Chapter Text
“Facial recognition promises to bring the disciplinary power of panoptic surveillance envisioned by Bentham - and then examined by Foucault - into the contemporary urban environment. The potential of facial recognition systems – the seamless integration of linked databases of human images and the automated digital recollection of the past – will necessarily alter societal conceptions of privacy as well as the dynamics of individual and group interactions in public space.”
MJ furiously scribbles into her notebook as Dr. Surkan clicks through to the next slide of their presentation, her fingers cramping with the effort it takes to keep up with the brilliant professor’s rapid pace as she struggles to tune out the endless clicking of the laptop keyboards around her and shield her eyes from the harsh blue lights.
Scholarships will cover a lot, but after tuition and housing expenses they don’t exactly leave much in the budget for the latest electronics – even if you are attending the country’s preeminent technological school – and so MJ has to make do with a good old-fashioned number two, some lined paper, and her well-honed ability to ignore things that don’t matter and focus on what does. Not that she really minds, though; she does some of her best thinking on paper, and the lack of funds for extra supplies just makes her that much more motivated to win the new Stark Scholarship that Pepper Potts introduced during her campus address last week.
Her phone buzzes against her leg, momentarily breaking her concentration, and she shifts so that she can slip it out of her back pocket. She tucks the brown unruly curls that have fallen loose from her bun behind her ear, and a quick glance at the screen tells her it’s Ned asking for the third time this week if they can splurge on dinner and eat something other than the soggy vegetables and flavorless fruit served at The Howard. MJ rolls her eyes and ignores it. Sure, the food in their designated dining hall sucks, but it’s included in their housing plan and that makes it good enough.
As if on cue, her stomach grumbles embarrassingly loudly, and with the sound comes the memories of her father’s spicy vegetarian chili with its warmth and flavors that heat her up from the inside out. She does a quick mental tally of how many days are left in the semester before Christmas break. She can make it through a few more weeks of cheap grilled cheese sandwiches and cantaloupe that tastes like feet if it means almost a month of home cooking when she’s done. She might even treat herself to coffee and a donut from Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop while she’s home, too, just for old time’s sake. A small reward for finishing her first semester at MIT. It’s silly, but it kind of feels good to picture entering the café as a successful college student now dressed in her favorite leather jacket and jeans, rather than a verbally abused employee with no future stuffed into a hideous shade of teal.
“More strikingly, psychological theory linked to facial recognition technology holds the potential to breach a final frontier of surveillance, enabling attempts to read the minds of those under its gaze by analyzing the flickers of involuntary microexpressions that cross their faces and betray their emotions.” Dr. Surkan’s voice brings her back to the present, and MJ quickly puts her phone away and resumes her notes – mentally pinching herself for getting distracted even for a second. The winter break will be nice, but she has to earn it first.
It’s an interesting course, all about gender and technology, and one of her favorites, but it’s been a steep learning curve adjusting to the intense pace and elevated expectations of such a prestigious university. Midtown High had pretty high standards of excellence, but it doesn’t compare to what MIT is asking of her, and even though she’s really smart (it’s not bragging if it’s true, especially if it’s just a thought in your head that nobody else can hear), MJ has to work hard to keep from falling behind the mountains of homework. It’s as if each professor has forgotten their students are taking four or five classes at a time, rather than just their one.
Fifty pages turn in sync as the class flips to the next page in the reading Dr. Surkan handed out - an article about urban surveillance and panopticism that MJ finds slightly terrifying (artificial intelligence being able to read her mind sounds like a nightmare after the whole Ultron thing a few years ago) and she highlights the paragraph Dr. Surkan is citing just as a flash of red and blue catches her eye.
She shouldn’t look. She knows what she’ll find and it won’t be something that will help her get an A on the final paper. It’s a distraction. Information irrelevant to both her current situation and her overall life. But the student whose laptop screen is pinging with notifications sits at an angle in the row in front of her and it’s practically impossible not to look at the Daily Bugle article when it’s positioned so directly in her line of sight.
(At least, that’s what she tells herself when she sucks in her breath and starts speed-reading the article over the other kid’s shoulder.)
