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New York's a big city. Eighty million people and growing every day. They say New Yorkers speak every language known to humanity. If you don't count programming languages, I only speak two. You'd think in a city that big I'd feel alone all the time. But I don't. Not since I met SP//dr, and especially not since I met my interdimensional spider family. We met by accident, took down a criminal mastermind on purpose, and parted ways seemingly forever. But I knew it wasn't forever. I couldn't let it be forever — and it wasn't. With the help of Professor Reed Richards I opened a gate to the home world of Miles Morales, and then Peter B, Gwen, Noir and Ham. Traveling to them was easy, and safe too, but there was no way to warn them. You just ended up right where they were, for better or worse. We nearly made Ham fall off the rooftop of Daily Beagle HQ. I decided then and there that I had to fix that. I had to find a way to get in touch with my friends without exploding into their universes all at once…
The day I finally worked out how to communicate across dimensions started out pretty normally, all things considered. It was the first week of October, the school Halloween Festival was on the horizon, and in the space of just a few days Professor Reed Richards and I had made dozens of trips across the multiverse. I'd been living life at full throttle, and boy did Aunt May let me know it.
"Keep me up to date," she said as she clunked a bottle of synthmilk down next to my un-milked bowl of cereal, "On everything…"
She meant the multiverse trips. I replied, "I will, I promise. But you can't tell Mr. Osborn."
She gave me a serious look, "I won't. I promise."
That's when Uncle Ben strolled into the kitchen, "What's all this about promises?"
Aunt May smiled, "Nothing, dear. I was just asking Peni to let me know if anything comes up at school. We don't want another Mysterio situation, after all."
As I poured the milk on my cereal I heard Uncle Ben take in a sharp breath, "God, no."
With the cereal poured and ready to eat, SP//dr crept down from his perch on my shoulder and settled on the rim of my bowl to nibble at the chocolate UFOs. He liked chocolate almost as much as I did. Almost.
Aunt May got one last bout of worrying in as I went to the front door and dragged on my shoes.
"You can always ask for help with those, you know?"
Her eyes were on my laces, which were a heaped mess of tangled knots. I couldn't get them tied properly no matter how hard I tried. Dad always used to tie them for me.
"Aunt May," I explained, "If I let you tie them, I'll never get them off my feet!"
"One day I'll teach you."
"One day I'll get Mr. Osborn to change the stupid dress code."
At school I shuffled into position next to the empty space where my girlfriend, Cindy Moon, used to sit. The last time I saw her she confessed that she'd developed a fear of the outside, and refused to leave her apartment. Since then she'd missed almost a whole week of school. So I decided: if she can't leave her home, I'll just take her home with me.
"Can you see the smartboard okay, Cindy?" I asked the surround screen camera I'd placed on our desk. Back in her apartment she was, in theory, wearing a VR headset.
The camera replied, "It's like I'm there! Except shorter. Like, a lot shorter."
"Hang on," I said, and using my phone I instructed the camera to levitate in the air, "Better?"
"Much better. Thank you for this, Peni."
"Don't mention it."
Even without looking I could feel the other students staring at us.
Cindy asked, "They can't hear me, can they?"
"Uh…" I pulled my Oscorp NeuroSound earphones out of my backpack and placed them over the back of my ears. Then I fiddled with Cindy's camera some more, "…they can't now."
Soon my homeroom teacher arrived — fashionably late as ever. When I told her that I wanted tomato pasta for lunch again she tried to convince me, "We have pizza, nut roast, tofurky. I hear the chef cooks a mean mushroom stroganoff!"
Clearly something in my expression told her it was hopeless cos before I'd even said anything she sighed, "Okay, I get it. You like your pasta."
Tomato pasta specifically. Earth's greatest comfort food. The cafeteria specials changed every day but I stuck to my guns and ate my favorite, rain or shine. I couldn't imagine not having tomato pasta.
I also couldn't focus on class. My mind was in another dimension — metaphorically. While Professor Banner discussed molecular biology I was running numbers in my head, trying to work out how I'd transfer information across dimensions in the same way supermarket transmitters transferred food from their stores to people's houses. Sometimes my mind would drift further. I'd see myself walking my spider friends through Central Park, or showing them the little ice cream place (Sergio's Scoops) on the corner of 1st and 73rd. I imagined us in the huge Sugar Hill Gaming Arcade, right by the innermost sea wall. We could go up the wall together and look out across the outer layers of the New York Sprawl, not that it was much of a pretty sight. But it was unique! And then we could—
A loud buzzing ripped me from my daydream. It was coming from under my desk.
