“Fourteen,” M. J. said abruptly. All eyes went to her, and Mr. Sullivan laughed nervously in a “why is she doing this?” manner.
“I beg your pardon?” called the tour guide.
Undaunted by the challenging looks from the others, and the clear chagrin from the teacher, M. J. said, “There’s only fourteen spiders.”
“No,” the guide said firmly, “there’s fifteen.” And then, a little less firmly, she asked, “Aren’t there?”
The smallest of the small didn’t have the strongest of memories when it came to events. The things that it did, it did as a result of instinct, hardwired into it by century upon century of evolution.
So the smallest, having departed the case that had been its home, had no recollection of ever having resided there. The only home it now knew was the web that it had delicately spun for itself, up among the recesses of the ceiling.
Nor did it have a clear recollection that, once upon a time, it had been given food by a mysterious benefactor that was the closest to the concept of God that the creature could come to. All it knew now was that food was no longer forthcoming, and that it had to forage for itself. The craving in its belly was growing by the hour, and it hadn’t been able to spin its web fast enough to gather sustenance for itself.
The gossamer web it had spun was indeed quite a beauty, and the smallest of the small was now waiting in the middle of it. Waiting for the unwary, waiting for its prey, waiting for something it could trap and cocoon and drain dry. Unfortunately nothing seemed to be cooperating. No flies or insects of any kind were presenting themselves as an entrée, and the smallest was beginning to go mad with hunger.
And something else was disrupting the poor creature—thunderous vibrations from the—from the whatever they were—a far distance below, which were no doubt serving to drive any potential meals away from the web.
The creature did not know, could not experience such emotions as anger. But as it became more and more famished, its frustration level built and built. . . .
The picture, and the opportunity, could not have presented itself more perfectly.
There was Mary Jane, looking into the glass case, checking out her makeup. It was hard for Peter to believe that she saw any need to take such measures. She was perfect; how could she conceivably improve upon herself? But he didn’t question it too closely, because he was busy seizing the chance that had been tossed his way.
A few quick steps and he was by her side. He said, “Can I take your picture? I need one with a student in it.”
Mary Jane turned to look at him, and Peter felt as if he was being pulled completely out of the depressing, frustrating world inhabited by Peter “Big Brain Loser” Parker and into the sphere where dwelt the magnificence that was Mary Jane. It was a happy, glorious place, and he was pleased just to be the most transient of tourists there.
In response, she immediately struck a pose, hiding a small smile behind the practiced pout of a model. She flipped her hair back, eyed the camera as she would a lover, and said in a playfully sulky voice, “Don’t make me ugly!”
“Impossible,” Peter scoffed, gazing at her through the viewfinder. He could have remained that way all day, but he felt he had to be thoroughly professional. “Right there … good!” He snapped a picture, and the autowind shot forward. “And one more—!”
Except she had vanished from his viewfinder. She had moved out of frame, drifting toward a group of her friends. “Thanks,” Peter called after her. He’d gotten her to smile at him, even if only for a photo. This was turning into a memorable day.
The spider had lost its mind.
It wasn’t as if it had a large mind to begin with, but hunger had overridden its desire for caution. Eat eat eat was the imperative hammering through it, and it decided to go on a hunt, rather than wait for something unwary to come to it.
There was a target just below it. Its spinnerets lowered it gracefully down, closer to its prey. Had the spider been thinking properly, it would have gotten nowhere near this . . . this monster. This gigantic thing. But the spider was only concerned about making a last ditch effort to fill its belly, and when it lunged at its prey, it had no clue that it was the last conscious effort it would ever make. . . .
“Ow!” Peter yelped.
He had just been turning to look at a huge display of electron microscopes when a sharp pain had gotten him in the right hand. Instinctively he’d snapped his wrist, and he caught out of the corner of his eye some sort of … of bug. An insect. A mosquito, perhaps?
