SOUL SEARCHING

Part One: Whatever Happened to Henry Pym?

the 68^th tale of agc

written and created by Mark Bousquet

2201 / NOVEMBER

ASGARD - THE FOREST OF EARTH

Eshir Maximoff smiled as brightly as he ever had, almost unable to believe his good fortune.

It had been a tough few weeks around Asgard. The news that Doom had conquered the Skrull Empire cast a pall over the Golden Realm that matched the sorrow in his own heart.* Skrull 4 had put a brave face on the tragedy, making certain that all Skrulls currently on Asgard knew that he hadn't given up hope just yet, but they weren't buying into that anymore than 4 himself was. Even the Kree and Shi'ar people, who normally held their superiority over the Skrulls with glee, were nervous. It hadn't been this bad in Asgard since the days after True Ragnarok.

* Doom conquered the Skrulls in AGC 65-67: Freedom Genocide; Eshir's sorrow was born in AGC 54-57: The Jazz Masquerade when he met, then left, a girl from an alternate universe named Felicia Osborn, daughter of that universe's Angelica Osborn

Such was the effect of Doom.

That's why he had left the city behind this day and headed out to the Forest of Earth for some exploring. None of the Orphans were around anymore - Toomi was an Angelux, Angelica was off with Brono, K'Zan was a Herald of Galactus, and Ben-Vell was the Cosmic Protector - and Eshir found he missed their presence, if not their company. In truth, since he parted ways with Licia, he'd been miserable, looking for a reason to lash out at anyone and anything. It was only with the news of the fall of the Skrull Empire that reality jolted him out of the funk he was in.

Alas, that had proven only a temporary respite from the heartache he felt for the girl who had shared his bed, then stolen his heart, then was left behind with her psychotic mother, who just happened to be an alternate world's version of Angelica Osborn.

Esh thought he'd never see her again.

"Eshir!"

"Licia!"

He was wrong. And never in his life had he been so happy about being wrong.

His path through the woods had led him to come face-to-face with the Man-Thing, the guardian of the Nexus. The swamp creature had pointed and Eshir's heart leapt with joy as he saw Licia standing there, awaiting his embrace.

They rushed toward each other and embraced in a passionate kiss, their arms wrapping tightly around one another. The physical aching Eshir had felt in his chest disappeared the instant Licia's body pressed against his.

"I've missed you so," she whispered into his ear. "I never thought …" Her words were cut off by sobbing, and tears began to stream down her face.

"There, there," Eshir answered, wiping the tears away with his right hand. "It's okay now. It's okay. "We'll never be apart again. Never. Everything will be okay from now on," he soothed, holding her tight to him.

"It will?" she asked.

"It will," he promised.

Licia broke his embrace and took a step backwards. "No," she said, her voice shaking with hurt and anger. "You lie."

"I don't!" he pleaded, hating the weakness within him but not caring when it came to Felicia.

"You do." She walked backwards, away from Eshir and into the waiting embrace of the Man-Thing. "You cannot even be true to yourself about who you are, so why should I believe that you will be truthful to me?"

Eshir tried to take a step forward, but his feet were sinking into the much of the Man-Thing's swamp. "I would never lie to you! Licia, please, come back!" He watched in horror as her body stepped backwards again and began to ooze inside the leaves and muck of the Man-Thing's chest. "Please!"

"You are so stupid, Eshir," Licia shook her head. "You are a Maximoff, a born loner, and a born liar. The truth, which you fail to recognize, is in your own hands. Do not be afraid to look."

As Felicia Osborn disappeared completely inside the Man-Thing's massive frame, Eshir looked down to his hands for the truth Licia promised. There was nothing in them. Just two empty hands.

Hands.

He had hands.

"Welcome to my world," a light, airy voice called to him, knocking him from his thoughts. Eshir looked up and saw a blonde woman cloaked in a dark blue robe. Where the cloak opened and Esh should have seen a body there was only darkness. Darkness and a bright white light emanating from deep within that appeared to be in the shape of a dagger.

"Who are you?" Eshir asked.

"I am Nightmare," the woman answered in a voice that seemed to dissipate on the warm breeze. It was a voice tinged with sadness. "Your sorrow and pain has drawn me to you."

"Why? For what purpose?"

The sad, beautiful voice replied, "To show you the things you cannot have. Look down to your hands."

Eshir looked down and saw his hands still themselves. He watched, stunned, as the skin began to wilt like dying leaves, withering on a vine. Soon they were dust, and then they were lost in the breeze, disconnecting themselves from him as autumn leaves depart their maker.

"Now look to the Man-Thing."

His eyes turned and saw to the swamp creature kissing Felicia Osborn in a passionate embrace. "It's not real," he said weakly, the pain in his chest overwhelming him.

