DarcyVision Ch. 01

EPISODE 1 -- "Fucking Before a Live Studio Audience"

"Hey," she said to the man sitting across from her in the armored transport. He looked up at her with a deer-in the-headlights sort of way but she continued on, unbothered. "What's your field?" she asked him, prompting a continuation of the look.

"We're not supposed to talk to each other," he answered, nervously.

"Hmm, boy scout leader," she quipped sarcastically. "Got it. And you?" she asked the only other woman in the group.

The mousy-looking woman smirked as Darcy put the other man in his place. "Nuclear biology," she answered readily.

The bald man next to her turned and looked at her and answered his own field unprompted: "Artificial intelligence." He looked like artificial intelligence to her. Not like someone who worked in the field but someone who might legitimately be a robot or some sort of man-droid. She noted the different domains of their work.

"Astrophysics," she said of herself. Thinking for barely a moment she smacked her lips. "We got the full clown car." When no one disagreed, and more importantly no one seemed to catch her meaning immediately, she continued. "It means whatever the threat is, S.W.O.R.D. clearly has no idea what they're dealing with." She squinted, trying to think, wondering what on earth there could be, after Thanos, that would prompt the new government agency to pull in such a varied set of scientific experts.

"I'm a chemical engineer," the first man said, clearly hoping to join the circle.

"No one cares," Darcy rejoined without missing a beat. She looked away for a moment to watch the scenery flitting away out the small windows in the back doors just as the brakes squealed slightly and the vehicle came to a stop.

The driver shifted the vehicle into park. "All right, grab your gear." The heavy door creaked and swung open and Darcy was the first to move, not just because she was sitting by the exit but also because she had the most experience with things like this compared to the others. She had been in New Mexico in 2011 when S.H.I.E.L.D. had gotten involved in the whole Thor-Asgard-Loki thing and had dealt with the black vehicles and suited agents and endless red tape. She'd gone with Jane when she'd been taken to a safe location during the Chitauri invasion in 2012. She had been in London in 2013 when Malekith the Accursed had tried to get the red infinity stone thing, the squidgy one, the aether, which they'd later learned was related to shifting and changing reality. After that, she'd spent time finishing her degrees and had joined Jane's field, astrophysics, eventually completing her own doctorate, which was presumably why S.W.O.R.D. wanted her now. She had to suspect, though, that Jane must have said no if they'd come looking for her. Dr. Darcy Lewis was an expert on the interrelation between astrophysics and metahumanity but if there was anyone with more firsthand experience, it was Dr. Jane Foster.

The dark-haired woman smirked to herself; Jane had certainly gotten more than her fair share of "firsthand" experience in New Mexico. London, too. Hell, she knew enough to know that Thor required more than one hand of experience to handle. More than once over the years a small part of Darcy had wished that maybe she'd been the expert at the time, maybe she'd have caught Thor's eye, and maybe she'd had the whirlwind romance, kissing, cuddling, and fucking that Jane had enjoyed for several years.

Despite not getting Thor to herself or becoming his girlfriend or the princess of Asgard or whatever the hell Jane had been for a brief time, Darcy had her experience with the Asgardian. A few times in New Mexico when the alcohol had flowed freely, and then again several times in London after the issues with the Dark Elves she'd been able to experience Thor alongside Jane, and even a few times one-on-one. She felt the memories of his strong hands and hard body warming her but there was no real time to reminisce about her own "firsthand" (and "secondhand" and...other...) experience she'd had with Thor and Jane and others along the way before it was time to focus on what was in front of her.

The camp she was walking through looked so much like what she had seen in New Mexico and so entirely alien at the same time. This time there would be no hulking hunk from the sky, she suspected, but rather something even more mysterious that there would be no one in the world better equipped to handle than herself, what's-her-face, who's-his-name, and domo-arigato-mister-roboto that she'd been riding with for the past hour and a half. Hopefully between the four of them they'd have the answers S.W.O.R.D. was looking for and they'd be able to stay in the game long enough to satisfy their own curiosities. Satisfying her curiosity was the last intellectual mountain left for Darcy since completing her PhD and moving so far up in her field. Fortunately, it was a huge mountain she could spend most of her life climbing because she was curious as hell.

