Chapter Text
—New York City | Wednesday 19 September 2012 | 2:45 p.m.—
“Man, it’s actually a pretty day out there,” the other asset says. “If it weren’t swarming with press, we could go to the park or something.”
It looks up from the little plant on the table in front of it, a spoon full of the special dirt ready to be carefully poured into the new pot. The other asset is standing in front of the wall of windows, looking out at all of the people gathered at the edge of the street looking at the hive building with their binoculars and everything else.
It is not sure why the other asset came to spend time with it and the ballerina woman while they repot the little plants. The other asset does not like plants very much, even when the other asset is not being asked to eat those little plants. But it is still glad that the other asset has joined them all the same.
To show the other asset how much it was glad, it had let the other asset try to pick out another pot for the little plant, but the other asset had chosen an ugly dark orange pot that was so dark it was almost brown. So ugly. Ocher, the ballerina woman had called it. But the ugly pot was too big, and so it had not needed to agree to use the ugly pot after all.
The little plant has finally graduated to a bigger pot since it is becoming a bigger plant, but not big enough for the ugly ocher pot.
The reason the little plant is bigger now is that it has done such a good job giving the little plant the exact right amount of water—not too much, not too little—and the right amount of sunlight. The ballerina woman said so. Said that it had done so well.
She had come to see the little plant, and also the two assets, after the lunchtime meal to see if the little plant had grown enough to be repotted yet, because her own little plants were ready for new pots themselves. And so now all of the little plants are changing their pots around.
The hamburger technician had talked the other day in the lab about a kind of fish called a crab that has little hands with pincher claws on the tips—the hamburger technician knows that it likes animals, and every time it visits the lab, there is a new animal the hamburger technician wants to tell it about. Specifically, the other day there had been talk about a particular kind of crab-fish that wears shells like people wear clothes or like hamburger technicians wear hollowed out red and gold robots. Hermits. Hermit crab-fishes.
The hermit crab-fishes grow bigger and grow out of their clothing-shells, and so they have to go find new clothing-shells to change into. Just like the little plants grow bigger and need to find new pots to be planted into.
It does not think that the hamburger technician knew about the little plant getting big enough for a new pot when he told it about the hermit crab-fishes, but the similarities are still there even if the timing was not intentional. And maybe the hamburger technician had known. Because the voice without a mouth tells him everything, and the voice without a mouth would have known that the ballerina woman had acquired even more of the little succulent plants to pot up.
The other asset turns to look back out the window as it scoops up another spoonful of the special dirt for potting plants in. Not just plant dirt, but succulent dirt. It says so on the bag. “Succulent.” “Potting soil.” Very special dirt.
The ballerina woman has a cracked plastic pot that she is using to put all of the little succulent plants into, lining them up just so along the crack so that their roots—so delicate, so fragile—are inside of the pot and the stiff leaves are on the outside of the pot. Every time there is a succulent plant nestled into the crack, the ballerina woman gently pats more of the special dirt for succulent plants into the pot. That way the roots are protected and the little plants will stay put instead of falling out of the crack.
“Hey Cap,” says the other asset several minutes later.
It does not turn around to face the clown man who has arrived. It heard the clown man rushing down the hallway in the distance and then slowing down to walk up to the room as if there were no rush at all. It does not know what the clown man’s game is, but it is going to keep potting little plants with the ballerina woman instead of playing the rush-and-then-pretend game.
“Come take a look at these people,” the other asset adds.
“Hey guys,” says the clown man before petting the dog in a bit of sunbeam. “They’re still out there?” the clown man asks as he goes to join the other asset at the windows. “Like vultures.”
That is enough of the special dirt for the newly repotted little plant. Now it is time to add the pretty rocks on the top of the dirt, which the ballerina woman says will help retain moisture. There are some very specific arrangements that need to be made so that the little plant will continue to get the perfect amount of moisture and not too much or too little.
And it will continue to meet those requirements so that the little plant can someday be a big plant. Bigger even than the ballerina woman’s little plants. It wants the little plant to get to be big enough for the white pot with the teal circles on it—polka dots, the ballerina woman calls them—and maybe a bright fuchsia saucer. That pot is really big, as big around as one of the bigger plates the team that is not a cell insists on putting food on before eating it.
The little plant has a long, long way to grow before it will be ready for that pot, though.
The ballerina woman’s little plants—the original ones, not the new ones—are not even that big yet. But they are ready for some pretty rocks, and it will help her by putting some rocks on top of the special dirt around those plants.
“Sam was swarmed by them this morning while he went to walk Lucky,” the clown man says, talking about all of the people—the media, the press, the reporters—out on the street. “He’s good at ignoring the press, but he shouldn’t have to be. They should leave him alone.”
The flying man had been swarmed? There are lots of things that swarm, and apparently the media-press-reporters do that, too. Not just tiny creatures like bees and wasps and ants and things. That is too bad. And while the dog was out there—that means that the dog was swarmed as well. Unacceptable.
The dog did not appear to be distressed when it came back from the morning session with Yasmin to collect the breakfast meal and the ballerina woman. So the swarming must not have been too bad. But…
“Yeah,” the other asset says, “especially when he had Lucky with him. The dog doesn’t need to get mobbed, too.”
Mobbed. That is like swarmed, then. But mobs are made out of people all doing the same thing at the same time in the same place, usually without thinking about why they are doing it.
“Those ones out there now are the dedicated ones,” the clown man says. It sounds like the clown man knows all about mobs of media-press-reporters. Maybe he is an expert of a sort, just in a very narrow set of topics. “The others will be back later tonight and they’ll show up in the mornings, but they won’t wait around all day. These ones, though…”
These ones? It looks up from the rocks and the ballerina woman’s little plants. What about these ones? Are these ones more dangerous than the other ones?
