Chapter 2: The Prodigy Emerges
The passage of two years did little to dull the grating absurdity of Arthur's existence. He was a predator trapped in the body of prey, a Machiavellian intellect forced to suffer the indignities of toddlerhood. He had endured the clumsy affection of relatives, the saccharine cooing of his nanny, and the endless parade of soft, mushy foods. Each day was a trial of patience, a masterful performance in which he played the part of a developing child while his mind, aided by the ever-present Great Sage, devoured information on a scale that would have shattered a normal psyche.
His prison, however, was beginning to offer new tools. The clumsy, flailing limbs of infancy had given way to the steadier, more coordinated movements of a toddler. He could walk. He could grasp. And soon, he would be able to speak. This was the first true key to unlocking his influence beyond subtle, psychological tricks.
He did not approach speech as a child would, through imitation and trial-and-error. He approached it as a problem of engineering.
Great Sage, he commanded one morning, while sitting in his highchair, absently pushing peas around his plate. Begin comprehensive analysis of the English language. Syntax, grammar, phonetics, and advanced vocabulary. Synthesize a complete linguistic model and integrate it with my motor control over the larynx and tongue.
«Acknowledged. Analysis of 250,000 words of ambient auditory data is complete. Cross-referencing with linguistic knowledge from previous life. Building optimized speech model. Estimated time to vocal proficiency: seventy-two hours.»
For three days, Arthur was mostly silent. His parents noted his quietness, attributing it to a thoughtful disposition. In reality, his mind was a storm of activity as the Great Sage mapped every nuance of spoken language. He processed the drawing-room chatter of his mother's friends, the clipped, formal tones of his father's business calls, and the simpler, lyrical cadence of the stories Eleanor read to him.
The moment came on a Tuesday. Charles was in his study, a grand, mahogany-paneled room that had become Arthur's de facto domain. It was filled with books on economics, history, and science—his true toys. Charles was reviewing a ledger, a frown creasing his brow. Eleanor sat nearby, embroidering a piece of silk.
"The returns on the railway bonds are steady, but uninspired," Charles mused aloud, more to himself than to his wife. "We need to find a sector with more aggressive growth potential."
From his position on the floor, surrounded by heavy leather-bound books he was supposedly just looking at the pictures of, Arthur rose to his feet. He walked steadily over to his father's desk, a small, serious figure in a sailor suit. He pointed a resolute finger at the open page of The Wall Street Journal lying next to the ledger.
"Diversify," he said.
The word was not mumbled or mispronounced. It was uttered with perfect clarity and diction, each syllable crisp and deliberate.
The room fell silent. Charles and Eleanor stared at their two-year-old son. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall seemed unnaturally loud.
Charles blinked. "What… what did you say, Arthur?"
Arthur looked from the newspaper to his father, his expression unnervingly placid. "The portfolio is over-exposed to transportation and established manufacturing. It lacks foresight. You should diversify into emerging technologies. Specifically, telecommunications and chemical production."
The silence that followed was heavier, charged with disbelief and a dawning, electric sense of shock. Eleanor's embroidery lay forgotten in her lap, her eyes wide. Charles slowly lowered the pen he was holding. He looked at the complex financial terms coming from the mouth of his child, who should have been mastering words like 'cup' and 'dog'.
"Arthur…" Eleanor breathed, her voice a whisper. "How do you know those words?"
Arthur turned his gaze to her, his internal performance calibrated by the Great Sage for maximum effect: a blend of childlike frankness and inexplicable knowledge. "From the books," he said simply, gesturing to the volumes scattered around him. "They are logical."
From that day forward, the charade of being a normal child was shattered. The "miracle" of his speech became family legend. Word of the Sterling prodigy began to circulate in their elite social circles, a curious rumor of a toddler who spoke like a tenured professor. Charles, recovering from his initial shock, embraced it with a fierce, almost fanatical pride. He saw in his son not an unnerving anomaly, but the realization of his own ambitions, magnified a thousandfold.
The tutors began to arrive when Arthur was four. They were the best money could buy, masters of mathematics, history, and languages, hired to cultivate the budding genius of the Sterling heir. They did not last long.
The mathematics tutor, a stern German man named Mr. Hess, arrived with arithmetic primers and wooden blocks. He set out a simple addition problem. Before he could explain the concept, Arthur looked at the slate and spoke.
"The answer is seven. However, this rudimentary approach to mathematics is inefficient. Have you considered introducing the foundational principles of calculus? Understanding rates of change would be far more applicable to modeling real-world systems, such as the economic fluctuations you were discussing with Father last week."
Mr. Hess, a man who believed in rigid, methodical instruction, stared at the child as if he'd just sprouted wings. He lasted two weeks, departing after Arthur began questioning his understanding of non-Euclidean geometry. He informed a bewildered Charles that he could not, in good conscience, accept payment for "tutoring a mind that was already teaching him."