Peter held up the back of his hand and saw two tiny red marks flaring up on it. There was a moment of morbid amusement as he wondered if he’d been assaulted by the world’s tiniest vampire, and then he saw a brief movement on the floor. He looked down, his eyes narrowing, as he watched what appeared to be a spider flip over onto its back, its legs curling up like something out of a commercial for Raid.
A spider . . .
Peter Parker felt a surge of momentary panic as he looked back in the direction of the spider tank. There had seemed to be some confusion as to whether there were fourteen or fifteen spiders. Could one of them have escaped? And … and could this be it? If he’d been bitten by some sort of genetically mutated spider … it could make him sick as anything.
Thoughts of blood poisoning tumbled through his head, and he moaned softly. Great. Just great. Everyone else goes on a nice, ordinary class trip, and good old Peter Parker gets bitten by a toxic spider.
But even as the possibility occurred to him, he was inclined to dismiss it. How in the world could a spider have escaped from there, anyway? It’s not as if one of its relatives could smuggle in a teeny tiny hacksaw. The spiders weren’t about to start punching their way through the thick glass. No … despite Peter’s tendency to ascribe a worst-case scenario to everything in the world, even he had to admit that the chances were that this was a normal, garden-variety spider. Heck, it didn’t even look as big as the others had been. The others had been huge, relatively speaking. This one just looked like … well, like a dead arachnid.
It was kind of puny, really.
And the kids—Flash, in particular—did tend to refer to him as Puny Parker. So if he had to be bitten by a spider, it was probably appropriate that it was this one.
Peter stood there, rubbing his hand, as the array of electron microscope display screens flashed around him, images of DNA strands dancing over him. He didn’t consider it to be particularly ironic in any way.
That would change.
IV.
THE
MEETING
Norman Osborn could remember clearly the day that the proud OsCorp Industries factory in Commack, Long Island, had first opened. He had stopped going home in those final days, as they rushed to make certain everything was ready for the opening day. He ate, slept, and breathed that building, checking every rivet, every switchplate, every window seal.
The first time he saw the neon letters of the huge OsCorp logo flicker to life, he felt a swelling of pride. The first time he beheld a black, noxious cloud belching out of the towering smokestacks, he knew that everything for which he’d been striving all these years had finally been attained.
So here he was, years later, and if driving a wrecking machine through the place—leveling it, reducing it to nothing but a pile of rubble—had been an option, he would have grabbed it in a heartbeat.
Explosives would serve just as well.
“General Slocum and the others have already started the inspection,” said his somewhat high-strung assistant, Simkins. “Mr. Balkan and Mr. Fargas are with them.”
Above the elevator door, the square that read RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT lit up. R&D was situated a fifth of a mile underground, which was a compromise as far as Osborn was concerned. For his full comfort level to be reached, he’d much rather have had it situated somewhere near the earth’s core. Industrial theft was his number-one concern, and he was prepared to do whatever it took to avoid having enemies swoop in and ste
al that which he had labored so long to achieve.
There was a soft ping as the elevator doors slid open. Osborn stepped out onto a dizzyingly high catwalk, and his hard green eyes, while appearing to be focused straight ahead, took in everything around him, with peripheral vision that would have rivaled the capabilities of security cameras. Simkins gulped audibly, fighting off a momentary flash of vertigo before gripping the rail and moving behind her boss. She had to pick up speed, because Osborn wasn’t slowing down.
“Why wasn’t I told about this?” Osborn growled.
“I … don’t think they wanted you to know, sir,” admitted Simkins.
Osborn moved quickly down a narrow flight of steps, taking two at a time. He hoped Simkins could keep up but was too focused on his destination to be concerned if she didn’t. He practically vaulted down to the polished floor, ignoring the greeting of “Morning, Mr. Osborn” he got from every employee he passed. As if there was anything good about this morning. As if any of them were remotely happy to see him. Every single one of them was a security risk, no matter how many nondisclosure forms they signed.
