The letter arrived in a manila envelope, via certified mail, two weeks after the X-Men’s visit.
It was twelve pages.
Alaric sat on the porch and slowly read the letter.
After years of studying good writing, he could appreciate a letter like this—one he might have once hoped to write himself.
It was formal, careful, and full of footnotes, asking for permission to study how sovereignty’s borders worked.
Reed Richards had chosen the kind of typeface physicists use when they want to be taken seriously.
There was a four-page methodology, a two-page statement of intended use, and a one-page summary of fourteen old Stark Industries documents that Reed had somehow found and wanted to acknowledge.
Alaric finished the letter.
He read it again.
He felt a certain fondness for people who took the time to be formal with him.
Even so, he thought Reed was probably the least likely person to be right for this proposal.
That evening, he wrote his reply.
It was three pages, careful and polite.
He focused on one main legal-philosophical point.
He explained it at the start, then spent most of the letter defending it.
The key difference was between treating Vantage as a research subject, something to be studied, and treating it as a country, something to be engaged with as an equal.
The first was not acceptable.
The second, if done right, was welcome.
He offered Reed standing access as a scholar.
On the second page, he explained what scholarly access meant.
A scholar could visit Vantage by invitation, observe what any guest could see, ask questions, and share their findings as academic work—as long as it was clear these were based on a guest’s observations, not a formal research study.
Scholars were not allowed to test, measure, or use instruments.
Instead, they could talk, walk, look around, and leave with whatever ideas came from those experiences.
The third page was a paragraph stating that Sue Richards was welcome in the same framework under the same terms.
He sealed the response.
He mailed it.
Reed Richards was at the gate eight days later.
He had, by Reed’s later account, considered for almost the entire eight days whether to refuse the invitation and reapply with a more limited research request.
He had decided, on the morning of the seventh day, that this was the wrong move.
The right move was to accept the invitation as a scholar, see what he could see, and then write everything he could write afterward without violating the terms of the visit.
He brought Sue.
He brought Sue along, just as she had suggested three days earlier in the kitchen at the Baxter Building.
She had told him, Reed, you’re about to walk into the most interesting building of your career, but you’ll be focused on the wrong thing the whole time.
I’m coming with you.
You can worry about the borders.
I’ll handle everything else.
Reed had agreed.
Sue had brought a portable soil-analysis kit.
— They came up to the porch.
Reed was tall and a little rumpled, as people with his kind of mind often were.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care how he looked—he just had other things on his mind that morning.
His shirt was buttoned, except for the third button, which he’d missed.
Sue hadn’t said anything about it on the boat.
By now, she knew when to mention the shirt and when to let it go.
“Mr.
Vane.” “Dr.
Richards.” “Reed, please.” “Alaric.” “Mrs.
Richards.” “Sue, please.” “Sue.” “Pleasure to meet you.
Reed has been talking about this for three weeks.
I’m, frankly, looking forward to him meeting you so he can stop telling me about you.” He smiled.
It was the kind of smile he would often give Sue Richards in the years to come, without really meaning to.
They went up to the porch.
Reed asked the first question before they sat down.
It was, by his own count, the seventh-most important question on his list, and it was the first because it was the only one he had been able to keep to a length appropriate for the moment of arrival.
“How do you handle the seam effects?” “Carefully.” “Carefully how.” “Sit down, Reed.” He sat.
He sat, slightly hunched.
Sometimes his body seemed to get in the way of what his mind wanted to do.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped, and asked his question again, this time more carefully.
“Carefully how.” “I keep the laws narrow.
I write them so they don’t contradict at the boundaries.
I have a protocol I’m thinking about declaring that handles the boundaries explicitly, rather than depending on me to draft them carefully.” “Tony said something similar.” “Tony has visited.” “He sent me his notes.” “All of them?” “Most of them.
He kept the personal observations.
He sent me the technical material.” Reed thought for a long while.
“Show me a seam.” “Come into the kitchen.” He did what Tony had done two months earlier.
He paused at the doorway and stood still for a moment, then stepped inside.
His reaction was nothing like Tony’s.
Tony had laughed, but Reed didn’t.
Reed froze, like a scientist who finally sees proof he had hoped for but never truly expected.
He stayed frozen for almost a minute.
Then he said, very quietly: “Oh.” “Indeed.” “Oh, that’s — oh, that’s not what I — ” “It’s — it’s a phase boundary.
It’s a phase boundary.” “All right.” “Do you have any idea what the implications of that are?” “Some.
Tell me yours.” He told him his.
It took two hours.
About forty minutes in, Sue excused herself, picked up the soil-analysis kit, and went to walk in the garden.