The history tutor fared no better. She found that her four-year-old charge not only knew the dates and figures of the Napoleonic Wars but could offer sharp, insightful analyses of their geopolitical and economic consequences that would have earned praise in a university seminar. He would listen patiently to her lessons, then politely correct her on minor details, citing books from his father's library that he'd apparently absorbed through osmosis.
"Your son… he doesn't learn, Mr. Sterling," she confessed after a month. "He… accesses. It's as if the knowledge is already there, and he is merely choosing to recall it."
The observation was more accurate than she could ever imagine. Arthur's days were spent in quiet, relentless acquisition. With the Great Sage as his internal librarian and processor, every book he touched, every conversation he overheard, every newspaper he scanned was cataloged, analyzed, and integrated into a vast, growing database. He was building a perfect model of the world he intended to conquer.
His greatest arena, however, remained his father's financial world. The Thorpe & Harding incident had been a subtle nudge. Now, he had a voice.
The Panic of 1910-1911 had played out much as his memory and the Great Sage's models had predicted. Charles, having sidestepped the initial collapse thanks to Arthur's "bad omen," had become more cautious, more receptive to the strange currents of insight that seemed to surround his son. Arthur knew that to truly seize control, he needed to graduate from preventing losses to engineering massive gains.
His opportunity came in late 1912. The Balkan Wars were igniting tensions in Europe, a prelude to the continent-spanning inferno he knew was coming. Most American investors were growing wary of European markets, pulling back their capital in anticipation of instability.
Charles was of the same mind. Over dinner one evening, he discussed his intention to divest from a German chemical conglomerate, Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik—BASF.
"The risk in the region is becoming untenable," Charles declared, swirling the wine in his glass. "Selling our position now and consolidating into domestic assets is the only prudent course."
Arthur, now nearly five, sat at the table, a special high-backed chair having been commissioned to allow him to join his parents for dinner. He had been silent for most of the meal, a habit that tended to put his parents on edge, as it usually preceded a startling pronouncement.
He carefully placed his fork on his plate. "That would be a strategic error, Father."
Charles paused, his wine glass halfway to his lips. "Explain."
"Your analysis is sound, but your conclusion is flawed," Arthur stated calmly. "You see regional instability as a risk. You should see it as a catalyst. The German Empire's geopolitical ambitions are intrinsically linked to its industrial capacity. War is coming. Not a small, regional conflict, but a total war between the great powers of Europe."
Charles frowned. "The boy has been reading too many speculative gazettes."
"When war begins," Arthur continued, ignoring the comment, his gaze unwavering, "the demand for nitrates for munitions will increase by an order of magnitude. BASF, through the Haber-Bosch process, which they are on the verge of perfecting at an industrial scale, will soon hold a near-monopoly on synthetic ammonia production. They will become an indispensable arm of the German war machine. Their value will not decrease; it will skyrocket. Instead of divesting, you should double our position. Perhaps triple it."
The room was still. Charles stared at his son, whose small legs dangled a foot from the floor, yet who spoke with the chilling certainty of a seasoned spymaster and economist. He knew of the Haber process; it was a topic of discussion in scientific journals, a promising but as yet unproven industrial method. For his son to not only know of it but to have already synthesized its military, political, and economic implications was beyond prodigious. It was preternatural.
"Arthur, that is an immense gamble on… a chemical process and a war that may never happen," Charles argued, his voice strained.
"The war will happen in the summer of 1914," Arthur replied with absolute finality. "It is not a gamble. It is a certainty."
That night, Charles Sterling did not sleep. He paced the length of his study, torn between every rational instinct he possessed and the undeniable, terrifying track record of his own son. To risk such a significant portion of their capital on the prediction of a five-year-old was madness. But to ignore the pronouncement, delivered with the force of divine prophecy, felt like a greater folly.
He remembered the Thorpe & Harding shares. The bad omen. The feeling that his son saw a world behind the world.
The next morning, he called his broker in London. With trembling hands and a voice tight with anxiety, he did not sell their shares in BASF. He tripled their position. It was the single most reckless and irrational financial decision of his life.
For the next year and a half, the investment was a source of constant, gnawing stress for Charles. The stock stagnated. His peers quietly mocked his foolhardy exposure to the volatile European market. He was forced to endure it all, clinging to the impossible certainty in his young son's eyes.
Then, in June of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. By late July, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had declared war on Serbia, and the dominoes began to fall. As Europe descended into the madness of the Great War, the German war machine roared to life. The British blockade cut off its supply of Chilean nitrates. Suddenly, the Haber-Bosch process was not just an industrial advantage; it was Germany's lifeline. BASF's stock value exploded.
The profits were staggering, beyond anything Charles had ever imagined. The family fortune didn't just grow; it multiplied, elevating the Sterlings from the comfortable upper-middle class to the rarefied echelons of the truly wealthy.
But as the money poured in, Arthur was focused on a new, more troubling development. It came during one of his nightly sessions with the Great Sage.