Public Menace Spider-Man caught aiding Scorpion in laboratory theft near Madison Square Garden!
MJ snorts under her breath at the hyped-up title. She’d expect nothing less of the Bugle and its leading lunatic reporter – J. Jonah Jameson. He loves to cast the webslinger as a villain and hardly an issue gets printed without something negative written about him or his exploits. More than a few people listen to Jameson’s raving and believe him, but MJ finds that the harder people try to convince her Spider-Man is evil, the more she’s inclined to see the good.
She chalks that one up more to her contrary nature than some sort of naïve belief in the inherent goodness of people, or whatever. That, and it’s hard to hate a guy whom Ned idolizes so much, even if he does swing around New York City in red and blue spandex.
Does he ever have to take a break to throw up? she silently wonders. If it were her swinging around Manhattan like that, she knows for certain it would make her sick.
Closer inspection of the picture the Bugle’s blasted at the top of the page only adds to her conviction that Spider-Man and Scorpion aren’t the friends Jameson is trying to make them out to be, as it’s pretty obvious the thick slab of steel that used to be the door to some sort of vault is lying on top of Spider-Man after the Scorpion threw it at him – rather than the result of a botched forced entry on his part in some attempt at teamwork gone wrong. She doesn’t know how the Bugle always seems to get the best pictures, but you’d think eventually they’d notice all the details she does that point to a hero, not some evil vigilante.
I hope he’s okay, she thinks, then quickly dismisses the thought. Jameson would be shouting victory from the top of his lungs if Spider-Man had been killed, and the whole world has seen him lift heavier things than a steel door – even if it is huge and at least three feet thick. Still, she can’t stop the involuntary spasm in her chest as the student in front of her zooms in on the gash in Spider-Man’s arm. There’s a strip of pale skin visible beneath the streak of blood, and MJ makes a small note in the margins of her paper even as she swallows down the sudden burst of concern.
“Scorpions hunt spiders you know,” the guy happily whispers to his friend, oblivious to the glare MJ shoots the back of his head. “Too bad this new guy didn’t kill him. It’s not right he never paid for what he did to Mysterio.”
“Nobody knows what really happened on that bridge,” his friend whispers back. “The London police said they couldn’t determine what was controlling those drones, and Stark Laboratories would only admit the equipment had been stolen without giving out any other details.”
“Come on, dude,” the first kid scoffs, “don’t believe everything the government tells you. It’s all a cover up to protect Spider-Man - the Bugle proved it in their five-piece editorial six months ago.”
Whatever his friend’s response is, MJ doesn’t hear it. She’s overheard enough iterations of this conversation to last a lifetime. She was there - in Venice, in Prague, in London - she remembers seeing Mysterio fight the Elementals and then the sudden appearance of thousands of drones at the Tower Bridge on that fateful afternoon. Remembers somehow ending up in a room with Harold "Happy" Hogan of all people, fighting for their lives (it makes sense he was in the city, given the drones were Stark technology, but she’s still not sure how he ended up running from them with a bunch of high school students).
But she also knows Spider-Man was there, too. Not just in London, but in Prague where they tried to pretend he was some other, new superhero called Night Monkey. How he was connected to Mysterio and the Elementals, she doesn’t know, but she’s certain he was there trying to help. And no matter what other people say, she’s certain Quentin Beck wasn’t all he appeared to be - even if she can’t prove it. Every time the news shows a picture of him in memoriam her instincts scream that his smile couldn't be trusted.
Forcing her thoughts back to the lecture, MJ continues taking notes - refusing to let herself become distracted again and successfully ignoring any talk of Spider-Man throughout the rest of class. It took a lot to get to MIT, and she isn’t about to waste the opportunity daydreaming.
Gender and Technology is her last class of the day, so as soon as Dr. Surkan dismisses them, she stuffs her arms into her heavy winter coat and slings her backpack over her shoulder. Her stomach grumbles sadly at the disappointing options waiting for her back at the dorm.
The winter air hits her like an icy punch to the face, stealing her breath away and sending shivers all the way down her spine into her scuffed-up snow boots. Winters in Queens could be cold, but the weather in Boston hits different. The temperature sits below freezing more often than not, and they’ve been bombarded with endless snow advisory warnings for the last three weeks. Her phone buzzes with more updates from the National Weather Service these days than it does texts from Ned, and that’s saying something.