On the other hand, there was nothing to be done when the enemy strolled right into your lair. Or, for that matter, rolled right in.
That certainly described Mr. Fargas, sitting imperiously in his wheelchair, his eyebrows thick, his head bald, making him evocative of the professor character from that mutant movie. Mr. Balkan, as always standing beside Fargas, was tall and distinguished looking, but no less irascible.
There were other people in suits standing nearby. Dammit, how many people was the Pentagon going to dispatch whenever they wanted to look in on OsCorp’s activities? It seemed there were more and more each time, and each one—as far as Osborn was concerned—represented a potential security leak.
There was General Slocum, in the middle of the lab, doing a slow, measured tread around the project that they had all come to see and, very likely, criticize. Slocum was square-jawed, steely-eyed, beetle-browed, and pea-brained. As for the project itself …
It was breathtaking.
For all the anger he was feeling toward this intrusion, Osborn was still able to take pleasure in his achievements, when his vision was combined with the talents of his people.
He remembered the time he had gone to the beach, at Harry’s pleading. Harry had just gotten a boogie board for his thirteenth birthday and was thanking his father profusely for his thoughtfulness. It seemed silly to Osborn, but the boy really did seem to be trying lately in school, and it seemed the least Osborn could do.
Well, off they’d gone to the beach. At first Osborn had felt self-conscious splashing about in the surf, but he was making the effort for Harry. It wasn’t easy; it was contrary to Osborn’s business-first nature and his own upbringing. But no one seemed to be paying attention to him, and he started to relax a bit.
But then he started watching Harry and other kids with the boards, skimming the tops of waves, controlling the things with remarkable dexterity.
And as they did so, Osborn took a mental snapshot of their actions, and found himself transporting the concept in his mind. Instead of skimming waves, they were hurtling over battlefields, deftly maneuvering around enemy troops. In his imaginings, they were wearing armor—tight-fitting, lightweight suits, designed for protection but more than that: They had a cybernetic link to the board. Yes, that was it—they could take it to the next level. It wouldn’t be all that much of a jump, really. Rather than depending upon the reflexes of the rider, the board would respond to their very thoughts.
When Harry had emerged from the water, his father had been grinning and nodding and clapping his hands with delight. Harry couldn’t have been more thrilled at his father’s support. Osborn, for his part, was looking right through his son, seeing a vast army of armored boogie board-riding soldiers.
It had taken four years, a government contract, and two breakthroughs in cybernetics to bring them to the point where they were now. There, in the lab at OsCorp, was the the result, mounted atop a servo pole. Since this board was designed for air, rather than water, adjustments had been made to make it aerodynamically stable. Fins had been added, and footholds for a more sure grip, and naturally there was the jet tubing down the middle that would propel the thing.
Next to the device, a technician was outfitted in the armored suit, moving his legs and arms while the board obediently responded to every change in his posture.
By rights it should have been eliciting ooooh’s and aaaahhhh’s from the onlookers. Instead they just stood there and scowled. They were bereft of imagination, nor did they possess the slightest vision, and yet they were coming here and standing in judgment of Osborn’s work.
He was entering the lab just in time to hear Dr. Mendel Stromm, his head of R&D, embark on a detailed explanation of everything that made the glider work. There may not have been a more personally annoying individual on the planet than Stromm, with his affectations and slightly mincing manner. But when it came to quantum leaps in cybernetic breakthroughs, the only scientist who had better chops than Stromm was probably Dr. Henry Pym, and Pym simply wasn’t for sale.
“Individual Personnel Transports are moving along splendidly,” Stromm was saying, clearly about to go into detail on the program’s progress.
“I’ve seen your glider,” General Slocum said, pausing momentarily over the word “glider” with such faint disdain that Osborn wanted to throttle him. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Osborn forced pleasantries. “General Slocum,” he said convivially. “Good to see you again. Mr. Balkan, Mr. Fargas,” he continued, acknowledging each of them in turn. They didn’t respond. Just glowered.
