Technical Difficulties

Operation: Galactic Storm is over and while the Avengers saved the Earth from danger caused from the Kree/Shi’ar war, it came at a heavy cost.[1] For Tony Stark he is still trapped in his Iron Man armor as a result of his central nervous system being ravaged by a technorganic parasite.[2] He tells his friend Jim Rhodes that he is living on borrowed time as the stress of wearing the armor is burning out the circuit mesh that has been keeping him alive. Tony feels as though he is already dead and all that’s left is an empty shell. He then takes out his anger on a nearby mirror. Getting ahold of himself, Tony wonders what he has let himself become.

Little does Stark know that he is being observed by cybernetic beings in the distant future who are attempting to bring him forward in time.[2] While they succeed in using their time platform to bring Iron Man to the future, the process almost shorts out their time machine, prompting them to take evasive maneuvers to prevent it from exploding. As Iron Man reorientates himself he demands explanations but is stunned when the alien cyborgs around him all begin to bow in religious reverence to his presence. Before he can ask any questions, Tony suddenly blacks out.

When he wakes up, he is on an examination table being scanned by his captors. When they remove his helmet, Tony is fully awake and he is greeted by the alien leader and welcomed to the 28th century. The leader, Sysop, explains that they brought Tony into the future because they need him to save their world from utter annihilation. Stark asks why he is so important and is shocked when the alien explains that they call themselves the Stark and that Tony is their god.

The leader then goes on to explain how this can be:[4] Long ago, the aliens the aliens that would call themselves the Stark were nothing more than a primitive society. That was until a ship launched by Tony Stark at some point in their past (and Tony’s future) crash landed on their world. The artifacts they found inside included Starktech as well as a suit of Iron Man armor. The Stark’s ancestors saw this as an offering by the gods and began trying to understand the technology inside the ship. Soon a religion sprang up around Tony Stark himself and the Stark people built a high-tech utopian society for themselves after mastering the technology. To safeguard their society, a secret society was formed called the Programmers who oversaw the implementation of technology on their world.

Tony finds this all incredibly hard to believe, so the leader of the Programmers takes him to a monitor room to show what he says is true as well as the problem they need Tony to fix. What Tony sees is a world of chaos as the Starks have devolved into savagery and have been using his technology to commit war and atrocity amongst one another. Worse, the pillaging of the rest of the planet threatens to throw it into an ecological disaster while the vast cities grow into ruin and disrepair. Worse, a band of barbarians has been breaking into Programmer facilities and wiping out everyone they find. So far the Programmers have been unable to protect themselves from being systematically wiped out. The projections of the future do not project a rosy future for the Starks. There are two possible outcomes to this instability: Either their entire race will become extinct due to the environmental damage, or 3/4 of the population will be slaughtered and give rise to a new brutal nation that could become a threat to other worlds in the galaxy.

When Tony asks if he is to blame for all of this, the lead Programmer tells him that it is not his fault, that blame goes to his people who have failed him. The Programmer then asks for Iron Man to help save their world. This is a huge problem and Tony wonders how he can even begin to bring back stability to an entire planet. Tony who isn’t a religious man finds it incredibly hard to stomach an entire society that reveres him like a god. He has a lot to think about and asks the Programmer to give him time to ponder the situation.

Tony spends the next few hours on a computer terminal verifying what he was told and it turns out the situation is much worse than originally projected. All this pain and suffering as a result of his own inventions convinces Tony that he has a moral obligation to do something about it, but finding a solution could take more time than what he has left. Regardless, Tony gets to work designing ways to save this dying world. He is making progress with new innovations when suddenly the compound is attacked by the barbarians who have been systematically wiping out the Programmers. Despite Iron Man’s efforts to repel the invaders, however many of the Programmers are injured or killed. Sysop tries his best to help but is also injured in the process.

Sysop decides that they cannot do anymore and his people’s fate has been written. He decides that it is time to send Iron Man back to his proper era as remaining in the future could cause immeasurable harm to the timestream. Realizing that he doesn’t have any other choice, Iron Man steps onto the time platform. As the machine is being powered up, more barbarians break into the room. Tony tries to use his status as a religious symbol to convince the barbarians to stand down, but they denounce him as a false idol and open fire. Luckily, the time machine kicks in and sends Tony back into the past the resulting backlash of energy killing the attackers as it overloads and explodes.

When Tony returns to the moment he was taken, Jim Rhodes comes in to check on the strange flash of light. When he asks Tony what happened, Stark doesn’t remember and suddenly collapses to the ground and becomes unresponsive.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Jim Rhodes, The Stark

Continuity Notes

1. The Kree/Shi’ar war threatened to destabilize the Earth’s sun due to the use of a nearby star gate. The Avengers stopped it, with a team led by Iron Man seemingly assassinating the Supreme Intelligence, which put them at odds with Captain America. See Captain America #398, Avengers West Coast #80, Quasar #32, Wonder Man (vol. 2) #7, Avengers #345, Iron Man #278, Thor #445, Captain America #399, Avengers West Coast #81, Quasar #33, Wonder Man (vol. 2) #8, Avengers #346, Iron Man #279, Thor #446, Captain America #400, Avengers West Coast #82, Quasar #34, Wonder Man (vol. 2) #9, Avengers #347, Captain America #401, Quasar #35

2. Tony goes over the health problems he has now and had in the past early in his career as Iron Man:

   • He was wounded from bomb shrapnel many years earlier in Tales of Suspense #39, requiring him to wear his Iron Man chest plate 24/7 to keep himself alive. This threat to his health ended after a full heart transplant in Iron Man #19. He continued to have heart problems for a time afterward but they eventually passed.

   • More recently, Tony was shot in through the spine in Iron Man #242 leaving him disabled from the waist down. He cured himself with an experimental bio-chip in issue #248. This chip was used by the Marrs twins as a backdoor to override Stark’s nervous system with an artificial one that allowed them to take control of his body. Iron Man uncovered and foiled this plot over the course of Iron Man #258-266. Tony’s condition will persist until Iron Man #290.

3. This futuristic 28th Century that Tony visits is not the future of the Prime Marvel Universe, but a possible future that exists in an different reality. Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005 #1 designates it as Reality-691.

4. This story was originally told in Guardians of the Galaxy #2.