longer.blue

The call came unexpectedly. People rarely used phones anymore, and if they did, it was to convey top-secret information. Quantum networking made hacking into such things a literal impossibility, as the qubits would immediately show if they had been observed by another entity. "Who the heck is calling me?" Peni asked no one, then pressed her finger onto the phone to answer it. "Peni?" Uncle Ben's voice came through the other side. Her lips thinned. What did he want? "Uncle Ben?" Despite her best effort, she couldn't hide the slight incredulity from her tone. "I know... no. This isn't the time for platitudes. I need to see you. At the office, as soon as you can get here. This is serious." "Oh! Okay, I'm at the neighborhood store. I'll be there as soon as I can." She made eye contact with the store owner, who gestured her over. Peni paid for her American dog and a few pockys, then exited the establishment into the pouring rain. The call ended and she slid her phone back into her pocket. There was no high-tech umbrella for her to use, just a normal parasol that she'd left at home. She clutched the bag with the items inside to stop water from getting in, then darted across the wide mag-street and walked toward Parker Industries headquarters, entering into a squat gray security structure to be scanned before she could fully enter inside. Water dripped from her hair onto her clothes and she shuddered while she made her way through the pristine corridors of HQ. Her hand pressed against an access point and the door opened noiselessly. A quite chime rang through the room. Uncle Ben leaned over a conference table with a hologram displaying the broken SP//dr unit. He wore a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled back, a royal purple, and his hair was an untidy mess. The deep bags under his eyes painted a picture of how little sleep he'd gotten lately, and his tie had been stuffed into the back pocket of his slacks. "Peni." He cleared his throat and didn't look right at her. She stepped fully into the room, each move hesitant, until he gestured for her to sit down. "I have news from the board." Oh, great. The board. The totally out-of-touch board of nepo babies that had taken over the company shortly after Aunt May's death and vowed to make "substantial changes" to their operations. Her brows knit together and she jerked the seat from underneath the table and collapsed into it, then used her heels to scoot herself closer to the table. Her chin rested on its cold surface. "Give me the good news before the bad news," she spoke glumly and Uncle Ben sighed. In defeat or irritation, she wasn't sure. "The good news is, you have another mech you can operate. Theoretically. The bad news is, the board is tired of you not being out there. The purpose of the program is for SP//dr to be out, fighting crime, for the image of the company. That's the only reason the company logo is on SP//dr's shoulders; they want the publicity. To make the public know that it was Parker Industries that saved them." The truth rapidly dawned on her. "They want me to pilot VEN#M. Or, let me guess, they'll pull all our funding?" Uncle Ben nodded solemnly. "Quick on the draw, as usual. You have three days to either fix SP//dr or get into the VEN#M and pilot it." "Did they say anything about what happened to May and Addy?" she asked, heat injecting into her voice. "I'm an incredibly expensive asset for them. No one else is bonded to the spider. If they lose me, then they lose almost a billion dollars worth of asset." "If they thought about that, they didn't say it." Uncle Ben shook his head. "You can't do it, Peni. I can't lose you, too. I can't lose- you're the only one I have left!" He threw his hands up, then placed his hands on his hips and stared at the wall, away from the table. 💭He doesn't want to look at me. He's worried this might be the last time he'll see me. "I'm tired of losing people. I don't want to- no, I *can't* stand the thought of losing you, too." The chair flew back and Peni ran around, only to stop right beside him. He turned and looked down at her. She hoped he only saw determination in her eyes. "I hated that thing for a long time," she admitted. "I hated the thought of the VEN#M mech. I thought- I thought you were trying to replace me. Trying to show me that you didn't need me anymore." Uncle Ben opened his mouth to say something and she raised her hand to forestall him. "Just let me finish. The SYM engine was rushed, but it's also not something from our world. Right?" "It's... from space." He reluctantly admitted. "Our deep space exploration probe sent it back to us through the QTN. It has incredible regenerative properties, and it feeds off of a few simple chemicals." "I met something like it, through the timestream. Anyway. I think I can make VEN#M work for me. Or, I think I can forge a bond with it where I won't get..." "Eaten," he supplied, and she nodded. "It's too dangerous, Peni," Ben folded his arms over his chest. "I can't allow you to try." "If I don't try, then we get our funding pulled!" she pointed out loudly, stomping her foot. "Is that what you want?? Every project will be shut down!" "Of course that's not what I want! I want SP//dr up and running so we never have to use that awful thing! It killed two people!" "But you don't know that!" she pointed out. "You don't know that they're dead! The symbiotes on the other worlds, they don't eat their hosts like that! They augment them!" "This ISN'T THEIR WORLD! Their reality! It's OURS!" he pointed out, matching her tone word for word. "Our universe's laws may not follow theirs! That's the nature of the multiverse, the point of it! There are entire universes, realities, made out of LEGO!" "Why didn't you get rid of it before?" she asked accusingly, pointing at his chest. "Was it cuz you knew there might be a CHANCE that they could be alive?" "I-" he started, then stopped. His shoulders slouched in defeat - a defeat that brought a pang of hurt into her chest. "I just... didn't want to see it at all. Not just losing my wife, my beloved May, but such a promising student... Addy Brock had everything to pilot it, to excel at it. I thought with you and her defending the city... we'd be safe. So I shoved it in storage. Gave it enough of the chemical cocktail to keep it running, just in case we ever... figured out what to do." Peni couldn't remember the last time she saw him look so defeated. "I'm going to do what they didn't. I'm going to bond with it. I'm going to reach out to it, not out of fear, but out of a desire to understand. To connect. It's been alone for four years in that storage bay. I need to show that I'm not going to toss it to the side." Peni stood straight, more determined than ever to show that this was something she could do. "I'll give it three days to make sure I really can't fix SP//dr, then I'm using VEN#M. If we lose funding, I can't do what the other Spiders can. I can't hop on walls and stick to things and lift a magcar and throw it, or stop a train with a bunch of web. I won't give up. But I'm not them. And if this is what the board wants... so be it." A memory of talking to the other Ben rang through her mind, of ridiculing the thought of another Peter Parker selling the Spider-Man brand to another company, and now she was here, defending the board's position and promising to do what they asked of her. Peni walked out of the room before Uncle Ben could offer another objection. She heard a chair creak, then turned right before the door and glanced over at him. He was hunched in a chair, his hands clasped over the back of his head, his elbows propped on the table. Was he crying? "I'll do what they couldn't. You'll see," she muttered under her breath, and then walked out of the room.