Chapter 1098 Father and Son (Twenty-Seven)

"Obviously, Mr. Howard, you have discovered the problem - the turning point in your relationship with Tony during his growth did not occur when you became addicted to alcohol, but appeared earlier." Schiller concluded. When Howard looked at him again, his expression seemed a little distracted, no longer as focused as before, as if he was listening to him and was lost in memories. Schiller did not pull him out of his memories, but asked: "Then, please think carefully, the length of your focus time with Tony, when did it first drop off?"

"Drop off?" Howard seemed to not understand the word, and Schiller explained it carefully:

"As you said, for a long time, Tony was your spiritual sustenance, and you hoped that the happy time spent with him would never end. When did you take the initiative to end this time for the first time?"

Howard was stunned for a moment, and then his eyes gradually recovered. Obviously thinking of a specific scene, he slowly said: "When we played marbles for the first time."

Howard sighed slightly and said: "That day, his toys were all packed up by his mother. We had nothing to play with, so we found a few marbles in the corner under the bed."

"That was actually when I was a child. I didn't think Tony would like the things I played with when I was young, so I just taught him how to play marbles. As a result, he did a good job and hit the target every time. "

"But what surprised me was that he was not satisfied with the simple straight-line method. He arranged a dozen ordinary marbles into a complex pattern and let them hit each other one by one until the last marble rolled to the target location. "

"I was really shocked. You don't know how complicated the pattern he designed is. And he didn't practice at all. He succeeded on the first try!",

Howard's tone was still amazed: "In other words, he calculated the interaction force and kinetic energy decay generated by each marble collision in his mind, and then let each marble complete its task at the most extreme distance. "

"Then, how did you do it?" Schiller suddenly leaned forward a little, staring at Howard's eyes, revealing an aggressive attitude.

Obviously, this put some pressure on Howard, so he instinctively said: "I think there is nothing to play, so I put the marbles away and promised him to play again another day."

"Why do you think there is nothing to play?"

"K has already done this step, can he do better? Or, this is actually not the way to play marbles, but his own innovation."

"We only have a dozen marbles in total, and he has played the most complicated way." Howard gestured and said: "It has come to the end."

"Is it the end of the way to play the game of marbles?" Schiller leaned forward and looked directly at Howard, forcing him to answer.

"Of course." Howard answered instinctively.

"What is the basis for your judgment?" Schiller asked at a very fast speed.

"Of course, because I have played it."

"Because of your experience?" Schiller interrupted him and asked.

"That's right." Howard began to look a little flustered. He held up the cup to cover his mouth, and Schiller looked at Howard and said:

"Don't you believe Tony can innovate the way of playing? Don't you believe he can break through your experience? Or do you think he can break through, but you don't want him to break through?"

"How could I not want him to break through?"

Just as Howard said this, Schiller suddenly stood up and came to the back of the sofa where Howard was sitting. He put his hands on the sofa behind him, leaned forward, pressed his head on Howard's head, and said quickly:

"I guess you must have collected the marbles in a panic. Your posture was very embarrassed and your words were not decent. It's better to say that it's the police confiscating the criminal's props than the father taking the initiative to end the game."

"What drives you to do this is not boredom and impatience, but panic. You are feeling fear."

Schiller bit the last word emphatically. From his perspective, he could clearly see that Howard froze instantly when the word landed.

"99 You are afraid that your son, with his genius and wisdom, will gain knowledge beyond what you taught him. You are afraid that he will explore the world outside your arms. You are also afraid that he will surpass you."

"Nonsense! Why should I be afraid that my son will surpass me?" Howard raised his voice, his arms began to tremble, and he said, "I should be proud of this!"

"Many parents are proud of their children, not because they really appreciate their personality and character, but because they think that their children have inherited their life experience and achieved success. They are proud of their own experience and teaching, not their children's success."

Howard was about to refute, but Schiller slapped the back of his chair hard, making a loud noise, and raised his voice and said: "In your memory, what impressed you most was not Tony's learning process, but his first innovation."

"But obviously, his learning period should have been longer, and his creation was just a flash in the pan, but you just remembered this moment. The essence is that your shock at his talent overwhelmed your sense of accomplishment in inheriting your own experience."

Schiller stood up straight, raised his head, looked forward, and said:

"And to continue the inference, at that moment, you first discovered Now, Tony Stark will surpass your life's accumulation and experience with his amazing talent... You feel unwilling. "

"That's why the time you spend focusing on each other is getting shorter and shorter, because you have less and less to teach him, and the more he innovates, the more impatient you become. "

"And the irresistible negative emotions you felt on the night you returned were because you found that there was no shadow of you in the beautiful future created by Tony Stark. "

Schiller's strong and fast tone suddenly stopped, and the silence came suddenly, but more violently, and the silence in the room was terrifying.

A few minutes later, Howard put his shaking fingers on his face, pursed his lips and blinked his eyes, but he still felt tears sliding down his nose from the inner corner of his eyes. He said in a trembling voice:

"I am his father."

"We were so close before. No matter what I taught him, he was willing to learn and learned it. He learned very quickly."

"I can no longer hold him in my arms, teach him to read numbers and do math problems, and he doesn't have to learn any experience and knowledge from me anymore."

