00106. Planting a seed.

00106. Planting a seed.

About a month passed since Theo helped out the Morlocks. Even the handful that didn't want to leave at first, finally caved and agreed to leave the catacombs when Ezekiel came back to check on them. And it didn’t take long to integrate everyone into Genosha. Making sure their basic needs were taken care of and finding suitable jobs or education for each person.

As for Annalee, her mental health improved greatly with Inoichi's help. She was no longer a risk to others and was even given a job helping out in one of Genosha's schools as an aid. It was Inoichi’s suggestion that giving her a job around children would help in her healing process. He also met with her every few days, since it would take a while before she was fully healed.

As for Leech, he quickly made friends with everyone. It helped that Cessily would hang out with him every day. She didn't do it for his powers though. She was just the type of person who liked to help other people. She even teaches him how to speak properly, gently correcting him whenever she’s with him.

Besides the base, Theo just finished his first year of school. School was something Theo enjoyed going to. Well maybe not completely, the classes were a little boring. But he enjoyed being with his sister and Peter. He also enjoyed playing during breaks, tag was fun. Even if he could easily win without trying.

Theo enjoyed tag so much, he was already making some plans to make some kind of obstacle course for tag at the base. It would partly be used for training, but also because he thought an advanced form of tag where people could run on the walls and ceiling would be fun.

The other thing Theo worked on in that month besides training was the phone project with Tony.

vvvvv

Tony was in his lab working on a new satellite design as a portal appeared next to his desk. He glanced over at Ezekiel who stepped through with a large bag of food in his hand.

Ezekiel placed the bag down on Tony’s desk as the portal closed and said, “I brought some sandwiches for you, from that Jewish deli you like.”

Tony nodded as he said, “Give me another minute, just need to adjust something on this.”

“Sure, I was gonna grab Happy anyways.” Ezekiel said as he moved towards the door.

Opening the door, Ezekiel walked up stairs and yelled out, “Happy, I brought dinner!”

“I'll be down in a minute.”

Ezekiel headed back down stairs to find Tony already rummaging through the bag of food. He pulled out different items and placed them on his desk, before he lifted an item out of the bag and unwrapped it.

Tony took a large bite of the sandwich as he let out a groan of pleasure. He finished his first bite before he asked, “So what brought you by? I thought you weren't coming by for a little while?”

“Well, you got it half right. That's in two weeks. I’m going on vacation with my family.”

“Oh. Can I join? I bet it's gonna be a lot of fun.” Tony asked before he took another bite of his sandwich.

Ezekiel scoffed as he said, “You would end up getting drunk and trying to hit on my family members.”

Tony shrugged as he said, “If they're decent looking and not married, what's the issue?”

“All of them are married.”

“Then there shouldn't be a problem. Come on, it'll be fun.” Tony said with a smile.

Ezekiel shook his head and said, “Go on vacation with your own family.”

Tony's smile dropped and he let out a sigh as he said, “Obie is the closest thing I have to family and he doesn't do vacations.”

“Then stop being an idiot. Cut back on the booze. Stop sleeping with every cute girl who looks your way. And find a nice girl who doesn't care about your money and make a family.”

Tony gave a slightly hollow laugh and said, “You want me to ruin my image and settle down? Plus how would I be able to introduce myself as a genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist? If I'm no longer a playboy?”

Happy opened the door and walked in as Ezekiel said, “More like, improve your image. If you look up egotistical rich douche bag in the dictionary, your face is the only thing on the page.”

Happy laughed as he said, “He kinda has a point boss.”

“Stay out of this, Happy. No one asked for your opinion.”

Happy shrugged as he walked over and picked up one of the wrapped sandwiches on the table. He nodded to Ezekiel as he said, “Thanks for the food.”

“You're welcome. But my point still stands, you should find yourself a nice girl and settle down. Maybe have a kid… If you haven't knocked up some girl already.”

Tony violently shook his head as he said, “No way, I always use protection. Plus if that happened, there would have been a huge scandal about it already.” Tony finished with a confident smile.

