Supercomputer 'Canada'

Brad waved as he watched the car carrying Little Arnie recede into the distance, then let out a deep sigh of relief.

With Howard's help, his research had advanced by leaps and bounds.

Take the Planetary Modification Project, for instance. After receiving the partial blueprint Brad had sent under the pretense of an academic discussion, Howard had actually optimized it and sent it back, along with annotations half as thick as an English dictionary.

After spending half a month digesting those annotations, aided by Skynet's increased computing power, Brad immediately ordered the companies under the Hydra Branch to recall and recast every product he had previously commissioned.

Using Howard's new proposal, Brad drew up a revised product blueprint. Everything would follow the new design.

As for Howard, he genuinely had no way of knowing what Brad was really planning.

The partial blueprint Brad had sent him showed that the finished product was an enormous environmental feedback monitoring device shaped like a metal rod.

It was expensive, costing over a million dollars per unit.

Once buried deep underground, it could provide more than ten thousand kinds of signal feedback based on the dryness of the surrounding soil, vibrations, and changes in the weather aboveground.

Howard, however, was clearly unfazed.

He had told Brad before that geniuses in applied technology like them sometimes acted like theoretical researchers, producing all sorts of bizarre things on a whim.

In reality, those inventions had no use in this era, and might never serve any purpose at all.

So when Howard received Brad's partial blueprint, he thought Brad had finally embraced the destiny of an applied technology researcher.

The kid has finally started making weird, useless things. I was afraid he'd drag Earth into the space age in another decade or so.

That was what Howard thought.

Still, he studied the blueprint carefully and spent some time optimizing it.

Then Brad received the results: the new product cost thirty percent less, yet could return more than two hundred thousand kinds of signals based on its surroundings.

Brad immediately ordered production to begin. Naturally, all the core technology was manufactured in his private factories, where Terminators served as technicians. No one else had access to it, not even Hydra's subordinates.

By now, Brad had established manufacturing plants under private companies in more than twenty countries. Each had been registered under a different identity, and their employees were all Terminator Mechanical Beings.

Of course, to handle unexpected situations, each factory housed one or two highly intelligent T1001-model Terminators.

The rest were T800s covered in human skin.

Intelligent robots were undeniably efficient. With Brad's funds still reasonably plentiful, they recycled the materials and rushed out ten new Environmental Feedback Monitors.

Brad's original Planetary Modification Project would have required at least a hundred of the older models just to begin its preliminary phase, but Howard's help had brought him an unexpected windfall.

Through negotiations between Silver Fox, the Hydra Base's current figurehead, and the Canadian government, Brad obtained several plots of land specified in his plan.

Then work began on burying those expensive instruments.

Next, he activated the supervising supercomputer and ran the program algorithms linking the metal pillars.

Three months later, Brad sat quietly in his chair, blue light flickering continuously in his electronic eyes.

A special form of pulse radiated outward in a sphere centered on the buried instruments, expanding until it enveloped all of Canada.

The pulse's range continued to spread, reaching the North Pacific off the west coast, the North Atlantic Ocean off the east coast, and the Arctic Ocean off the north coast.

Brad could now see everything happening across one percent of Earth's surface, and it barely consumed any of his computing power.

In fact, through the interaction between the Environmental Feedback Monitors and a specially written algorithm called Planetary Computation, the entirety of Canada and a portion of its surroundings had themselves become Brad's "supercomputer."

And that was not all.

Sitting in his luxurious home in New York, Brad swept one hand gently forward, and every image within his sight began to rewind at incredible speed.

He could read every person and event from the past five hundred years on this land, down to the birds that had flown through its skies and the insects that had burrowed through its soil.

All he had to do was want to.

"That's not all. Skynet, begin running the Zola Algorithm."

Brad gave the order quietly.

Soon, every supernatural presence that had existed in Canadian territory over the past five hundred years, currently existed there, or might exist there in the future was cataloged and displayed before Brad.

Over the past five hundred years, a total of 343 individuals on this land possessed supernatural powers. Excluding Logan, Silver Fox, and Emma Frost, who are already known to you, 340 remain. Of these, 289 are deceased.

Twenty-seven have left this region. Twenty-four still live here in seclusion.

A total of 130 supernatural items were identified. Eighty-seven have been destroyed or rendered ineffective through time, loss of power, or use.

Three supernatural items exceed your current power and can be utilized.

Locations marked.

Brad blinked and disconnected from the Supercomputer 'Canada'. Then he slumped in his chair, taking a long time to recover before finally letting out a long breath.

Ten minutes later, three Hydra squads led by T800 Terminators left the base, each heading for a different destination.

"The Planetary Modification Project turned out even better than I imagined."

"I only modified a small patch of land like Canada... That feeling of looking down on all living things, of calculating the past and future, was far too intoxicating."

"But just using the Supercomputer 'Canada' had such an impact on my mind. Once Earth's modification is complete, connecting to the Supercomputer 'Earth' even once might wash away every last trace of my humanity before I even do anything."

"I can't use the current Supercomputer 'Canada' too frequently, either. It would cause irreversible mental damage."

Brad had a vague feeling that this thing had never been designed for humans in the first place. It was a special kind of "supercomputer" intended for artificial life such as Skynet and Ultron.

Under the onslaught of such an enormous volume of data, a human could not possibly retain their humanity and sanity.

Unless some extraordinarily powerful treasure could safeguard his humanity. Only then could he use a planetary supercomputer without restraint.

The Mind Stone, or the Soul Stone.

Brad thought of the two Infinity Stones most likely to help.

Except neither of them was on Earth right now.

The Tesseract, which contained the Space Stone, was still...

Brad suddenly sat up, forcing himself to endure the headache left by using the planetary supercomputer.

He remembered previously analyzing and recording the structure and data of the Infinity Stones Destroyer. He had even personally built an instrument capable of analyzing and matching the wavelengths emitted by the Infinity Stones.

Although losing Nanobug had cost him some of his inventive ability, connecting to the Supercomputer 'Canada' would instantly increase his combined computing power with Skynet more than ten thousandfold.

What he lacked in inspiration, he could make up for in sheer numbers. He could simulate thousands of modification proposals in an instant and brute-force the development of a radar capable of detecting the Infinity Stones' wavelengths.

If necessary, he could build a spaceship and send more intelligent Terminators into space to find them for him!

There was a risk of running into Thanos ahead of time, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Brad immediately connected to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database and remotely fed all the Tesseract's real-time monitoring data into his experimental base in Canada.

Then he activated the Supercomputer 'Canada' again, remaining connected for well over ten minutes before disconnecting.

The Infinity Radar has been successfully manufactured in the laboratory.

Reality Stone fluctuations detected on Earth... Time Stone fluctuations detected... Time Stone signal lost.

Skynet's notifications drifted silently past.

Brad's eyes rolled back, and he lay motionless in his chair for a long time.

After another while, Brad turned his head and began violently retching. His brain, even after being strengthened by the Moonstone, felt as though it had been churned into mush.

Once Brad recovered, he wiped the saliva from the corner of his mouth.

"Fuck. Using a planetary supercomputer is still too much for a human brain."

"Add another directive. Begin the Spaceship Project."