Chapter 6

The rest of the school day was uneventful and boring to say the least. Finally done with classes however, I was excited to go find out what was in store for me from Dr. Nelson. I weaved between the many students rushing towards the buses as I made my way to her office. Once again, thanking Mr. Flannigan for the map.

I knocked on the frosted glass door of the head of the Science Department’s office. She was given a very large corner office on the second floor of the Science wing. Once I had her permission, I entered to see a room decorated very differently from the rest of the school.

While the school building itself had a façade of red bricks, the hallways inside were bleached a pasty yellow. Dr. Nelson’s office looked like it belonged in a different building entirely, however. It was all glass furniture and pristine marble floors. The décor was minimal and very stylish in my opinion; it was an office I would love to have.

The school must have been quite desperate to have her here, to allow her such liberties with her office. She seemed to have spared no expense, purely for the sake of it. I could not imagine that she even used this office much, being a full-time researcher. She probably only used it when she needed to write emails or make calls.

“I hope you’ve had a good first day Mr. Parker,” said Dr. Nelson almost belatedly, after I had waited awkwardly by her desk for a few seconds. She was still completely focused on the document she was writing but she added, “Please, take a seat.”

I sat and waited several minutes longer, busy with my own thoughts. It looked like she would take a long time and I was beginning to worry that MJ and Liz would be delayed. Regardless, I simply glanced around the room. I was certain Dr. Nelson would not appreciate any interruptions.

“It is good that you are patient,” she said as she put the papers aside. “You’ll find that interrupting me while I’m working is a sure-fire way to piss me off. I would much prefer you remain one of the few people still on my good side, Mr. Parker.”

I perked up at that.

“Yes! This day can be salvaged, yet!” I intoned grandly in my head. I was beyond relieved that my reputation with Dr. Nelson had not been completely demolished simply by associating with Flash.

Her initial reaction to seeing Flash and I “talk” was extreme to say the least. We were barely even making a noise so her instant dislike of me was baffling. I could only imagine she has had some bad experience with Flash, or she just really didn’t want some pipsqueak high school intern to babysit.

Dr. Lynn Nelson was a tall but lithe woman. Her hair looked like it had been brown at some point but had spontaneously decided to turn blond, resulting in thick dirty blond curls. She wore a no-nonsense white shirt and black pencil dress skirt. The outfit would have seemed aged on her not-yet-thirty person, but it was very well fitted.

She carried herself with confidence. Which had the downside of getting a lot of male - and probably some female - students to take her classes, only to flunk out later.

Despite her relatively young age for a teacher, she was seen as amongst the strictest at Midtown High. Her disdain for her classes and occasionally her students was well known. She knew the school would put up with almost anything, evident in her occasional complete disregard of propriety when dealing with pesky students.

Midtown High was desperate to rekindle their connection with a re-emerging Baxter Foundation and Dr. Nelson looked like she intended to take full advantage of that.

“Come on, let’s show you what you get to play with,” she said mirroring my thoughts almost exactly.

Dr. Flynn had opened a drawer and tossed the documents she was working on inside. With a long sigh, the visibly relaxed woman got out of her seat and walked to the door. She opened it for me and gave me an almost impish grin, “You’re going to like this.”

What followed was a walk through Disneyland.

The facilities available to Midtown High could not claim to be state of the art, but they were still a far cry from the cave paintings I’ve been dealing with.

The Chemistry Lab would enable me to run tests using a whole host of new materials. Not to mention the industrial grade chemicals the lab had permission to use. Just basking in the presence of the decommissioned AIO Manufacturer from Stark Industries in the Robotics Lab made me giddy.

I enjoyed the tour that Dr. Nelson was almost proudly giving despite her rather vocal dislike of her humble role as the Head of Science for a High School. Every now and then she would interpose the tour with titbits of information about the projects currently underway in the many, many labs of Midtown High. To be fair, not all the work was particularly interesting but the sheer amount of real research being conducted at this public school was just disproportionate.

