The workstation was a Silicon Graphics Iris Crimson. In 1992, this was the pinnacle of tech—a bright red tower that cost as much as a luxury car. To my 2026 eyes, it looked like a vintage radiator, but it was the best sandbox I had.
I sat there, fingers flying across the clunky mechanical keyboard. I wasn't even thinking about the "future" or "Marvel." I was just enjoying the fact that I could remember the exact logic for a recursive subdivision algorithm from my sophomore year "Digital Foundations" class.
If I can just optimize the vertex pipeline... I thought, biting my lip.
"That's a lot of C++ for someone who hasn't hit puberty yet."
I nearly jumped out of my skin, my elbow knocking a stack of physical floppy disks onto the floor. I spun the chair around to see a young man leaning against the mahogany doorframe.
He was wearing a tailored suit that screamed 'trust fund,' but the top two buttons were undone and his tie was nowhere to be found. He looked sharp, arrogant, and—honestly—a little bit bored.
Tony Stark. Twenty-two years old and already the smartest person in any room he walked into.
"I... uh..." I scrambled for a second. I was twelve, I had to act like it. "I'm Julian. My dad is the lead architect for your new campus?"
Tony didn't seem to care about my dad. He was staring at the monitor, his eyes narrowing. He stepped into the room, smelling like expensive cologne and just a hint of scotch. He leaned over my shoulder, his face inches from the screen.
"Wait. You're bypassing the standard graphics library calls," Tony muttered, his voice dropping an octave as his brain shifted into high gear. "You're writing directly to the frame buffer? On an SGI? That should trigger a kernel panic."
"Not if you trick the CPU into thinking the data is a texture map," I said before I could stop myself. The 18-year-old student in me couldn't help but defend my logic. "It's faster. The standard library is too bloated for what I want to do."
Tony froze. He looked down at me, actually seeing me for the first time. A slow, mischievous grin spread across his face.
"Bloated? Kid, I've been saying that since I was at MIT. Move over."
He didn't ask. He just nudged my chair aside and sat on the edge of the desk, pulling the keyboard toward him. For the next hour, the world outside that office ceased to exist.
It was a whirlwind. We weren't building a weapon or a world-changing AI. We were two nerds—one a billionaire playboy and the other a displaced student—trying to make a 1992 computer do something it wasn't designed for.
"If we use a lookup table for the sine and cosine functions here," Tony muttered, his fingers moving twice as fast as mine, "we save three clock cycles per pixel."
"But that'll eat up the RAM," I countered, leaning in close. "We should bit-shift the integers instead. It's messier, but it's lighter."
Tony paused, his hands hovering over the keys. He looked at me with a look of pure, unadulterated glee. "Bit-shifting? You little monster. I love it."
By the time my dad walked into the room to find us, the floor was littered with crumpled-up notes and the computer was humming a high-pitched whine that sounded slightly dangerous.
"Julian? Mr. Stark?" my dad asked, looking between his twelve-year-old son and his most important client. "Is... everything okay?"
Tony didn't even look up. He was staring at the screen where a 3D cube was spinning—not a choppy, flickering 1992 cube, but a smooth, anti-aliased shape that looked like it belonged in a movie.
"Thorne," Tony said, his voice full of energy. "Your kid is a freak. Why is he in middle school? He should be in a lab. Or working for me. Can I buy him? Is that legal yet?"
My dad just blinked, completely lost. I just grinned, feeling a rush of adrenaline. I didn't have a "system," and I didn't have powers. But I had just earned the respect of Tony Stark before he ever became Iron Man.
"He's not for sale, Tony," my dad laughed nervously.
"Fine," Tony stood up, dusting off his suit. He looked at me, his eyes lingering for a second. "Keep that code, kid. We're going to finish that 'game' of yours. I'll call you. Or your dad. Whatever."
As he walked out, he stopped at the door and looked back. "By the way, the bit-shifting worked. Don't tell anyone I said that, it's bad for my reputation."
I sat back in the chair, my heart racing. I was rich, I had a family, and I had just made a friend out of a legend.
This was definitely the best day ever.