if anyone remembers what harry's actual job is pleeze tell me cuz I had to take a flying guess. :P
thanks for the reviews I hate to say something as ick as keep 'em coming but they really do help. squimp.
Part Four- Irritations
There was a full moon that night. Mottled and swollen, it hung low in the sky like a tarnished coin, yellow with the city smog. Inside the abandoned warehouse, the patterns of missing roof shingles let the moonlight shine through, falling across the floor in an irregular, patchy mosaic.
The squares wavered, disturbed by a movement far up in the heavy iron and timber roof beams. With a faint, nervy rustling, the shape of a large rat detatched from the shadows in the eaves and ran out across the long central beam. Sleek and grease-furred, its claws making the tiniest of clickings on the rotten wood, it scurried down a broken pillar and set off across the vast, dappled floor.
The rat's weak eyes glowed eerily. It sat up, sniffing, and set off again, following a faint, tantalizing food-smell. It was cautious, having scented two dangerous presences in the room, both huge in the rat's small world. It had been waiting for hours, until both had stopped even the slightest movements, to come out into the open.
There was another smell, too, an inorganic oddity which was new to the rat and therefore dismissed. The rat's walnut-sized brain was programmed by evolution for three things only. The recognition of advanced electronics wasn't one of them.
The rat twitched its whiskers, began to run forwards…
…and died without a sound.
Escher woke with a start. She'd eventually fallen asleep around midnight, her body curled into the space between the pillar she was chained to and the wall. Her fervent plans to stay awake all night so nothing could creep up on her, although technically sensible, had lasted maybe fifteen minutes before her head had fallen gently forwards onto her knees.
But now she was wide awake, the events of the past day flooding into her mind in a confused jumble. Her neck hurt, and she felt cramped and stiff. And then there was the noise, the horrible noise that had woken her, the noise which could only be described as…sklutch.
Turning over, she peered carefully around the pillar, just in time to see a long, graceful shape withdraw out of the moonbeams on the far side of the warehouse. The three segmented fingers at the end of it glistened in the pale light, wet with…something. Escher pulled back behind her pillar, hoping the arm hadn't 'seen' her.
In the silence that followed she recognised the voice of Doctor Octavius.
'…Oh…not again…Why?'
The words were tired, and slightly reproachful.
'Threat? It's a rat. Was a rat. It was hardly a…yes, yes, I know. Rabies and so forth. But even so, did it really have to be…' A dragging pause. '…Yes. You're right. It isn't important.'
Escher closed her eyes, just in case. The voice went on, a weary duologue with half the words missing.
'No, she's not a threat, either. We frightened her too much, she won't…' Pause. 'I know what I said! But we don't need…no! She's only a child, for God's sake!' He was shouting, now, like someone trying to be heard in a crowded room. 'She's not worth it! Listen to me!'
The longest silence yet.
'Yes, I know it was my fault. We would have the chip by now if I hadn't've hesitated. But we have to be patient…and we can't afford any more complications.'
There was a slow rattle. Escher couldn't imagine how such a simple mechanical sound could convey meaning, but still, to her it sounded…grudgingly agreeable. Perhaps she was right, for when she heard the voice again, it sounded relieved, more confident.
'I know I made mistakes. But that is exactly the kind of flaw that the device will eradicate!…Yes…and we'll have it soon, I promise.'
Escher dimly understood, even as sleep began to overtake her once again, that she'd just been reprieved by the narrowest of margins. A few more words reached her, drifting into the beginnings of a dream, before her senses slipped entirely away.
'For what it's worth…I promise.'
Dawn came, overcast and hideously sticky. The sweltering, oppressive heat hung like a shroud over the streets of New York, slowly turning the entire city into one enormous pressure cooker as the hours dragged on into the morning. Horns blared in the congested streets as sun-worn tempers frayed and snapped, the object of the day for most of the city's fourteen million residents being to move from one source of cool air to another with as little time inbetween as possible.
Harry Osborn had a different aim in mind. Walking purposefully down the airless corridor, far up in the soaring, glass-fronted heights of OsCorp headquarters, he resembled nothing so much as a young, classically handsome cruise missile, a guided warhead in a perfectly-tailored Armani suit. The automatic doors hissed as he turned right into a large, open-plan lobby, ignoring the bewildering array of incredibly rare plants in their faux-gravel beds along the walls.
