Peter could barely contain his excitement. He'd seen the spiders in passing previously, but hadn't been allowed too much time to sit and watch them. Doctor Connors had four others supporting him, each of them a student in one of his Genetics classes, all older and more obviously qualified than Peter.
But Connors had shown faith in him, in that near silent manner of his. The geneticist's face was generally a mask, giving away little. But he had inquired about Peter's plans after high school. When Peter replied that he wouldn't be able to afford the fees charged by NYU, Connors offered to put his name forward for a scholarship.
"I'm not doing it as a favour," he had passively replied. "You've a sharp mind, and you've done the menial tasks without complaint. The scientific community needs to get people like you access to training."
His face was frozen in seriousness even at this moment. There was none of the warm, paternal pride of Uncle Ben, or the kind of enjoyment that he had seen Harry's father, Norman Osborn, display when he endowed others with his philanthropy. Instead, Doc Connors had made what he considered to be a factual observation, and that was all there was to it.
Peter could not be passive in the same way. In fact, during the day, he'd thought of little but the spiders.
Novum aranea, Connors had called them – 'new spiders' in Latin. Created by combining the genes of existing spiders, to create an entirely new breed. It seemed a remarkable achievement to Peter (and speaking to others, it seemed that it was) but Connors insisted that it was only a minor achievement, a step to something better. Dogs crossbreed and expand the genetic possibilities all the time, he'd insisted. The aim of his project was to take control of the process of evolution, which meant understanding which genes would produce which traits, to a greater extent than his earliest attempt.
The job now, for Connors and his interns, was to track fully which traits the animals (spiders, rats and mice) had, as individuals and as species.
Peter sat, looking through the glass cage. There were six spiders - three male, and three female, each of them about big enough to fill his palm. Though the males, in general, were larger than the females, there wasn't a huge difference. In fact, one of the males was noticeably smaller than the other two, smaller even than two of the females. The smallest male (Peter quickly nicknamed it 'Tiny', much more memorable than Connors' name, SPM001-02) was often bullied by the others. They took away food Tiny had gotten to first, as well as pushing him from the exercise wheel. Peter thought of Billy Baker, several years older than him, who'd bullied him mercilessly when he first started high school. Many things were different for these spiders - not least the fact that they had no genetic parents - but some truths were universal.
In time, Peter became more and familiar with his subjects. He could recognise each of the spiders without needing to refer back to the notebook. He bought a cheap, disposable camera to photograph each - he wasn't much of an artist, and thought this would be an easier way to keep track of any changes over time.
They were quite beautiful - once you overlooked their row of eyes, with pincers in front. The body itself really was stunning. A vibrant red and blue, the patterns differing on each spider.
Peter nicknamed another of the spiders Billy – both for his behaviour, and because the striped blue and red pattern reminded him of the style of jumper Baker often wore.
More importantly, their ability to shoot webs was beyond anything Peter could find in the textbooks. Rather than painstakingly weave the webs, the novum aranea could shoot webs across the cage, then pull themselves across on them straight away.
There was a thick tree branch, rooted upright, which to scale must be the equivalent of one of the larger oaks in Central Park. But none of the six seemed to have trouble hitting it from ground level, and pulling themselves up in a matter of seconds.
He sat and watched their interactions in awe for several minutes, forgetting to even take notes.
They really were remarkable.