By seventy-five minutes, Reed had settled into the visit and the long, careful conversation that would, over the next few years, become one of the most productive talks either of them would have.
By the end of the two hours, Alaric understood three things he had not understood before about his own borders.
By the end of the two hours, Reed understood one thing about Vantage.
The borders were doing something he had not identified in any other physical system or literature.
The question of what they were doing would, by his quiet estimate, take him somewhere between seven and twelve years of careful work to formalize.
He sat back at the kitchen table.
“Alaric.” A pause.
“You’re not going to like this.” “Mhm.” “I’m going to ask you fourteen more questions before I leave.” “And then, when I get back to New York, I’m going to send you another twelve.” “All right.” “And then, when you answer those, I’m going to send you twenty.” “Sure.” “Are you sure you want to keep saying all right?” “I am, in fact, looking forward to it.
Send me the questions.
I’ll answer them.
I’m better at answering questions than I am at most things.” “Yeah, all right.” “You’re saying all right now.” “You started it.” He smiled.
It was, by Alaric’s later count, the third laugh of the visit, and the first genuine one.
— Sue’s report came in on the porch about an hour later.
She sat down across from Alaric, set the soil-analysis kit on the table between them, opened a small notebook, and read from it, in the brisk, efficient voice of a woman who was doing this for the second man at the table’s benefit and not for her own.
“You have a soil quality problem in the eastern section.” “Fine by me.” “The eastern section is the section you’re about to want to expand into.
The soil quality is going to need to be fixed before you build anything heavy on it.” “All right.” “You have a drainage issue under the third house.
Not yet a problem.
It will be a problem in two winters if you don’t address it.” “Done.” Your foundation choices for the residential houses are good for one through three.
They aren’t the foundation choices I’d recommend for houses four through ten.
The reasons are technical.
I’ve notes.
“You’ve forty applications waiting for you to process, and you’ve built houses for twelve.” “I know.” “You didn’t build for forty.” “I didn’t.” “Why?” “Because I didn’t, when I built the first three houses, expect there to be forty applications.
By the time I had forty applications, I was overwhelmed, and the right solution was to stop building until I had a better plan.” “You have a better plan now.” “I do.
It’s not yet drafted.” “It’s now.
I drafted it on the boat.” She handed him a sheaf of paper.
He flipped through it.
It was eleven pages, written in about three hours.
Alaric felt truly grateful—Sue had given him exactly what he’d been trying to ask for.
This was the first draft of what he and Sue would later call Phase Two.
He looked up.
“Sue.” “Go on.” “Will you come back?” “As often as I can.” “I won’t be able to pay you adequately.” “You won’t need to.
Reed pays me adequately.
I’m offering this to you because I’ve been looking for years for a project I want to give some of my afternoons to, and you’ve built one I want to give some of my afternoons to.
The arrangement is simple.” “Fine.” “Reed will be coming approximately seventeen times per year.
I’ll come approximately five times per year.
Together, you and I’ll probably end up in correspondence approximately twice a week.
If you’re amenable.” “I’m amenable.” “Good.” She closed the notebook.
She put it back in her bag.
She turned to her husband, who was, at that moment, on the porch with them in body and somewhere in another universe in mind, scribbling intensely on the back of a napkin.
“Reed.” A beat.
“Yes.” “We need to go.” “Now, Reed.” “That’s where I land.” He did not move.
Sue smiled, patient, like someone who had lived with this routine for years.
She stood, gently took the napkin from his hand, and put it in her bag.
“We’re leaving, Reed.” “All right.” He stood up.
He shook Alaric’s hand briefly, distracted, as if he was already thinking about page seven of a long paper.
“Alaric.” “Reed.” “Send me the responses.” “Yeah, I will.” They walked down to the boat.
The captain this time was someone new, a young man Alaric hadn’t met before, who helped them aboard.
They pushed off and motored away.
Alaric stood at the gate.
He watched the boat until it was a small dot on the water.
He went back up to the porch.
Dara was on the porch.
“Forty applications,” she said.
“Eleven pages of plans.” “Are we doing it?” “I think we’re.” “Sounds right.” She picked up the eleven pages and went inside to read them.
He sat on the porch.
He picked up the journal.
Reed Richards visited.
Sue Richards visited.
Reed asked seventeen questions and plans to ask thirty-two more.
Sue checked my soil and wrote the next phase before lunch.
I was wrong about the help I needed.
I thought I needed people who would defer to me.
What I really needed were people who were smarter than I in their own fields, and who would tell me so without waiting for permission.
I have, somehow, accidentally hired the right people.
He looked up from the page.
He went inside to look at the eleven pages with Dara.
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