"My backpack…?"
I realized then that Professor Banner had stopped speaking. I stared at him open mouthed, "I… uh… one sec—"
I yanked open my backpack and pulled out my phone. It was an Oscorp alert — alert level 3, meaning a direct attack on Oscorp HQ.
Oh boy…
I stuffed the phone back in my backpack, along with my school tablet, and slung it all over my shoulder.
"Sorry Professor Banner, sir!" I said, hoping I looked as apologetic as I felt, "I've gotta take this."
He waved his hand, "Don't worry. I was told you might have to zip out from time to time."
I was already halfway through the classroom door, "Thanks for understanding!"
The mech was parked out front. I hopped through the front hatch and flopped into my pilot's chair. Soon SP//dr found his spider-sized cockpit, and then, like melting into the world's comfiest bed, our consciousnesses fell into blissful synchronicity. My arms became quiet and numb and my mind became still for just a moment, then all the life of the mech's synthesized innards flowed through me all at once. Its skin was my skin, its eyes were my eyes. I was ready. We were ready.
I grinned, "Alright SP//dr, let's see who Mr. Osborn ticked off this time."
Somehow I couldn't bring myself to swear, even when Aunt May wasn't around. Although of course, she was around nowadays.
"Peni?" came her voice through the mech's comms.
"Aunt May! We're heading your way now. Are you all safe?"
She sounded unsure, "We're safe enough. The attacker, he… well he's trying to get into Oscorp Tower."
"Don't worry," I said, "We'll stop him!"
"Maybe you should go back to class."
"What? Are you kidding me! This is a level 3 alert! I mean, you know how I feel about Mr. Osborn, but if someone's attacking the tower—"
I swung down Park Avenue, dipping down through the city's various strata. There were four layers to Manhattan, more or less, like a really grimy cake. The top one, layer four, was where all the really rich people lived. The peak of the tallest building in layer four, the Sky Needle, was over thirty thousand feet (nine kilometers) above sea level. Each layer was about three thousand feet tall, give or take, though the real difference between them was fanciness rather than height. In the Bronx there was no layer four. Up there everything was layer one, no matter how high you went. Oscorp Tower went from the bottom of the city straight to the top. Luckily for me though it had a sort of exclusion zone all round it, to make it almost impossible for someone to approach in secret.
You know, I should take the others to see the Sky Needle. I bet they'd love the views!
SP//dr fed my mind footage from the security cameras around Central Park. As clear as day I saw two stringy, metallic limbs wheedle their way down through the nest of skybridges connecting the park to the buildings along 5th Avenue. It almost reminded me of the Doctor Octavius I saw in Miles's universe.
No… it can't be…
More and more information poured into my brain, courtesy of Oscorp's all-seeing security network. Seismic readings, satellite imagery, and of course SP//dr's own musings. He didn't think in words, he thought in pictures, and he thought fast. I was smart, super smart, probably smarter than anyone else on Earth, but even I could only handle the enormous influx of information thanks to how well our minds meshed together.
As soon as Central Park South was in view I saw the culprit. A man in a silver suit with huge, stretchy legs. He was up so high he could reach right into Mr. Osborn's penthouse. Oscorp's private army were firing at him with everything they had, but his suit was so well armored that even their laser blasts bounced right off of him. One of them ricocheted straight into the mech's glass screen.
"Hey!" I yelled, "Cut that out! That's dangerous!"
They ignored my request, so I webbed them up, which I knew would annoy Mr. Osborn. In the past that would've had me worried, but nowadays that was a bonus. He couldn't do anything to me, or to my aunt and uncle. After the chaos with Mysterio I had all of New York on my side. Him? Not so much.
I stuck myself to the wall of Oscorp Tower with my magnetic claws and cuffed the long-legged villain's surprisingly normal-sized arms with a well-placed web blast.
"I don't know what you're doing," I told him, "But it stops now."
"Oh really!?" he replied in a haughty voice, "I think not, little girl! For I am the Sensational Stilt-Man, and none can stand in my way!"
I squinted, "Hang on… Stilt-Man? That's your name?"
"My legs are taller than any building! With my extendo-suit I can reach heights heretofore unimagined by mankind! Nowhere is off limits!"
"Right…" I said, slowly climbing up the wall to place myself between him and the penthouse entrance, "And so you thought you'd stop by Oscorp first?"
