Chapter Text
Reed Richards was thirteen years old when he was given his first swirlie. It was horrid, unpleasant as water filled his ears. His hair was then yanked at the back of his head, lifting him from the toilet bowl, gasping for air as his glasses were dangling off his ears,
“You just had to be a brainiac, didn’t you dick ?”
“I told you,” Reed said, coughing up water, “It’s just Rich--” SPLASH!!! Reed tried and failed to hold his breath as the bullies held him down. Reed knew that the world record for holding one’s breath was around twenty-four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Unfortunately, Reed’s lung strength and capacity could only limit him for a few dozen seconds at the most.
The bullies laughed as some of them punched Reed in the sides as he was forced into the toilet bowl, drastically limiting what lung capacity he had. He was yanked out again, puking toilet water out of his guts,
“Oh! Sick!” Said the Bully who held Reed by the back of his head, “Dude, let’s see if we can get him to barf again!”
“Hey!” Barging the door opened was a kid nearly twice the size of the other kids. He wore a black t-shirt with a skull, and a face that matched his name,
“Oh, uh… H-hey, Grimm…” Said the bully who immediately let go of Reed’s head, “H-how are--”
“Cut the shit, moron,” Ben said, looking at the five kids in the room, “Either you get the hell out of here, or it’s clobberin’ time for all of ya’s!” One of the other bullies scoffed, stepping up to Ben,
“Come on guys, it’s just one--” Ben immediately grabbed the kid and threw him into the wall, pummeling his face with his large fists. The kid, with tears and blood streaming on his face, begged Ben to stop. Ben looked over his shoulder, furrowing his brow,
“Well, ain’t you assholes gonna go, or do I have to beat the shit out of you too?” The kids booked it, too chicken to mess with the “Grimm Reaper.” Ben walked over to Reed, and picked him up,
“What'd ya do this time, Reed?” Ben asked, “Didn’t do their homework?”
“Actually,” Reed said, wiping off his glasses with his shirt, “I only reminded the teacher that they forgot--”
“You didn’t… Wait, who am I kidding!? Of course, you did!” Ben said, “You just had to make sure everyone had their homework, didn’t you?” Reed wiped his head and hair with the paper toweling, wringing his hair over the sink,
“Ben, if I didn't, the professor would’ve just given them over the weekend,” Reed explained, “Of course, I probably shouldn’t have made it so vocal.”
“Just… Please make sure you know what will happen if you open your smartmouth, alright?” Ben said, “I can’t keep running around the school the moment I hear someone’s giving you atomic wedgies or shoving you in a locker!”
The two boys went to their lockers, Reed looking at his neatly organized locker, filled with books rented from the library,
“I don’t know how you can read them all,” Ben said, shoving his homework in his locker, next to the pile of papers that Ben knows only God could sort out, “And, I thought the library only let you rent two books at a time.”
“The librarian noticed I rapidly came back each day,” Reed said, “They just let me take as many books as I want. Currently, I’m reading five books a day!”
“Jeez, Louise!” Ben said, “I can only read that many books if they were comic books!”
“Speaking of reading,” Reed said as he pulled out one of the assignments, “Did you read the essay for History class?”
“No,” Ben said, “Who could give a rat’s ass what Nikola Tesla did!”
“Actually, without his contributions to modern science, we wouldn’t have the type of wires that most electronics use,” Reed said, “That, and he had hidden designs for lasers, invisible walls, and had a romantic partnership with a pigeon!”
“Holy crap!” Ben said, “Repeat what you said about the lasers? That sounds like a cool thing to focus on for the essay--”
“Ben Grimm and Reed Richards!” The announcements blared, “Please report to the Principal’s Office, immediately!!! ” Ben groaned as Reed raised an eyebrow,
“I don’t understand,” Reed said, “How are we in trouble?”
“Cause, those little dicks cried first!” Ben then slammed his locker shut, “As if I don’t got enough trouble with my grades! If my old man finds out--”
“It’ll be fine,” Reed said, “I’m sure we can explain what happened to the Principal, pointing out the flaws of whatever the other kids said!”
“Alright, but you should do the talking,” Ben said, “These jerkwads that run the school don’t appreciate my foul mouth as is!”
The boys walked into the office, and Reed noticed a couple of things right away. First, the Principal was scowling as the boys walked in. Second, the boys looked at Ben with fear and dread in their eyes. And thirdly, the fathers of each of the boys were there, Reed’s sitting next to Ben’s,
“Alright, I’ll make this quick,” The Principal then looked over at Reed, “Richards, what happened?”
