Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

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Following Audrey Hepburn, Henry once again visited UNICEF-supported child protection institutions, this time accompanied by staff from the organization. The trips weren’t limited to Africa—South Asia, Central America, South America, and other impoverished regions were also on the list.

Unlike before, neither Miss Hepburn nor the UN staff dared split up when visiting conflict-prone areas. They were escorted at all times by UN peacekeepers, supplemented by private security teams provided by insurance companies.

The cooperation with Bryan Mills and his team had been a one-off, tied to that ill-fated Somalia trip. Afterward, each mission saw different teams contracted. It wasn’t out of preference; the nature of the work simply demanded flexibility. Unless one signed a long-term contract—which meant paying even for downtime outside Africa—it was inevitable to change partners each time. And insurance companies, being the businessmen they were, would never pay extra without need.

Fortunately, Miss Hepburn’s security requirements were relatively straightforward. UN personnel usually bore the brunt of responsibility. No matter how chaotic Africa was, few dared to provoke the Blue Helmets. Outside Africa, local police or military escorts sufficed.

The Somalia incident, then, was an exception among exceptions. Shortly after Henry and the others escaped, the country plunged headlong into civil war. Warlords mushroomed everywhere. Hepburn had simply been unlucky enough to arrive on the eve of total collapse.

As everyone knew, the early stage of upheaval is when the most reckless madmen appear. It takes rounds of bloody elimination before the truly dangerous consolidate power and the rest learn to avoid them. That was why some dared to seize the chance to kidnap a Hollywood star, separated from UN protection.

In truth, UN missions were generally reliable, especially regarding safety. After all, Hepburn was one of their brightest symbols. If something happened to their "brand," it would be a massive humiliation. For the major powers in the UN, if someone embarrassed them, they could just slam the table and demand obedience. But for some small-time warlords to trample the UN’s face? Intolerable.

From his quiet conversations with peacekeepers, Henry learned that soon after Somalia, UN forces had conducted live-fire drills in the country’s south. Ironically, that region had since become the most stable part of war-torn Somalia.

Of course, one of the main reasons Audrey Hepburn felt so at ease now was Henry himself. A man who could fly, who bullets couldn’t harm—having such a presence nearby was deeply reassuring.

As for his feat of lifting a small plane into the sky, Audrey had little grasp of how extraordinary that really was. Had she shared the story, someone might have told her the difficulty involved. But Henry had never asked her to keep it secret. She chose on her own to respect his wish, never disclosing a word of it to outsiders. When asked, she offered only bland, official-sounding responses.

The other abilities Henry had shown during their escape—heightened senses, driving skills, marksmanship—perhaps drew Bryan’s suspicion. But they could still be explained away as natural talent or sheer luck. Nothing that invited scrutiny.

Whatever the case, Henry’s presence undeniably lightened Miss Hepburn’s workload.

She never once thought of forcing him into "greater" work. What could be greater than helping UNICEF bring relief to children in the Third World? Asking him to step into war zones and talk opposing armies into peace? No—such miracles were beyond even Henry. Helping her here was more than enough, far better than being a nameless extra back in Hollywood.

Perhaps he was simply too capable. During the trips, Henry handled most of the trivial chores, leaving Audrey to do what only she could: play with children, pose for photos, and radiate hope.

Back in New York, she submitted finalized reports—reports Henry had drafted and she barely needed to edit. After a few rounds, she stopped revising them altogether, trusting his drafts as final.

The cycle repeated: travel, visit, return, report, attend fundraisers, coax money out of the wealthy, and then set out again.

Henry at last understood Givenchy’s complaint that Audrey Hepburn was "too crazy."

Each round trip between the Third World and New York took half a month or more. Audrey could complete two or three such trips before resting briefly at her home in Switzerland, only to set off again.

If the world had known her schedule, the nickname "workaholic queen" would have appeared twenty or thirty years earlier.

Even at home, she did not rest. Gardening and reading—her passions—demanded time and energy. Especially gardening, which consumed both.

And Henry? He didn’t get to rest either. He had, after all, signed up partly as her driver. He had his own small room in the villa. When she went out, he drove. When she stayed in, he worked quietly as her assistant.

Despite retirement from film, her phone never stopped ringing: UNICEF, her business managers, investment advisors. In his spare time, Henry helped with the garden as well. Because weeks or months passed between visits to Switzerland, the garden always required heavy upkeep.

These tasks were trivial for someone with Kryptonian abilities. Though he refrained from doing everything in one swoop—gardening, after all, was about the process, not the results.

At night, Henry even carved out time for himself. He had moved his computer from his Los Angeles apartment—which he still paid rent on—and dabbled in software projects.

It was in 1991 that Linux first appeared, posted to newsgroups in August and uploaded to Helsinki University’s FTP server in September. But in this altered timeline, it wasn’t just a kernel. Thanks to cooperation with the "Joker BBS" community, parts of GNU were already integrated, creating a working free operating system. Progress had leapt forward.

Under the username "CK," Henry quietly joined the open-source movement. He couldn’t spend all day on BBS forums like others, but every so often he dropped a software package into the Linux ecosystem, earning himself the mystique of a hidden master.

Then, at the end of 1991, shocking news rocked the business world: Howard Stark and his wife had died in a car accident.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

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