In recent months, governments around the world had begun noticing something unusual.
No, "unusual" wasn't quite the right word.
What they were witnessing was a series of unprecedented breakthroughs across the entire field of fundamental science.
The first major case came from a European laboratory specializing in advanced materials research.
The lab had achieved a massive breakthrough while developing a new class of nanomaterials.
Researchers successfully created an ultra-lightweight, ultra-durable nano-coating material. The project itself had already been underway for five years.
The achievement even caught Drex Valen's attention.
Materials science happened to be one of his primary areas of expertise, and he understood better than most how difficult genuine progress in the field could be.
Every step forward in materials science often enabled a hundred more steps across the rest of technology.
Once the materials existed, the only thing left was supplying enough energy and infrastructure to turn theory into reality.
Britain, France, and Germany had already invested over a hundred million dollars into the project. Originally, the development schedule had been planned across ten years.
Phase One was expected to take nearly three years.
Phase Two was projected to last until Year Seven.
Phase Three would conclude in Year Ten, culminating in small-scale laboratory production of the coating material.
After that, another decade of civilian, military, and commercial development would begin.
The entire industrialization roadmap spanned twenty years.
But scientific research rarely followed schedules.
Unexpected obstacles appeared constantly.
Even the world's greatest scientists could never guarantee when a breakthrough would occur.
Unless a researcher somehow already knew the answer beforehand, delays were completely normal.
This nanomaterials project had been a perfect example.
The first phase alone had taken four years to complete, significantly exceeding the original three-year target.
Then the second phase had stalled almost immediately.
Progress slowed to a crawl.
Budget committees in Britain, France, and Germany had even begun questioning whether the laboratory's research direction was fundamentally flawed.
For years, the project seemed trapped.
Then something changed.
Starting at the beginning of this year, the project's lead scientist, Professor Zoffi, appeared to have entered a state of impossible inspiration.
Whenever the research hit a dead end, he would step away for a short walk.
Soon afterward, new ideas would strike him.
Solutions emerged one after another.
Every bottleneck seemed to unravel.
Within only six months, the laboratory's progress accelerated at an astonishing pace.
The entire project advanced as though someone were secretly handing the researchers the answers to every difficult question.
In half a year, they completed work originally expected to require seven years.
The project had already entered the industrial expansion stage.
When Professor Zoffi published the results and experimental records from the previous six months in academic journals, the scientific community erupted.
Most experts had expected meaningful results no sooner than a decade later.
The implications of the new nano-coating material were simply too significant.
A breakthrough in fundamental science often triggered cascading advances across countless applied fields.
If this had been the only extraordinary discovery, people might have attributed it to the sudden brilliance of a once-in-a-generation genius.
History had seen such figures before.
Rare, but not impossible.
The problem was that this wasn't the only breakthrough.
Over the past six months, the entire world of fundamental science had begun accelerating.
Rapidly.
If humanity's previous exploration of science had resembled a leisurely bicycle ride, recent progress felt more like strapping oneself onto a supercharged racing motorcycle and launching down a straightaway at full throttle.
Before anyone could process what was happening, entire disciplines were crossing finish lines.
Scientific advancement was no longer taking cautious steps.
It was sprinting.
Everyone paying attention to academia knew it.
In the last six months alone, major scientific journals had published more groundbreaking supplemental issues than they had during the previous decade combined.
Papers with impact factors of 2.0 or 3.0 suddenly felt insignificant.
Research that once would have earned international recognition now appeared almost ordinary.
Drex sat in his office, flipping through journals such as Nature and Science.
Most of the knowledge inside was already outdated from his perspective.
Still, revisiting old ideas occasionally sparked new insights.
Sometimes inspiration hid in places others overlooked.
Tony Stark read those journals as well, though his approach was considerably less thorough.
His primary focus remained advanced energy systems and mechanical engineering.
He usually skimmed materials science articles and ignored most of the rest.
The person who studied them most carefully was Bruce Banner.
Whenever scientific topics arose, Banner genuinely enjoyed discussing them with people operating at the highest levels.
Drex Valen.
Tony Stark.
Doctor Richards.
And others like them.
That said, Banner always felt strangely uneasy around Doctor Richards.
He couldn't quite explain why.
Whenever he imagined having a deep scientific discussion with the man, an inexplicable sense of danger surfaced.
As a result, he had never attempted to become particularly close with him.
Inside a private group chat shared by Drex, Tony, and Banner, a message suddenly appeared.
Bruce Banner: @Drex Valen @Iron Man, have either of you read the latest issue of Science?
Drex responded almost immediately.
Drex Valen: I have. Doctor Wang's paper on quantum communications was especially impressive. It pushed the field forward by at least twenty years. If the technology can be commercialized successfully, the global communications industry could be transformed completely.
Tony's reply came a little later.
Tony Stark: I only read the nanomaterials section. What's up?
Bruce Banner: Don't you think something feels off? There have been way too many influential papers lately.
Tony Stark: What's strange about that?
Drex Valen: Sounds like good news for science to me.
Bruce Banner: It is good news. But the concentration is abnormal.
Banner leaned back, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
Bruce Banner: Normally, research of this caliber appears once or twice a year. Maybe three to five papers if we're lucky.
Bruce Banner: But we're only halfway through the year. Look at what's happened already. Materials science. Communications. Cellular biology. Nearly every major discipline is making enormous leaps forward.
Bruce Banner: The pace is becoming difficult to explain.
He paused before continuing.
Bruce Banner: In fact, it's advancing so quickly that we can't even apply all these discoveries fast enough. If humanity could fully utilize everything that's been published recently, we'd be living in the kind of near-future world Hollywood movies love to depict.
Bruce Banner: The problem is that most experts expected those technologies to arrive a hundred or even two hundred years from now.
A brief silence settled over the chat.
Then Banner typed another message.
Bruce Banner: What do you think that means, Stark?
Tony narrowed his eyes.
Tony Stark: What exactly are you getting at?
As he spoke, he opened his digital copy of Science and began reviewing the latest issue more carefully.
Something about Banner's concern had caught his attention.