Chapter 2660: Hollywood Rhapsody (XIX)

Facts prove that ordinary people are hypocritical, and Shiler is no exception.

He greatly dislikes rebooting the universe, because it erases the meaning of existence for all living beings in the universe, rendering their efforts to survive meaningless.

But when it comes to himself, he feels that slightly nullifying his own and his friends' efforts is not unacceptable, because if he doesn't do this, they will have to expend even more meaningless effort cleaning up the mess caused by the current situation.

Of course, Shiler hasn't gone so mad as to directly reboot; his idea is actually just to have Barry take him through time to remind that version of himself who wants to vacation like an ordinary person not to be too optimistic, and it's better to just stay in the sanatorium loafing around, not going out if there's nothing to do.

Because Shiler isn't very confident he can convince himself, he needs some evidence to prove that if he goes on vacation, it will trigger a chain of chaos afterward, and the best evidence is the documentary filmed by Eddie.

Now, the time point Shiler is at is after he became famous, the documentary has already been publicly screened, so he directly copied the video materials and some relatively important analytical short clips, as well as many rumors released by marketing accounts, and returned to the day before he set off for the West Coast.

He placed these things on Shiler's desk; upon seeing Barry, Shiler understood what was going on, and after looking at these video materials, he thought, "Good grief, the internet celebrity is actually me."

To be fair, no matter which era of Shiler, none would want to get involved in such trouble, and the Shiler who hasn't set off yet has more free time to ponder what this chaotic situation will ultimately lead to.

To be honest, just as many people have analyzed, working for law enforcement isn't something shameful, and as a professional technician, it's actually difficult to bypass this step.

At least many teachers and classmates Shiler knows have had such experiences, whether in his previous life or this one, it's inevitable to cooperate with some official institutions, and he has even participated in not a few classified projects.

But his family knows his own affairs; the current biggest problem is that back then he didn't know his own background story was copied from his previous life, during which he additionally fabricated another background story for himself—that he is a long-lived Soviet person.

He could act as an American, or even as a Sino-American mixed-blood participating in FBI work, but he cannot act as a long-lived being who survived since the founding of the Soviet Union participating in American law enforcement agencies.

Then the FBI and S. H. I. E. L. D. would inevitably ask, "What do you want to do? What have you already done? What did you do afterward, yet still hide things so we can't find anything at all?"

This is similar to how it's more terrifying when a cockroach appears before your eyes and then vanishes after a second than if it just stayed there.

Shiler can completely understand Nick and the FBI director's fear; if he knew he still had such a background story, he wouldn't have fabricated that later set.

But the superego and arrogance, these two petty fellows, to retaliate for his initial memory deletion, dug such a big pit for him to jump into; he has long since finished fabricating this Soviet person's origin, only now realizing what this body's background story actually is.

If you say it's merely a pure background story conflict, that's fine anyway, since Shiler has never verbally stated what his past actually was; everything is others' speculation, so if there are contradictions, outright denial suffices.

But unfortunately, these two background stories happen to fit together perfectly.

Nick cannot figure out why Shiler initially wanted to work for law enforcement—this must have some reason, just like in his previous life, because Shiler appears to be someone who wouldn't enjoy dealing with law enforcement.

Doesn't Nick understand his own colleagues? The work they can offer is basically low pay, high workload, far from home; no matter which, these are recruitment conditions Shiler would disdain, so how could he possibly be so kind as to take such a job?

Since that's the case, there must be some shameful reason, just like the FBI often recruits those unwilling experts—there must be some opportunity that makes Shiler willingly work for them.

But Nick just can't find it out.

This is actually because Marvel is a comic world, and everything not focused on here is presented according to comic logic.

In comics, there is a term called "panel," which can be understood as a shot in film; the lens aims here, here the story unfolds; not aimed here, here there is nothing.

The narration of a story is divided into many panels; the time jumps between panels can be large—for example, one panel shows him as a child, the next he's already a young adult.

So how would the intervening decade or so be expressed? Often through character dialogue, such as when he becomes a young adult and looks back on his childhood, saying what he did as a kid.

From common sense, one can also know a good comic cannot possibly use thousands of panels to fully depict every detail of a character from childhood to adolescence to youth; the logic framework of the comic world doesn't support this.

Therefore, the background story written by the superego that conforms to this world's logic framework is also presented in comic form—that is, the entire story only has a few panels written.

Roughly speaking: attending university in college years, going to church to pray, attending elite banquets, drug addiction, working for law enforcement.