“Well, it began when I was walking to my next class, after reminding Mr. Kirby that he forgot to pass out homework. Then, these guys,” Reed said, pointing over at the bullies, “Dragged me into the bathroom and repeatedly dunked my head into the toilet. Ben got the bullies to run off and--”
“What is this!?!” Said one of the fathers of the bullies, “You’re gonna take the side of this… this… Spaz!?! ”
“Hey!” Reed’s father spoke up, “Don’t you dare try and insult my son!”
“Please, gentlemen!” The Principal said, turning towards Reed’s father, “I am inclined to Nathaniel’s son’s view on the story since he’s the one who was bullied!”
“They weren’t bullying him!” Said another father of the bullies, “They were just roughhousing!”
“Reed isn’t the kind of boy to roughhouse,” The Principal said, “Hell, look at him! How else do you explain how drenched he is!?” The fathers looked over at their boys, scowling at them as they were made fools out of. Reed and Ben’s fathers stood up, “Where are you going?”
“Hell, I’m taking my boy fishing!” Ben’s father said, “Besides, I need someone to pass me a beer! Come on boy!”
“Alright, pops,” Ben said, shrugging to Reed. Doesn’t matter how, Ben’s off the hook! “See ya later, Reed!”
“Seeya Ben,” Reed then looked up at his father, “Dad, are we leaving too?”
“Do you wanna leave?” Reed’s father asked. Reed looked at his bullies, gulping down the creeping dread that crept along his back,
“Yeah, can we stop by my locker first?”
“Of course!” Nathan said, holding his son close as they stood up,
“B-But--” Is all the Principal could get out before Reed and Nathan walked out of the office. He sighed, and pressed one of the buttons on his phone, “Julie, please mark Ben Grimm and Reed Richards absent for the rest of the day… And send in some detention forms!”
Reed walked down the hallways with his father, looking up at his father with pride. The town scientist, Reed’s dad, is one of the smartest people that he knows. Any question that Reed had about the universe, whether it be about the stars above or the microbes below, his father had a scientific explanation for almost everything. Reed stopped at his locker, opening it to put his books in his backpack,
“Reed,” His father said, “How… Often are you bullied?”
“Uh… About twice a day.”
“Twice a day ?” His father said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve taken care of it!”
“Whenever I want to speak with you, you’re in your lab doing research,” Reed said, “And… It’s not like I have a mom to talk to about it.” Nathan sighed as Reed threw on his jacket,
“I… I know, son,” Nathan said, patting his son’s shoulder, “And trust me, I’m this close to finding the answer, Reed!”
“What answer?” Reed asked. Nathan hesitated, shaking his head, “Dad?”
“It’s for another day,” Nathan said, “Right now, let’s go for a burger, huh?”
“Sure! Can we stop by the radioshack? I have some allowance money, and I wanna try something out!”
“For you bud, I’ll throw in an extra twenty!”
“Really? Thanks, dad! I think that’ll make what I got designed possible!”
The father and son walked out of the school, Reed lugging his heavy bag of books to the car. Nathan turned the key, keeping a vigilant eye on the winter road,
“So son,” Nathan said, “What did you learn today?”
“Not much,” Reed said as he read one of his books, “However, I did pick up two new books at the library to read before dinner!”
“Really, what are they?” Nathan asked as he drove into the local diner’s parking lot,
“ Cosmos , by Carl Sagan, and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. They’re really insightful! But, when I asked my teacher about black holes, he didn’t know what I was talking about!” Nathan stopped and looked at the young man that is his son,
“Really? Y’know, I could use your perspective on a project I’ve been working on… Well, for most of my life!” Reed raised an eyebrow as he and his father walked into the diner. They climbed into their padded seats at their table, ordering their burgers, fries, and ice cream, “So, Reed, how much do you know about modern physics?”
“I know the current goal is to prove either string theory or quantum loop theory to explain the absolute building blocks of this universe. Correct?”
“Almost,” Nathan said, breaking a french fry in half, “Okay, imagine this french fry is… The universe. Within each molecule of salt and potato are the infinite galaxies and nebulas that fill out the ever-expanding fabric of time and space. However,” Nathan said as he reached for another fry, this one much smaller and softer, “Now this is another universe. You do know multiverse theory, correct?”
“Yeah, but I thought it was the branching of different choices of time, but these universes occupy different spaces, right?”
“They do, but they exist on top of each other,” Nathan said, hovering the smaller fry over the fry that was split in half, “They exist within each other through dimensions inconceivable to the human mind. We poor hominids, Reed, are limited to having a mind that sees the cosmos through three spatial dimensions, and one temporal dimension that we have no control over.”
