War Imminent

Although Darcy told everyone that S.H.I.E.L.D. and the United Kingdom military had already begun operations in the Greenwich district, Selvig and the others merely looked up at Darcy... then lowered their heads and continued studying the map.

They had always felt that S.H.I.E.L.D. was practically synonymous with unreliability. In their eyes, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s greatest talent was making simple matters complicated, turning minor issues into major disasters, then blowing the major disasters sky-high until they could no longer handle them—at which point they cried for help and dumped the blame on someone else.

Selvig, in particular, had firsthand experience with this. Last time, S.H.I.E.L.D. invited him to study the Cosmic Cube, swearing up and down that there was no danger whatsoever. But what happened? The base commander died, he went insane, the Cosmic Cube was stolen, and aliens invaded New York. All fine work by S.H.I.E.L.D.!

If that incident could be excused because someone had been plotting behind the scenes and caught S.H.I.E.L.D. off guard, then what about a few days ago, when he had been locked in a mental hospital? S.H.I.E.L.D. had pounded their chests and promised that he only needed to focus on treatment, and that the agent they sent would soon come bail him out. But he waited until the flowers wilted, so bored that he ended up explaining the universe to a bunch of lunatics, and that damned agent never showed up.

Who could trust that kind of efficiency? He would rather calculate things here based on ancient legends than believe S.H.I.E.L.D. If they could accurately predict the convergence point of the spatial distortions in advance, he would eat shit!

"Spatial convergence has happened before. Someone must have witnessed it firsthand." Selvig spread out a huge map and carefully studied it. "The Maya, the Chinese, and the Egyptians