Don't think the panel shots are few, but Marvel comics emphasize "large quantity, full satisfaction"—there are too many characters; many characters in major events only have one or two panels, and those who can have their own origin stories are truly exceptional; many accumulate a nearly complete origin story only over decades.

Shiler's origin story, hard-written by the superego, is already quite complete, but inevitably, many shots are missing—for example, why Shiler initially worked for law enforcement.

Someone might think that if placed on another character, Nick now investigating would definitely find something, because this is plot-needed, but the premise is that the character must be a native Marvel character.

Nick is a character Marvel created himself; when he has plot needs, naturally the universe administrators and editors assign him to write others' background stories so he can further advance the plot.

But the problem is Shiler is not a Marvel character; his background story was written in by the superego, and Marvel's universe administrators won't idle around doing nothing to help him detail his background story, and since the superego didn't write it, Nick of course finds nothing.

Thus, this matter becomes a perfect misunderstanding.

Shiler might be a long-lived Soviet; before knowing these superheroes, due to some completely uninvestigable mysterious reason, he once had dealings with law enforcement.

And precisely because this record could allow him to join S. H. I. E. L. D., become a psychological counselor for superheroes, and even during the Superhero Registration Act, through his own deterrent power, completely reverse the entire situation.

Doesn't that sound like a very complete conspiracy?

In fact, it indeed is a complete conspiracy, except it's not a greedy one, but that of the petty superego and arrogance.

If it were in the past, greed would definitely demand they slam the table and argue with them about how they could be so petty; you just made it up, fine, but at least open the memories to me so I can prepare in advance.

But regarding the memory deletion, he himself was originally at fault, so he could only accept it and adopt some somewhat hypocritical actions to preemptively stop this from happening.

But facts prove that this comic world simply does not allow time-travel plots to prevent tragedies from occurring.

After deciding to stay honestly at Arkham Sanatorium before departure, Shiler first faced a crowd of people incessantly inviting him, regardless, just hoping he would go on vacation and rest.

Shiler tried to dismiss them by citing work busyness, but everyone thought he couldn't possibly be that busy, and being so busy wouldn't benefit his mental state, so they insisted on dragging him along for vacation.

Shiler knew he couldn't go, so he pretended his mental state was indeed poor; as a result, everyone became even more worried, and after back-and-forth, Stark actually didn't plan to go.

In the end, Shiler had Helen and the Guardians of the Galaxy cooperate with him to act, creating some chaos in the universe that required Shiler to resolve, allowing him to escape and avoid participating in the filming work.

The result was, because Shiler wasn't there mediating to persuade Steve and Peter to each help one to balance Stark and Strange's relationship, it led to their tension reaching an absurd level, finally erupting on the beach.

Stark couldn't use surfing skills to attract attention, originally holding in anger, while Strange still stood aside coldly mocking; Steve and Peter were busy chatting with the New Warriors team, not even noticing they were about to fight.

At the time, Stark wasn't wearing armor, but he had at least trained his body; Strange didn't need to wear anything to use magic, but with so many people around, he couldn't go all out, so the two actually fought to a draw.

While they were fighting, Sandman arrived, this time blowing Strange and Stark into the air.

Strange instinctively used magic for self-defense, which interfered with Stark's summoning of his armor, causing the armor to directly crash into the nearby diner, creating a huge commotion.

This incident made the news that day; both men's reputations were thoroughly ruined, and Stark, still anxious, stubbornly refused to admit fault, they argued, leading to public opinion declining even more severely.

As expected, this trouble fell on Pepper's head; Pepper wanted to persuade Stark to come out and apologize, but Stark stubbornly refused, they had a huge argument, and Pepper was so angry she was hospitalized.

When the news broke, Shiler knew it was bad; now this group of people in this state gathering together would definitely cause trouble; after thinking, he felt he still had to go.

Thus he again had Barry take him back to the past, bringing the first timeline—the one where Shiler became famous—and the second timeline—the one where Stark and Strange became famous together—along with all media and news reports, giving them to the third timeline's Shiler.

Upon seeing this, Shiler #3 immediately knew filming was definitely necessary, because besides him, others would struggle to handle Stark in this state, no matter how, it would devolve into chaos.

Thus he chose to still follow a few people to Hollywood vacation, but this time his strategy was to remain as silent as possible, not display his professional expertise, act as an insignificant nobody unnoticed, so he could both protect himself and avoid causing trouble.