Another smog-filled morning as the sun rises over 1930's New York. It's a crisp January morning filled with the sounds of street cars and horse-carts and swerving automobiles.

Add to this the BOOMING sounds from the top of the Baxter Building as Ben Grimm lifts and sets down huge pieces of machinery weighing several tons at Reed's request.

"Make up ya mind, Stretch! Why doncha just buy longer cables next time so ye don't have ta daisy chain all these thingamajobbers!"
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:30, Wed 09 Jan 2019.

"Because we're trying out one of the materials we obtained from the Savage Land..."  Reed smiled and looked at the unusual Rubber he had obtained from the plant samples there.

"If I can identify this, I might be able to increase the tensile strength by a factor of ten.  Listen, Ben, I know that I promised to devote most of my time to researching a cure, but I've hit a wall...." he pinched the bridge of his nose, "And I think that there is a lot of good we can do with these abilities that we've aquired.  I have several ideas that can improve the world a great deal, but after the publicity we got from our expedition, I have learned the importance of story in the public narrative....we can do a lot of good and at the same time that good will empower us to capture the narrative of society."

His neck stretched up to look at the cityscape outside of the building.  "Something is wrong....I can feel it.  And you know me Ben, I'm not one to go by my intuition.  There's no logical reason for it, no rational reason but its there nevertheless, and it bothers me profoundly."

"Yeah will if your intuition was workin' right before we jumped in your flyin' jalope I woulda taken my chances on Yancy Street." He grumbled.

Ben was now a large, orange, lumpy...thing. His strength was off the charts, but with the fusing of the four fingers on each hand into two wide digits made most fine work impossible, at least until he could practice and control his strength. As evidenced on the journey home, he was completely unaffected by subfreezing antarctic temperatures on his rocky skin. Even the flame that Johnny generated off his body seemed to have no effect on him.

"I still don't know how I'm gonna explain this to Alicia..."
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:39, Fri 11 Jan 2019.

"I wish I could help you with that Ben, but that's a barrel of apple monkeys I can't pass on.  God's green earth gave me all the smarts a man could ask for and I still haven't figured out how I won Susan.  Women are a mystery I may never solve.  I could tell you the atomic make up of their DNA, their neurochemistry, the number of heart beats per minute and how many of each basic element is in their body just by looking at them by weight in metric or Imperial but the magic star dust? That's a thing I can't answer.  What I can tell you Ben is I think you do her a diservice.  It won't be good news but-"

He looks up at a ticker on the wall.  "It looks like the analysis I had the Difference Engine working on for patterns in the headlines just came through.  I will find a way to undo this Ben, it's just going to take time.  I might be able to work on something that will let you blend in easier..."
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:32, Fri 11 Jan 2019.

"Well you got me inta this, so I guess you're the only one who can get me out of it."

He squeezes his fist a few times, noticing the fault lines spreading ever so slowly over his clay-like body.

"Skin's hardening up, I think. Maybe when I'm old I'll just fall to pieces like Aunt Mabel's china set! Hrmmm...so what's this doohickey do, anyways? Looking at headlines? You trying to clock the next market crash so you can make another million smackeroos?"

"The Doohickey to make things easier for you would throw up an image around you.  I have to invent that but I have a better idea how to do that based on Cathode Ray technology vs undoing what has happened to us.  The skin hardening makes me more concerned.  Invulnerable is good, statue is not.  This device? It monitors the Wires of news articles and content from around the world and looks for specific patterns of words that stand out.  Think of it as the electronic of hiring a dozen secretaries to pour through news papers and circle things based on instructions I gave them."

“But that’s twelve less secretaries to make coffee for ya! And ya can’t pat THAT broad on the keister!

He lets out long belly laugh, the kind you haven’t heard him make since before the expedition.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:45, Sat 12 Jan 2019.

Reed thinks a moment, rubbing his chin, "You know Ben, my first answer was going to be that this works 24/7 but due to some of my existing inventions, not to mention what I have in mind from our visit to the savage land..."  He seems lost a moment and begins to mark on the chalk board, "Given reasonable enginering expansion at cost to accept my own extrapolations, combined with a natural mathematical curve of miniaturization this would cause massive job loss..."  He holds a finger up, "But if I factor in jobs created due to productivity increased...."  He makes a large white line that shows a linear curve and then notices how it eventually over takes the first line, dips and then stops.

He sits there for a solid minute in silence and then says,"Maybe you can hire 40-50 secretaries tomorrow to do the same thing Ben."  He seems to look extremely disconcerted by this as if the math has reached out of the chalk board and insulted him somehow.

"I'll work on that ...I have no idea what to call it...Image Inducer?"