She looked around, her pace slowing, as she began to wonder just who was supposed to be her handler. Who was she supposed to report to at this circus now that she was out of the clown car? She looked from blank, unassuming tent to blank, unassing tent until she heard someone calling her name.

"Ms. Lewis?" a man called as he strode toward her, dressed in military fatigues.

She turned and breathed a sigh of annoyance. "Dr. Lewis," she corrected.

"We have your gear set up inside," the man said, not particularly caring as he gestured the direction he intended to lead her. She followed, knowing that if she stopped to care about every man who put her back by calling her "miss," she'd be as far back as they intended to put her. Better to just go along and get the job done and wait for the opportunity to show him up later. The handler walked through the door ahead of her while another man stood by, holding it open for her. He smiled and she nodded and after she passed him she let herself smile. Who doesn't love a handsome man in uniform? she thought to herself as she entered the field base.

The handler led her down a straight corridor, ignoring a few branching rooms that were only partially set up, possibly left set aside for whatever work might crop up in the near future requiring separate spaces. Together they moved down the hall to a large, round room in which several work stations were in place with things ranging from standard work tables to spectrometers to tactical area maps, all of which were focused on the small town in front of them: Westview, New Jersey.

Outside, a drone lifted off and flew forward before disappearing into the clear sky. Darcy's mental math moved fast and she recognized a spatial anomaly for what it was, having seen several during the London event in 2013.

"Those drones you're sending in, what kinda data are you getting?" she asked.

"I'm afraid that's highly classified," the handler told her, arms crossed in front of his chest.

She moved her eyes up and away from him for a moment to think and then looked back at him. "You can't see anything?"

He didn't answer her but the way he straightened up his posture told her that she was right and he didn't like it. Of course, she knew she was right from the second he opened his mouth: she was here to help S.W.O.R.D. understand the whatever-it-was and if there was relevant data they would provide it. The only reason there was to tell her it was classified was to avoid admitting they were entirely stumped. She looked away to avoid his annoyed gaze and then unslung her bag, putting it down next to an unoccupied workstation that she assumed would be hers, which was confirmed as she began to notice the gear that she had requested be provided.

"FBI, Army. I saw Air Force Office of Special Investigations out there," she said as she pulled a heavy, reinforced case up and onto the desk, opening it and beginning to set herself up. "Research Lab, Space Command, too. A bona fide, joint, multi-service response. Really looking forward to the commemorative T-shirt." She sat and began tinkering with some of the gear to prepare to follow her first hunch. "Is there somewhere a lady could get a cup of coffee? You guys look like you might get down with those little pod things. Horrendous for the environment--"

"Make your assessment, please," the handler interrupted, clearly not appreciating her sardonic chatter and dismissive suggestion that he fetch her something to drink. Fortunately his impatience wouldn't need to be tested any further as she was already beginning to get results from her first scans with her first piece of equipment.

"Whoa..." she said, double-checking the scans. "I mean, whoa..."

"What're you getting?" he asked, less annoyed, more curious. She could work with curious.

She pulled up the spectrum analyzer. "A colossal amount of CMBR."

"CM--"

It was her turn to cut him off, though she appreciated he was asking a question with a genuine intent to learn something. "Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation."

He looked like he wasn't sure what to think and furrowed his brow. "We've been told the radiation is within a safe limit."

"Uh, it is...for now."

"Wait, what do you mean?" he started, but now it was becoming annoying. Some questions, good. Lots of questions, annoying. She shushed him.

"There are longer wavelengths superimposed over the noise here." She paused, thinking for a moment, and then looked under the table for one of the pieces of requested gear. She bent down, grunting, picking up the heavy Lexington Instruments Physio-Scope and then dropping it slightly again, making it clatter. The handler stepped back and got out of the way as she heaved the physio-scope onto the workspace. "I got it," she said sarcastically as she got herself set up. Quickly she worked to get it hooked up to what she needed and then began to work with the dials, just then realizing that she was still dressed for the cold weather. Her fingers were dumber than usual, trapped beneath her fashionable gloves, but at least she was warm. The physio-scope was an old enough piece of analog tech that her motor skills were fine for now but anything more delicate would require freeing her digits.