He chuckled, "Yes! They have a particle gun that can shrink any matter whatsoever! With that weapon I could make myself smaller and smaller, and then accelerate myself through the little cracks in people's windows at the speed of light!"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, "But… why? Why would you want to do that?"
"Stilt-Man has no need to explain himself! Now get out of my way before I smoosh you like the bug you are!"
I smirked, "You won't be smooshing anything with your hands tied up like that."
"I don't need my hands!" he cackled, retracting his left leg into his torso.
Suddenly my spider-sense kicked in, "Uh oh!"
I dodged just in time to avoid a huge boot from his extendo leg. The leg rammed straight through Mr. Osborn's penthouse, smashing and crashing god knows how many priceless items of furniture in the process.
I'm gonna be in big trouble for this.
Stilt-Man retracted his leg once more. I loaded my web bombs. Once the leg came out again I could stick it to the floor in one big gloopy volley.
"Look, mister," I said, "I don't wanna send you to prison."
"You'll never catch me! I'm invincible!"
"I'm serious," I thought about Oscorp's robotic police force and all the years this guy was gonna get for sticking his foot right in the piranha tank, "There's plenty of ways to shrink objects down. You could just reverse engineer a Roxxon Matter Transmitter. Everyone has one of those."
"No!" he grunted, trying desperately to un-web his hands, "That won't do! They can't shrink living organisms. The process would just kill me! Besides… I… I… oh what's the point!"
I waited, watching as his left leg, primed and ready to strike, slowly lowered itself onto the penthouse balcony. His right leg came after. Now he was completely normal sized. Up close I could see that his suit was a lot less primitive than it seemed at first. He was completely sealed in his metal can, no cracks or weak points. The mech's sensors told me that his armor was actually nanotech, like mine. Really high-spec.
I hazarded a question, "Did you make that yourself?"
"This?" he tilted his torso forward, examining himself, "I made the legs. My… wife… made the body."
He was still struggling with the webbing. I took a step closer, "I can remove that for you, but you've gotta promise not to do anything stupid."
"She was right. I'm an idiot, a laughing stock. All those years spent designing these legs, for what!?"
I carefully dissolved the webbing using a nozzle on the mech's forearm, "I dunno, I think extendo legs are pretty cool."
"They were meant to revolutionize public transport," he lamented, clunking his butt onto the floor, "But no one needs stilt legs when you can just take the RoxRail. Even elevators are more convenient than," he motioned to his legs, "these!"
I opened the mech's hatch and stood in front of him unarmored. SP//dr watched over me from inside the mech, but we both knew that, for the moment at least, we were safe. My spider-sense wasn't tingling even a little.
I said, "I still don't get why you wanted to shrink, though."
"I…" he sighed, "I just wanted to apologize to my wife. For spending so much time on these legs, rather than our marriage. She won't speak to me. Won't reply to my messages. She's threatening a restraining order."
"Not sure sneaking in through her window will make her any happier."
He held his helmeted head in his metal hands, "What am I supposed to do!?"
"I…" had no idea. Though I knew someone who did. "…I have a friend who might be able to help, but he's…" in another dimension, "real far away right now."
"It doesn't matter. Nothing can help me," he sobbed, "there's no way to get through to her. No matter how tall or small I become, nothing can pierce—"
"Wait!" I cried, clapping my hands to my mouth, "That's it! Oh my god that's it! I don't need a huge wormhole to transfer the information! I only need a really, really small one. Just big enough for the information to pierce through it!"
Stilt-Man sat upright, "Excuse me?"
The wormhole would only need to last for as long as it took to transmit the message to the target dimension.
"This is perfect," I grinned, "Thank you so much Stilt-Man! I swear I'll repay you somehow!"
"Wait, I don't understand—"
"You'd better run. Like right now," my spider-sense pressed against my brain like a hot boulder, "I get the feeling that a lot of Oscorp guys are coming our way."
He quickly climbed onto the balcony's fence, "Don't you work for Oscorp?"
"Technically, yes."
Then I heard their voices, "It's the intruder! Get him!"
Stilt-Man didn't delay any longer. In a flash he extended his legs all at once and launched himself into the air, flying down 59th street like a gigantic bullet.
"Well SP//dr, I think that's our cue."
The last thing I needed was a front row seat to Mr. Osborn's impending rage fit. Besides, I had to tell Professor Richards my idea right away.
[I'm thinking it could work like this] I typed into my phone, explaining my calculations and drawing up schematics while SP//dr swung us back to school.
