WARNING: The following contains spoilers for X-Corp #3 by Tini Howard, Valentine De Landro, Sunny Gho & VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
Since debuting, X-Corp has been trying to give the mutants of Krakoa a foot in the door of global business. Their wealth makes them an automatic power player, and their inventions have the potential to change the world in drastic ways. However, they still need to really prove that potential to the world -- which won't be helped by their latest failure. X-Corp just tried to show off one of their most impressive new inventions and power sources, only for everything to blow up in their faces and publicly embarrass the company.
Ahead of the Technology TALKS Conference, the newly revealed X-Corp introduces the world to their next potential groundbreaker: an Ionospheric Bandwidth Generator, a creation of X-Corp Telecom. With Angel and M set to reveal the technology to the conference with a demonstration of its capabilities, the invention is revealed to be a means of amplification of the data streams already moving through the ionosphere. Thanks to the X-Corp HQ being in that same part of the sky, it's able to stabilize and charge the air with a massive amount of solar energy -- powered by the new Mutant Circuit of Bishop, Thunderbird, Sunspot, and Vulcan.
This massive output of energy can fuel the machine, increasing bandwidth to previously unseen levels and allowing the massive transfer of digital data to shift from hours to seconds. It's potentially a revolutionary step forward for the expansion of human knowledge and contact, effectively giving the world a powerful alternative to currently limited internet providers. Designed and maintained by Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, the device could be another major victory for Krakoa's advancements, which have already impressed (and terrified) the world. In theory, this could expand the potential of the internet exponentially, as Madrox reminds his various duplicates as they work together to create the proper circuit.
However, it turns out Madrox made a mistake in his planning -- resulting in excess energy being produced that Vulcan can't fully contain. The only way to safely vent the energy forced the X-Corp HQ to leave the conference, taking them out of range for the event. Although one of Madrox's duplicates is able to vent the overage, it costs him his life, taking his recent memories of his and Layla Miller's son walking for the first time with him before the original Madrox could absorb those memories. But despite their best efforts, the Ionospheric Bandwidth Generator ends up failing at the crucial moment anyway -- giving the mutant company a very public failure that they'll now have to contend with.
Given the suspicious figures at the event -- including the mysterious Sarah St. John -- it's possible that someone interfered with the plans of X-Corp. There's also a chance that Madrox, already being pulled in several directions by his current position with the company, just wasn't capable of juggling all the various problems that the launch of the Ionospheric Bandwidth Generator produced.
Regardless of the cause of the disruption, it's a very public failing for X-Corp and Krakoa as a whole, and will likely put additional pressure on Angel and M to get the company back under control -- or at least present the image of control, which might be easier now that the company has brought on Mastermind as a member of their Board of Directors. It'll be on X-Corp to deliver an impressive response to the bad press this failure will likely bring, or they'll expose weakness to the world at a crucial time for the mutant nation.
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