The pretty blonde behind the desk jumped up at his entrance, holding out a thick green folder and flashing him a nervous oh-god-it's-the-boss smile. Harry barely spared her a glance, taking the proffered file and striding on.
A bespectacled secretary, who had been waiting right behind the door, dithered in his wake. 'Mr. Osborn, sir…your eleven o'clock…?'
'Cancel it.' snapped Harry. 'Are Elmore and his buddies here yet?'
'They're waiting for you in the boardroom, sir. But your eleven o'clock-'
'Chris, if it's not in this folder right now I don't want to hear about it.' The young head of Special Projects flicked the green file smartly under his secretary's nose and swished through another set of automatic doors. 'I've got to patch things up with the Mindmap team fast. I didn't like Elmore's tone last night. The last thing we need is them pulling on us now - it's practically the only thing keeping us afloat after that goddamn Fusion fiasco. I'm gonna be in there for twenty minutes max and I do not want to be disturbed. Got it?'
'Uh, yes, Mr. Osborn, sir.'
'Good.' And Harry Osborn scanned his clearance card into the last door, pushing through after the buzz and letting it swing back, heavily, an inch from his secretary's nose.
The boardroom was long, low, and beautifully designed. Photographs of previous board members lined the marble-clad walls, which along with the dark, panelled ceiling had been studded with spherical lights that delivered a soft, uniform glow. A long window ran down the entire length of the room, with a dazzling view out over the city skyline. In the distance, glittering like a band of liquid silver under the hazy clouds, the Hudson River curved across to New York Bay.
The five serious-looking men and women arrayed around the far end of the large table stood up as Harry entered, a large smile lighting up his long, attractive features. He practically bounded into the room, with the step of a variety compere who knows the audience has come along armed.
'Mr. Elmore! Mr. Fleming…Mrs. Jarvis…Ms. Dietrich…Mr. Tavalouris...' He greeted them each in turn, shaking their hands and ushering them expansively back into their seats, before sliding into his high-backed chair at the other end of the table. Lacing his fingers together, he leaned forwards and beamed expectantly at them.
'Now, I understand you're all a little jumpy about the safety of your property. Well, you'll be pleased to hear, I've spoken to the curator of the museum, and he has assured me personally that-'
'A little jumpy?' It was the severe, power-suited woman he'd addressed as Ms. Dietrich that interrupted him, her eyebrows hitching up so far they disappeared into her neat black fringe. 'Mr. Osborn, this is an unforgivable breach of security! The sort of scenario you assured us was impossible!'
'"Unforgivable breach of security"…now, those are pretty harsh words, Ms. Dietrich.' said Harry. 'And I'd like to point out that in the end, the protective measures I had installed did prevent the theft…'
'The only thing that prevented the theft,' said Mr. Elmore, taking a copy of the Daily Bugle out of his breifcase, 'appears to have been the intervention of some sort of…masked vigilante. I don't believe that particular, uh, "protective measure" was mentioned in the contract.'
'I mean, good God, man!' interjected Mr. Fleming. 'What sort of city is this? Crazies flying around the streets on giant webs, maniacs with eight arms…'
Privately, Harry made a mental note to watch out for Mr. Fleming. Anyone who could use the phrase "good God, man!" in everyday conversation without looking at least slightly embarrassed was sure-fire trouble in his book.
'Look, ladies and gentlemen, please don't insult your own intelligence by being taken in by the wild allegations of the gutter press.' he said, smoothly. 'There is no proof whatsoever that Spiderman had anything to do with the failure of the attempt. My own conviction is that these two…crazies, as you said, Mr. Fleming…were probably in on the break-in together.' He coughed, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
'Mr. Osborn.' Steepling his long, bony fingers, Mr. Tavalouris leaned forwards. 'We don't care who organised the incident. All that matters to us is that the security surrounding our device has been found wanting. Alongside the safety of the Mindmap chip, all other matters pale into insignificance.'
Harry looked down and shuffled through the papers in his file, buying time. As much as he hated the supercilious tone of Tavalouris's voice, he had to admit that the man had a point.