“That we have no control of so far! ” Reed said, Nathan, chuckling as he split the small fry in half, pointing towards the starch inside the fry,
“Even though each of the fries is differently shaped, each of them is made of the same stuff! That there exists within our laws of reality an equation that can be carried to all universes. The theory of everything!”
“Wow!” Reed said, “Is that what you’ve been working on?”
“Yes! My research has already shown great promise, especially a dimension that I believe we can communicate to!”
“Really?” Reed asked, “What is it?”
“I call it the N-Dimension,” Nathan said, “From what we can tell, it’s the version of our own universe if it experienced ‘Heat death.’”
“What's heat death?” Reed asked,
“Imagine you have a bathtub, one that is infinitely huge, and fill it with magma hot water, coming into being as a form of steam on the verge of plasma! Of course, it would immediately expand, trying to fill out the infinite void. In the process, the steam would become water, hot and boiling. Over time, it would become the perfect temperature to take a bath in. Then, it would get lukewarm. Then it would get cold. And colder. And colder and colder and colder until it is sheets of packed ice, being pushed by the steam engine heart at the center of the void. The ice would keep going, getting thicker and thicker, the atoms inside the ice becoming so cold that they nearly stop. Finally, they reach zero Kelvin, the coldest temperature that the universe will allow.
“Being this cold,” Nathan continued, Reed unblinking as he slowly munched on his burger, “The bathtub now becomes more cold than warm. The force of entropy steps in, a force that instills an equilibrium into the system. And if the universe will forever expand, the edges being nothing but the ice of ice, then the whole universe will be cold. It will keep expanding, some thinking that it’ll tear apart the fabric of time and space, while others believe it will keep getting colder and colder until all the stars burn out, the planets turn to dust, and all the photons and fermions slowly decaying into nothingness, forever.”
“Whoa…” Reed said, the gears in his head turning. He sat there, thinking the whole time about each word his father said, letting the sponge in his head absorb the water of knowledge. He was left to contemplate the fate of the universe, the building blocks of the fabric of reality, and the boundaries of time itself by himself. Nathan smiled as he drank his frappuccino, knowing he finally stumped his son’s mind.
They finished their meals and went back to the car. Reed was puzzled over what his father said, “The Theory of Everything.” How could everything, everything around Reed be quantified into an equation? Reed mewled over this as he read his books, trying to piece together the images that Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan were trying to convey to their readers.
That night, Reed lay in bed, dreaming of dying black holes within the cosmic canvas of the universe. Reed wanted to be like Galileo Galilei, Issac Newton, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein. He wanted to be an explorer, a pioneer of the unknown, finding the solution to everything.
Reed woke up to his alarm, running to the kitchen to see his dad, “Hey dad! Where are you?” Reed then looked over at the fridge, and sighed as he looked at the note:
Hey kiddo, I had to step into the lab, I’ll see you later tonight! Love, Dad. Reed neatly folded the note and put it into his pocket. Reed grabbed his things, especially his private project to show Ben.
“So, what is it?” Ben asked as Reed showed him the weird-looking device, “It looks like the scanner from Ghostbusters .”
“It’s sort of like a scanner,” Reed said, “I made it finely tuned to pick up a certain kind of radiation: Cosmic Radiation!”
“Cosmic Radiation? Sounds like something from a cheesy science fiction movie!”
“No!” Reed said, turning his scanner on, “Right now, it’s detecting some of the Cosmic Radiation, radiation made when the Big Bang occurred, I’m talking about the creation of the universe, Ben!”
“So, like when God said, ‘Let There Be Light!!!’ Is that the light? It’s still around?”
“Sure! And it is still around, the amount of energy behind the Big Bang would insure that Cosmic Radiation will last as long as the Universe will!”
“Is it working?” Ben asked. Before Reed could say anything, a snowball was thrown at Reed, hitting him in the head. Reed held his head, ears ringing as he held up the snowball that hit him, a rock covered in a red liquid. He looked up to see Ben gasping at Reed, then slowly turning towards the kids across the street, the same bullies from yesterday, “Alright, you stay right here Reed,”
“Ben, where are you going?” Reed asked as Ben rolled up his sleeves,
“I’m gonna go over there, and clobber their asses!” Reed saw as Ben ran towards the kids, yelling profane curses at the kids. Reed then looked over to see his Cosmic Scanner, destroyed. It shattered on contact with the ground, the fragile piece of equipment never meant to be tossed around. He sighed as he picked up the pieces, walked back home, and applied pressure to the head wound on his forehead.