[We could insert the technology into anything, like a watch or a phone. Maybe we could infuse it with Reilly Particles to prevent cellular decay even in people who haven't jumped into a collider recently…]
We reached school just in time to miss lunch. Cindy was still in the same spot she was when I left her. That's the convenient thing about Mason Banks Academy — you don't go to the teachers, the teachers come to you. Currently the room was teacher free, which meant I was just in time for the next class. Not that I could remember what class that was. Cindy's voice fizzed into my earpiece as I sat down at the desk, "Did you see Harry?"
I reached into my backpack and pulled out my tablet, "No…"
"I figured, you know, as your lockers are close together and all…"
"He hasn't replied to my messages since school started back up."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. We couldn't have known."
"I did."
"What!? He told you?"
"He's always had feelings for you. I was the only person he could talk to about it. It's not like he could go to his dad."
"Right… of course…"
"When I kissed you back then, in all the chaos, I didn't think… I wasn't… it was in the heat of the moment. I never believed you'd feel the same way."
I looked into her camera, "Well I do. And I'll make things right with Harry. Somehow."
I promise. I don't know how, but I will.
Turns out the lesson was actuarial science, which is without a doubt the most boring field in mathematics. No amount of clever computer science could make calculating life insurance policies interesting. It's not even something humans excel at. Artificial intelligences love that kinda stuff, but still Mr. Osborn made us study it. Maybe he was trying to prove a point, maybe he just didn't trust an AI with his company's finances after what happened with the Octavius system — who knows.
While the teacher rattled off algorithms and programming strategies I stared at my tablet and daydreamed of better things. I was gonna show the others how the mech worked, I decided. Back in Miles's world there was no time for casual things like that. Then afterwards we could swing down Madison Avenue, maybe even stop by the Madison Square Conference Tower with its glittering shell of electronic billboards. Or not. Maybe they'd prefer something more low key.
Whatever we do, I have to introduce them to Cindy.
We could take photos together, like Cindy and I used to do before all that crap with Mysterio happened.
We'll take so many photos. All of us, together. And I'll find a way to help Cindy overcome her fear. Then she won't have to be alone. None of us will have to be alone in the city ever again. We can be together, always.
"—what do you think, Miss Parker?"
I almost didn't recognize Professor Lansky's voice at first. Then I looked up from my blank tablet and saw him glaring at me.
"Uhhh…"
"Were you even trying to listen?"
I looked at the board and was greeted by a dense block of code.
Cindy spoke into my earpiece, "The expression in his assignment statement is wrong. He wants someone to correct it."
Without thinking I replied out loud, "Oh, right!"
Professor Lansky furrowed his brows. I had to act quick or he'd realize Cindy just helped me.
"Well your expression's all wrong," I began.
"I know," he replied.
"And uh, the best way to fix it is…" I typed something into my tablet, "like this!"
My answer appeared on the board. Professor Lansky folded his arms and grimaced at my solution, "You weren't listening at all, were you?"
I felt my neck become stiff, "I, well, I…"
"It's the right answer," he grumbled, "but that doesn't mean you can just doze off in class."
I'd avoided danger — for now.
I whispered, "Thanks, Cindy. You're the best girlfriend ever."
"You can thank me by bringing pizza over later."
"Deal."
By the time the school bell rang I was desperate to get back in the mech. All I could think about was swinging down to the Reed Richards Science Center to see what the professor thought of my interdimensional communicator designs. I didn't even stop off at my locker to raid my secret candy stash. I did, however, call Aunt May to let her know I'd be out.
Professor Richards was practically leaping off the walls when I arrived at the science center.
"Peni this is brilliant!"
The last time I saw him this excited was when he finally activated the warp gate in one of the center's enormous back rooms.
Leaning on a desk littered with gadgets and gizmos he told me, "I think we'll be able to do much more than just send messages! With a bit of tweaking here and there I think we might even be able to open up wormholes to those universes of yours anywhere we like! Ah, but…" his expression became pained, "It'd require an enormous amount of energy. Far more than any handheld device could hold. I suppose I could design a compact battery…"
I raised my hand, "How easy do you think it'd be to make a device just for the messages?"
He paused, confusion strewn all across his face, "Why? What use would that be?"
"Well, I was just thinking it'd be nice, you know, to talk to my friends, see how they're doing…"
He pinched the bridge of his nose, "Of course! Of course, forgive me, I'm getting ahead of myself. I've actually already manufactured a prototype. I barely had to change anything from your original designs. It also gave me a chance to try out the new printer. I think I left it… ah yes, here."