Throughout the course of scientific history, no search, cause, or interest has ever been so avid or long-lived as mankind's fumbling investigation into the composition of his own amazing body. And no organ has ever been so scrutinized, so examined and admired, as the one which every human being carries around with them inside the brittle bone cathedral of their skull. That three pounds or so of grey goo which makes us what we are, gives us the capacity to reason and the ability to feel. Even in the bright, technology-fuelled dawn of the early twenty-first century, the brain remained one of science's greatest mysteries, an uncharted miracle realm where only the tiniest fraction of features were known, and fewer still understood.
Until now.
Because, as with any unexplored land, the brain's mapmakers were not long in arriving. It was a long, incredibly involved process, where only the most dedicated were able to stay the distance and see the final result. Slowly, layer by layer, the scientists, doctors, and psychologists of the Mindmap Project peeled back the covers of this complex puzzle box, analysing, scanning, testing, and recording their discoveries.
When the last scan was complete, when the final samples had been discarded, when the last piece of data had been catalogued to perfection, the Mindmap Chip was the result.
Simply put, as its name suggested, it was a perfect map of the human brain. Every twist, turn, and neurone, their position and function, from the smallest area of the crude prehensile brainstem to the fantastically intricate tissue of the cortex. The chip contained information which had formerly been thought impossible to trace. The part that makes us blink when we comb our hair? Parietal lobe, upper right, section 988889666540GC. The bit that makes a grandmaster chess player, or the part that knows how to tie our shoes? Hippocampus, sections 23555366627B and Q respectively. Billions of co-ordinates, each one exactly precise.
The scientific community reeled with shock at its unveiling. Such a device had to be flawed. Human brains were surely too dissimilar, too randomly formed, to afford this much specificication? Heads were shaken, critical articles were published…and then the leaders of the Mindmap Project dropped their bombshell.
The device could adapt.
The technology had taken almost a decade to perfect, but perfect it was. The chip could be given any brain, be it that of a child or a genius or a stroke victim, and it would scan and provide an adjusted model, matching all of the stored data with areas of the subject's brain. It worked on anyone.
Basically, it made all previous attempts at neurosurgery and mapping look like prodding the brain with a stick. A blunt stick.
But projects need money, and after nearly a quarter of a century of work, money was one thing the Mindmap Project didn't have. Their prototype device rocked the world of science, but for a while it looked as if it might remain a prototype if no-one could step forward with the funding.
Luckily a number of wealthy corporations quickly realised the potential of the chip. One of these was Oscorp, specifically the Special Projects division headed up by Harry Osborn. Showing the keen business-savvy which he had inherited from his father, Harry had agreed that OsCorp would pay for the project's further development, providing that Special Divisions would be included in any future success - and that the chip could be exhibited in the New York Museum of Science for a month before it left for Europe, all revenue generated going to OsCorp. The leaders of the Mindmap Project accepted gratefully, with one condition- that the safety of the exhibit was ensured.
Kinda screwed that one up, huh, thought Harry. He put down his file and shrugged.
'What can I say? We've got people working on the museum as we speak. I haven't seen any paperwork yet, but I think I can predict we can have the exhibition open again in a week maybe less.' Picking up an expensive fountain pen, he started to tap it idly against his teeth.
'You may have the exhibition open in a week, Mr. Osborn,' said Fleming, 'but I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere for a star exhibit. The chip is leaving New York tonight.'
Harry nearly swallowed the pen.
'Tonight??'
Mrs. Jarvis spread her chubby, ring-choked fingers against the polished teak tabletop. 'Please try to see this from our point of view, Mr. Osborn.' she said, placatingly. 'We appreciate your offer of funding, but we can not jeopardize our project any further. The Mindmap Chip represents decades of work, and it is the only one in the world, at least until it can be copied. Yesterday's events have shown us that we can't wait to create that copy any longer.'
'The duplication process will take months.' continued Elmore. 'We've had to invent the technology to clone the chip from scratch. Our lab in Paris is waiting to begin the process, and so we're flying the chip over to them tonight.'
'Now, I hear the number of costumed madmen in Paris is at an all-time low,' remarked Fleming. Harry glared at him, completely shaken.
'We have a contract…' he began.
'I believe the term is had.' said Dietrich.
'You can't…'
'Our lawyers inform us that we can.' Elmore coughed gently and produced a thick wad of legal paper from his briefcase. 'Under the terms of the contract, our obligation is forfeit if the Mindmap Chip is harmed or threatened in any way. And not even you, Mr. Osborn, had the foresight to include a, uhh, 'supervillain attack' clause.'
