Chapter 1098

"It is very obvious, Mr. Howard, you have already discovered the source of the problem—in the process of Tony's growth, the turning point of the relationship between you didn't happen in the stage of your alcohol addiction, but appeared much earlier."

Shiler summarized; when Howard cast his gaze toward him again, his spirit appeared somewhat scattered, no longer as focused as before, as if he was listening to him talk while falling into memories.

Shiler didn't pull him out of his memories, but took the opportunity to ask: "Then, please recall carefully, when was the first cliff-like drop in the length of the focused time between you and Tony?"

"Cliff-like drop?" Howard seemed not to understand this term; Shiler explained carefully again:

"As you said, for a very long period of time, Tony was your spiritual sustenance; you hoped that the happy time spent with him would never end, and from when did you start to actively end this time for the first time?"

Howard was stunned for a moment, and subsequently, his eyes gradually regained their spirit; clearly, he thought of a specific scene; he slowly opened his mouth and said: "... The first time we played marbles."

Howard sighed slightly and said: "That day, his toys were all tidied up by his mother; we had nothing to play with, so we found a few marbles in the corner under the bed."

"That was actually something I played with when I was a child; I didn't think Tony would like it, so I just taught him how to play marbles casually; as a result, he did very well, hitting every shot."

"But what surprised me was that he wasn't satisfied with the simple straight-line method; he arranged more than a dozen ordinary marbles into a complex pattern, letting them hit one after another until the last marble rolled to the target location."

"I was really stunned; you don't know how complex the pattern he designed was, and there was absolutely no practice; he succeeded on the first attempt!"

Howard's tone still had amazement: "That is to say, he calculated the mutual interaction force and kinetic energy decay produced by every marble collision in his brain, and then let every marble complete its task at the most extreme distance."

"Then what, what did you do?" Shiler suddenly leaned his body forward a bit, staring at Howard's eyes, revealing a kind of aggressive posture.

Clearly, this gave Howard a certain pressure, so he instinctively said: "I felt there was nothing to play with, so I put the marbles away, promising him we would play another day."

"Why did you feel there was nothing to play with?"

"It has already reached this step; could it be done better? Or rather, this wasn't the way to play marbles at all; it was his own innovation."

"We had a total of more than a dozen marbles; he already played the most complex way." Howard made a gesture and said: "It has already reached the end."

"Is it the end of the marble game method?" Shiler leaned his body further forward, looking directly at Howard, forcing him to have to answer.

"Of course." Howard instinctively answered.

"What do you rely on to make such a judgment?" Shiler asked at an extremely fast speed.

"Of course because I have played it."

"Because of your experience?" Shiler interrupted him and asked.

"That's right." Howard started to appear somewhat flustered; he picked up the cup to cover his mouth, and Shiler looked at Howard again and said:

"You don't believe Tony could innovate the method? Don't believe he could break through your experience? Or rather, you feel he could break through, but you are unwilling to let him break through?"

"How could I possibly be unwilling to let him..."

Just as Howard said this, Shiler suddenly stood up, came to the back of the sofa where Howard was sitting, pressed both hands on the sofa behind him, leaned his body forward, pressed his head on Howard's head, and said quickly like a series of words:

"I guess, you should have put the marbles away in a very flustered manner; the posture was very disheveled, the words weren't decent either; rather than a father actively ending the game, it was more like a policeman confiscating a criminal's crime tools."

"What drove you to do this wasn't boredom and impatience, but panic... you were feeling fear."

Shiler emphasized the last word; standing from his angle, he could very obviously see that when the word landed, Howard instantly froze.

"You were afraid that your son, by virtue of his amazing genius wisdom, would obtain knowledge other than what you taught him; you were afraid that he would explore the world other than your arms; you were also afraid that he would surpass you."

"Nonsense! Why would I be afraid of my own son surpassing me?" Howard raised his tone, his arms started to tremble, and he said: "I should feel proud of this!"

"Many parents' pride in their children is not really appreciating their personality and character, but believing that their children inherited their life's experience and achieved success; what they are proud of is their own experience and teaching, not the children's success."

Howard was about to refute, but Shiler slapped the back of the chair behind him hard, making a loud noise, and raised his tone: "In your memory, what left the deepest impression on you wasn't the process of Tony's learning, but his first innovation."

"But clearly, the time of his learning period should have been longer, and creation was just a flash in the pan, but you remembered this moment; its essence is that your shock at his talent outweighed the sense of achievement for your own experience inheritance."

Shiler stood up straight, raised his head, looked forward, and said:

"And continuing the inference, that moment, you discovered for the first time that Tony Stark would surpass your life's accumulation and experience by virtue of his amazing talent... you were feeling unwilling."

"This is also why the focused time between you became less and less, because the things you could teach him became less and less; the more things he created, the more impatient you became."

"And the inference continues to the night of your return; the negative emotion you felt was that you discovered that there was no shadow of you in the beautiful future created by Tony Stark."

Shiler's strong and fast tone suddenly stopped; the silence came suddenly, but even more violently; the room was terribly quiet.

A few minutes later, Howard's trembling fingers touched his face, constantly pursing his lips, blinking, but still feeling tears sliding down from the inner corner of his eyes along the side of his nose; he said with a trembling breath:

"I am his father..."

"We were clearly so close before; no matter what I taught him, he was willing to learn, and he learned it all; he really learned very fast."

"I can no longer hold him in my arms, teach him to read numbers, do calculation problems; he also doesn't need to learn any experience and knowledge from me anymore."

