September 1999
Reed stood in his empty office at Columbia University, boxes stacked around him and the smell of fresh paint still lingering in the air. The space felt enormous compared to his cramped graduate student lab at MIT, with actual windows that looked out over the campus quad instead of the basement fluorescent lighting he'd grown accustomed to.
Herbie lay sprawled across the one patch of sunlight streaming through the window, his golden fur showing more gray around the muzzle than Reed liked to think about. The old dog lifted his head when Reed spoke.
"Not bad for a failed rocket scientist," Reed muttered, then immediately regretted the self-deprecating joke. He was trying to break that habit. He looked down at Herbie, who was watching him with those patient brown eyes that always seemed to understand more than they should. "It's just you and me, Herbie. The lab's getting old, but at least you're still here."
Herbie's tail thumped once against the floor in response.
His phone rang, the sound echoing in the empty room.
"Reed? It's Tony Stark."
Reed nearly dropped the box he was carrying. He hadn't heard from Tony in... what, five years? Maybe six? "Tony? Holy shit, I wasn't expecting—"
"Yeah, I know. We've both been terrible about staying in touch." Tony's voice sounded tired in a way Reed remembered from their conversations right after the funeral, back when they'd tried to keep in contact before life pulled them in different directions. "Look, I heard NASA dropped your program. That sucks, man."
Reed set down the box and leaned against his desk. "Where'd you hear that?"
"Are you kidding? 'MIT Wonder Boy's Space Dreams Crash and Burn' was front page of the tech section last month. Plus, Rhodey still follows your work. He was pissed when he told me what happened."
"How is Rhodey?"
"Good. Air Force has him testing experimental aircraft that would probably give you a heart attack. But listen, I didn't call to catch up on old times." Tony paused. "Actually, fuck it, yes I did. How are you doing? Really?"
Reed rubbed his forehead. "Honestly? I feel like I wasted five years of my life and a ridiculous amount of government money on something that turned out to be impossible."
"Come on, Reed. You know better than that."
"Do I? Because I can't actually make the damn thing work, Tony. The energy requirements, the materials science, the containment failures—every solution I came up with created three new problems."
"So? Edison didn't invent the light bulb on his first try either."
"Edison wasn't burning through twenty million dollars of taxpayer money."
Tony laughed, and for a moment he sounded like the guy who used to throw toga parties. "Jesus, you really are beating yourself up about this. Look, I'm calling because Stark Industries needs people who think the way you do. We're working on defense projects—shields, protective systems, that kind of thing. Your electromagnetic work could save lives."
Reed looked out his office window at students walking across the quad. "I appreciate it, but I'm going to try teaching for a while."
"Teaching?" Tony sounded genuinely surprised. "Reed, you could be building technology that actually matters instead of explaining freshman physics to kids who are just trying to fulfill their science requirement."
"Maybe explaining physics to those kids is what matters right now," Reed said. "Maybe I need to remember why I got into science before I try to save the world again."
There was a long pause. "Shit. You really are serious about this."
"Yeah, I am."
"Okay." Tony's voice shifted, becoming more serious. "But Reed? The offer's there whenever you want it. Stark Industries could always use someone who's not afraid to try impossible things, even if they don't work the first time."
"Thanks, Tony. And hey—we should actually catch up sometime. Like, really catch up. Not just when one of us is having a career crisis."
"Yeah," Tony said, and Reed could hear something that might have been relief in his voice. "Yeah, I'd like that. Running this company is... it's not what I thought it would be. Could use more friends who remember when my biggest worry was whether the beer would stay cold at my parties."
"I remember. That was a good night."
"One of the last really good nights, honestly." Tony's voice went quiet for a moment. "Anyway, I should let you get back to setting up your new life as a professor. But seriously, call me if you change your mind. Or just call me anyway."
After Tony hung up, Reed sat in his empty office chair and stared at the phone. It felt good to hear from an old friend, even if the circumstances weren't great. Tony was right about one thing, Reed could probably make more money and have more immediate impact working for Stark Industries.
—
October 1999
"Dr. Richards, I don't understand why we need to know about electromagnetic induction if we're not going to be engineers."
Reed looked at the skeptical face of Jennifer Martinez, a pre-med student who'd been challenging every assignment for the past three weeks. He could see the same expression on half the faces in his introductory physics class. They were here because it was required, not because they cared about understanding how the universe worked.
"That's a fair question, Jennifer. Anyone want to take a shot at answering it?"
Silence. Reed had learned that classroom silence meant he was losing them, and if he didn't find a way to make this relevant in the next thirty seconds, he'd spend the rest of the semester talking to blank stares.