”It collects the clippings for ya? How about The Tipster?”

Ben reaches for the plug and shoves it in.The lights begin to flicker and the machine rumbles, reminiscent of the jet engines that carried the Fantastic Four on the failed expedition. It was supposed to prove that a manned rocket to the moon was possible. May be someday...

A buzzer goes off as a critical match of data overlaps. The ticker tape spills a stream of information onto the floor.

”Wait I got it! It reads everything for ya? Call it THE GOOGLER!”
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:16, Tue 15 Jan 2019.

As he got out of his car, and walked up to the building. His car still heated up due to his personal driver. He walked up to the front doors of the building, and attempted to open the doors. Hoping he would be able to meet up with Reed Richards for the day.

The secretary at the front desk apologizes but very politely tells Me. da Costa that Dr. Richards is busy at the moment, but if he leaves his phone number and address of where he's staying in town he'd love to discuss business opportunities.

Meanwhile the device begins printing data...

DAILY BUGLE: Kravinov journeys to Antarctic with oil tanker ship and surplus military weaponry and munitions. Journey subsidized by Roxxon.

RICHARDS GEOGRAPHIC SURVEY: No fossil fuels found in Savage Lands. The fossils are still moving.

DAILY BUGLE: Kravinow advertising having recovered a dragon named Fin Fang Foom.

SMITHSONIAN: Fin Fang Foom was a man-eating dragon of Chinese Myth.

Journal of Psychology: Jungian thesis on comparison of Chinese army routing Fin Fang Foom to St. George slaying the Dragon and St. Martha slaying the Tarrasque.

PEKING TIMES: Celebration of anniversary of expulsion of the man-eating dragon Fin Fang Foom from China in 1602.[Contradiction: Historical documents verify as true.]

DAILY BUGLE: Advertisement: Kravinov claims to have captured Fin Fang Foom, will present in grand exhibition sponsored by Roxxon.

ROXXON ANNUAL REPORT: Extensive uranium deposits found in West Virginia. Mention of purchase of War Department armor prototypes to protect miners from radiation. [See Stark Report on prototypes]

LOCAL ECONOMIC REPORTS: Roxxon pushing locals off land over mines.

LOCAL POLICE REPORTS: Skyrocketing number of murders and suicides [correlation: locals who don't take land purchase offers from Roxxon found dead: HIGH]

CONCLUSIONS: *machine sputters and stops before printing*

He writes down his address, and phone number. Thanks the lady, and leaves. He instructs his driver to take him home. So, he can check out what he needs to do, and see if he can learn anything about his problems from that angle.

The kid hands Roberto a flier for Kravinov's dragon exhibit while he's stopping off at the hotel, right after he tips the doorman. You can't help but notice that it's subsidized by Roxxon.

Reed beams at Ben, "New rule.  You name all my devices.  I would have called it the Newsotron, or the Tickertapeparadare or....something...lame....it stopped on the conclusions...I could check it, but I surmise the increase of events is only the beginning...anomalies, increasing exponentially, pointing to ...what..."

Roxxon.  It wasn't his style to fight big business.  It was odd, because part of him felt it was only natural that a company should look after its self interests.  Indeed, if a large group of all the most intelligent people in the world would stop working, then they could...do nothing, the part of him that saw ten moves ahead projected.  Roxxon was eating their own economic base with no understanding that a manufacturing economy would eventually-

The very fact that he was this conflicted was a problem unto itself.  He needed an external reflection to observe the empirical reality to understand the impending data, the x-factor he could not discern.  And it wasn't the balderdash called 'magic' that was as clear as day to him, merely unexplained science.  There was something...else.

Something at the edge of his mind and it was driving him slightly mad.

Round and round and round the gibberish in his mind went.  This business with the uranium mines was significant to him in entirely different way...but it did not seem significant.

Then it all became clear.  The one area that almost all the data conversed was this Kravinov.  Clearly an accident waiting to happen.  He handed the paper to Ben, "I think this is an accident waiting to happen.  We should investigate this.  If you don't mind, I think we will need your skills too Ben.  I can invent the image inducer tonight with some coffee and a few hours, and should finish at 4:52am as long as we get back my 10pm.  Something tells me this Kravinov doesn't know what he's dealing with."

As you clean up the tickertape from the Googler you see it crumpled up near the beginning. It starts with this one, a year before the Anarctic expedition:

HUNTINGTON DISPATCH: Expert Hunter Visits Roxxon W. VA. Properties to Capture Deadly Mountain Lions

"We're heading to West Virginia." As an after thought, he adds, "Let's be sure to bring gas masks.  I have a theory about small amount of coal dust in the lungs causing cancer but its #425 on the Master List."