"A phone?" Howard blinked. "It's barely the size of your palm, that's incredible."

"It did take a while to get to this, but technology is more advanced in my time." Kae shrugged. "This is fairly normal. And no, you cannot have it."

"I just want to examine it," Howard said. "And you weren't making any sort of calls, so what were you doing with it?"

"Taking a picture. Yeah, I know, it's tiny for that too." Kae shot him a half-smile, well aware she was intriguing him.

"Pictures?" Howard asked. He was practically drooling at all of the promise that little gadget held.

"Yes. And you can't take it apart. You can look at it but no taking anything apart." Kae gave him her best stern look.

Howard looked like he wanted to argue; he really, really wanted to see what made the gadget tick. But at the same time, he wasn't sure he'd be able to put it back together again afterwards.

Kae handed it over but kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn't do anything bad.

Howard fiddled with the device, pushing buttons here and there. He jumped when the screen lit up, and then he poked at it.

"Fascinating," he said. "An internal light source... A powerful one. And the thing is so light, too, it's amazing, you'd never think it had this much power in it."

Kae laughed a bit. "Probably seems very alien to you. Although I heard about the flying car attempt. I'm impressed."

"I'll get it right soon," Howard said. "Shouldn't take me long to perfect the technology. It's called repulsor technology, and if you'll excuse the pun, I'm going to make sure it takes off."

Kae grinned. "Oh I'm sure it will," she said, grinning broadly. Idly she wondered if Tony realized repulsor technology wasn't new.

Howard glanced at her.

"What, did I say something funny?" he asked.

"Kind of, unintentionally. Don't worry about it." Kae grinned at him.

Howard just raised an eyebrow.

"What did I say?" he asked.

"You just remind me of someone," Kae said, shaking her head. "A close friend." And that was as much as she was going to tell him.

"At least it's a good someone," Howard said, grinning. He reluctantly handed her little gadget back to her.

"It is." Kae smiled and took her phone back, tucking it in her pocket and sparing a moment to be thankful that he hadn't gotten a look at her prosthetic yet. "Well, I know I saw a library, so I might do a bit of reading. I'm sure I'm distracting you from more important work."

"Go head," Howard said, "the door should be open." And in the meantime, he had a phone call to make.

Kae nodded and meandered over to the library to find a book to read.

Peggy, meanwhile, was busy entertaining her nephew.

Howard called Peggy's number and waited, listening to it ring on the other end.

"Come on, pick up," he muttered.

It took Peggy a minute to pick up, but she did.

"Yes?" she answered crisply, watching Phil with half her attention.

"Peggy, it's Howard, how are you this evening?" Even with the information he now had that he wanted to pass on to her, he still had time for pleasantries.

"Good evening, Howard, I'm doing well. And yourself?" Peggy could hear that anxious little note in his voice but let him dictate when he'd start in on that subject.

"Fine, doing fine," Howard said. "Listen, something... happened. I think you're going to be interested in it." He waited anxiously for her to take the bait.