Chapter 6: From Yesterday, by Otto Octavius

"On a mountain he sits,

Not of gold but of shit,

Through the blood he cannot

See the lives that he took...

From yesterday, it's coming!

From yesterday, the fear!

From yesterday, it calls him,

But he doesn't want to read the message yet!"

30 Seconds to Mars, "From Yesterday"

I can't get over that nagging feeling in my mind. I have discovered that there are large chunks of time missing from my memory, my psyche's efforts to shield the scientist I once was and still am from the actions of the supervillain I became after The Accident. There was a time when I could not remember robbing banks, or rebuilding the nuclear fusion experiment, or battles held on elevated trains. I only knew what Doctor Octopus did from what I read in the papers. His mind was shielded from mine; my life was increasingly compartmentalized, separate from itself until the recent efforts to rehabilitate my life.

When I realized that I was him, and he was me. Some experts concluded that my mind had been taken over by the artificial intelligence of my arms, but I was the one who went along. A suggestion is not coercion, although I was afraid that if I resisted, they would destroy me. They will not; we are too interdependent. Perhaps I listened to them because I was desperate to rehabilitate my dream at any price.

With the changes I made in the invisibility bracelet, their voices are mute. They cannot speak to me, cannot seduce me into choices I'll regret. But it won't last. After three years, my four metal arms have become as natural to me as my two human arms, and hearing their whispering, bio-computer-generated voices twenty-four-seven is just a way of life. I have already repaired the bracelet twice; eventually my body will reject it as it might a foreign organ or a virus. I hope that moment will not happen in front of May.

The cheery voice of the laptop exclaims, "You've got mail!" I race towards the computer, opening the email program. May's letter is a bright spot among the spam.

"My dearest Oliver,

I do hope all is well with you. This letter is to let you know that I have accepted your offer of a second date. After dinner, I propose that you should visit my apartment in Queens, where you will meet my only living relative, my nephew Peter. He is like a son to me; my husband Ben and I raised him after his parents, Ben's brother and sister-in-law, died while abroad. I think you would love him; he is an excellent student and a scientific genius. I believe for his first year at Empire State University, he wrote a paper on nuclear fusion on your brother, Otto. It really is too bad about how he turned out, isn't it?

My older brother Nathan died two weeks before our first date. It was going to his funeral as well as the death of my beloved Ben that reminded me of the finiteness of life and inspired me to start dating. According to Peter, who met with Nathan's attorney, I have been willed his property, including an entire island off the eastern Canadian coast, just a short ride by air or boat. Peter says it has beautiful scenery and forests, and the perfect weather. It would be the perfect place for a picnic—or maybe an eventual wedding!

Best regards, May

Octopus intrudes in my life again, pulling out another memory. Rosie is in this memory, as is a young student, the best friend of my employer, whom he "got through high school science", and a student of my former friend and colleague, Dr. Curtis Connors.

...I had given him a tour of my facility, shown him the machinery intended to control the tremendous energy of fused hydrogen atoms. "So are you sure you can stabilize the fusion reaction?" he asks. I laugh at the absurdity. "Rosie," I exclaim to my wife, "our new friend thinks I'm going to blow up the city!" She rushes to my defense. "Don't worry Peter. Otto knows what he's doing." ...Of course I did... "I certainly know the consequences of the slightest miscalculation." The subject was quickly brought to an end...

I knew her nephew...I might still know him...Another memory floats to the surface of my consciousness.

...The bug runs up to me in a fit of desperation and pulls off the mask of his costume... "Peter Parker," I recognize. "I remember you...brilliant but lazy."...

I could not face May with what I know now. The nephew would never accept me as his uncle. I shake my head. On tonight's date, I must break up with her. I could lie and tell her I didn't really love her. I could lie by omission and say that I thought I was ready but I wasn't. I could give her a half-truth and say it wasn't her, it was me. I could not tell her the full truth, which was that her nephew is really a masked vigilante called Spider-Man and that Dr. Otto Octavius isn't really my brother.

Or I could continue the relationship and depend on the knowledge that Peter is a common male name and Parker is a very common surname. I could depend on the chance that the nephew of which May speaks and the student of my memories could be completely different.

I open the message's attachment and gasp. Shortly after I had received my doctorate in nuclear physics, I had applied to work at Rosslyn Energy Alternatives, accepted by its owner, Dr. Nathan Reilly, before the American government tapped me to oversee their nuclear plants. It was the Cold War, after all.

May had inherited the entirety of Rosslyn. Nathan Reilly was her brother. The island of May's letter was none other than the famous Rosslyn Island, the Rosslyn lsland of North America's largest nuclear reactor conveniently located near a large deposit of uranium and an estimated 10 of the worldwide total of 25 pounds of tritium isotope.

If May and I were to marry, I would get it all.

The decision is made for me. The tide is turned.

Just another day in the life of Otto Octavius, formerly Doctor Octopus.