She adjusted the dials slowly and carefully and as she watched, a picture seemed to appear in the scope, causing her handler to lean in a bit and furrow his brow again in confusion. Slowly, an image of a woman in a Donna Reed-style dress began to appear, eventually smoothing out into what looked like a sitcom like the Dick Van Dyke show or Bewitched crackled into focus in glorious black and white.

"I need a TV," she said, turning to the handler, realizing that they could do better than the old physio-scope with this kind of transmission. "An old one," she clarified. "Like, not flat," she clarified further. The handler disappeared and Darcy kept working, beginning to tinker with her setup to make sure she was prepared to capture and store as much of the data as possible. She wanted the video, she wanted the audio, she wanted the CMBR readings, she wanted anything she could get her instruments on and minute by minute she was not only prepared, but was in business collecting.

Darcy stared at the physio-scope for a moment before she began to realize something: she thought she recognized the woman she was looking at. From a certain perspective and position of the head she would almost swear that the woman on the screen was Wanda Maximoff, one of the Avengers. But what was she doing in a television show that seemed to be from the 40s or 50s? She watched for the next few minutes or so before deciding that she was definitely looking at Wanda Maximoff or someone who looked and sounded exactly like her. But just as she went to swivel her chair to try and get someone's attention, she heard someone standing behind her.

"Is that...one of the Avengers?" the man asked.

Darcy turned in her chair about to talk and then her eyes shot open wide for a moment before she closed her mouth, gathered her thoughts, and answered. "I think it might be," she told him. She looked up at the man who had been standing behind her, his handsomeness having been what caught her off-guard. He looked to be in his mid-30s, strong, wearing military fatigues with various pieces of body armor over top of it, his nametag stating that she was staring at D. JONES. He smiled at her, and for a second she thought she spotted the same spark of surprised attraction on his face as well but then it was gone and the soldier looked at the screen instead of at her. She turned partway in her chair and was surprised again as she saw the Vision walking onto the set to join Wanda, clearly also part of whatever manufactured melodrama they were looking at.

"Him too," D. JONES pointed out.

"Yes, him, too," she agreed.

"What the heck is this?"

She shrugged in her seat. "I don't know, actually...shit!" she kicked herself mentally as she realized the surprise of what the physio-scope had shown her had kept her from getting the rest of her kit set up. "Shit, shit!"

"What?" the soldier asked.

She turned and started working quickly, sill not bothering to take off her coat or gloves or hat or scarf, grabbing equipment and then becoming flummoxed, not sure of where to go. "I need...space. Is there another spot that I can set some of this up? I need to make a recording and storage hub for all the data we're getting and there's not enough table space."

"Uh, here," D. JONES said, reaching out his arm to get the attention of another soldier. This one looked a little older, a little more rough around the edges, but also handsome and aware. He had a well-kept but large reddish-yellow beard but a short haircut for a look that wouldn't have been allowed in a true military outfit but seemed to fly with S.W.O.R.D. The man joined the two of them and Darcy got a look at his nametag which read W. BURKE.

"What's up?" W. BURKE asked.

"She needs more space to set up. Help me get her gear moved into one of these offices here," D. JONES told him and then the astrophysicist was surprised at how quickly things moved. Both men easily lifted the equipment that had been so heavy for her. They moved it from her workstation in the command center to the first office in the hall, quickly helping her assemble the necessary setup, collecting data on the CMBR, the transmission buried within it, and the actually video and audio transmission with a full spectrum analysis also recording to another file. After barely ten minutes, the setup was done and everything was recording to a series of external hard drives as well as to a computer that was pulled into the room to help manage everything.

As the men finished they stepped back into the doorway and Darcy sat at the table. The room was small, even more so with the equipment all piled into it and with the two men standing near the doorway. She felt tiny compared to them, especially since she was sitting. Suddenly it occurred to her what was at her eye level and it was everything she could do to keep from sneaking a quick peek but then her resistance failed her and her eyes flitted down for a second, disappointed to find that their uniform pants kept them from giving her an idea of what they had going on. She looked back up at them just as quickly and then stood, stretching out her arm to D. JONES first.