"Of course not," Nightmare said, suddenly beside him. "And yet the pain is still very real. You're hurting from the image, are you not?"

Esh answered weakly, "Yes."

"Then my duty here is finished," Nightmare said sorrowfully. "At least for tonight." She leaned forward and kissed Eshir gently on his un-scarred cheek. Eshir screamed in agony, a thousand images of Licia flashing through his mind as his world went white with pain.

When his vision was restored to him, he was sitting up in his bed, covered in sweat, and sobbing like a child. His hands were once again gone, his face once again scarred, and the space beside him in bed once again empty.

A TRANSPORT SHIP NEAR MADNESS

Steve Rogers couldn't remember the last time he had worn normal clothes. Three years ago? Five? Twenty? No, he thought, looking out the window towards the small planet below, there was a Christmas party maybe four or five years past where Dani had made him change out of his uniform and into retro-clothes she had bought on a trip to Earth.

The clothes he wore now were another gift from Dani - jeans, dark brown boots, a dark blue t-shirt, and a brown bomber jacket. "Perfectly boring," she had said.

He rubbed his hands over his face just thinking about her. At some point over the past 50 years they had fallen in love. He still wasn't sure when or why or how it happened, but he was thankful it had. They did not share a typical relationship, but they had found a way to make it work, despite the long absences.

"She makes you smile," Thor had said to him once. "There are times when I cannot remember seeing happiness upon thy face, old friend. We should always find time for joy, even in times of war such as this."

Steve smiled at that for a few seconds, and then his memory reminded him that four days after Thor had spoken those words he had died while fighting the Midgard Serpent.

Such was the life of a man who'd lived for over two centuries. Every fond memory was mixed with sadness, and this trip would be no different. What bothered him most was that from that memory the one detail his mind focused on was that they had let Mjolnir simply lie where it had landed. Steve did not think at the time, nor now, that such a powerful weapon should simply be left lying in wait for someone to claim it.

"A soldier's mind is never at rest." Those were the words of Nicholas Fury, yet another friend long since passed on to a higher plane.

Around him sat a mostly empty transport ship; there were perhaps twenty people aboard a craft that sat 200. None were making this trip because they wanted to. No, they were all making it out of some sense of duty, whether personal or professional. A computer read-out posted at the front of the vessel listed the docking time to be in fifty-two minutes.

Steve Rogers was headed for Madness, an insane asylum masquerading as a planet.

It was here that he hoped, at long last, to find Henry Pym.

MADNESS - MAIN FACILITY

"Right this way, Mr. Rogers," a Shi'ar nurse smiled from the open door. "The doctor will see you now."

Steve rose from his chair in the small waiting office. The room was a dull grey, made entirely of reinforced steel, and he was none too disappointed to leave it behind. The nurse held the door open for Steve and he passed into a brightly-lit white-walled room.

"Can I call you Captain America?" the nurse asked with a seductive grin. "Or are you here incognito?"

"I'd prefer you call me Steve," he answered, forcing a smile. "I'm afraid there's quite a few patients of yours who don't think too highly of Captain America."

"Steve it is then," the nurse smiled back, leading him down a long steel hallway.

Inwardly he rolled his eyes. He wished there was no need to smile at the nurse, to play her silly little games, but the truth was that he might need a favor from her before this trip was over and, well, if a wink and a smile put him on her good side, he would do it.

It was in times like this that he missed Tony Stark. In thirty seconds he could've convinced this nurse to hand over every piece of classified information they kept about the patients on this planet.

"Here you go," the nurse said, still smiling, as they reached a large door at the end of the hallway. "By the way," she said quickly, dropping her voice to a whisper, "I don't care what the other nurses say, you were a much better Cosmic Protector than Ben-Vell will ever be, even if he did kill Thanos." She knocked once, then pressed her hand against a glowing sensory pad to the door's left, then punched in the key code on the alphanumerical keyboard beneath the pad. With a loud click, the door swung open.

Steve thanked the nurse and entered the office of the planet's Psychological Director, Dr. Silas Crochoix.

"Captain America, it is good to see you again," the doctor said, moving around his desk to shake Steve's hand.

"It's good to see you again as well, Silas," Steve answered, shaking the doctor's hand. Silas Crochoix appeared to be a man in his early thirties, but Steve had first met him nearly 100 years ago, and in all that time it didn't look like Silas had aged more than a day. "It's been what, nearly forty years?"

"Something like that," Silas answered. Silas' office was a large, oval shaped room. At Steve's back, along the wall that he came through, the walls were lined by with bookshelves, stuffed with medical journals garnered from across the Everything. The opposite wall was a long glass window, looking out into a beautiful and exotic jungle environment, ripe with large green leaves and tall trees. To the far right, a small lake could be seen. "Can I offer you a drink, Captain?" Silas asked, moving to a small kitchen area that rested between the bookshelves and the window.

