Author's Note: This is part 3 of a series.
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SPIDER-MAN
As I follow Johnny back to Reed's lab, I think back on the first time I came up here. I have a lot of fond memories of the Baxter Building, but that one always makes me chuckle.
I was hurting for money and my reputation was in tatters. I decided to join the FF as a way to remedy both problems. My bright idea was to break into Reed's top secret laboratory as a way to showcase my abilities. That caused an obvious misunderstanding with the Fantastic Four, but Reed kept a level head and put a stop to the fight. When I told him I was looking for a job, Reed explained that any profits from his patents went back into scientific research, so I wouldn't be getting a paycheck.
That was the first time I met the Human Torch. Since then, we had teamed up against villains, competed in aerial races around the Statue of Liberty, built the Spider-Mobile, and I even let him stay in my spare room for a while (FYI, Johnny is a terrible roommate).
The FF were also the first people I turned to for help with Venom. We were together on Battleworld when I found it. I thought it was just some advanced piece of nanotechnology that the alien civilization used to repair their clothing. It wasn't until long after I brought the thing back to Earth that Reed and I discovered it to be a living organism that had latched onto me. After removing the suit, I was left in my underwear and had to make do with an ill-fitting FF uniform. Thanks to that classic Parker luck I had to swing home with a paper bag on my head and a "Kick-Me!" sign slapped on my back courtesy of Johnny. Let that be the one and only appearance of the Bombastic Bag-Man.
"You DO know, Web-Head, that we all know what you look like, right?" Johnny Storm asks with an elbow to my ribs. "You don't need to wear that creepy bug-eyed mask in here!" He reaches up to pull it off my face.
I swat his hand away "You never know when SHIELD or the Avengers might casually stroll in. I'm protective of my secret identity."
Johnny was really quiet for a minute. Weird, he wasn't a broody sort of superhero. I wondered if he caught on that his sister and I had been boinking in the kitchen just a few minutes ago.
"Hey man, thanks for trusting us with that. I know it means a lot. You're like a member of the family."
Oh, how the guilt tugs at your heartstrings.
Mr. Fantastic was waiting for us, seemingly oblivious to having walked in on my tryst with Mrs. Fantastic. I have to admit, its super weird standing next to a guy when you just slept with his wife. I studied Reed a little more closely; I hadn't seen him in a while, and I wasn't really looking at him too much when he walked in on an invisible coitus uninterruptus.
Reed spent so much time working that he pretty much stopped wasting time to shave. The full salt and pepper beard had taken some getting used to, and the grey streaks at his temples now extended around his ears. Reed was a celebrity scientist that I looked up to when I was in high school. I guess Rob Zombie puts it best: Are we getting ugly or are we getting old?
"So, how are things with Susan?" I ask super nonchalantly. Damn motor mouth.
"Hmm? Oh, she's doing well." Reed didn't even look up from the gadget he was fiddling with. I recognized it as the makeshift sonic wave emitter we cobbled together all those years ago to remove the symbiote after it tried to bond to me permanently.
Reed's brain just doesn't work like everybody else. Even before becoming "Mr. Fantastic", he was a genius beyond Iron Man, Ant Man, or Beast. Now? His stretchy powers didn't just stop with contorting his body like rubber; the dude could expand regions of his brain, giving him levels of intellect and consciousness beyond normal human dimensions. As Johnny and I watched, his fingers expanded and stretched to to dexterously reconfigure the bulky sonic wave emitter into a sleek and portable sonic blaster.
I was in awe. In just a few seconds, Reed had crafted a cutting edge wonder of modern science. As I looked around the laboratory, couldn't help but notice all the magnificent and wonderful inventions that we had worked on together. The awe...it faded away, became something more bitter.
Reed noticed my silence. He glanced up at me frowning. "Is something wrong?"
I paused, looking around the lab. "Reed, we've worked on so many projects that never went public. Studied alien technology. Any one of these devices could change the world for the better. A mind like yours could solve thousands of humanity's problems in a day. And its all just sitting here collecting dust."
Reed sighed, and set the sonic gun back on the table. "Peter, do you think I don't know that? That I haven't had this discussion before?" He motioned to Johnny, who just shrugged.
"I think you know it on an intellectual level. I think that you've weighed all the factors and decided that its better to bring a horse to water or teach a man to fish or whatever the best metaphor is. I also think that you have difficulty matching up the raw numbers to the real people out there suffering."
A bitter smile crossed Reed's face. "Suffering, Peter. You hit the proverbial nail. The introduction of this technology...it would cause a global upheaval. Entire industries rendered obsolete in a day, with tens of millions of families at stake. We would create massive inequality just with the consumer aspect of it all. And of course, when the military applications are discovered, will you be able to stomach it?" He reached out to place his hands on my shoulders. "We need to be careful or we could end up ruling the world."
"Then what's the freaking point?" I asked, more heated than I expected. I was angry, at Reed's arrogance, at his detachment. All of a sudden, my guilt and shame about the affair kind of...eased up. Reed didn't deserve a woman like Susan. "The human race isn't just another experiment that needs a control test, Reed! We're not barred from interfering with normal people!"
"But Peter...we are. We have experienced firsthand the sort of disaster that can come from introducing advanced technology to a more primitive society. The age of exploration and colonization included a great deal of war, exploitation, forced assimilation, and even genocide. The people outside this building...they have the right to a normal cultural evolution."
I shook my head and disbelief. "So you get to decide when they're advanced enough? And until then, you'll let them live in Hell because it is their "natural development"?" I grabbed a table of delicate looking instruments and flipped it over.
"Whoah, Spidey, chill!" Johnny was between us, frantically trying to calm the flames for once.