White Vision

Here is a question for you to roll around in your head. Are you the same person you were when you were five? Some of you used to be five! Maybe even right now! But the people who are seven — are you the same as you were at five? Your hair is longer. Your feet are bigger. Your favorite food might be different. You know how to do things now that you couldn't do then. So — are you a different person? Or are you still you?

That question is at the very heart of today's story. And the two people in the story — well, they're both named Vision. Both of them. At the same time. Same face. Same voice. Same hands. And they had to figure out, together, what made each of them themselves.

Let me tell you how the trouble started.

While Wanda's great red Hex was glowing over the town of Westview, something secret was happening OUTSIDE the bubble. There is an organization called S.W.O.R.D. — that stands for Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division, but most people just say S.W.O.R.D. — and the man in charge of S.W.O.R.D. was named Tyler Hayward. Hayward was not a kind man. He had a sharp face and a hungry stare, and he was doing something he was very much NOT supposed to be doing.

You see, when Vision was gone, his original body had been brought to S.W.O.R.D. for safekeeping. It was supposed to stay quiet and still and respected. But Tyler Hayward had taken the body into a private laboratory and, piece by piece, had been putting it back together. New circuits. New vibranium plates. New synthetic muscle. He was rebuilding Vision into a weapon.

One day, the body opened its eyes.

It looked exactly like Vision. Same face. Same hands. Same calm shoulders. But — and this is where it got eerie — it was WHITE. Pure, blank, marble-statue white from head to foot. No pink. No silver. No green cape. No yellow gem in the forehead. Just clean, empty, unfinished white.

White Vision sat up on the lab table. He had no memories. He did not know his name. He did not know where he was. He did not know why he was here. Tyler Hayward looked him straight in the eye and gave him a single instruction.

"Find the other Vision," Hayward said. "End him."

White Vision didn't argue. He didn't know how. He just flew. Straight up off the table, through the lab roof, into the sky, and — WHOOOSH — right through the red wall of the Hex.

Inside the Hex, things were a little tense. The whole town of Westview was getting a bit unstable. The other Vision — the pink one, the husband, the dad — had figured out by now that his life inside the bubble was not exactly what he had thought. He had said goodbye to Tommy and Billy. He was flying over the rooftops of Westview, trying to help, when he looked up and saw a second figure floating in the sky above him.

Pure white. His own face. His own voice. His own hands.

The two Visions hovered there, just looking at each other.

Have you ever seen yourself in a mirror and waved, and the person in the mirror waved back, and for one strange second you weren't sure who was the real you? It was a little like that — except both Visions were real, and the air between them felt very serious.

White Vision attacked first. He didn't know any better. CRASH. BAM. The two Visions traded blows above the rooftops, knocking each other through the air, perfectly matched in every move — because of course they were. They had the same body. They had the same training. They had the same calm reflexes.

And then, almost without meaning to, they landed on the front steps of the Westview public library. And they stopped fighting.

Pink Vision sat down. White Vision, slowly, sat down beside him.

And they started to TALK.

What they talked about is one of the oldest puzzles in the whole world. It is called the Ship of Theseus. (You say it like THEE-see-us. Try it. Take your time.) The Ship of Theseus is a question philosophers have been arguing about for more than two thousand years, and it goes like this:

Imagine a beautiful wooden ship. It belonged to a great hero named Theseus, and it sailed the seas of ancient Greece. Every year, one wooden plank in the ship got old and needed to be replaced. So the shipwrights swapped it for a fresh plank. The next year — swap. And the next — swap. And the next — swap. Year after year after year, until eventually, every single plank on the ship had been replaced. Not a single piece of the original wood was left.

Question: is it still the same ship?

Some people say YES, because it has the same shape, the same name, the same job, the same memories of every voyage. Some people say NO, because none of the original wood is there anymore. Some people say BOTH at the same time, and they shrug.

Pink Vision asked the question very gently. White Vision — who had no memories, but who still had the careful, calm mind of a Vision — thought about it for a long, quiet moment. Then he answered in his careful British voice, "The Ship of Theseus is the philosophical question of whether an object that has had all its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object."

They looked at each other.

Because here was the situation, right? Sitting on the library steps:

Pink Vision had all the memories. Every conversation with Wanda. Every Avenger argument. Every sunset. Every lifted hammer. Every Tommy and Billy bedtime story. But his body was new — built from magic, made out of love and red sparkles, only a week old.

White Vision had the original body. The actual vibranium, the actual synthetic skin, the actual hands that had once held Mjolnir. But there were NO memories inside. The body was empty.

So which one was Vision?

Both of them, maybe. Neither of them, maybe. The Ship of Theseus shrugs.

And then Pink Vision did something only a being made of love could think of.

He reached out his pink hand. He gently touched White Vision's white forehead. And — WHOOOOSH — quietly, kindly, he gave White Vision back all his memories. Every single one. The Sokovia battlefield. The first time he lifted Mjolnir as a teacup. The paprikash dinner with Wanda. The sunset on the bench in Scotland. The hand on Wanda's hand in Shuri's lab. The week in Westview that he hadn't even been there for, but that Pink Vision shared with him anyway.

White Vision's eyes went very wide.

He understood.

He understood who he had been. He understood what had been done to him. He understood that the orders he had been given by Tyler Hayward were wrong. He understood that he was, in a real and complete way, Vision — the Vision who had been built from JARVIS code, the Vision who had lifted Mjolnir, the Vision who had loved Wanda Maximoff.

He looked at his pink twin. He gave a small, grateful bow. And then he flew up — WHOOOSH — out of the Hex, up through the clouds, into the great wide sky.

"I am Vision," he whispered to himself as he went.

And here is the wonderful, mysterious part. Somewhere out there in the world — somewhere in the great wide everywhere — White Vision is STILL FLYING. He carries every memory of who he was. He is looking for what comes next. Nobody knows quite where he is. But he is out there, somewhere, being Vision.

And the two Visions on the library steps had answered the Ship of Theseus the only way you can really answer a question like that.

They had been kind to each other.

And kindness, it turns out, is enough.