Tony Stark was completely ignited by the very idea of Soulium. He almost forgot the pain from his injuries as he pestered Mobius for details. But Mobius's next few lines were like a bucket of cold water poured straight over his head.
"Make Soulium?" Mobius repeated in her distinctive, lazy drawl tinged with mockery. Her emerald eyes looked at him as if he were a daydreaming child. "My dear little tin man, what do you think that is? Some trinket you can knead into shape with those crude 3D printers and laser engravers in your garage?"
She lightly swayed a green reagent tube that had no business appearing out of nowhere and continued the dimensionality reduction beatdown. "The base unit of Soulium requires picometer-level machining precision, with nearly ruthless demands on quantum tunneling effects, interatomic forces, and the manipulation of energy fields at microscopic scale. With technology from your era… hmm, let me see…"
Her gaze swept across the equipment in the garage, and JARVIS obligingly projected holographic overlays of technical parameters.
"…With an industrial level that struggles to stably manipulate even a single atom, you want to manufacture Soulium?" Mobius let out a laugh that didn't quite mean anything. "That's like trying to carve an integrated circuit board using a stone axe and flint. Cute idea. Zero feasibility."
The fever in Tony's face drained into a slow, sickly pale. He was a genius; more than anyone, he understood the limits of current technology. The chasm Mobius pointed out was real—and it was a cliff, not a gap. Picometer precision? That was a field you wouldn't even graze until the next century.
A huge sense of powerlessness surged up inside him. He could see a door into a new world—and discover that his key couldn't even fit into the lock.
Watching Tony's crushed, hollow-eyed expression, Mobius seemed amused. She pivoted, like a cat teasing a mouse under its paw. "But… since you're my little lab mouse's friend (meaning Takao), and since this… hmm, not-bad curiosity of yours is worth something, I'm not unwilling to point you toward a slightly more realistic road."
Tony snapped his head up. Hope flared back into his eyes.
"The essence of Soulium is the collective cooperation of intelligent nano-units. Since you can't produce perfect nano-units, why not take a step back?" Mobius tapped the hologram with her reagent tube. "Scale the units up. Up to the micrometer level—maybe even millimeters. Give each unit simple functions: movement, connection, energy reception, and signal processing. You'll lose Soulium's almost magical shapeshifting and its ability to carry consciousness, but…"
She paused on purpose, watching Tony's eyes brighten with every word.
"But for assembling a 'living' suit that can deploy quickly, repair itself automatically, and adaptively deform to some extent—that's more than enough. Imagine tens of thousands of tiny 'mechanical ants.' Normally they're stored in a small container. When you need them, they swarm out like a tide, covering your body and forming an unbreakable suit of armor in one hundredth of a second…"
Tony's breathing turned ragged. The image drew itself in his mind instantly. No more bulky metal shell that had to be worn like clothing—this would be flowing metal that flooded over him like a second skin. Damaged sections would be patched in an instant by new "ants." The shape could adjust in real time for combat needs. It wasn't Soulium, but it was already next-generation technology that would overturn the very concept of single-soldier equipment.
"Mechanical ants… swarm intelligence… modular self-assembling armor!" Tony muttered. His hands trembled with excitement. This path was still an enormous climb, but at least it was a peak you could attempt with existing materials science, microelectromechanical systems, and artificial intelligence. He could see a clear, executable R&D roadmap.
"Thank you, Mobius… ma'am!" For once, Tony even used an honorific. He didn't bother with manners—he whirled around and lunged for his workbench, hammering away at a virtual keyboard as he pulled up design software, words tumbling out nonstop: "Power supply… communications protocol… structural mechanics… swarm algorithms…"
He plunged into the new project's frenzy so completely that he temporarily forgot his injuries—and even Pepper beside him.
Mobius watched Tony flip into work mode and nodded in satisfaction. She murmured to Takao, "See? That's what a qualified lab mouse looks like, right? Give him a goal he can actually see, and he'll erupt with astonishing energy."
Takao looked at Tony—like a man reborn—and then at the great scientist beside him, who had effortlessly redirected Tony onto an entirely new tech tree. His heart filled with complicated emotion. He knew that Tony Stark's Iron Man armor was about to undergo a true, reborn evolution—and all of it came from Mobius's offhand "Ant Workshop" concept.
It was easy to imagine the shock this world would suffer when a new armor that could be stored in a "wallet," instantly cover the entire body, and auto-repair while reshaping itself finally appeared. And that might be only the first ripple—one among countless possibilities Mobius would bring.
Skadi leaned against Takao's side. Watching Tony suddenly sink into fanatic obsession, a trace of confusion flickered through her ice-blue eyes—but she didn't care about complicated technology. She simply tugged lightly on Takao's sleeve and whispered, "Doctor, hungry."
Takao chuckled and pulled her in by the shoulder. "Alright. Let's go see what there is to eat." As for Tony and his "ants"… let them swim freely in the garage's ocean.
(End of Chapter)
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