"Water, please," Steve replied, and Silas brought him a small, square glass of the liquid a moment later.

"To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence?" Silas asked as he settled into his large, stuffed brown leather chair.

'Good,' Steve thought. 'Silas wants to get right to this.' "I'm looking for Henry Pym, Silas. Is he here?"

Silas removed his wire-frame glasses and ran his hands through his tussled light brown hair. "I wondered when you would coming looking for Dr. Pym," he sighed, taking a sip of his own glass of water.

"How is he doing?" Steve asked.

"He has his good days," Silas answered honestly, "but many more bad days. I was surprised he ever came to Madness, given our history, but he has been a model patient these past sixty-odd years."

"Can I see him?"

"Captain, I haven't even seen him in over six months," Silas said slowly. "You know that many of my methods are controversial due to my belief and practice of Acceptance Therapy. In my capacity as doctor to these patients, I try to get them to accept who they are before we move on to becoming better people. Oftentimes people look for the easy answer in assigning blame to another. The 'I can't help it' excuse. The 'I am this way because my mother didn't love me' rationale. All excuses that run along that vein seek to excuse a person from taking personal responsibility for their actions." Silas stopped himself, took another sip. "Perhaps it would be better if I was to show you. Come. Let us take a ride across this world to where I believe Dr. Pym has taken up residence."

MADNESS - SKINNER ROAD

"Silas, there are days I'd give just about anything to go back and see 1955 for the first time. Are you sure this isn't a time machine?" Steve asked, cracking a smile despite the gravity of his reasons for being here. They cruised along a dirt highway that cut through a dense jungle. The day was overcast, threatening rain at any moment.

"Positive," Silas replied, smiling. "It is an original DeLorean, however. Most of the parts have had to be replaced over the past two centuries, of course, but I'm certain there are a few original parts still hanging on somewhere inside here."

"Why a DeLorean?"

"What can I say?" Silas shrugged. "I've always been fascinated by things that look like they belong nowhere except at a World's Fair."

Silas slowed the car as a wild-eyed man stormed across the road a few hundred yards ahead of them. The man was dressed in a white tunic and his thick brown hair was matted and dirty. Silas took notice that the man had stopped upon seeing the car, and slowed down to stop next to him.

"How is it going today, Cupid?"

"The gods are in session!" the man yelled, pointing above to the storm clouds. "They conspire to keep me from my home!"

"How long has it been since the gods allowed you a chance to eat a warm meal?" Silas asked, concerned with the man's gaunt appearance.

"Days, weeks, months!" Cupid screamed, shaking his fist heavenward.

Silas nodded emphatically. "Why don't you walk down this road," he suggested, pointing back the way they had come, "and stop by the main facility. Get yourself a warm meal and a hot bath." Noting the concerned stare Cupid gave the sky, Silas added, "I doubt the gods will attempt to harm you while inside my house."

Cupid nodded, "A wise plan." He took a step and stopped himself, his head turning back to view Silas. "Are you by any chance serving those warm crab cakes today?"

Silas nodded. "We are."

"Excellent!" Cupid yelled wickedly, then took off down the road. Silas watched the man walk for a few moments, then accelerated the car forward again.

"Is that the real Cupid?" Steve asked.

Silas nodded. "Been here since True Ragnarok. After the Norse repelled the Olympian invasion, some of the Olympian gods went into hiding on their own, instead of holing up with Pluto. I ran into Cupid aboard the Bliss and suggested he come here to seek treatment for his depression."

"How is his treatment progressing?"

Silas shrugged. "It is an interesting case. As the legends tell us, Cupid's duty is to make people fall in love. Unlike most gods, Cupid is generally wired to give rather than receive. From what I can gather, he was involved in a rather nasty battle with the Asgardian sorceress, Lorelei and was placed into a severe state of depression. While his own self-worth has not improved, his instinctual desire to please others has made him a wonderful addition to our planet. As you know, most of Madness is free and open. Our patients are free to roam the world, seeking to find their own cures to their own ailments. Cupid has brought happiness and meaning to many citizens of this planet, and not solely through love. He has proven himself a wonderful listener, adept at helping people solve their own problems by looking deep inside themselves. He reminds me of that woman … what was- Oprah. Do you remember Oprah? He reminds me of Oprah. We're thinking of giving him his own talk show-"

Steve cut Silas off. "We're here."

"How do you know?"

"Look around you," Steve said, pointing out the front window. "Ants cover the ground, yellow jackets fill the air. I'd say Henry is nearby." Steve studied the world outside the car for several seconds, then added. "Try this path to our right. It appears the ants and jackets are coming and going from that direction.