Report. Review all gathered intelligence on key individuals related to the Stark family, Arthur commanded as he lay in bed, the sounds of a celebratory dinner party drifting up from downstairs.
«Acknowledged. Analyzing public records, business registries, and newspaper articles. Cross-referencing with baseline MCU timeline from your memory.» A moment of silence passed. Then: «Alert. A significant deviation has been detected.»
Arthur's focus sharpened. Specify.
«Baseline memory indicates Howard Stark's father was an impoverished fruit seller. This timeline's data contradicts this. Public records show the existence of 'Stark Industries,' a small but respected engineering and electronics firm founded in 1898 by one Ricardo Stark, Howard's father. The firm holds several minor patents in dynamo efficiency and early radio components.»
The information landed like a stone in a still pond. It wasn't a world-shattering change, but its implications were immense. His knowledge of the future, his greatest weapon, was not absolute. The timeline was malleable.
Was this change caused by my rebirth? Arthur asked.
«Analysis inconclusive. The butterfly effect resulting from your existence is a possible cause. However, it is also possible that the 'MCU timeline' from your memory was an incomplete or slightly inaccurate record of this reality's true history. Other, as-yet-unknown variables may also be at play.»
This was a new, dangerous variable. He could no longer rely on his memory as gospel. It was a superb guide, but not an infallible one. He was flying with a map that had blank spots and potential errors.
New directive, Great Sage, Arthur commanded, his mind cold and clear. Your highest analytical priority is now active surveillance of the timeline. Scan all incoming data for deviations from the baseline memory, no matter how minor. Every deviation must be flagged, analyzed, and its potential future impact modeled. We are no longer just predicting the future; we are actively monitoring its changes.
«Acknowledged. Reallocating 30% of processing power to continuous timeline variance analysis. The Chronos Imperative has been updated.»
The world felt more dangerous now, but also more exciting. It was a challenge, a puzzle to be solved in real-time. His ascent would not be a simple execution of a known plan, but a dynamic conquest of an evolving reality.
A few days later, the celebration over the family's financial coup had subsided. Charles called Arthur into his study. He closed the heavy doors, shutting them off from the rest of the world. He didn't ask Arthur to sit in his high-backed chair. He gestured to the leather armchair opposite his own desk, an acknowledgment that this would not be a conversation between a father and a son. It was a meeting between a kingmaker and the king.
Charles Sterling looked older than he had two years ago. The stress of his great gamble, followed by the shock of its success, had etched new lines onto his face. But his eyes held not just fatigue, but a profound and unsettling awe. He looked at the small boy before him, who sat with perfect posture, his hands resting calmly on his knees.
"The profits from the BASF investment have been fully realized," Charles began, his voice raspy. "We are… one of the wealthiest families in New York now. All because of you."
Arthur simply nodded, waiting.
Charles leaned forward, his hands clasped on the desk. He looked directly at Arthur, his gaze piercing, desperate. "I no longer ask myself how you know these things, Arthur. The tutors, the finances, the war… I have stopped trying to find a rational explanation, because I know there isn't one. So I will ask you a different question."
He took a deep breath. "Not how. But what. What are you?"
The question hung in the air, thick with years of unasked questions, of fear and wonder. It was the ultimate test. Arthur's response would define their relationship, and his own future, from this moment on. He could have feigned ignorance, maintained the thin veneer of being a child prodigy. But that was a tool he no longer needed with this man. Charles was no longer just his father; he was his first and most important disciple, the public face of his growing empire. He needed to be bound to Arthur's cause not just by paternal love, but by a sense of purpose and a taste of the power to come.
Arthur met his father's gaze, his own eyes ancient and cold. He let the silence stretch, forcing Charles to confront the sheer strangeness of the moment.
"I am your son, Father," he said, his voice soft but carrying an immense weight. "And I am the future. Not just of this family, but of everything you can imagine. The world you know is ending. A new age of chaos and wonder is coming. Men will become like gods, and gods will walk the earth. Most people will be swept away by the tide. They will be victims. We will not."
He leaned forward slightly, his small frame radiating an authority that defied his age.
"You have seen what my foresight can do in the world of money. Consider what it can do in the world of men, of nations, of science. Stay with me, Father. Trust me, as you have before. And I will give you an empire. I will give you a legacy that will outlast civilizations."
He offered no explanation. No origin. Only a promise. A promise of boundless power, wrapped in an enigma.
Charles Sterling leaned back in his chair, his face pale. He was a man of the modern age, a believer in ledgers and logic. But he had seen the impossible. He had profited from it. And now, the source of that impossibility was offering him a partnership in shaping the world. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But it was being eclipsed by a different, more powerful emotion: a thrilling, terrifying ambition. He was not just looking at his son. He was looking at destiny.
And in that moment, he bowed his head in surrender. The prodigy had emerged, and his first conquest was complete.