Chapter Twenty-Eight: Robots In Disguise

For Peter, getting settled in his new home was relatively easy...primarily because he was rarely there to begin with. He had two jobs to juggle, after all, and that took up enough of his time without adding college to the mix. Strangely enough, Annabelle was barely at home either - yet the fridge was always fully stocked and sometimes he'd find a weird new art project on the kitchen table.

Today, however, Peter was in the middle of a horrendously overdue assignment when Annabelle peered into his room. She held a strawberry roll-up in one hand and two tickets in the other. Apparently, between his best friend going psycho and his home being destroyed, he had completely forgotten about the ARGENT Defence Hardware Presentation; a convention that Annabelle had given him tickets for a few weeks ago, and that he had been overwhelmingly excited for until his life fell apart...again.

Though Peter didn't feel completely motivated to do anything but sit in his room, he simply couldn't refuse an opportunity to hang out with Annabelle. Especially not if it had anything to do with science.

When they arrived the entire building was packed with new inventions and hardware. Peter could make sense of every single device with merely a glance...but Annabelle didn't seem to fully grasp what she was looking at.

For example, Annabelle was currently squinting at a strange contraption inside of a cylindrical glass case before her. It appeared to be some kind of high-tech harness with all sorts of cables running along its length.

"Hey, what the hell is this?" She called as she slapped the back of her hand against Peter's shoulder.

The off-duty Amazing Spider-Man (not currently Spider-Man but still 100% Amazing), lit up like a lightbulb. "Oh cool, yeah that's the...uh..." He then started furiously clicking to himself, trying to recall the name of the product on display. "I think it's called the X-S or something, as in Extreme Situation."

"Extreme starts with 'E', stupid people. What is this, the nineties? So what does it do?"

Peter, glad that someone was actually interested, continued, "It's a telepresence robot that's used to interact with dangerous objects or environments from the safety of a lab or control centre."

He approached the case and pointed at the various components as he spoke, "You see these things all over the arms and legs? They're motion tracking nodes, filled with gyros and sensors that track movement. The goggles are built from a modified Oculus Rift, so it too has motion control. All of this takes the input and sends it to the X-S unit."

"It doesn't look like a robot, I thought you said it was a robot." Annabelle prodded in confusion.

Peter cocked his head and sighed. He pointed to the other case on Annabelle's right that was directly next to the first one, which contained, who could've guessed it, a robot.

"Oh." Annabelle added.

"Yeah...so when you wear that stuff over there, this robot will copy whatever you do." Peter explained, trying very carefully to limit his use of jargon seeing as Annabelle clearly had no idea what he said that last time.

"Why would you need a copycat robot?"

"Well, the applications are pretty broad. This kind of technology is already being used in explosive ordnance disposal; the bomb squad can defuse a device without risking their own lives that way. In terms of scientific research, it's much safer to send a robot to an active volcano to take geological samples than it would be a human, and same goes for space exploration. However, it's argued that your standard robotic drones or rovers could achieve the same results and carry a greater array of built-in scientific equipment. I feel like the portability of human skills is probably its best selling point, though. You don't need to fly an engineer down to a remote construction site to perform sensitive repairs when you can strap the motion trackers on him and have him do it from the other side of the planet."

And just like that, ladies and gentlemen, Peter Parker had once again lost Annabelle Lee. It was far too difficult for him to not use the otherwise useless science vocabulary he had built up. She took a bite of her chocolate bar then asked, with a mouthful of it still getting grinded down, "What if you put the motion stuff on the robot?"

"What?"

"It would be this crazy endless loop. Because the robot is meant to do what the harness thing does but it's wearing it. Would it go insane and want to kill itself like those guys in Robocop 2?"

"It would...just do nothing."

"Well that's mega boring." Annabelle's eyes lanced away from the X-S unit and settled on something in the distance, on the other end of the convention floor. "Cool, what's that?"

Without a care in the world, Annabelle drifted off into the crowded space, leaving Peter to try to wade through the sea of people.

Most of the people at this event were rich business dudes, military sponsors, and members of the press. There weren't a lot of normal people around, but the fact that there were any at all spoke volumes to Peter of the company's new direction. ARGENT had always been very traditional in its management and didn't really prioritise connecting with the public until now.

By the time Peter found Annabelle, she was gawking at a set of robotic products on a wide display stage. They were organised in pairs; one humanoid in shape, and the other...well, it was a motorbike. Each pair was painted in different colours to denote various potential customers such as the police, army, and S.H.I.E.LD.

"Peter, is that a robot programmed to ride motorbikes? That's amazing." Annabelle beamed.

Peter scratched the back of his head as he prepared to let her down easy. "Well, it's even better than that. It's a robot that can turn into a motorbike that a human can ride."

Nodding, Annabelle seemed to be slightly disappointed at how she wasn't going to see robots pedal down the street in bicycles any time soon, but was intrigued nonetheless. "Woah. It's a Transformer?"

