Deep beneath the Empire State University library, a frustrated student finds the lost legacy of ESU's most infamous alumnus. Victor Von Doom's lab notebooks -- instructions for how to build a machine that can pierce the veil between Earth and the netherworld -- have fallen into the wrong hands. A gate is opened where none should exist, and someone -- or something -- has invaded our world.
The Fantastic Four would be the team to face such a threat...if they could reach one another. Force shields erected around Manhattan by the over-anxious agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have trapped Reed Richards, Sue Richards, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm. All are in danger of succumbing to the pernicious effects of the energies emanating from the dark dimension, forcing the F.F. to seek aid from their greatest enemy, whose nefariously brilliant mind first conceived the Doomgate.1
Stanislaw Klemp sat cross -legged on the drab, gray, polyblend carpet that covered the floors of the Stacks' lowest levels, inhaled as deeply as he could (which, due to his asthma, wasn't very), then released the breath in a long, ragged exhale. Klemp loved the Stacks, especially the windowless depths where the mingled odor of paper mold and library glue was strongest and no one, not even the bawdiest and most desperate freshmen in search of privacy, ever came. He listened to the timer that controlled the overhead fluorescent fixtures goclick, click, click,and waited for the moment when the lighted row would flick off and the world would be plunged into a profound darkness broken only at the far end of the row of shelves by the half-visible "Exit" sign.
He glanced again at the wadded-up ball of university stationery that lay to his left, just beyond arm's reach. Klemp could see the outline of the official seal of Empire State University through the back of the page, and he briefly wondered if he might somehow derive satisfaction from burning the damned thing. He'd started to reach into his pants pocket for his butane lighter when he reconsidered. The fire suppression system would activate and flood the room with inert gas, which, while not enough to suffocate him, wouldn't do him any good, either. He remembered reading about how Reed Richards, Empire State University's most famous (as opposed toinfamous) alumnus, had designed the system and paid to have it installed. Apparently, Richards had spent almost as much time down here amongst the rows and rows of books as Klemp himself had. Once, that thought had delighted the young man, but tonight the idea only filled Stanislaw Klemp with self-disgust. In what now seemed the distant past, he had imagined that someday people might speak his name and Richards' in the same breath, as in "Wow, did you hear what Klemp has come up with this time? We haven't seen a mind like his come through ESU since..." And et cetera.
But now what were they going to be saying? What word was going to most likely be said in the same sentence as "Klemp"? He tried to remember the exact words the dean of the Graduate School of Engineering had said, but the only ones that stuck in his memory were "lax" and "disappointing" and, most important, "funding discontinued." Klemp's grandmother, a tiny, shriveled, desiccated, beetleshaped woman who wore only black and had a mustache thicker and darker than the feeble one Klemp had sported for a brief spell last semester, had used similar words when describing him. "You're a lazy boy," the old hag would spit at him during one of her volcanic tirades. "Just like your father -- God rest his worthless soul. He was lazy too. Got by on good looks and charm, but wouldn't ever turn his hand to an honest day's work." The implication here, Klemp understood, was that he didn't even have the advantages of good looks or charm to help him get along in the world. He was, he knew, a sunken-chest, no-chin runt, with a hairline destined to end in a comb-over. Girls didn't just turn away from Klem
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