Cindy Moon, Gwen Stacy, and the awakened members of the Fantastic Four stepped through the next shimmering dimensional rift. They were bracing themselves for an impossibly complex, hyper-futuristic utopia. They expected floating cities, Dyson spheres, or a laboratory the size of a continent.
Instead, they walked into absolutely nothing.
The pocket universe that housed Reed Richards' deepest, truest desires was a completely blank, infinite white void. There was no horizon, no ceiling, and no floor. It looked like the inside of an empty loading screen.
Sitting cross-legged in the dead center of the white expanse was Reed Richards. He was staring blankly at his own hands, a dopey, vacant smile plastered across his face.
"I've got to admit," Johnny Storm muttered, crossing his arms as his boots echoed against the invisible floor. "I always knew Reed wasn't quite right in the head. But I never imagined his ultimate fantasy was starring in a bleach commercial."
Susan Storm rolled her eyes at her brother and quickly stepped forward, kneeling beside her husband. "Reed? Honey, are you alright?"
Reed blinked slowly, looking up at her with wide, empty eyes. "Who are you? Oh. Susan? I'm sorry... I'm... I think I've forgotten absolutely everything I know."
Johnny burst out laughing. "No way. The smartest man on the planet's ultimate dream is to be a complete idiot?"
"Incorrect. My ideal is the eternal, unquenchable thirst for knowledge, combined with the absolute euphoria of acquiring it."
Everyone whipped their heads around.
A second Reed Richards stepped out of the white ether. He looked identical to the first, but he stood tall, his hands clasped behind his back, projecting an aura of supreme, calculated intelligence.
"To put it simply," the second, Omniscient Reed explained, gesturing to the dopey Reed on the floor, "he is responsible for perpetual curiosity. I am responsible for satisfaction. Whenever he learns something new, the data transfers to me. I retain the knowledge. He remains blissfully unaware, allowing him to endlessly experience the sheer, unadulterated dopamine hit of discovery."
Omniscient Reed smiled proudly. "Every single time he calculates that one plus one equals two, he is utterly blown away by the revelation. And I get to experience that profound satisfaction alongside him, in perpetuity."
A heavy silence fell over the white void.
Gwen and Cindy exchanged a deeply disturbed look. To simultaneously obtain the joy of possessing knowledge and the thrill of craving it, Reed Richards had literally split his own consciousness in half.
"Wow," Ben Grimm grunted, rubbing his rocky face. "How the hell do we wake him up from this?"
"Let's test the baseline," Gwen suggested. She stepped toward the Omniscient Reed. "Dr. Richards, do you have any idea where you are right now?"
"Oh! That is a fantastic question!" the Ignorant Reed cheered from the floor, clapping his hands together like an excited toddler.
Omniscient Reed tapped his chin, his eyes darting as he ran the calculations. "Given the spatial parameters and the absence of surgical trauma to my physical brain, this must be a localized soul-world constructed entirely from my subconscious desires. Furthermore, considering the energy signature of the explosion we were just engulfed by, this independent pocket universe is undoubtedly housed within the crystalline matrix of the Soul Stone."
Gwen stared at him. "I don't even understand how he just pulled all of that out of thin air."
Cindy stepped forward, cutting through the exposition. "Dr. Richards, listen to me. Peter and Kang survived the blast. Kang used his time-travel tech to lock Peter and Korvac inside a future temporal node within this psychic space. We can't reach them. How do we break the time barrier?"
Omniscient Reed's eyes lit up with the challenge. "Fascinating. A chronal lock within a timeless dimension. Since you have come to me for a solution, I must deduce that this spatial puzzle exceeds Adam Warlock's capabilities. He cannot directly dismantle the pocket universe himself. What were his exact biometric parameters when you asked him?"
Cindy shifted her weight, suddenly looking a bit sheepish. "Uh... well, I'm sorry. We didn't actually ask him."
"Yeah," Gwen added, rubbing the back of her masked neck. "We just figured you were the smartest guy here, so we came straight to you to fix it."
Omniscient Reed froze. His eye twitched.
"You didn't ask?" Reed whispered, his voice trembling with sudden, profound horror.
The infinite white space around them began to vibrate.
"You didn't ask the primary custodian of the dimension?!" Reed yelled, throwing his hands in the air. "How can you expect to conduct rigorous scientific inquiry when you don't establish a baseline?! Do you realize how catastrophically you have compromised the entire experiment by turning a known constant into a variable?!"
The sheer, unadulterated scientific outrage of a ruined experiment was too much for Reed's subconscious to bear. The perfect equilibrium of his mind snapped.
With the sound of shattering glass, the white void collapsed inward.