'When the chip has been cloned,' cut in Jarvis, who still seemed to be trying to reduce the tension in the room, 'there won't be such a strong need for security. We can still reserve you first exhibition rights...it'll just be a few months longer.'
Harry shook his head, dazedly. A few months…in that time, Special Projects could be shut down a thousand times over. Just when he thought he might be getting back on his feet after the Fusion disaster, fate had conspired to kick him in the teeth once again.
'You're making a mistake.' he managed.
Elmore spread his hands wide, and to Harry's fury there was a touch of pity in his smile.
'The fact remains, Mr. Osborn.' he said. 'The Mindmap Chip will be driven to Teterboro Airport at nine o'clock this evening, where it will be flown to Paris. And nothing you…or anyone else…can do is going to stop it.'
'Owwww. Nnnhh-'
Crick.
'-OW. Sheez.'
Escher had a very stiff neck. And a stiff back, and stiff shoulders, and arms, and legs. Possibly a couple of her fingers were okay, and her nose wasn't hurting, but that was about it. She'd slept deeply, curled up on the wooden floorboards, and now she was paying for it.
After a couple of failed attempts, she managed to stand up against the damp-blistered wall. She stretched out, her small body arching to its tallest extent. Escher would have like to describe her build as 'slender' or possibly 'delicate.' In truth, she was scrawny, natch. It kind of came as a package with the freckles and the brace.
When her shoulders had stopped complaining, she laced her hands and cracked her knuckles for good measure. Escher was very good at cracking her knuckles. She popped each in turn, creating a sound uncannily like someone treading on king-sized bubblewrap.
Over in the alcove, her captor was once again hunched over the desk, his nose half an inch from the tiny cluster of microcircuitry held delicately in the extended claw of a lower tentacle. A high-precision circuit welder glowed in his fingers as he scored a series of parallel, hairsbreadth lines down the surface of one exposed chip. Another claw braced against the tabletop, compensating for the slightest involuntary movement. His eyes narrowed in an expression of complete concentration…
Pop snap crick.
Escher finished with her tenth finger, and started back again in a lesiurely fashion.
Snap ka-pop click.
There was a silence. After a moment, the welder started to glow again-
KLICK.
Doctor Octavius swung round, his upper left tentacle dropping hastily to catch the welder before it hit the floor.
'Don't. Do. That.'
Escher stopped, but as the man turned back to his work, she spotted something she'd overlooked the previous day. Lying on the floor beyond the desk, half-hidden behind a crate, was a patch of familliar purple and black.
'Hey!' She waved, the chain on her wrist rattling loudly. An arm snaked up behind the chair back, opening to expose the scarlet 'eye' at its centre. There was a sigh.
'What is it?'
'That's my bag! Over there by the crate. Can I have it, please?' Interpreting the following silence as uncertainty, she pressed on. 'Come on, it hasn't got a phone in it or anything, I swear. Just some books and my lunch.'
'I know.' said Doctor Octavius. 'Not that you could make a call from anywhere around here in any case. Cellphones don't like these.' The arms twitched.
'Oh.' Escher regarded the nearest claw. 'I guess you've got some kind of weird, futuristicky x-ray thing in there, huh? So you can see right through the bag. Like in airports.'
'No, I just unzipped the top and looked.' said the man shortly, turning away. But Escher wasn't going to give up so easily.
'So can I have it? Now you know it isn't bugged or whatever? I'm really, really hungry,' she added. 'And sometimes when I'm hungry, I get these headaches, and-'
'If you get it, will you be quiet?' interrupted Doctor Octavius.
'Absolutely.'
'Fine.' And an arm shot out, the curve of one jointed finger slipping through the strap of her bag, slinging it through the air into her lap. Escher ran her hands over the worn cloth straps, the rash of bright metal badges pinned to the front pocket casting discs of light across her face as she looked up.
'Thank you.' she said quietly, to the chair back.
Otto, who had once again picked up the welding tool, stopped short for a moment as he registered these words. Then he focused once again on the half-finished circuitboard in front of him, and was soon absorbed in his work. Minutes slipped by, his eyes flicking back and forth from the complex blueprints propped up in front of him, labelled in his own neat hand, to the tiny thing taking shape in his fingers.