"Okay, let's try something different. Jennifer, you want to be a doctor, right?" She nodded. "So you're in the ER, and someone comes in with a head injury. How do you see what's happening inside their brain without cutting it open?"
"MRI?" suggested a voice from the back.
"Exactly. And what makes MRI possible?"
"Magnetic fields," Jennifer said slowly, her skepticism starting to crack.
"Not just magnetic fields. Precisely controlled electromagnetic fields that can be manipulated to create detailed images of soft tissue. The same principles we're studying in this class." Reed walked over to the whiteboard and started sketching a simplified diagram. "In fact, I've been working with Mount Sinai Hospital on improvements to MRI technology that could detect cellular changes much earlier than current systems."
He spent the next twenty minutes explaining how electromagnetic field theory applied to medical imaging, watching his students' expressions shift from boredom to genuine interest. By the end of class, Jennifer was asking follow-up questions about how the technology might be used to detect early-stage cancer, and three other students had stayed behind to continue the discussion.
"Teaching's harder than research," Reed told MaryGay during one of their weekly phone calls that evening. "With research, either the math works or it doesn't. With students, you have to figure out twenty different ways to explain the same concept until you find the one that clicks for each person."
"But you like it," MaryGay said. It wasn't really a question.
Reed thought about it as he watched Herbie snore contentedly on the couch. "Yeah, I do. It's different than I expected. More rewarding in some ways. When a student finally gets it, when you see that moment where everything connects for them, it's almost as good as making a breakthrough yourself."
—
January 2000
The email from Dr. Sarah Johnson at Mount Sinai Hospital was marked urgent: "Dr. Richards. We need your expertise on a medical emergency. Can you come in today?"
Reed had been collaborating with the hospital's radiology department for four months, helping them optimize their MRI systems using his electromagnetic field research. He'd never been called in for an emergency before.
He found Dr. Johnson in the imaging lab, standing next to an MRI machine and looking more frustrated than he'd ever seen her.
"We have a six-year-old girl with what appears to be a brain tumor," she explained without preamble. "Standard MRI shows something, but the boundaries are too fuzzy for the surgeons to operate safely. They need better resolution, and I remembered those modifications you proposed."
Reed studied the images on the computer screen. The tumor was there, a dark mass pressing against healthy brain tissue, but the edges were indistinct, bleeding into surrounding areas in ways that made it impossible to know where to cut. "What about the enhanced resolution protocols we discussed?"
"That's why I called you. We've never tried them on a pediatric case, and honestly, we're not sure how to implement them without potentially damaging the equipment. Or worse, the patient."
For the next four hours, Reed worked alongside the hospital's technical team to recalibrate the MRI system. It was delicate work. Too much electromagnetic field strength could damage the machine or harm the child. Too little wouldn't provide the resolution they needed. Reed found himself thinking about the little girl waiting in another room, probably scared and confused, while he adjusted magnetic field gradients and tweaked pulse sequences.
"Try it now," Reed said finally, his hands shaking slightly from four hours of precise calibrations.
The new images that appeared on the screen were extraordinary. The tumor boundaries were crystal clear, showing exactly where healthy tissue ended and the growth began. More importantly, they could see that the tumor hadn't spread into critical areas of the brain. It was completely operable.
"This is incredible," Dr. Johnson breathed. "The surgeons can work with this. You just saved that little girl's life."
The operation was successful. The little girl, whose name was Emma, went home two weeks later with a clean bill of health. Her parents sent Reed a drawing she'd made of a rocket ship, with a note that said "Thank you for helping the doctors fix my brain so I can become an astronaut."
Reed kept that drawing pinned to his office wall. His electromagnetic field research hadn't taken anyone to Mars, but it had helped save a child's life and preserve her dreams of reaching the stars. Maybe that was worth something too.
—
Spring 2000
"Professor Richards, I've been thinking about your lecture on molecular interactions."
Reed looked up from grading papers to find David Park, one of his graduate students, standing in his office doorway. David was brilliant but quiet, the kind of student who absorbed everything and only spoke when he had something genuinely important to say.
"Which part?"
David pulled out a notebook covered with equations and diagrams. "You mentioned that controlled energy fields could theoretically manipulate matter at the molecular level. I've been wondering if that could be applied to materials science."
Reed set down his pen, immediately interested. "What kind of application?"
"What if you could use precisely controlled energy fields to alter the crystalline structure of metals? Make them stronger, more flexible, more resistant to temperature extremes?" David flipped through his notebook, showing Reed pages of careful calculations. "I've been working through the mathematics, and the theoretical framework seems sound."
