Bad Astronomy

Greetings, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

SHIELD STATION

Photo by Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division

If you’re reading this, then the blog software has identified you as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and this blog post has been automatically decrypted for you. (FYI, members of the public will see this article being about why Mars is red.)

Congratulations on getting this far. Given the current state of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the death of Director Fury—not to mention the now-rogue and anarchic Hydra—we know your life is constantly in danger. And now more than ever you need to be apprised of the scientific research being done involving the Avengers Initiative.

We held a covert training session at San Diego Comic-Con last weekend; the idea was to have it in a public place hidden in plain sight (code name: Operation Purloined Letter). We were able to go over the basics to about 500 agents—if you weren’t there, as is likely, then you can read a synopsis by Level 5 Agent Mika McKinnon at io9, another at NerdCoreMovement,* and a third written by Level 4 Agent Kyle Hill as a false flag operation at Nerdist.com. Again, those will be automatically decrypted for you.

We had several S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists on hand for the training session: Preston Dyches, Sebastian Alvarado, Randii Wessen, and Ricardo Gil da Costa. I was chosen to moderate the panel, given my own work on the Bifrost technology and the efforts to map out Yggdrasil shortly before the Chitauri invasion.

The big announcement was that we have opened up a S.T.A.T.I.O.N.: Scientific Training and Tactical Intelligence Operative Network. Here you’ll learn the introductory science about the Avengers: Thor’s hammer, Tony Stark’s Iron Man tech, how the serum works that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America (involving genetic as well as epigenetic engineering as well), and what we know about Dr. Bruce Banner’s transformation into the Hulk.

The S.T.A.T.I.O.N. is located in Times Square, New York, and will travel the country as soon as Agent Coulson deems it safe enough.

Stay alert, be ever vigilant. Your country, your species, and your planet need you.

*As a suspected agent of Hydra, the author of that particular article thought she was going undercover to penetrate the meeting; what she didn’t know is that we were totally aware of her presence, and let her in as a trap. She has been dealt with, but we have allowed her article to stand posthumously as part of the disinformation campaign.