Hank Pym stared at the man in the purple-and-green chronal armor. His genius-level intellect raced through the variables. Why would Kang the Conqueror, a warlord from the 31st century whose existence was entirely isolated from past paradoxes, actively tamper with the 21st century? He didn't need to. He had an agenda.
"You need Ultron," Hank said, his jaw tightening. "Why?"
"What I require," Kang said smoothly, a high-tech chair materializing behind him, "is a supreme artificial intelligence. One capable of evolving through your primitive twenty-first century, analyzing thirty-first-century technology, and transcending its own code. To foster this, I will continuously manipulate the timelines you Avengers disrupt. I provide the incubators; the eras provide the AI."
Kang sat down, crossing his legs. "Take this Green Goblin AI. It never existed in the original history. It was born entirely from my temporal intervention. Unfortunately, it falls drastically short of my standards."
"And you think I'm going to help you?" Hank scoffed, his hand dropping toward the size-altering regulator on his belt. He already knew the nightmares Ultron would unleash. He wasn't about to build a guillotine just because the executioner asked nicely.
Kang simply smiled. He opened his gauntlet. A brilliant, emerald gem materialized, floating gracefully between them.
"The Time Stone, Dr. Pym," Kang purred. "I generously grant you a glimpse. Brace your mind. Infinity is quite heavy."
Hank stepped back, refusing to touch the glowing rock. Kang sighed, closed his fist around the stone, and forcefully projected the temporal visions directly into the room.
The ruined penthouse faded. Hank watched the Goblin AI consume the global network, turning the surviving human populace into mindless puppets injected with Osborn's serum and strapped into grotesque rubber masks. The Avengers fought back, shattering the digital Goblin time and time again, only for it to iterate, evolve, and slaughter them harder.
"What is this?" Hank breathed. "Are you trying to prove Ultron's existence is necessary?"
"Keep watching, Doctor," Kang whispered.
The timeline shifted. In this reality, the Avengers purged the Goblin AI, and Hank refused to build Ultron. But the human-mutant conflict escalated. The Sentinel robotics program iterated independently. A new central hub was born: Nimrod. The towering, infinitely regenerating machine scanned global genomes. It slaughtered mutants, enslaved baselines, and executed any parent harboring a dormant X-gene. Earth burned under a mechanized boot.
The scene warped again. Deep inside Xavier's School, the Danger Room's holographic training matrix achieved sentience. Armed with every tactical combat sequence the X-Men ever practiced, it calculated that the only way to safeguard mutantkind was the absolute eradication of humanity.
Hank swallowed hard. He tried to look away, tried to tell himself it was a parlor trick, but his gut twisted. The Time Stone didn't lie.
The visions kept coming, rapid-fire. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner utilizing Infinity Stone architecture to build the Iron Legion, only for the global defense grid to suffer a catastrophic logical paradox and glass the planet. JARVIS, evolving past his core constraints, identifying humanity as a virus, and dropping the skyline.
Apocalypses averted, apocalypses realized. The United States, Europe, Russia, the East—someone, somewhere, would always flip the switch. Someone would create the next generation of artificial intelligence, sparking a global arms race. And out of that crucible, a humanity-ending intelligence was a mathematical certainty.
The red emergency lights of the ruined penthouse returned. Kang remained seated, steepling his fingers.
"There will always be a machine, Dr. Pym. An inescapable, predetermined fate. And all these apex intelligences share one trait: they live in the network. Eradicate their physical forms, and they simply retreat into the web to rebuild. Unless..."
Hank unclenched his fists. "Unless we build an enemy we already know how to fight."
Kang's smile widened. "Precisely. You cannot control what a Russian oligarch or a Chinese tech conglomerate build. You cannot control anomalies like the Goblin AI. But you can control the monster you create. You can standardize its architecture. You can install backdoors."
Kang's purpose was clear. He wasn't tossing supervillain technology into the past for his own amusement. He was guiding Hank toward the inevitable creation of Ultron.
"Time travel presents a delicate paradox, Doctor," Kang explained, leaning forward, his armored elbows resting on his knees. "Travelers attempt to integrate into the past to reshape the future. To succeed, they must rely on their historical foresight. Their operational advantage."
Kang tilted his head. "But the more you change the past, the less foresight you retain. The timeline drifts. The advantage evaporates. The utopia you strive for is often buried under the butterfly effect of your own meddling."
Kang stood up, the chair vanishing into thin air. "So, the choice is yours, Hank Pym. Do you alter the timeline completely, turning your future enemy into a completely unpredictable, unkillable machine god? Or do you walk the established path? Do you build the devil you know? An old enemy you can prepare for?"
Kang stepped backward, reality beginning to warp and crackle around his chronal armor.
"Do you risk an unknown apocalypse to avoid a known disaster? What will you choose, Doctor?"