Stop Studying and Go Play

All Brad could say was that Arno Stark truly was Howard Stark's son-or rather, that he truly carried the Stark Family bloodline.

Although he had been born with a genetic disorder, it did nothing to diminish the boy's intelligence.

Brad had assumed that Arno calling him "Godfather" that day had just been a coincidence, a lucky bit of baby babble.

He had never expected the boy to have already developed a complete grasp of language, let alone understand what the word "godfather" meant.

With Howard's approval, Arno was allowed to spend a few days at Brad's home. There were professional servants and a butler, after all. With a nanny hired as well, it was hardly any different from staying at the Starks' own house.

Brad made a few little toys and tossed them to Little Arnie, then set up a rudimentary laboratory in his suburban mansion. He spent most of the next few days inside, occasionally coming out to play with Little Arnie.

But after only a few days, Little Arnie grew bored with all those toys and directed the nanny carrying him to Brad's study.

Once, when Brad happened to return to the study for a break, he was surprised to find Little Arnie lying on his desk, leafing through a book on applied engineering that Brad had written.

Brad had compiled the book himself for students at X Academy who were old enough and had a certain foundation of knowledge.

It was essentially aimed at the young people who had just joined the X-Men, in case they encountered unusual situations in the future that required them to figure out mechanical devices.

Brad tiptoed over to Little Arnie and watched the boy turn the pages with convincing seriousness, his chin propped on one hand and his brows tightly furrowed, just like a hardworking college student.

Soon, Little Arnie noticed the shadow over his head.

"Ah!"

Little Arnie cried out and turned around. Only when he saw Brad did his expression relax, and he held out both hands to ask to be picked up.

"Godfather!"

Brad scooped Little Arnie up. "Can you understand what's in there?"

"No."

Little Arnie buried his head against Brad's chest and rubbed his face back and forth.

Brad breathed a sigh of relief. That seemed much more normal. He did not deny that this world might contain geniuses beyond even his imagination, but there was no way anyone could comprehend the material in his textbook from such an advanced perspective without any foundation at all.

"Then why were you so absorbed in it?"

"It looked interesting."

After saying that, Little Arnie looked this way and that. He was still a child, after all, and soon he yawned and fell sound asleep in Brad's arms.

Brad gently handed the child to the nanny. After thinking for a while, he asked the butler for some blank paper.

Then he shut himself away in an empty room and, after a night of intense deliberation, printed out some teaching materials.

Considering how far Little Arnie's behavior surpassed that of other children his age, Brad consulted teaching materials online, then trimmed and condensed some of their contents.

He also accelerated the progression of knowledge covered in the materials.

Three hundred sheets in total covered everything from elementary school through college, along with some prerequisite knowledge for applied engineering.

The next day, he tossed the condensed materials to Little Arnie and set down a modified smart home robot beside him.

"Read these pages in numbered order. Understand as much as you can, and don't worry if you don't understand something. But if you can keep reading, you can ask this chubby white fellow any questions you have along the way."

Brad reached out and patted the robot's head. He had installed a speech recognition system inside it and connected it to Skynet.

That meant Little Arnie could direct any questions straight to Brad in the laboratory.

Sure enough, Little Arnie thought these were new toys and eagerly threw himself into them.

Brad turned around and disappeared back into the laboratory.

The so-called rudimentary laboratory mainly consisted of a computer and a scanner, which he used to transmit the extracted data from the former Black Bishop's blood samples back to the base laboratory.

There, they would be analyzed and cloned.

Skynet supervised that work, so Brad only needed to check on it at regular intervals.

Then there was remotely managing his newly established company, periodically reviewing the results produced by its recruited researchers, and discussing various questions with Howard, who had likewise plunged into his laboratory as soon as Christmas was over.

He also occasionally had to field academic questions from Hank at X Academy. On top of that, Obadiah kept hinting, both openly and subtly, about acquiring patents cheaply for research and development, so Brad sometimes discussed matters with him as well.

In short, he was very busy.

Little Arnie did not disturb Brad for an entire week either. At mealtimes, he sat in his stroller with his little face all scrunched up, no one knowing what was going through his head.

Then, at dinner on the ninth day, Little Arnie clutched the hem of his shirt with one hand and held out a slip of paper with the other.

His face, still plump with baby fat, was full of embarrassment.

Brad took the paper and looked at it.

It showed part of the structure from a sketch of an enormous integrated circuit diagram.

"Um, I finished all those pages, but I still can't figure out what's wrong here..."

Little Arnie bounced up and down as he pointed to a line on the sketch.

Brad looked down and froze on the spot for a full three seconds.

The reason was simple: the circuitry in the picture was so complex that Brad had instinctively activated Skynet's computational program in his brain, and it took three seconds to calculate the answer.

But this diagram was not in the teaching materials he had written!

"Where did you get this diagram?"

"I saw it on Daddy's desk a year ago. Daddy spent ages trying to find what was wrong with it. He missed two meals in a row, and Mommy got angry."

Brad suddenly remembered that Dr. Zola had mentioned this sort of activity before. It was a little game played among former researchers of the Strategic Scientific Reserve.

These circuit diagrams were designed with exceptional ingenuity. Most people struggled to solve them, and even someone on Howard's level had to use brute force to find the flaw. It made sense that Howard would occasionally use them to exercise his brain.

With his brain connected directly to the Supercomputer, Brad was essentially cheating at this game.

But...

The section Little Arnie had just pointed to was precisely where Brad's computer had finally identified the problem.

"No, I mean... when did you bring this over from your dad's desk?"

"I drew it from memory."

Seeing that Brad still had not answered him and had instead asked a whole string of questions, Little Arnie lost interest. He lowered his head and started chewing on his finger.

Brad swallowed hard.

His mind was now filled with nothing but... A year ago. Saw it. Drew it from memory.

And the way Little Arnie had just bounced up and down, pointing to the very spot Brad had calculated as the answer, asking exactly what was wrong with it.

His half-mechanical body suddenly felt weak at the knees, and his brain, linked to the Supercomputer, suddenly felt dizzy.

"Did you finish all the pages I gave you?"

"I finished them the day before yesterday. They weren't any fun."

"I... I'll go make you a game console. Don't read this boring stuff anymore, unless your dad tells you to start studying someday."

As Brad walked toward the laboratory, his feelings were decidedly mixed.

This kid deserved a happy childhood. With a brain like that, no matter when he started studying, he could never fall very far behind.

Instead, Brad felt that if Little Arnie stayed with him a few more days, he might end up pulling out the Quantum Computer Project, which was still under development, and discussing it with the little brat.