Reed studied David's work. The math was elegant, building on electromagnetic principles but extending into areas Reed had never fully explored. "This would require incredibly precise field control. And the energy requirements would be enormous."
"But not impossible?"
"Not impossible," Reed agreed, his mind already racing through potential applications. "But it would take years to develop the technology. Maybe decades."
That conversation planted a seed that grew into Reed's first major research grant at Columbia. The National Science Foundation was interested in advanced materials research, especially applications that could benefit both civilian and military uses. Reed was careful to frame his proposals around civilian benefits: stronger building materials for earthquake resistance, more efficient electrical conductors, improved medical implants.
—
Fall 2000
The breakthrough came unexpectedly, as breakthroughs often do. Reed was working late in the lab one evening, testing field applications on a sample of ordinary steel, when the power grid fluctuated. Instead of shutting down, the equipment began operating at frequencies Reed had never attempted before.
When he examined the sample the next morning, its properties had changed in ways that shouldn't have been possible. The steel had become nearly twice as strong while maintaining its flexibility. More incredibly, it seemed to have developed a resistance to corrosion that defied everything Reed knew about metallurgy.
"I don't understand what happened," Reed told his research team as they gathered around the modified sample. "The power fluctuation created field harmonics I'd never calculated. It should have destroyed the sample, not improved it."
"Maybe that's the point," suggested Lisa Chang, one of his PhD students. "Maybe we've been thinking about this wrong. Instead of trying to control every variable, what if we learned to work with controlled chaos?"
That insight led to Reed's first patent at Columbia: a process for enhancing material properties through controlled field resonance. The applications were immediately obvious to industries ranging from construction to aerospace to medical devices.
—
Spring 2001
As Reed's materials research gained recognition, he found himself pulled in new directions. A chance conversation with a colleague in the chemistry department led to insights about how field manipulation could accelerate certain chemical reactions. Another collaboration with the medical school opened up possibilities for using controlled fields in drug delivery systems.
"You're becoming a renaissance scientist," MaryGay observed during one of their phone calls. "Your father would be so proud."
Reed was in his office late one night, working through equations for what would become his second patent, when he realized she was right. The failure of his NASA propulsion research had forced him to think beyond electromagnetic applications. He was developing expertise in materials science, chemistry, biology, even some aspects of medicine. Each field informed the others, creating a web of knowledge that was far richer than his original narrow focus had been.
The drug delivery breakthrough came when Reed realized that the same field principles he'd used to modify steel could be applied to creating microscopic capsules that would release medication only when they reached specific locations in the body. The patent application for "Controlled Field Drug Delivery Systems" was filed in June 2001, with immediate interest from pharmaceutical companies.
—
August 2001
By his second year at Columbia, Reed was already pursuing his second PhD, this time in applied chemistry. His professors were initially skeptical about allowing someone to pursue multiple doctorates simultaneously, but Reed's research was generating too much valuable work to ignore.
"The boundaries between scientific disciplines are artificial," Reed explained to the Dean during a meeting about his unusual academic path. "The universe doesn't care whether we label something physics or chemistry or biology. The same fundamental principles operate at every level."
His third patent application was submitted in late August 2001, based on applying field manipulation to agricultural applications. Working with researchers in the biology department, Reed had developed a process for enhancing seed germination and plant growth using controlled energy fields. The implications for global food production were staggering.
"You're going to revolutionize farming," said Dr. Margaret Foster, his collaborator in the agricultural research. "These field applications could increase crop yields by thirty percent while reducing the need for chemical fertilizers."
Reed was also working toward degrees in materials science and applied mathematics, taking courses at night and during summers. His advisors had given up trying to convince him to focus on a single field. The cross-pollination of ideas was producing too many innovations to discourage.
By early September 2001, Reed's office wall was covered with patent certificates and academic achievement awards. The shy graduate student who had arrived at Columbia believing himself a failure was becoming one of the university's most productive researchers. His work was being cited by scientists around the world, and companies were lining up to license his innovations.
But the moment that meant the most to Reed came when Emma, the little girl whose brain tumor had been successfully removed using his MRI improvements, sent him another drawing for his birthday. This one showed her as an astronaut, floating in space with a big smile, with "Dr. Reed helped me reach the stars" written in crayon at the bottom.
Reed looked at the drawing, then at Herbie, who was now showing gray around his muzzle but still faithfully accompanied Reed to the office every day.
"You know what, Herbie?" Reed said, scratching behind the old dog's ears. "Maybe we didn't fail after all. Maybe we just found a different way to make a difference."
Herbie's tail thumped against the floor in agreement, and Reed realized he was genuinely happy with the path his life had taken.