"Thank you," she told him.

"You're welcome, miss," he answered.

"It's doctor, actually," she told him, willing to correct him since he seemed like he might actually care. "Dr. Darcy Lewis, astrophysics."

"Jones," he told her as he shook her hand.

She cocked her head and smirked. "Is that what your mom calls you?"

He smiled back. "She calls me Demetrius."

She smirked again. "And what do your friends call you?"

"The guys call me D," he told her with a confident smile. "And I've been called Big D."

The other soldier chuckled.

"Shut up man, I have been," Demetrius scolded with a laugh of his own.

"Well I'm not your mom," Darcy continued on, "and I'm not one of the guys so I'm gonna call you...Meech. Get it? Meech, like, short for Demetrius."

"Aw, hell, no," Demetrius said as he took a step back toward the door, his complaint seeming more like he was playfully annoyed than actually disagreeing.

The other soldier cleared his throat. "I'm Wyatt. Wyatt Burke."

"Nice to meet you, Wyatt," she said, shaking his hand.

"The guys just call me Wyatt."

"Well, this time I'll go with the guys," Darcy quipped back. "Seems like they got it right."

Wyatt smiled and then stepped back as well and in another second the two left through the doorway and headed off somewhere else. Darcy turned back to the array of equipment and finished calibrating the last few settings before she headed back out to her workstation. For now, the only way she could see what was coming in the broadcast was to sit in front of the physio-scope and squint. Hopefully it wouldn't take too long for her handler to have someone run over to the nearest Goodwill and grab some old janky tube TV so she could watch in comfort. Research in comfort, she corrected herself.

She stepped out into the corridor and cast her eyes around for a second to see if she could spot a coffee station anywhere but she had no such luck. Pursuing her lip out in a pout she went to her desk and sat down and began to watch the small, grainy picture as something resembling a sitcom continued to play out in front of her. What on earth was it? Why was it? She had no answers whatsoever but her curiosity was officially piqued.

*****

Fifteen minutes was later, Darcy was startled as a heavy tube TV was clunked down on the edge of the desk she was leaning on. She had been watching the small picture with her elbows on the edge of the desk and her head in her hands, probably looking like an enrapt schoolgirl to anyone who was watching her; her eyes glued to the screen and her mind daydreaming about some boy she'd met. Blech. Not her style, really, not most of the time. The last boy she'd been with for any length of time had been Ian Boothby back in London but that hadn't even made it a full year after the first time they'd kissed. He'd struggled with the history she had with Jane and Thor and eventually collapsed in on himself like a dying star that whined about not being a superhero or being superhero adjacent like she was and like Jane was and like even Dr. Selvig was.

She looked up at the handler. "Jeez, man, you scared me."

"Sorry. I found your TV."

"I see that," she said, sliding it forward and then looking at him expectantly before she rolled her eyes. "I got it," she told him as she climbed under the table and plugged the TV in, then climbed back out and began fiddling with the antenna until she was getting the same signal as on the physio-scope, only bigger. Vision and Wanda were back in front of her, live and seemingly living out some weirdly anachronistic sitcom, still driving Darcy's curiosity crazy. What was it?

"...when the first is yet to return," an Asian-man with the letters FBI stamped on his jacket was saying to a taller, older white man dressed less like a field agent and more like a bureaucrat as they entered the command center.

"Someone must miss you back in Quantico," the older man snapped.

"No, sir. Softball season's over, sir," the FBI agent countered earnestly.

"What do we have up?" the older man said, descending the stairs to his post.

"Radar, lidar, sodar, infrared," a woman called out.

"Cycle through."

She followed the order and the scans displayed, one after the other, giving precious little useful information. The older man's face belied his frustration just as the FBI agent joined him, more curious and perplexed than he was annoyed. Curious is good, Darcy thought, I can work with curious. The old guy stepped away from the post and groused.