A few students are brave (or stupid ) enough to ignore the cold, and an enthusiastic snowball fight breaks out in front of the rotunda. Students either stop everything to scoop up some fresh powder and start throwing it at their classmates, or pull their hoods tighter and make a run for it.
MJ watches the display for a second, wondering what it would be like to join in. Maybe, somewhere in an alternate universe, she’s one of those popular girls who has no problem making friends, but in this reality she seems doomed to brutal honesty and poor social skills.
“You can’t marry Captain America, Maddie, he’s dead.”
MJ turns towards a group of girls, exactly the type that an alternate version of her might be friends with, who are all standing in a loose circle under a tree, sipping coffee and apparently debating the marriageability of the Avengers.
“So?” the one apparently named Maddie retorts. “Liv picked Iron Man as her fuck and nobody complained then.”
“That’s because she could have fucked him at some point, but to be eligible for marriage the person still has to be alive.” The first girl replies, then pauses and adds, “And I guess they still have to be alive to be eligible for kill, too.”
“This game has too many rules.” Maddie juts out her bottom lip before taking a long drag of her coffee, and the first girl rolls her eyes.
“You next, Bri. Fuck, marry, kill - the Avengers version.”
The one named Bri taps her chin, staring up at the cloudy skies overhead for a second before answering. “Fuck Thor, marry Doctor Strange, and kill Hulk. Thor’s got the body, but I want a wizard for a husband.”
There’s a lot of squealing and general agreement over the potential fucking of Thor, but MJ ignores that in favor of scowling at the mention of Doctor Strange instead. She’s not sure why, but she’s always disliked the mysterious wizard with his perfectly coiffed hair and trimmed goatee. It makes absolutely zero sense, given that she’s never met him, and so she’s never said it out loud because it would sound insane, but any time his name is mentioned she gets this feeling like he’s personally offended her somehow.
Maybe she just has an irrational distrust of superheroes.
“I don’t care about killing any of them,” a tiny blonde interjects, giggling uncontrollably, “I just want to fuck and marry Spider-Man.”
The other girls all groan in unison.
“We know, Ella.” Maddie playfully shoves her giggling friend. “You want to have his spider-babies.”
There’s a familiar dull throbbing in the middle of her brain and for one fleeting moment, MJ can feel fingers laced with her own and a strong hand gripping her palm, but it’s gone before she can fully appreciate or analyze it, leaving behind a tingling phantom sensation that feels different from the winter chill.
A lonesome pang thrums through her body, making her shiver in a way the snow can’t, but it isn’t this group of happy girl friends and their easy camaraderie she envies. She’ll never be the type of person who stands around giggling or wants to spend her free time talking about boys (not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not her personality) - it’s just that she can’t shake the persistent feeling that something’s missing from her life, but she can’t figure out what.
The throbbing in her head fades as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind an empty feeling that drains into her chest, and MJ tucks her hands under her armpits and quickly marches past the group of girls towards the towers of Maseeh Hall she now calls home - zeroing in on the icy sidewalks and the wind biting her nose and blocking out any other thoughts about superheroes or loneliness.
She’s just homesick for the apartment she shares with her dad back in Forest Hills and the familiarity of New York, that’s all. It came with its own difficulties, sure, but it’s where she grew up. It’s home in a way Boston never will be. But every freshman probably feels this way as they adjust to a new city and a new school. She isn’t special.
And she’s lucky, because at least she has one friend she can always count on to be there.
The dining hall attendant swipes her student ID card, and MJ kicks the snow off her boots and unwraps her thick knitted scarf as she walks towards the table she normally shares with Ned - his easy grin and small wave greeting her the same way they always do and helping ease any residual chill.
“Hey, loser,” she greets him the same way she has since the day they first met, her voice laced with affection, and she steals a chair from the table nearby - spinning it around and taking a seat even though there was an empty chair available next to him. It’s a thing they both do sometimes, a habit they share, even though there’s never anyone else to join them.
