Stark Industries Expo Farce (Part 2)

On the day the Stark Expo opened, New York was sunny and the streets of Midtown were bustling with traffic, with East Grand Central Station completely jammed.

The work vehicle opened its trunk, and the TV station staff unloaded the reflector and camera bracket. Near the front of the vehicle, the editor-in-chief Facing Forward explaining precautions to the reporter holding a microphone.

On one side of the road, many luxury car drivers impatiently honked their horns to drive away internet celebrities and bloggers who were taking photos and videos on the road. Even the coffee and hot dog stalls benefited from the situation, with crowds gathered in front of them. youth men and women dressed in fashionable clothes held food and drinks and chatted in twos and threes.

Not long after, the glass doors of Stark Tower opened, and everyone rallied like soldiers on a command. Reporters reacted the fastest, rushing forward with their cameras and microphones, while the owners of luxury cars, maintaining their status, slowly opened their car doors, took the coffee their drivers had bought, and leaned against their cars to watch.

youth couples, eager to join the fun, squeezed in. Gwen shielded Peter with his arm, and the two followed the crowd into Stark Tower. Gwen whispered to Peter, "You seem to know your way around a lot. Looks like you were very diligent during your internship."

Peter looked around and said, "Coincidentally, I brought my work ID today, so let's go through the Staff Passage."

As he spoke, he pulled Gwen away from the crowd and walked to the other side. Gwen said with some concern, "But we don't know the exact address. Where exactly is the 90th floor that the invitation says?"

"I don't know either, but we should go up to the 89th floor first, that's definitely the right thing to do."

The others who entered the building didn't Peter Peter's level of initiative. After entering the lobby of Stark Tower, they found that there wasn't even a guide. Many people were complaining about Stark's neglect, but since they were already there, most of them followed the crowd and squeezed into the elevator.

The Stark Tower has a good carrying capacity; even with so many people flooding in at once, they were all transported to the top floor in an orderly manner.

Floors 79 to 89 of Stark Tower are Stark's personal laboratories, which are generally not open to the public, and almost no one has ever entered or left the 89th floor of Stark Tower. When the crowd surged out of the elevator, everyone was stunned.

Early 21st-century technology was already quite advanced, but it certainly hadn't reached the kind of Zentari technology displayed at Stark Tower. The moment they stepped out of the elevator, the entire corridor lit up, and a synthesized electronic voice announced, "Hello, I'm Jarvis, the butler of Stark Tower. Welcome! Please follow the lights to the designated area to participate in the expo..."

At that moment, the lights came on, and a holographic arrow appeared in the corridor.

People followed the signs through a technologically advanced corridor and arrived at the lobby on the side of the 89th floor, where three walls and half of the ceiling were made of glass curtain walls.

The curtain wall is covered with Hive- like structure. As people flow in, the metal panels unfold like fish scales, allowing bright but not glaring sunlight to shine through the glass.

Peter led Gwen into the lobby through the Staff Passage. Peter was used to this, but Gwen was quite surprised and said, "With such a large glass curtain wall, can it really support the building's strength?"

Peter explained to Gwen, "This is a new technology from Stark Industries. It doesn't have an official name yet, but I call it Resonance Glass. The larger the area of this glass, the greater its strength..."

The crowd surged into the hall, only to find that Stark was not there. Just as they were wondering where Stark, the host of the industrial expo, had gone, a faint buzzing sound came from above their heads.

Immediately afterwards, a dense, machine-gun-like sound of armor scraping rang out, and suddenly layers of shadows appeared overhead. Everyone looked up and then gaped in astonishment.

With a whooshing sound, hundreds of mechs flew in through the opening at the corner of the glass curtain wall. Sunlight shone on the metal mechs, and the entire hall was filled with what looked like a shower of diamonds, the dazzling luster blinding everyone.

Immediately afterwards, an even louder roar of jets erupted, and a massive aerial platform descended from the center of the hall. The instant it touched the ground, smoke billowed around the platform, all the mechs landed, and surrounded the platform. Stark, dressed in a suit, rose from the platform.

The dense crowd around him froze for a moment, clearly stunned by his unexpected entrance. But then, Stark opened his arms and said, "You thought that was all?"

He shook his head, then slowly raised his head to look up at the sky. Everyone followed his movement and looked up as well. Instantly, the mech covered Stark's body, and he took off from the spot, flying out through the exit in the glass curtain wall of the ceiling. Then everyone heard him say, "Prepare to deploy!"

As Stark finished speaking, the crowd saw shadows gather above their heads, and half of the ceiling was covered in metal. Then, countless metal structures surged over like waves.

The supporting pillars rose layer by layer, the walls grew as if they were alive, plate armor spread, gears intersected, and structures overlapped. In an instant, a mechanical city like an empty island appeared above everyone's heads.

They watched as Stark, hovering in mid-air, unleashed an enormous mechanical city atop the 89th floor of Stark Tower.

Then, people saw the massive mechanical island begin to descend slowly, and the mechs in the hall flew out in all directions before stopping below the island, as if to catch it.