All of the four smart arms were now curled around the desktop, heads open, viewing the work from every side, ready to correct the slightest error. He needed them for this, needed them to process the multi-angled input that his own senses couldn't cope with. Microelectronics was an unforgiving art - one minute slip could mean hours of work down the drain in less time than it took to blink. He couldn't be so precise on his own…not yet, anyway.
As he worked, however, he slowly became aware of a small noise, a dry, repetitive scratch. After about three-quarters of an hour, he found that he couldn't ignore it any longer. He knew that despite the best efforts of his arms, a few rats still managed to find their way inside the warehouse, and it was one of these he expected to see as he gradually flexed a tentacle up and around, the head opening fully to take in the whole of his decaying lair.
No rats. Just the girl, sitting cross-legged in the corner, apparently just as absorbed in the book on her knees.
Not quite, though. Framed in the distorted, high-contrast vision of the robotic eye, she glanced up, then back down at the page. A pause, then up, and down again. And all the time, her right hand was moving across the paper…with that constant, rustling, scratching noise…
Drawing.
She was drawing him.
He lunged around, the two lower claws already hitting the floor, propelling him upwards and forwards. Behind him, his upper arms lingered to place the unfinished circuitry back on the dust-protective stand, than snapped over his head towards the girl.
Escher just had time for a startled yelp before her world turned upside down, accompanied by a sound like a cobra going one-on-one with a lawnmower. Hanging by one ankle, her dark hair falling across her eyes, she felt her sketchbook being torn from her grasp.
'Hey!' She struggled, but her ankle was held in a vice-like grip, just tight enough to hint that things could get a lot worse. Shaking her hair clear of her face, she saw two claws take hold of either cover of her sketchbook, brace themselves…
'NO!!'
Lashing out with her free foot, more by luck than design, she caught him in the chest. Otto wasn't hurt, but he was taken aback at her desperation.
'That's my sketchbook! All my stuff's in there!' She tried to kick him again. 'All my drawings…hundreds of hours worth!' She was utterly frantic, her voice cracking with urgency. 'Take the page, don't tear up the book, it's all my work! Don't you understand? All my work!!'
Otto stared at her. From her inverted view, her blood rushing deafeningly in her ears, he looked completely dumbstruck. A couple of years passed.
Then suddenly, he let her go. The floor tumbled up to meet her and she folded her arms protectively around her head, but a tentacle snaked underneath and let her down safely, if clumsily. The sketchbook hit the ground a few moments later, its covers slightly bent, but otherwise unharmed. She grabbed it, holding it close to her chest as she backed into the corner.
'I'm sorry.' He was standing a little way off, his back to her. The arms, retracted as far as they would go, trailed on the floor. Without their full, imposing span he looked different…smaller.
'That's okay.' she said, carefully. 'It's not damaged.'
'No…I'm sorry that you had to get caught up in all of this. It's…it's not fair that you should suffer for my mistake.' The empty space between them sucked at the words, giving them a hollow quality.
Escher blinked. She felt out of her depth, on the edge of an ocean of complex adult emotions, huge things that her fourteen years had ill-equipped her to deal with. I think I preferred it when he was ignoring me.
She edged forwards, almost to the extent of the chain. 'I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.' she said. 'You were…I mean, you were probably desperate. And…well, everyone makes mistakes…right?'
When there was no reply, she opened her sketchbook to the last page, where a half-finished, eight-limbed outline traced across the paper. Carefully, she tore the page out down the spine and held it up, towards the nearest of the mechanical arms. She held it there until her arm began to cramp, but just as she was about to put it down, the arm stirred, opened its head, and took it from her. She saw a couple of thin, fine manipulating pincers grip the paper beneath the bulky claws, and finally understood how they were able to perform such delicate tasks.
The arm moved around, disappearing into the folds of Doctor Octavius's long coat. Came back empty. Then he turned, the other arms still contracted and hanging behind him, and his expression was new to her.
'Let me show you something.'
whooo ouch I have such a pain in my shoulder dang it. and my PC table is one heck of a mess of reference books yay I like complaining. like you can NEVER find the right National Geographic issue when you want it, it's a law of physics or nature or something. anyway. cellphones? izzat right? over here we calls 'em mobiles. kuh-razeee.and how weird was it that someone found the escher thing i put up under my halley42 addy on deviantart, and made the connection? verreee strarange.