He handed me a small black rectangle. It was like a phone, but uglier.
He explained, "You push this button to turn it on. It has a rudimentary user interface. Do you know how to program in SQUID++?"
"Of course!"
"Then you'll be able to modify it at a computer without issue."
I scrolled through the limited list of functions, "I wonder if I could hook it up to the mech…"
"Oooh! That's a promising idea! With your cold fusion engine you'd have no problem managing the microscopic wormholes."
I plopped the device into my backpack and gave the professor my best smile, "I'll see what I can do!"
Cindy's sofa was softer than most beds. The already floofy chair was floofed up even more by a mountain of blankets and cushions. If I wasn't nestled in Cindy's arms I would've been swallowed up completely.
"The idea," I explained, "is to give each of my spider friends one of these. Then with the tiny wormholes we could message anytime we like, like you and I do on Chatbubble."
She strung a thread of webbing from her fingertips and weaved it idly around her thumb, "Do I count as one of your spider friends?"
"No…" I said with a smirk, "you're my spider girlfriend! And you've got really good at managing your webbing now."
She chuckled, "I've had a lot of time to practice…"
I watched as she unwound the webbing from her thumb, squeezed it into a little ball and tossed it into one of the empty pizza boxes littering her family's old coffee table.
She asked me, "Can all your friends spin webs?"
"Two of them can, just like you. The rest have to use synthetic webbing. I think you'd like them, you know. And they'd definitely like you."
"I'm not so sure about that."
"Of course they'd like you, silly! They're weird!"
That got a genuine laugh out of her, "Thanks?"
I kissed her cheek apologetically, "You know what I mean! Neither of us are exactly normal."
"Can't argue with that. You're the weirdest person I know."
"Well I happen to know a talking cartoon pig."
"Is he shorter than you? Asking for a friend."
"Cindy I will kill you."
She squeezed me against her and kissed my head, "SP//dr won't let you. He likes me too much."
"He's a vicious killer. You just don't realize it. SP//dr, attack!"
On cue, my eight-legged best buddy scampered down my arm and onto Cindy's hand, where he gave her the gentlest little nibble a spider could give.
Cindy giggled, "That tickles!"
"Cower in fear, mortal!"
"Is that what he's saying?"
I shifted around so that I was facing her directly, "No, he's saying your skin smells nice."
"Oh yeah? That's not just you speaking?"
"We're a symbiotic consciousness, Cindy. What he thinks, I think."
She smirked, "Alright, so what do you think, then?"
I stared at her lips, "I think…"
Suddenly I felt nervous, like I was a million miles away, "I think… I need to double check his hypothesis."
Her smile drew me in, reeling me closer, so close I could feel her breath on the tip of my nose. She whispered, "Don't let me stop you."
I whispered back, "I won't."
Back home, after dinner and a shower that I was coerced into by Aunt May, I lay in bed, cocooned in my comforter, staring at Professor Richards's prototype interdimensional communication device. I had it hooked up to my phone, ready for reprogramming.
"Computer conshmuter," I mumbled to SP//dr, "We could reprogram this thing with our eyes closed, isn't that right SP//dr?"
He agreed. If he could close his eyes, they would be closed right at that very moment.
"I'm gonna make one for each of them," I told him with a yawn, "In different colors. I'll make it so we can do voice calls, text messages, even send video."
He thought that sounded like a great idea. He showed me images of me and the gang chatting across dimensions in the middle of the night, all chilling happily in our beds.
"Exactly," I said, "Just like that…"
I felt SP//dr bury himself in my hair. He liked to sleep there at night. Maybe cos it was dark, maybe cos it was soft, maybe cos it was so knotted it reminded him of a spider web. It was hard to tell. But when he was holed up in there sleeping, a strange sense of peace washed over me. It was washing over me now.
"You sleeping already…? Gonna miss out on all the action…"
My eyelids were beginning to droop. But I wasn't ready to sleep. Not yet. I had to get the communicator set up. I needed to speak to them right away.
"I'll visit them again tomorrow," I promised myself, "I'm sure they'll be free this time…"
Last time I accidentally caught Noir in the middle of a shootout.
"We'll talk every day," I said in a voice that was barely a whisper, "And then when they visit my world… I can show them… everything…"
I didn't notice that I'd dropped the communicator beside my pillow.
"Come on SP//dr… we've gotta finish this thing…"
But he was asleep. And a few moments later, so was I.