“Always a pleasure to have our board of directors pay us a visit.”
Slocum didn’t seem impressed by Osborn’s greetings. “I want a progress report on Human Performance Enhancers.”
Doctor Stromm paused a moment, glancing at Osborn, who simply nodded. Gesturing toward a glass-walled isolation chamber on the other side of the lab, Stromm started toward it, speaking as he went. “We tried vapor inhalation with rodent subjects. They showed an eight hundred percent increase in strength.”
Fargas rolled his chair forward. “Eight hundred percent. That’s excellent.”
That gave Osborn a momentary surprise; he didn’t think Fargas was capable of praising anyone or anything. Slocum, however, was naturally looking for the downside. “Any side effects?” he asked.
“In one trial,” Stromm began to reply, “yes, the—”
Osborn quickly interrupted. “It was an aberration. All the tests since then have been successful.”
But Slocum continued to pointedly ignore Osborn as he addressed Stromm. “In the test that went wrong, what happened? What were the side effects?”
Stromm didn’t hesitate. It was clear that he was extremely concerned about the situation, and was welcoming the opportunity to make that concern known. “Violence. Aggression. And eventually, insanity.”
A silence fell over the group for a moment, and then Slocum said, “What’s your recommendation?”
Before Stromm could say anything else that could possibly sink OsCorp lower than the R&D level, Osborn stepped in, physically interposing himself between Stromm and Slocum. Meeting the general’s gaze, he assured him, “With the exception of Dr. Stromm, our entire staff has certified the product ready for human testing.”
And then the human submarine known as Dr. Stromm fired his torpedo, striking the good ship OsCorp across the bow. “We need to take the whole line back to formula.”
Feeling betrayed, Osborn whirled to face Stromm. “Back to formula?”
“Mr. Osborn,” Slocum said stiffly, “this department has missed seven consecutive delivery dates. After five-and-a-half years of R&D, the United States government has a right to expect the supersoldier you were contracted to deliver.”
This was madness! The formula was safe! Stromm was just being paranoid!
Trying to soun
d reasonable and assured, Osborn said, “These are quantum leaps in science, gentlemen. We are unlocking the secrets of human evolution. I never said it would be cheap or fast, only groundbreaking.”
Slocum drew himself up so that he towered over Osborn, and fixed a cold stare upon him. “I’ll be frank with you. I never supported your program. We have my predecessor to thank for that.” There was another word that he spoke with dripping contempt: predecessor.
Osborn sensed that the other shoe was going to drop, and it was Balkan who dropped it. “The General has given the go-ahead to Quest Aerospace to build a prototype of their exoskeleton design. They test in two weeks.”
My God . . . they’re that far along? Osborn fought to keep any look of panic off his face, even as General Slocum, twisting the knife, said, “If your so-called performance enhancers haven’t had a successful human trial by that time, I will pull your funding and give it to them.”
“Norman,” Fargas said, very slowly and very dangerously, “we are not going to lose this contract.”
All eyes were now on Osborn, obviously waiting for him to say or do something. At that point, all he could manage was a nod and a forced smile. Then he glanced back over his shoulder at the armor and the glider, and instead of a foreign battlefield with enemy soldiers strewn around, he was picturing sailing it over a ground littered with the bodies of Slocum, Stromm, and the entire board of directors.
It gave him some momentary comfort.
V.
THE SIDE EFFECTS
May Parker thought she was going to have a heart attack.
She had just walked into the living room to discover her brilliant husband standing precariously on a chair, stretching his arm as far as he could to try to change a light bulb in the overhead fixture. Ben was grunting, his full concentration on the job at hand. Pale sunlight was filtering through the just-vacuumed venetian blinds, causing him to squint as the chair tilted ever so slightly on the carpeted floor.