The Fantastic Four, Gwen, and Cindy instantly materialized back on the golden, violet-dotted fields of Adam Warlock's central dimension. Reed was standing with them, completely whole, rubbing his temples with a massive headache.
"Wow," Johnny laughed, patting Reed on the back. "Turns out the one thing the omniscient Reed Richards can't comprehend is how humans can be so aggressively ignorant."
"I... apologize," Reed groaned, shaking his head to clear the disorientation. "The dichotomy was intoxicating. What was your question again?"
"They wish to know how to dismantle Spider-Man's temporal lock," Adam Warlock said, walking weakly through the golden grass to join them. "I cannot do it myself. The Cosmic Cube's raw energy is currently contained within the Soul Stone, but it is suppressing my full access to the Stone's power."
"Ah. Well, that makes the equation quite simple," Reed said, his mind already operating at light-speed. He paced a tight circle. "We just need to reunite the consciousness and the energy of the Cosmic Cube. The raw power of the Cube is strong enough to alter reality and easily break through chronal barriers."
Reed pointed a finger in the air. "Theoretically, the concept of linear time should not even exist inside the Soul Stone! It was Kang's Time Stone that artificially introduced the concept of a 'future' node. Therefore, if we can telepathically summon Michael Korvac's self-awareness out of Spider-Man's psychic universe, his reality-warping energy will shatter Kang's created timeline and pull us right to them!"
"Great! So what are we waiting for?" Gwen asked, the symbiote rippling excitedly over her shoulders. She turned to rally the troops.
But a few yards away, a vicious argument had broken out.
Star-Lord had returned through a gray portal, bringing Drax, Gamora, Groot, and Rocket Raccoon with him. And Rocket was absolutely livid.
"You're just a meddling idiot, Quill!" Rocket snarled, kicking a clump of golden dirt at Star-Lord's boots. "I already knew I was dreaming! I knew it wasn't real! I didn't need you to come marching in and 'save' me!"
"Oh, really?" Quill yelled back, his face flushed. "Is that why you were wailing and howling like a wounded animal when the illusion started fading and you realized your friends were disappearing again?!"
Rocket bared his teeth, his fur standing on end. "Shut up, Quill! The day you finally die, I'm going to inherit your ship, stuff your ashes into the primary exhaust thruster, and laugh my tail off when you burn!"
"Completely the opposite, Rocket!" Quill shot back, stepping into the raccoon's personal space. "When you bite it, I'm gonna wail and smear my snot and tears all over your tombstone!"
The two of them stood chest-to-chest, hurling bizarre, emotionally stunted insults at each other. It was genuinely impossible to tell if they were about to hug or murder one another. But despite the chaos, almost everyone was present. Only Mar-Vell and Carol Danvers were missing, but as Adam Warlock pointed out, no one here possessed the emotional connection required to easily wake them from their respective military fantasies. With Reed Richards awake, they had enough brainpower to execute the plan.
"I'm out. Let me out of this stupid rock, Adam," Rocket complained, turning his back on Quill and crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "Quill is a moron who wants to play hero and dragged us all right into the blast radius of a living nuke. I'm not getting blown up again for a bunch of strangers."
Groot slowly walked over. The towering Flora Colossus gently placed a long, wooden finger on Rocket's shaking shoulder. "I am Groot."
Rocket swatted the branch away, his voice cracking slightly. "Am I wrong? Is this the damn team we wanted? We go around saving everyone else, and what do we get in return? We just get ourselves killed! We lose everyone!"
"Then we go save the next Rocket."
Drax's deep, rumbling voice cut through the golden field. The Destroyer walked forward, his heavily scarred face uncharacteristically soft.
Rocket froze. He slowly turned around, staring up at the massive alien. "What did you just say?"
"If the Guardians of the Galaxy had been formed much earlier," Drax said simply, looking down at the raccoon, "then you and your friends from the laboratory would have been saved, Rocket. We fight now so that others do not suffer as we have."
Rocket stared blankly at Drax. The fight completely drained out of him. He looked down at his own paws, the phantom pain of his cybernetic implants aching in the silence.
Quill reached up, pressing the activator on the side of his neck. His metallic faceplate materialized over his head with a mechanical hiss, his red eyes glowing in the sunlight.
"Yeah," Star-Lord said, his voice filtered through the mask. "So we're going to go save the universe. Once more." He looked down at the raccoon. "You wanna go die together, Rocket?"
Rocket let out a long, heavy sigh. He racked the bolt of his plasma rifle. "Fine. But I'm charging double for this."
Behind the group, standing quietly near a patch of violet flowers, Mantis waved awkwardly at nobody in particular. She was just happy to be included.
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