The hamburger technician had told it once about how some swarms are more dangerous than other swarms. Bees swarm when they have run out of space—another similarity with the little plants and with the hermit crab-fishes—but there are some kinds of bees that swarm when they are angry. Usually because a person did something stupid or mean to them.
The clown man is looking through the windows, one hand on the glass. “These ones,” he says, “will follow a newly minted super soldier as he chases down a HYDRA assassin. Or they would, given the opportunity.”
The other asset blinks, and so does it. Both assets blink.
It does not know what mint has to do with super soldiers chasing down HYDRA assassins. Or why new mint is the kind of mint that is related to them. What is wrong with old mint? Or medium-aged mint? Is there such a thing as medium-aged mint? Or is mint just new or not new?
The other asset is just as confused about mint as it is.
“Newly minted, meaning, you?” the other asset asks. “Back in the ‘40s?”
“Yeah,” says the clown man, although this does not clear up the matter of what mint has to do with anything they are talking about. “The man who made the serum and who chose me to be the test subject, he was shot just after the process had completed. I chased him down, the shooter, barefoot, all the way to the river, then dragged him out of his submersible.”
“Neat.” The other asset nods.
And it is neat, it supposes, though it has yet to hear anything that involves mint, or any other kind of plant.
The clown man was a test subject. That is more important than asking what the clown man has to do with mint or mint with the clown man. Actual mint is probably not what they are talking about, ultimately. In this case, mint must be a kind of fish called a red herring, where something seems important but is not, although it does not yet understand fully about the fish, either.
The hamburger technician is trying to teach it all about “sayings” and “phrases” where the words that are spoken are not at all the words that are meant. It is… still confused most of the time. Like now, with the mint. Or about happy clams.
“Never did find out more about him, though,” the clown man is saying. “Cyanide tooth.”
It knows all about cyanide teeth, though. Now it is “reading the same page,” or something about the same pages, anyway—that is another saying—and knows what is going on once more. The clown man chased down a HYDRA assassin and the HYDRA assassin killed himself with a cyanide tooth.
That’s unfortunate, because surely the clown man could have hurt the HYDRA assassin in order to make the man tell the right kind of lies. HYDRA assassins, after all, are people. And people never say true things when they are tortured. They only ever say what they think the other people want to hear, and also lies that they think will make the pain stop.
This is one of the ways that order does not come through pain. Interrogation almost always yields corrupt intelligence.
But that is less important in this case. The important part is that the clown man could have employed some torture, hurting the HYDRA assassin, and was denied the opportunity by the cyanide tooth.
It wonders why a HYDRA assassin would have wanted to kill a researcher who was making super soldiers, though. HYDRA wants super soldiers. Why kill a researcher making them? That doesn’t make any sense at all. HYDRA would have wanted to protect a researcher making super soldiers.
“That was the first time anyone in the press had ever looked at me twice,” the clown man says. “After that, though, I didn’t have a scrap of privacy. Everyone wanted to know my business.”
It frowns. First HYDRA employs a researcher to make the clown man—definitely something very secret—and then HYDRA sends an assassin to kill the researcher when the clown man was made. Plus something about mint. And then…
But even if two cells within HYDRA were competing against each other for who got to control the clown man, neither cell would have allowed the media-press-reporters to know anything about it. The clown man would have been a secret that the media-press-reporters weren’t allowed to look at once, let alone twice.
Maybe the clown man had breached containment after the assassination, too soon for either cell to have gained full control over, similar to how it breached containment many months ago and began killing them all. All the ones who had hurt it, all the handlers-operators-trainers-technicians it could get the hands on, and the talons, the fangs, the glittering knives that it loves so much.
“The USO tours, right?” the other asset asks. “With the girls on motorcycles and the song and dance routine.”
…Now it is even more confused than before. Girls on motorcycles? Songs and dances? What is a USO and what kind of touring does it do that girls get onto motorcycles and—
“And don’t forget socking fake-Hitler in the jaw, shaking hands, holding babies…” There is a short huffed of laughter, the kind that is fake laughter, where the laugher is not amused.
Babies, it knows about. Those are teeny-tiny people, like puppies, meant to be held, yes. And it has seen handshakes. And perhaps there is something to do with socks… The feet are just the hands of the legs, though they are unrelated to jaws and it does not know what a hitler is, let alone a fake one.
The clown man is speaking gibberish.
Maybe the clown man is becoming feverish or is otherwise terribly confused about the story that he is telling. He is talking about the ‘40s. That is a set of years that was a very long time ago. That is the time there was a bucky in the world, it thinks. It might not be remembering the time of the bucky well, but it thinks that is when the bucky was around. The ‘40s.
“And the scientists were all over me for days before the USO tours. Needed samples to try to recreate the serum.”
It thought that the researcher was assassinated. That is what started the whole story. Mint and the assassination of researchers.
It looks back at the little plants in their pots on the table before it. These make sense, the little plants. These are logical. They get the exact amount of water at the exact right times, on a schedule, and they get to nestle into the exact right kind of special dirt for succulents, and they get the exact right amount of sunlight, and the result is a row of healthy little plants that grow into ever so slightly bigger little plants.
There is no inter-cell rivalry involving assassinated researchers, mint, and cyanide teeth, followed by unsanctioned media-press-reporters gaining access to equally unsanctioned revenge attempts that end with cyanide teeth and girls on motorcycles with babies and socks.
Perhaps it will stick to the plants, where everything makes so much more sense.