched out into tech,” said STARK. “So did I. Well, my founder did. But HYDRA wouldn’t join the Culture when everyone else did. Instead they’re going around screwing with all the baby civilisations that don’t know any better. Pissing off Special Circumstances even more than I do, which takes effort.”
“What’s the Culture?” Steve asked, almost in spite of himself. None of the other answers today had made any sense.
“Uh,” STARK turned to the avatar. “How do you guys describe this to the lower level civs?”
With supreme effort, Steve managed to avoid punching STARK in the face.
“It is an interconnected group of civilisations from multiple galaxies,” the avatar said. “The Culture encourages freedom for all species and all forms of life, including technological life. Resources and ideas are freely given and shared.” The way the avatar said it made Steve think it must have said the same lines multiple times.
Steve concluded his brain had constructed some kind of outer space communist utopia, only with more asshole androids… and HYDRA. Maybe Steve was in a coma, rather than hell? He pinched his arm just in case. No luck.
“What year is this?” Steve asked.
“2967 C.E,” STARK said. “Which means you’ve been on ice or online for,” STARK pretended to think about it, “oh, about a thousand years. From what I could get out of the program, HYDRA have been storing you on a database since around 2050.”
“Storing?”
The ship and the android shared a look. “It is the future,” the avatar said. “We can do a lot of things. And one of those things is storing brains in machines. It looks like HYDRA made a copy of your brain, probably for nefarious purposes, and kept it around. STARK found the copy and sent it to me, and I used it to make a brand new you.”
“What happened to the original?” Steve asked.
“You’re the only copy HYDRA had that I could find,” STARK said. “It doesn’t look like they defrosted you. You probably wouldn’t have survived anyway.”
“At least there’s not two of me wondering around,” Steve said.
“That’s the spirit,” STARK said, gripping Steve’s shoulder in fake sympathy. “Anyway I deleted their copy.”
So he was dead, in some sense at least. Not that it seemed to mean much in the future.
Steve needed to not be looking at either of them for a while. He made his excuses and went to find a bathroom. There were a lot more bathroom options than there had been in 1945 with a lot of symbols on the doors. The one Steve settled on had a mirror though. Steve studied his own face in it: he looked the same as he did before he went into the ice. Somehow the ship had managed to replicate the serum. Or maybe it was the drug glands the ship had talked about? Maybe he was on drugs right now. Maybe he was in a hospital and they’d given him something? Although the longer he stayed here the more he was starting to think this might be real. He’d been out of his mind before with fever and it hadn’t felt anything like this.
Could this really be the future? And he was in some kind of outer space bar talking to with a flying saucer and a robot. He’d seen space ships and flying saucers in Star Wars, and these looked close enough, he guessed. Only smoother, as if they’d been made out of one smooth piece of metal. It seemed like STARK, at least, was willing to answer Steve’s questions, even if he was more annoying than C-3PO.
Steve pissed in the closest thing to a urinal, looked around for a sink and couldn’t find one. He held his hands under some device that briefly made his hands vibrate and he guessed that cleaned them somehow. He hoped he hadn’t stuck his hands in some kind of elaborate vibrating alien toilet.
Back in the bar, STARK and the ship were talking. Most of the bar’s patrons seemed to be either ignoring the pair or keeping a wide berth. But as he headed back towards them Steve spotted an alien looking a little too interested, talking into their hands.
“There’s an alien over there who keeps staring at you,” Steve said, gesturing in the direction he’d just come.
“I am pretty impressive,” STARK said, but he was frowning.
The avatar got a strange look in its eyes. It tapped STARK’s shoulder, just once, and broke into a sprint. Steve glanced over to watch as the avatar leapt onto the alien, pinning them between its thighs. The avatar tore away whatever device the alien had been talking to and crushed it in its mechanical hand. The whole thing was over in less than two seconds.
“Looks like you’re not just a pretty face,” STARK said to Steve.
“Is the alien with HYDRA?” Steve asked.
“I honestly have no idea. But the fewer people know about this meeting the better; I’d really rather not have it out there that I’ve been working with Special Circumstances.”
“Is that what the ship is? Special Circumstances?”
“Yeah. They’re shady as hell but they get the job done. Nobody knows what they want, nobody knows who they answer to, and they’re all a bunch of smug, self-satisfied assholes. But I’d take their particular brand of insanity any day over HYDRA.”
“I have an honest question,” Steve said. The ship was leaning over the alien, probably interrogating them.