Silas nodded and turned the DeLorean to the right, onto a path that swirled up into the dense forest. They drove for ten minutes, noting the large increase in ant and yellow jacket activity. The trees that lined each side of the road were eventually lost beneath the swarming of the creatures. Soon the buzzing from outside was so loud that they had to shout to hear each other talk though the sat only a few feet apart.

Silas began to wonder if maybe they should turn back when suddenly the insects parted, veering off sharply to the right and left as the DeLorean entered a small clearing.

Seated on a large rock in the center of the field, one hand under his chin and eyes pointed straight at them was a creature that gave Steve Rogers' nightmares.

Ultron.

Cautiously, Steve pushed open the car's rising door and exited the vehicle. Hands up to show that he held no weapon, he walked the short distance from the car to stand before the nightmarish robot.

Ultron moved to his feet to greet him. "Hello, Captain," the shrilling voice cackled, red ionic energy pouring from its unmoving eye-slits. "Have you come here to die?"

"No, Henry, I've come to see how you are doing," Steve replied earnestly to the robot in which a near-death Dr. Henry Pym had long ago downloaded his own engrams. "It is good to see you again."

Steve watched as the ionic energy bubbled out of his eye and mouth slits, wondering if coming here was the best decision he could have made.

"I was expecting you nearly four decades ago," Pym/Ultron said, turning his back to Steve and walking towards a cave a few meters off. Steve motioned for Dr. Crochoix to stay in the car and moved to follow his troubled former teammate. Pym continued, "The voices in my head … they come and go, Captain." Stopping at the mouth of the cave, Pym/Ultron turned around. "My experiment failed, as so many have over the ages. Do you ever think back to the way things were?"

"All the time, Henry," Steve said, clasping Ultron on the shoulder.

CHANDILAR - 2025 / OCTOBER

"Henry Pym of Earth!" Majestrix Lilandra read the pronouncement of the courts in front of the full Shi'ar political assembly, "You are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the Vision! May your God have mercy on your eternal soul, because the Shi'ar will have none for your mortal frame."

MADNESS - PYM'S CAVE - PRESENT

Pym/Ultron's shoulders were slumped forward as he led Steve towards the back of his cave. "It was a set up, of course, but you knew that."

"Of course," Steve said, not wanting to anger Ultron if he didn't have to. The truth was that he had murdered the Vision, frying the synthezoids's internal circuits after they learned that Janet Van Dyne had passed away back on Earth. Once Hank learned that the Vision had received an intergalactic transmission from her earlier in the day, the then 60-year-old scientist snapped and blamed the Vision for Janet's death.

"The Shi'ar just wanted me to work for them," Pym continued as they moved deeper and deeper into the cave's tunnel.

That much was true, Steve knew. Hank's murder of the Vision had merely given them the means to place Pym under their control. It was the early days of the Eternal War and before the Alliance Treaty had been officially signed. The Shi'ar Empire was rebuilding itself to its former glory in the wake of Doom's conquest of them two standard decades earlier and were still hostile to outsiders - especially humans. An Ultron robot had followed the Ascension cast into space and wreaked havoc on one of the Shi'ar's outer worlds and the Shi'ar, instead of wanting Ultron's creator - Henry Pym - brought to justice, wanted Pym to work for them. When Pym fried the Vision, it gave them the opportunity they were looking for.

The Shi'ar first ordered Pym to recreate the Vision, and Henry had done so within a few short weeks. The Vision had taken to saving all of his daily experiences in various formats; the result was that the new Vision was exactly the same as the old Vision, minus the experiences of the day he had been killed. Upon learning of Pym's actions and the rampage that Ultron had laid on several Shi'ar planets, the Vision left them behind. Eventually, he chased Ultron back to Earth and Steve, and the rest of the Ascension cast, had lost track of him.

"We are here," Pym/Ultron said, stopping at a door he had constructed into the walls of the cave, and turned around. "Past this steel door lies the product of my work. It is my hope that you may find use for it."

Steve nodded. "Let's see what you've created, Henry."

Pym/Ultron nodded and opened the door. Entering first into the dark room, he flipped the light switch to reveal a large cavern opening beneath them. The sight that greeted Steve's eyes was so wondrous, so horrific that it took him several seconds to even process what he saw. "By God, Henry, what have you done?"

"I have built you an army."

Before them, standing scattered across the massive cavern floor in no particular formation, were the shells of two thousand Ultron robots.

SOUL SEARCHING to be continued ...

His hands were once again gone, his face once again scarred, and the space beside him in bed once again empty.

Y G G D R A S I L

comments to bousquet22@earthlink.net

Mark Bousquet

19 May 2003

Northern Bear Productions