"Yeah. Basically. It's designed to be a partner for cops. I heard they're going to start mass-production really soon...and these must be the final models. They've added some purely aesthetic shaping to the casings, maybe trying to make it all look a bit nicer." Peter's voice declined into a mutter as he started getting into the nerdy stuff. "Jo Kimble's never been one to overdesign mechanical systems. I reckon they had an artist rework some of the outer design so it could look more appealing for investors."

"Cool." Annabelle said, despite not having really listened to the back half of that.

Peter looked to the left end of the stage and saw a young woman sitting behind a desk. She had her feet up on the table and was face first in a novel. Peter instantly recognised her as Jo Kimble, mechanical engineer at ARGENT and project director of the COBRA units. She was one of those people with a severe case of 'resting bitch face'. "Speaking of Jo Kimble...I think that's her right there."

Annabelle slinked over to Peter's side and nibbled more of her chocolate. "She looks a little scary...like she'd rather be at home listening to satanic death metal."

"She's never really done any press. I mean...she did do a video interview for the Bugle but it didn't go that well."

Peter reached into his bag and removed a copy of an old peer-reviewed journal, more specifically 'Contemporary Mechanical Technologies' volume 23, issue 6. It contained one of Jo's first published works, an article called 'Dynamic Framing In Robotics: Prototype Test Findings'. With this in hand, Peter approached the desk and said rather terribly, "H-Hi. How...How's it going?"

Jo's eyes, which revealed the pitch black colour of her dead soul, slowly inched up from her book and locked onto Peter's.

"If it isn't too much trouble...I was wondering if you could sign this for me."

With the speed of a venomous snake, Jo snatched the journal from Peter's hand and glanced at the cover. "Huh." She said to herself.

Jo reached inside her jacket and pulled out a pen. "You do this often?" She asked, voice as dead as roadkill. She quite possibly thought that Peter was a loser for getting someone to sign their research article like they were a rockstar.

"Y-Yeah. I've got Otto Octavius' original thesis signed by him. He's...well, he was nice until he went crazy." Peter started. "Your article was really cool too. I mean before this was published, the concept of flexible skeletal structures hadn't gained much popularity in the field. I've been following the development of the dynamic framing ever since I read this."

Jo quickly scribbled her signature across the cover of the journal and said, "Didn't realise it's been seven years since I wrote this. The 'dynamic framing prototype' I wrote about was something I put together in my garage."

"Woah...really? Now you have a whole line of robotics that relies on it as a key system. That's pretty awesome." Peter chuckled like a dork. "I have a question, actually. Why did you choose to make the COBRA's patrol mode humanoid?"

Jo handed the journal back to Peter and cocked her head.

"That's a...good question. We did a lot of deliberation on what it's patrol mode should be. At first, it was possibly going to be a reconfiguration of the pursuit mode, so it was going to be on wheels. No arms, no legs, no head. But eventually, we realised that they needed to be able to access all infrastructure that human officers could. They needed to be able to use stairs, open doors, enter houses, that kind of stuff. So it was only practical; we live in cities built for humans. Also, if they could use human weapons, it would cut costs significantly; we opted for hands so they can use any firearms given to them, and we wouldn't need to integrate weaponry."

Peter smiled and nodded. "That makes so much sense. Thanks."

Annabelle had finished her chocolate bar, so she started to get a little restless. "Can I sit on the motorbike?" She blurted.

Peter sighed heavily as he clutched the journal to his chest. Jo crossed her arms and gave Annabelle a once over. She turned to Peter. "She your girlfriend?"

"Yes. I-I mean, no! No! N-No. But she's my friend...and roommate...and a girl." Peter stammered.

Jo blinked rapidly at Annabelle and finally answered. "Yeah. Sure. I guess."

Annabelle's eyes widened. "Oh my god, thank you so much! You're the best!"

She bolted onto the stage, leaving a bewildered Peter behind in shock. Before long, he joined Annabelle as she straddled the COBRA that was in the motorcycle mode and urged Peter to take a photo of her using her phone. Next minute, it had become her new display picture on Facebook.

Peter had almost forgotten about the last month of his life until he spied a small television in the back corner of the room. It was muted, but the image that appeared on the screen was enough to fill him with so much guilt that he almost felt sick.

A picture of Harry Osborn had been placed next to his lawyer, Matt Murdock, who was being interviewed about the outcome of yesterday's trial. Peter had watched it from afar that day, but couldn't bare to actually enter the courtroom. Matt had managed to convince the jury that Harry was only a pawn that The Green Goblin had used - and that his weakened mental state prevented him from realising the dangers that the goblin presented. Harry was no longer suspected of being the villain, but was admitted into a mental health facility for an undisclosed amount of time.

Any joy that Peter had felt immediately vanished. He had no right going to science conventions with Annabelle when his childhood friend was locked in a psych ward... He had no right to be doing anything at all. The fact that he had forgotten about Harry, for even a second, tore at his soul like a sharp blade. Nothing could console him after that. Not even Annabelle's hand being placed upon his shoulder.