“Whatever, do what you want. But no matter how many girls you sleep with, it'll never fill that hole in your heart.” Tony frowned again as he chewed on another bite of his sandwich and thought about what Ezekiel said.

The room quieted down as each person ate their food. When Tony finally finished his he asked, “Why did you come by anyways?”

“We need to make a cell tower and test it out.” Ezekiel said in between a bite of food.

“We already have cell towers, why would we need to make a new one?”

Ezekiel pulled out the phone he used for testing and opened up the Vibe application. He clicked a random video on the front page and showed it to Tony. It was a new video by Dazzler’s band, the main issue was it kept buffering. About a second of video played before it froze and buffered for a few seconds.

“You understand now?”

Tony shrugged as he said, “Ya, but we don't have the technology to make it any faster right now. Maybe you could fix the back end coding to make it better for 1G cellular transmission?”

“You think my coding is the issue?” Ezekiel said with a flat look.

Tony glanced away as he said, “I guess we could look into improving how the cell towers work and upgrade them to 2G. Or skip ahead and buy out that company in Japan testing 3G.”

“Actually I have a better Idea. But you’ll need to reverse engineer it.” Ezekiel said as he pulled out a small package and placed it on Tony’s desk.

Tony opened the package and found what looked like a cellular transmitter, just tiny in size. He examined it for a few minutes before he said, “Who made this? A cellular transmitter this small is at least twenty years ahead of our current tech.”

Ezekiel smirked as he said, “It’s good, but not that good. This is a lot better than what they are currently testing in Japan though.”

“This is a prototype 3G transmitter?”

“Better. It’s closer to 5G than anything else. But with your skills, you should be able to reverse engineer it and improve its hardware. I don't even care if it ends up being ten times its current size.”

Tony was flipping the device over to look over the back of it as he asked, “Is it really that important? We’ll already dominate the market on launch and everyone else will be at least a year or two behind us.”

Tony glanced up as he said, “Don’t get me wrong, I see the potential for this with our phones and tablets. But we would be spending billions to get the infrastructure in place for this to work. We would still profit in the long run but…”

Tony’s eyes widened and he looked directly at Ezekiel who smirked as he said, “You figured out what I plan to do?”

Tony nodded as he said, “We patent this and set up all the infrastructure. Then we charge other companies a premium to use it. The money we would make should easily cover our initial costs and make a big profit after a few years of service… Only we’ll have to lease the patent out to other companies though, or we might run into issues with being a monopoly.”

“Yup, but that's why we charge a fee that’s reasonable and make the patent rights almost unreasonable to purchase. Even if someone buys a lease for the patent, it will be crap because I won’t be releasing my code for it. They would have to build the code themself. Yeah they would have 5G, but it would never be as good as what we offer.” Ezekiel finished with a smile.

Tony nodded as Happy said, “You guys sound like some scheming villains in a Saturday morning cartoon.”

Ezekiel shrugged as he said, “Eh, this is tame compared to other ideas I've come up with.”

Tony nodded as he took out some tools to open the device up and said, “He’s right, some of the weapons I’ve designed are worse than this idea. By the way, you still didn't tell me where this came from.”

“It's outdated tech from a place I visited once.”

Tony glanced up as he asked, “This is outdated tech?”

Ezekiel nodded as Tony said, “ What country? Could you take me there? I would love to see what they currently use.”

Ezekiel chuckled as he said, “No place you’ve ever heard of and they are isolationist assholes anyway. You wouldn't be allowed inside their country.”

“Then how did you even get this?”

“I took it, along with a bunch of other things. I'm pretty sure that I'm a wanted criminal there now.”

Tony glanced over to Happy as he asked, “Can you believe this guy? Calling me out on my issues and he's a thief.”

Happy finished chewing a bite of his sandwich and said, “I decline to comment on that.”

“Why the hell not?” Tony asked.

Happy pointed at his sandwich in his hand as he said, “He always brings me my favorite food.”