When such a massive building collapsed, everyone looked terrified. The crushing descent was incredibly oppressive and suffocating.

In the center of the hall, Stark descended from the light-screen elevator. As the elevator landed, his visor opened, and his voice echoed throughout the hall:

Welcome to the Stark Expo!

As the words fell, the flying mech supported itself beneath the sky island, then quickly transformed into a pillar. Accompanied by the hum of machinery and the sound of jets, the mechanical sky island landed steadily above Stark Tower.

It's unclear who uttered the first cheer, but a few seconds later, a deafening roar echoed throughout the hall.

The crowd erupted in cheers. Regardless of their purpose in coming here, there was no doubt that they had witnessed a miracle of human technology.

At that moment, Stark heard Schiller's satisfied voice in his ears. "It wasn't for nothing that I spent so long fixing the light bulb."

Stark pressed his earpiece and replied, "Obviously, the least important part of this is how you twisted the light bulb."

In the control room of Stark Tower, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Steve glanced at the surprised expressions on Peter and Gwen's faces on the monitor and said, "Peter would probably be very sad if he knew we didn't bring him."

"He said he was waiting for his girlfriend and couldn't come early." Schiller put down his coffee cup and said, "Let's go, the work is done, it's time to go see the exhibition."

"You two go first," Rhodey said from behind them. "Stark told me that someone might cause trouble, so I'm going to check the evacuation routes again to prevent ordinary people from being affected."

Natasha straightened her hair and said to Schiller, "Stark knew someone was plotting something, yet he still made such a high-profile appearance?"

"What you should be worried about right now is not Stark's safety, but the safety of the group of people who want to cause trouble."

The two walked into the lobby, Schiller said as they went, "The security of the entire Stark Tower has been completely upgraded. I seriously doubt whether those people can..."

After Peter and Gwen landed on the Sky Island, the two of them turned into relentless exclamation machines, unable to utter a sound other than "wow" the entire time.

The entire mechanical sky island is not just for show. Once you step onto the sky island, all sorts of new technologies and machines developed by the Stark Industries are displayed on it in a well-organized manner. The various mechanical creations that should not exist in this era are dazzling.

Generally speaking, industrial expos should be comprehensive in nature. Even if Stark is the organizer, it should invite other industrial groups to participate. After providing the venue, the organizer will allocate space for each of the other exhibitors. Previous Stark Expo have always followed this format.

However, this Stark Expo, hosted by Stark, had no place for anyone else; it was purely a "Stark Industries" expo.

This all started when Stark used the magic reactor to ascend to a higher dimension. At that time, in addition to gaining higher-dimensional sensory experiences, the combat methods of the Iron God mechanical army also gave him a lot of inspiration.

Although the original Stark was not an extreme technologist, his lack of security made him averse to things that were out of control.

But the emotional upgrade he gave Jarvis allowed him to take the first step. The subsequent vampire war made him realize the importance of quantity and functionality. Later, the perspective of the Iron God made him realize that the so-called risks and uncontrollability were just due to insufficient technology. As long as he could reach the level of "I am the swarm", there would be no risk of an omnic crisis.

Having experienced this feeling, Stark began to break through his inner barriers and stopped obsessively researching the path of individual mechs. Clearly, he also realized that being the master of machines and commanding a torrent of steel was more practical than becoming a flawless mechanical individual.

Having figured this out, Stark has been bursting with inspiration lately. In the past, his skills only had a single path, and once he encountered a technical bottleneck, his research progress would be stalled. But now, Stark has developed a dense skill tree based on that single path. When a research project hits a bottleneck, he can simply turn around and explore another path, which has greatly increased his research efficiency.

What sets Stark apart from other geniuses is his abundant creativity. After upgrading his path to a skill tree, the exhibits at the Stark Expo were incredibly diverse. Without the need for cooperation from any other companies, Stark's inventions alone supported the entire large-scale industrial exposition.

If Schiller hadn't gotten so fed up with fiddling with light bulbs that the mechanical sky island was a third smaller than expected, Stark could have crammed even more stuff inside.

Even the most discerning critics had to admit that this was an unprecedented expo, not only because of its stunning opening, abundant products, and cutting-edge technology, but most importantly, because it was an expo independently organized by the Stark Industries, fully demonstrating the Stark Industries' impressive financial resources and Stark's own amazing creativity.

"Well? I told you this would be a surprise." Stark, squeezing through the reporters, said to Schiller, who had just landed on the sky island, "Those reporters were stunned. Can you imagine? Out of so many reporters, not a single one asked me about those scandalous gossips. They were all amazed at how I did it..."

"Compared to this..." Schiller turned his head and looked around, "Don't you think this scene is missing something?"

"Something's missing?" Stark paused for a moment and said, "My exhibits are all here, what's missing?"

"Where is your opponent?" Schiller asked Stark helplessly.

Stark opened his mouth slightly. "I'd forgotten all about them. Oh right, Hammer Industries and that Ivan Vanko guy? Shouldn't they be causing trouble at my industrial expo?"