“They’ve started recruiting for next year’s clubs.” Ned slides a pamphlet across the sticky tabletop before taking another bite out of his half-eaten burger, a single wilted lettuce leaf dangling precariously out of the bun. “Maybe we should try signing up for something. They have a puppy lab here!”
“What’s a puppy lab?” MJ lifts the pamphlet with feigned disinterest, already toying with the idea of trying out for either the debate team or the newspaper - somewhere she can productively channel her burgeoning political activism.
“It’s a club studying the scientifically-proven stress-relieving effects of animal interaction to improve the state of community mental health and wellness,” Ned rattles off the official description, before shrugging. “Basically you get to hang out with puppies for an hour every week.”
“I’m not sure how impressive that would look on a resume,” she helpfully points out, setting the pamphlet back down between them and glancing towards the buffet to see if anything looks even vaguely appetizing.
Ned smiles, unconcerned with future career applicability. “It would be fun, though. What about this one? That could be us next summer!”
He points to the picture of a bunch of students playing ultimate frisbee on the quad, and MJ wrinkles her nose. “Yes, just without the frisbee… and the smiling.”
The strange deja-vu returns, and she scrunches her eyes shut to block out the grey light from the windows while she waits for it to pass.
“Headache again?” He asks, and MJ wordlessly nods. “Me too.”
They sit there in shared silence for a moment, and MJ wonders if shared brain tumors can be a thing between best friends. Or some strange tether as a result of going through the Blip together. Maybe everyone who disappeared for five years experiences these weird moments, not just them.
“Do you want something to eat?” Ned moves to get up once he’s finished his burger, sipping the remnants of his Coke, but she stops him with a wave.
“I’ll just grab a sandwich and a banana and take it up to the room.”
Their dorm room is identical to all the others in the building; white walls, plain utilitarian furniture, twin beds elevated high enough to fit flimsy particle board bins underneath. The standard college freshman fare. But they’ve managed to make it their own. What once was bare space is now covered in posters, class notes, textbooks, jackets thrown haphazardly over the backs of chairs, sneakers kicked aside in the corner, and sketches of various spots around campus that MJ has drawn when she needs a break from studying.
When they first moved in, Ned helped her hang curtains down the center so they could both have their privacy, and he’d been generous enough to offer her the far side of the room with access to the window overlooking the Charles River. Her stack of art supplies rests precariously on the ledge where she’d left it after drawing a cardinal that had been perched on the tree outside - a bright flash of red against a backdrop of white.
The pegboard in the middle of the wall is something they both contribute to, a shared project Ned started one day by pinning up an article about Spider-Man that talked about where he was most frequently sighted and that MJ pretends is just a dumb, fleeting hobby - who wouldn’t be interested in unmasking superheroes that seem to have a connection to all the places you’ve been? - even though seventy-five percent of the scribbled notes currently pinned up belong to her. She makes a mental note to add the scrap about his skin color she’d written down earlier in class.
The LEGO Death Star, however, is entirely Ned’s.
“You finished it.” MJ kicks off her boots and hangs her coat up on their wobbly coat rack before crossing the room to take a closer look at Ned’s favorite pastime. “It looks good.”
“ Almost finished,” he corrects her, taking off his own shoes before flopping down on his bed and pulling out his phone - already scrolling through TikTok. “I’m missing Emperor Palpatine. You know -” he makes a crazy motion with his hands that MJ realizes is supposed to mimic force lightning, “- the bad guy.”
She rolls her eyes and peels her banana, wheeling around his desk chair and folding herself into it with one knee propping up her chin. “I know who the Emperor is, Ned.”
“I can’t find him anywhere. I guess I must have lost him back home when I was packing for school. I’ll ask my Lola about it when I’m back there for the break.” He laughs quietly at something on his phone, and her phone buzzes with the notification that he’s sent her a video.
This is how the rest of their night will be, homework and TikTok, and MJ finishes her banana and tosses the peel into the trash before retrieving her books and notes from her backpack with a sigh.
It’s not a bad life, really. She shouldn’t complain about being lonely when she’s here at her dream school with her best friend surrounded by all the education and opportunities she could want. She just wishes she could shake the feeling that something is… missing.