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The Ant-Man March
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May. 21st, 2009 @ 11:29 am
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There was no doubt that Henry Pym was a brilliant young man, gifted in great intelligence and ingenuity. Along with his industriousness, or more accurately, his obsession with work (“busy as an ant” his parents would say), he could achieve great things. The highest hopes of his mentors were dashed when Pym focused not on a cure for cancer, diabetes, or (as some hoped) making the next new weapon to give them an edge in the cold war, but on ludicrous theories regarding growing and shrinking molecules with each new theory more ridiculous, more insane, than the last. At least so it seemed to the world.
But there was one woman who understood him, Maria Trovaya. She was intelligent and beautiful, graceful and collected in a way Hank had never been. Maria’s father had been less than thrilled when the young eccentric courted, and worse yet, won his daughter’s hand. Although by the time of the wedding he’d warmed up to young Pym, somehow, certainly not through any of Hank’s social graces but perhaps out of pity for his lack of them. Or out of recognition that his daughter deeply loved the man and he loved her just as much.
Neither Henry nor Maria’s father were happy when Maria suggested a trip to her native country for a honeymoon. Her father and she had moved to America for a reason but she was persistent and Hank was in love. It was only a matter of time before he acquiesced.
If only he hadn’t yielded to her wishes. It wasn’t long before they were surrounded at gunpoint. Maria was forced into a car and when Hank tried to fight back, to save his wife, he was rewarded with a blow to the back of his head. He awoke in a hospital. As soon as he could he reached the American Embassy and after days of endless worry, of clinging desperately to any shred of hope, the ambassador himself came to Henry Pym. His quiet, closed expression filled him with dread but even then Henry could not believe his words. When he saw her body he still did not believe. She had been beaten so badly he did not recognize her. They had to use her dental records to ID the body.
For his own safety, Henry was sent back to America. Not a few days later Maria’s father died under suspicious circumstances. Eventually the death was ruled a suicide but Henry did not believe the coroner’s report.
Henry buried himself in work more deeply than before. No one was willing to fund his research so he used what money he inherited from his late wife. But it was not enough.
Struggling to cover the costs of operating his own lab housed in his tiny apartment, Pym turned to quick inventions in the hopes of earning quick money. But it seemed no one was interested in communicating with ants, even if it meant getting them out of the house without resorting to a pesticide and other noxious gases in their home. And no one was interested in ant bite proof gloves when normal ones would work just fine. He finally managed to sell a tiny marble catapult (in truth, really a miniature cannon) as a child’s toy— that is until one of the marbles hit a child in the eye.
Eventually he learned that while others didn’t want to buy an ant-helmet, he could use it to his advantage. He marketed his ant-specific exterminating services and it brought in enough money to pay the rent— usually. The job had other benefits. Curious about such complex creatures, Pym would rescue the ant colonies he drove out of homes and buildings and take them home to study them in his “spare time.”
But now the rent was due again and again his job hadn’t brought in enough money to pay it. If only he hadn’t bought so many chemicals but he knew he was close to a breakthrough and he couldn’t bring himself to wait, not after working for so long.
And now, finally, the time had come to test his discovery. But had he succeeded? Would the pym particles work?
With shaking hands, he did something entirely unprofessional and utterly mad. He tested the solution on himself.
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