Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman Chapter 692: The Establishment of the Police Technology Command Center

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The forward command center at the World Trade Center ruins was relocated into a tent provided by Stark Industries.

Inside was not only a military-grade high-tech operations platform, but also a large collection of technological and computer systems designed to help personnel monitor conditions across the disaster zone.

The tent itself was no ordinary semi-open field tent.

It was a sealed medical-grade structure equipped with several high-capacity air purification systems running continuously.

With assistance from Stark Industries personnel, Henry transferred the distribution of manpower and resources onto the operations platform.

The system could also track supply inventories, consumption rates, and the movement of units represented on its digital map.

Eventually, it could even generate resource-demand forecasts and perform the same logistical optimizations Henry had been handling manually.

Rather than routing all incoming supplies through a central distribution point, relief vehicles could be directed straight to the sectors where their cargo was needed.

To make that possible, Stark Industries had provided large numbers of compact cameras to police officers manning checkpoints around the perimeter.

Using captured footage—including vehicle size and cargo-load estimates—the system could approximate the amount of supplies being delivered.

The calculations weren't perfectly accurate, but they were fast.

Once integrated into operations, the entire command center began to feel like a strategy game.

As long as someone monitored the numbers and evaluated whether the computer's recommendations required adjustment, orders could be issued directly over the radio network.

Tony Stark's equipment also significantly alleviated the severe radio-channel congestion that had plagued the rescue effort.

If teaching scattered rescue personnel how to use tactical computers hadn't been so difficult, Tony would have preferred to replace radios entirely and upgrade everyone's equipment on the spot.

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The reason Henry Brown had been the only person capable of directing the entire rescue effort until now was simple:

Only he could reliably sort through the chaotic flood of overlapping radio traffic, identify every speaker, understand every report, and issue appropriate instructions in real time.

After the addition of computerized analysis systems, the confusion on the airwaves decreased dramatically.

Reports from various units could now be organized automatically, and some information could even be displayed directly on the 3D tactical platform.

The system itself had originally been designed for military operations, supposedly capable of coordinating forces all the way down to individual soldiers.

Since battlefield communications rarely occurred under ideal conditions, processing chaotic radio traffic had been one of its core features from the beginning.

Its shortcomings were equally obvious.

It was extraordinarily expensive.

It required specialized training.

And in most military situations, commanders could simply trust their soldiers and their training rather than micromanage every movement.

Even the U.S. military, despite its massive budget, had purchased only a handful of systems after Stark Industries completed development, reserving them for special operations units.

Now, however, once a group of operators became familiar with the platform, they could effectively replace Henry's role in coordinating the rescue effort.

One major reason everyone was so eager to learn was that Henry Brown had not properly rested since the previous morning.

Under normal circumstances, nobody would have been surprised if he collapsed from exhaustion at any moment.

But a rescue operation could not simply stop because one person went down.

A replacement system had to exist.

That was why everyone worked so hard to master Stark Industries' command platform.

Once learned, anyone could operate it.

Henry Brown's ability to personally manage an entire disaster zone was a different matter entirely.

Very few people could replicate that.

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Gradually, command authority shifted away from Henry and toward the operators seated before the computers, wearing radio headsets.

George Stacy, who had managed to grab a few hours of rest during the night, remained their supervisor and occasionally adjusted orders he felt were inappropriate.

Having surrendered command responsibilities, Henry wasn't idle.

Aside from occasionally filling gaps and answering questions, he now assisted Tony Stark with another crucial task:

Analyzing the ruins of the World Trade Center.

The goal was to map the underground conditions and locate survivors, allowing rescue teams to focus their efforts where lives could still be saved.

The alternative was blindly digging with excavators and hoping not to accidentally kill someone who happened to be trapped beneath the debris.

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Converting sensor data into terrain maps and displaying them as three-dimensional models was something Stark Industries already had mature software solutions for.

Those systems had been designed for above-ground environments.

What they were attempting now, however, was nearly an entirely new field.

Tony initially wanted to adapt indoor scanning technologies to construct a 3D model of the ruins' interior.

Unfortunately, indoor scanning relied on shortcuts.

By examining a building's exterior dimensions, wall thickness, and other observable characteristics, the software estimated interior layouts.

The resulting models could be useful but were never guaranteed to be completely accurate.

Occasionally, the technique uncovered hidden rooms.

Those discoveries weren't common, but when they occurred, the confidence level was generally high.

After all, normal concrete walls weren't measured in meters of thickness.

If there wasn't a hidden chamber inside, then either the architect or the contractor had made some truly bizarre decisions.

The problem here was that there were very few reference points available.

The team had to build their model almost entirely from sensor data.

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In this area, Henry actually possessed unusually valuable experience.

He had repeatedly used his Kryptonian abilities—combining sonar-like feedback with x-ray vision—to construct three-dimensional mental models of buildings and objects.

That gave him insights few others possessed.

Naturally, he couldn't resist standing beside the engineering teams and offering suggestions.

He quickly became extremely annoying.

Eventually, someone gave up and simply assigned him his own workstation.

If he wanted to play armchair engineer, he could sit down and write code himself.

With Henry contributing ideas and Tony Stark providing the genius-level leadership, the former flat-map system evolved into a fully three-dimensional platform.

Not only did the surface terrain gain elevation and depth, but users could also visualize estimated conditions beneath the rubble.

The underground portions remained approximations, of course.

But they were far better than nothing.

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Building the model wasn't the end goal.

The real objective was finding survivors.

That was where the thermal-imaging systems, life-detection sensors, and other specialized equipment came into play.

Truthfully, operating these systems and identifying targets was easier than constructing the underground model itself.

The challenge lay elsewhere.

The system could identify objects emitting body heat and possessing human-like outlines.

It could not determine whether those individuals were alive.

Human bodies didn't immediately lose their heat after death.

Nor could rescuers simply classify low-temperature targets as dead.

Some trapped victims might be suffering from exposure or hypothermia.

Moving them down the rescue priority list could prove fatal.

There was another complication as well.

Underground fires generated intense heat signatures.

Some apparent survivor signals might actually be fire sources.

Conversely, real survivors could be trapped near those fires.

Distinguishing between the two became the most important task assigned to Stark Industries personnel.

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The rescue system gradually taking shape represented an astonishing investment of resources.

Most people could scarcely imagine the cost involved.

Nor was it a unified, purpose-built package.

Many components had been assembled on short notice and integrated temporarily for this specific operation.

Part of the reason it worked at all was because the World Trade Center disaster zone possessed a unique set of characteristics.

The affected area wasn't particularly wide.

It was deep.

Exceptionally deep and densely layered.

Those conditions made this improvised solution viable.

Had the disaster covered an entire town or city instead, the system would have been completely unsuitable

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