"The moment I got into that car with the data, I thought that although I died, the knowledge, experience, and those good times I left for him would accompany him forever, so I stepped on the accelerator."

"But when I returned, I realized that resurrection is the cruelest punishment for a person, because you will see how this world has forgotten you."

Howard lowered his head and wept silently, while Shiler slowly walked back to sit opposite him, took a sip of water in the wine glass, and said:

"You will leave Earth and come to the Andromeda Galaxy, not because you don't want to see Tony, but because you don't want to see his creations."

"You are afraid that you won't be able to help but rush up like a madman, looking for the traces you left in Tony's life; you feel that he shouldn't have a father whose mind isn't broad enough, and even appears somewhat manic."

Shiler's tone became very slow, at least much slower than when he was forcing Howard before; it sounded like he was reciting a poem.

"Parents hope to turn their children into another themselves, and hope their children will surpass themselves; parents hope their children can inherit all their experience, and hope they won't be shackled by dogma, breaking through and innovating."

"Parents hope their children will fly higher and higher, and don't hope their children will be too far away from them; parents hope their children have their own lives, but don't hope they will focus on their own lives and forget their parents."

"Parents are always contradictory, painful because of contradiction, and contradictory because of pain."

Howard slowly raised his head, looked at Shiler with eyes full of tears; Shiler knitted his eyes and looked at him and said:

"You are too focused on the inheritance of knowledge and life experience, and ignored an extremely important point, which is personality."

"You are disappointed that you didn't see more of yourself in Tony, while I am moved that I saw too much of you in him."

"Do you know? In this world, there aren't many people who possess tens of thousands of transmission parts; in their hearts, they carry a huge machine, dealing with those tiny emotions that others might not be able to detect at all every moment."

"Mr. Howard..." Shiler looked into his eyes and said: "It seems you should have already admitted that in terms of emotional judgment, I have surpassed you."

Howard just watched somewhat sluggishly as Shiler poured water into the wine glass with a water pot; the thick cold water pot mouth was much larger than the champagne glass mouth, so Shiler could only pour slowly, the scene looking very comical.

"Aren't you a psychologist? Shouldn't you comfort me?" Howard said with a hoarse voice.

"What's important is. I won." Shiler raised his head slightly and said: "And what I defeated was a genius; let me be happy for a while first."

"Oh, no, I was wrong." Shiler suddenly shook his head again and said: "Actually, there is nothing worth being happy about; I am a psychologist, and you are a scientist; I won against you in psychological inference, just like a cheetah running faster than a turtle."

Howard's complexion flushed red, seemingly feeling angry at Shiler's rude wording, but Shiler calmly picked up the wine glass, took a sip of water, and said:

"However, next, we can have a fairer competition, which is to compare who understands Tony Stark better."

"I am his friend, you are his father; the time you taught him is not short, the time I have known him is not long; from all aspects, this is a fairer competition than just now; then, Mr. Howard, do you want to compete with me?"

Howard raised his eyelids, stared at Shiler with light-colored pupils; he slowly blinked and said: "... How do you intend to compete?"

"Very simple." Shiler stood up from the sofa, walked to his desk with the wine glass, and said: "Now, both of us are in the Andromeda Galaxy, far away from Earth, and neither of us is monitoring there."

"Then let us guess how Tony is doing now; let us each say a conclusion, and then call over; whoever guesses right wins."

Shiler reached out, poured the clear water in his cup into another cup, then opened a bottle of champagne, poured it into the cup, and took a sip.

But the wine fragrance coming at this time made Howard knit his eyebrows; he felt his chest trembling, his heart clamoring that he must not lose this battle; understanding his son was a battle a father must not lose.

So. He also stood up, walked to the opposite side of the desk, stared at Shiler's eyes, and said: "Then, let me guess first."

"Please." Shiler raised the wine glass and said.

"Now, New York should be in the middle of the night; Tony Stark is staying up late in the laboratory doing research, and it is researching the most difficult part of a certain project; at this very moment, he is supporting himself on the experimental table with both hands, staring intently at the data on the paper, without saying a word..."

Howard described it very detailedly, because he had to force Shiler to describe it as detailedly as him, but Shiler said nothing; he dialed the phone, and one second before the call connected, Shiler suddenly opened his mouth:

"... He is crying."

The next second, Stark's hoarse voice came from the other end of the phone:

"... Hello?"

Instantly, the muscles in Howard's arms tightened, because he was already unable to support himself standing there; he clearly heard that the first breath before Stark opened his mouth was a sob.

Shiler hung up the phone with a "pop," but Howard ran over from the other end of the table like a madman, raised the phone with trembling arms, and shouted: "Call back!... Call back quickly!!"

"Sorry, there is no credit left; I don't know why Magneto is so stingy; although long-distance is very expensive, it shouldn't be to the point of running out of credit after one call, right?" Shiler stood with his back to the desk, supported himself on the table with both hands, and looked up at the ceiling.

Before Howard could roar again, Shiler suddenly made an "Oh," and then continued: "Look, how did I forget? Magneto can open wormholes that travel through space; he can return to Earth at any time; why would he need to pay phone bills?"

Howard threw the phone away and rushed out the door in a panic; Shiler, standing in front of the desk, shook his head and smiled.

But at this time, the phone on the table rang again; after Shiler answered, a low voice came from the opposite side:

"Hello, I am Odin; I want to chat with you; may I ask, do you have time now?"

Hungry one meal, full one meal