“Can’t guarantee an honest answer,” STARK said.
“Should I stick with this ship, or should I get out of here?”
“If HYDRA is after you, the See, I Told You I Was Ill is probably the only thing that can keep you safe.”
“And if I’m not interested in safety?”
The avatar was running its metal hand over the alien’s face in a way that promised something almost unimaginably sinister.
“Then you’re probably interested in answers,” STARK said. “I know how you got here, but I’ve got no idea why, or what that Mind even needs you for, or why it built you a brand new body in the first place. But whatever its plans are for you, they can’t be worse than the ones HYDRA had.”
Steve couldn’t think of anything to say to that. The avatar pulled out something from its pocket and it must have been a gun because he pressed it to the alien’s head and they stopped moving.
The avatar came back over to them, holding the crumpled device it had taken. The alien was lying on the floor of the bar. None of the bar’s patrons were looking at the body but some of them were heading for the doors.
“They will be following us,” the ship said. “Think you can run interference?” it asked STARK.
“Can do,” STARK replied, his hands starting to glow as he lifted himself into the air.
“Catch you later,” STARK called over his shoulder.
Without much of an alternative, Steve followed the avatar out of the bar.
The hangar where the ships were stored was mind-boggling. It seemed impossible that a space this big could be indoors. Still, they found the See, I Told You I Was Ill, and the avatar pressed a panel with its metal arm. A door slid open and Steve followed the avatar through it.
After the excitement and colour of the bar, it was surreal to be back inside this sterile space. Once the avatar had climbed back into its tank, taping the wires back onto its head, and the walls had closed around it, Steve was alone again.
Well, not quite alone.
“We are getting the hell out of here,” the ship said, “that means you need a new suit.”
“A suit?”
“It is going to be a bumpy ride, you need some padding. Open that drawer,” the ship said, and a light flicked on near the floor. Steve pulled out a long, flat tray just an inch or so above the ground.
Inside was a kind of jelly-like substance.
“Stand in that for a second,” the ship said
Steve climbed awkwardly onto the tray.
“Okay, take a deep breath,” the ship said.
Steve did as he was told, and he felt the goo begin to climb up his legs and torso, eventually flowing over his face.
Steve had a brief moment of panic as it covered his mouth and nose.
“Breathe out,” the ship said.
It went against all his instincts but Steve managed to release his breath. The seal around his mouth broke and Steve felt the suit moving over him like a second skin, thinner over his fingers and almost non-existent over his eyes and ears.
“It is just until we get somewhere a little safer,” the ship said. “Now that we have protected your fragile human skeleton, let us get this show on the road.”
With a strange lurch that seemed to want to force all Steve’s internal organs out of his body the ship was moving.
On the display screen Steve could see only the specks of stars slipping past at high speed. Nothing seemed real, and Steve gave himself over to his final theory: that he’d gone mad. He’d seen veterans wondering around Brooklyn as a boy, talking to people who weren’t there, living in some kind of other world. He wondered where he really was, what other people thought of him wondering around talking to an invisible flying saucer and a robot version of Stark.
When he turned his attention back to the screen it showed two shapes heading towards them.
“HYDRA?” Steve asked.
“Give the man a medal. Well, another medal, anyway. I am sure they gave you plenty when you were alive.”
“Can we outrun them?”
“No,” the ship said. “Well, yes, but why outrun them when we can kill them, this is what I would like to know.”
There was another stomach-wrenching lurch and through the glass screen Steve could see two bright lights, missiles maybe, were streaking away from them and towards the enemy ships. Steve wondered if this was how air support had felt – this sense of detachment. There were people in those ships, Steve knew that intellectually, but seeing them explode into fizzing points of light turned his stomach less than using his fists as Captain America. Was he still Captain America? Did America still exist?
“Is that all of them?” Steve asked.
“Yes, I mean, if it was not all of them we would have noticed by now. I had to slow that one down for you. Biological eyes are not really equipped to handle things happening that fast.”
“So , the battle is over?”
“Oh yes, it has been over for approximately fifteen point two seconds.”
“And that’s approximate?”
Steve wasn’t even sure why the ship had bothered showing him in the first place. To show off? To intimidate him?
“I can get a lot more accurate than that.”
“That must be real swell.”
The ship laughed. It was easily one of the top ten creepiest things Steve had ever heard.
“So where are we going now?”
“We are going to the Shield nebula.”
“What’re we going to do there?”
“Well, that is for me to know and you to find out.”