"When I got into the car with the documents, I thought that although I was dead, the knowledge, experience and good times I left for him would always accompany him, so I stepped on the accelerator."

"But when When I came back, I realized that resurrection is the cruelest punishment for a person, because you will see how the world has forgotten you. "

Howard lowered his head and shed tears silently, while Schiller slowly walked back to sit opposite him, drank a sip of water in the glass, and said:

"You will leave the earth and come to the Andromeda Galaxy, not because you don't want to see Tony, but because you don't want to see his creations."

"You are afraid that you can't help but pounce on him like crazy, looking for the traces you left in Tony's life. You think that he shouldn't have such a narrow-minded and even crazy father."

Schiller's tone became very slow, at least much slower than when he questioned Howard before, sounding like he was reciting a poem.

"Parents want their children to become another version of themselves, and they also want their children to surpass themselves. Parents hope that their children can inherit all their experiences, and hope that they can break through and innovate without being bound by dogma."

"Parents want their children to fly higher and higher, but they don't want their children to be too far away from them. Parents want their children to have their own lives, but they don't want them to focus on their own lives and forget their parents."

"Parents are always contradictory, suffering from contradictions and contradictory because of pain."

Howard slowly raised his head and looked at Schiller with tearful eyes. Schiller frowned and looked at him and said:

"You are really too focused on the inheritance of knowledge and life experience, and have overlooked a very important point, that is, personality."

"You are disappointed I didn't see more of myself in Tony, but I sighed that I saw too much of you in him. "

"Do you know? In this world, there are not many people who have tens of thousands of transmission parts. In their hearts, there is a huge machine, which is processing those small emotions that others may not even notice at all. "

"Mr. Howard..." Schiller looked into his eyes and said, "It seems that you should have admitted that I am better than you in judging emotions."

Howard just watched in a daze as Schiller poured water into the wine glass with a kettle. The thick spout of the cold water kettle was much larger than the mouth of the champagne glass, so Schiller could only pour it in slowly, and the scene looked very funny.

"Aren't you a psychologist? Shouldn't you comfort me?" Howard said hoarsely.

"The important thing is that I won." Schiller raised his head slightly and said, "And I defeated a genius. Let me be happy for a while."

"Oh, no, I was wrong." Schiller suddenly shook his head and said, "In fact, there is nothing to be happy about. I am a psychologist and you are a scientist. I beat you in psychological reasoning, just like a cheetah beats a turtle."

Howard's face flushed, as if he was angry about Schiller's rude words, but Schiller leisurely picked up the wine glass, took a sip of water, and said:

"But next, we can have a fairer game, that is, let's see who knows Tony Stark better."

"I am his friend, you are his father, you have taught him for a long time, I have known him for a short time, in all aspects, this is a fairer game than before, so, Mr. Howard, do you want to compete with me?"

Howard raised his eyelids and stared at Schiller with light pupils. He blinked slowly and said, "How do you plan to compete?"

"It's very simple." Schiller stood up from the sofa, holding a glass of wine and walked to his desk. He said, "Now, both of us are in the Andromeda Galaxy far away from the earth, and neither of us is monitoring there."

"Then let's guess how Tony is now. Let's each say a conclusion first, and then call him. Whoever gets it right wins."

Schiller reached out and poured the water in his glass into another glass, then opened a bottle of champagne, poured it into the glass, and took a sip.

But the aroma of the wine at this time made Howard frown. He felt his chest trembling, and his heart was shouting that he must not lose this battle. Understanding his son is a battle that a father must not lose.

So. He also stood up, walked across the desk, stared into Schiller's eyes and said, "Well, let me guess first."

"Please." Schiller raised his glass and said.

"Now, New York should be late at night. Tony Stark is staying up late in the laboratory to conduct research, and he is studying the most difficult part of a project. At this moment, he is leaning on the laboratory table with both hands, staring at the data on the paper, without saying a word..."

Howard described it in detail, because he had to force Schiller to describe it in the same detail as him, but Schiller said nothing. He dialed the phone, and one second before the call was connected, Schiller suddenly said:

"He is crying."

The next second, Stark's hoarse voice came from the other end of the phone:

"Hello?"

Instantly, Howard's arm muscles tightened, because he was no longer able to support himself standing there. He clearly heard that the first breath Stark made before he spoke was sobbing.

Schiller hung up the phone with a "click", but Howard ran over from the other end of the table like crazy, raised the phone with trembling arms, and shouted: "Call!...Call quickly!!"

"Sorry, I don't have any phone credit. I didn't know that Magneto was so stingy. Although long-distance calls are expensive, it's not so bad that he would owe money for just one call, right?" Schiller turned his back to the desk, supported his hands on the table, and looked up at the ceiling.

Before Howard yelled again, Schiller suddenly uttered "Oh", and then continued: "Look, how could I forget? Magneto can open a wormhole through space, he can return to Earth at any time, why should he pay for the phone?"

Howard threw the phone away and rushed out the door in a panic. Schiller, who was standing in front of the table, shook his head and smiled.

But at this time, the phone on the table rang again. After Schiller picked up the phone, a low voice came from the other side.

"Hello, this is Odin. I want to talk to you. Excuse me, are you free now?"