Six weeks passed after the founding of the Virtual Universe Company. It was mid-February 2013.
Adrian arrived at the Advanced Engineering Annex of the Novi Grad State Polytechnic Institute wearing a plain dark wool blazer, canvas trousers, and work boots.
Inside the third-floor laboratory, thirty student stations were arranged in clean rows, each equipped with a streamlined silver headband connected to a compact desk console. Adrian pulled up a wooden stool beside a third-year mechanical engineering student named Miran, who was adjusting the headband's temple contacts.
"How does the interface seat, Miran?" Adrian asked, nodding at the sleek band.
"No pinching, Mr. President," Miran said, looking up with a grin. "It weighs less than fifty grams. Once you close your eyes, you're standing right inside the workshop."
Adrian rested a hand on the console and took a second headband from the tray, slipping it over his brow.
<< Sophia: Establishing local Virtual Universe node. Synchronizing neural telemetry via Mind Stone core. Latency: 0.00 milliseconds. >>
The classroom faded instantly. Adrian stood inside an immaculately rendered virtual machine hall.
Miran stood beside him, holding a virtual high-pressure geothermal turbine rotor. Adrian reached out, his fingers closing around the metal shaft. The tactile feedback was indistinguishable from reality—the cool brushed surface of the domestic alloy, the heavy inertia of eighty kilograms of balanced metal, and the microscopic friction of the milled bearing races.
"Yesterday I ran this rotor up to twelve thousand RPM under simulated superheated steam," Miran explained, tapping the virtual casing. "The intake blades shattered three times because my root fillets were half a millimeter too sharp. In the physical plant, that would have cost twenty thousand marks and wrecked two milling beds. Here, I pulled the diagnostic log, recalculated the curve, and remilled the profile in twenty minutes. When I step into the real factory next week, I won't make a single wrong cut."
Adrian tested the rotor's balance with a flick of his wrist, feeling the authentic centrifugal resistance. "That is the purpose of this system, Miran. Fail here a thousand times so you never fail on the line."
Removing the band, Adrian returned to the quiet classroom. There was no disorientation, no eye fatigue, and no residual headache. The Mind Stone's boundless cognitive architecture rendered the physical laws of the simulation flawless.
By April 2013, the domestic network had expanded across the provinces.
In the staff canteen of Central Clinical Hospital No. 2 in Trnava, two junior trauma surgeons sat over lunch, their surgical scrubs clean and pressed.
"How did the timber worker's femoral repair go this morning?" the younger doctor asked, buttering a slice of rye bread.
"Cleanest vascular graft I've ever placed," the other replied, shaking his head in quiet awe. "Before we scrubbed in, we imported his high-resolution ultrasound scans straight into the virtual surgical suite. My lead surgeon and I performed the entire arterial bypass thirty times in virtual space. We mapped every hidden branch, anticipated the bleed points, and cut our actual operating time down to eighteen minutes. The patient was stabilized before noon."
Down the block at a sunlit outdoor café, an elderly tailor sat with his neighbor, watching children walk home from the primary academy.
"My granddaughter came home yesterday reciting technical German and geometry," the tailor said, tapping his pipe against a stone ashtray. "She's ten years old! She says they put on the silver bands for an hour a day and walk through ancient Athens and modern mechanical labs like they're playing outside. No dry lectures, no worn-out paper books. The children are absorbing ten years of schooling in eighteen months."
Outside the town, Pietro spent his afternoons inside isolated high-speed combat simulation sectors, pushing his physical reflexes against supersonic virtual interceptors to sharpen his reaction times without breaking city sound barriers. In Zubrovka, Wanda spent her mornings tracking the collective neural field from her palace office. Her refined psionic awareness confirmed that across hundreds of thousands of active daily users, the network produced zero neurological strain or psychic exhaustion.
In mid-May 2013, Adrian stepped into his subterranean palace workshop and crossed into the World Seed.
The pocket realm stretched out like an unblemished continent under the warm golden rays of the synthetic star.
High atop a crystalline mountain ridge, a soaring spire of transmutated Sunstone caught the stellar light. Suspended at its geometric center was the authentic Mind Stone, pulsing with steady, rhythmic golden brilliance.
Through Sophia's analytical matrix, the stone routed three million simultaneous consciousness nodes without a flicker of latency. It managed real-time agricultural distribution grids, industrial stress simulations, and academic environments in parallel, requiring zero physical server farms or terrestrial electrical draw.
Adrian stepped onto an open terrace beneath the unfiltered solar beam.
His Kryptonian cellular physiology drank in the concentrated stellar radiation. Every muscle fiber tightened with impossible tensile strength; his skeletal lattice hardened until even high-caliber artillery would shatter harmlessly against his skin. His senses expanded effortlessly, able to track the micro-vibrations of automated Kelex drones welding alloy panels twenty miles across the plains.
By late June 2013, the confidential terminal inside Adrian's palace office chimed with a series of high-priority intelligence intercepts.
Sophia projected the decrypted files onto the secure screen.
<< Sophia: European signals intercept: Austrian border perimeter. >>
<< Target: Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. >>
<< Status: High internal friction recorded. HYDRA research teams remain baffled by the counterfeit scepter. While the artifact displays residual energy readings, all human genetic enhancement trials have resulted in cellular necrosis with zero mutation activation. Strucker has executed three project biochemists and halted trials indefinitely. >>
<< Western Tactical Updates: >>
<< 1. Anthony Stark: Medical logs confirm the successful surgical extraction of the Arc Reactor and embedded shrapnel from his sternum. Subject has entered a temporary public hiatus from frontline armor operations. >>
<< 2. S.H.I.E.L.D. Construction: Subterranean construction under the Potomac River has commenced on three next-generation Project Insight Helicarriers under the oversight of Secretary Alexander Pierce. >>
<< Strategic Assessment: Sokovia remains categorized under Green: Routine Monitoring in Western intelligence records. Analysts maintain their profile of an inert, agricultural buffer state completely dependent on domestic farming. >>
Pietro tossed a silver neural headband onto Adrian's conference desk, letting out a sharp chuckle. "Over eighty-five percent of our schools, hospitals, and heavy plants are fully plugged in. Our apprentice toolmakers have more practical flight-hours than NATO pilots, and the Pentagon still thinks we're an agrarian commune trading turnip futures."
Wanda leaned against the window frame, the warm summer breeze stirring her dark hair. "Our people have taken the leap. They understand the system, they trust it, and our domestic industry is a decade ahead of Europe. When do we open the doors to the outside world?"
"At the end of the year or the first week of 2014," Adrian said, looking at the map of Europe pinned to the wall. "We let our people master every trade, every design, and every science in total quiet first."
Adrian pulled forward an executive manufacturing authorization and signed it with a firm hand.
"Instruct the automated lines in the Seed to begin mass assembly of export-grade 'Aetheria' neural bands," Adrian commanded. "When we drop this onto the global market, Western telecommunications won't just be outmatched—it will become a museum piece overnight."