Just goes to show the power of Stardom. All this was likely only possible because of the school’s connection to its alumnus, the late Franklin Storm. Father and mentor to the top researcher Sue Storm, founder of the Baxter Foundation; Franklin Storm’s influence in the scientific community was palpable. Donations from both the Foundation itself and the slew of parties trying to curry favour with it had made Midtown a fortunate beneficiary.

“So,” started Dr. Nelson as she ushered me through yet another frosted glass door. “Finally, this is my lab.”

Like many of the other labs, it was in pristine condition. After further inspection I realised it was a little too pristine. Not a single item in the lab was misaligned. The decoration, the spartan comforts and even the smell spoke of a high functioning, obsessively clean individual.

This is going to be such a drag.

I would not say I was messy. I am carefully disorganised. There is a difference. And with Peter Parker’s frankly astonishing memory at my disposal, it was inevitable that I would prefer to simply toss things around and catalogue its location.

I placed my backpack neatly in a locker and followed the Doctor into the lab.

Once inside she simply nodded approvingly and got right into it, “Now given the school’s management’s latest idiocy I am stuck with you. I’m at a bottleneck with my research and unless you know more about neuroplastic learning algorithms and linguistic computation than I do, you are useless to me.”

I refrained from the obvious confirmation that I indeed did not know more than her on either of those topics and she continued, “Yet, you are now officially my student lab worker and if you don’t want me to scrub my name off your records you’d better get up to something productive around here.”

The woman had been becoming increasingly agitated, no doubt once again frustrated at this school blindsiding her. However, she composed herself easily with a small breath, “Kindly, refrain from bothering me while you work. As important as you may think your dilemmas may be, I assure you they are not comparable. I do not have the time to babysit you, unfortunately. Neither do I want your assistance, nor do I require your assistance-”

She cut herself and pulled a phone to her cheek. I blinked, that was abrupt. Where was she even keeping that cell phone, I wondered baffled as I tried my best not to eavesdrop.

“Oh! It’s here already?” she asked excitedly. “Yes, well it was rhetorical. Transport the equipment to lab sixteen and I’ll have my assistant swipe you in.” She paused, and visibly calmed herself. “Yes, my assistant will be with you momentarily.”

“I need you to do me a favour.” Gone was the cell phone and I was once again faced with a slightly ticked off Dr. Lynn Nelson.

But I couldn’t help it, I grinned.

So much for not needing my help.

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Once I got my very own Midtown High access card, I grabbed my backpack and started to make my way to lab sixteen. The building was thankfully very well organised. The labs were labelled sequentially in order covering all the departments. Unfortunately for me, this meant I’d have to walk a department over and two floors down to get to lab sixteen from twenty-one.

Thanking Mr. Flannigan seemed to be a theme for the day as once again I benefited from the lovely map. I decided to take the stairwell by the fire exit rather than walk to the middle staircase of the building or wait for an elevator. In a more modern building these doors tend to be locked magnetically until a fire alarm is tripped but this building was probably built way before that was popular.

I was skipping two steps on the stairwell at a time when a sound broke me out of my frantic descent. Someone was muttering and sniffling and they were only just around the corner. My pause in movement made me just too late to get a look at who it was or what had happened.

On any other day, my curiosity would probably have gotten the most of me. But as it was, I had a task to do. And it had been a long day. So instead of poking my nose in other people’s business, I carried along down the stairwell.

It was not long before I was waiting outside lab sixteen. But there was no shipment equipment evident.

I groaned, why didn’t I take Dr. Nelson’s business card or something.

I waited around for a few minutes hoping that the delivery would arrive quickly. I would probably need to get to the football grounds soon. Before I could check my watch however, I heard sounds from inside the lab.

The heck?

Fumbling my shiny new keycard out from my wallet, I swiped myself into the lab. The lack of audio feedback from the reader before I tried the door made me wonder if it was even working. I did not have long to ponder however because it looked like the delivery guys were already inside.

The room was dark and rather musty. In fact, I concluded this was the most neglected lab at Midtown High. The edges of the room were lined with tables stacked with all sorts of scientific instruments and gadgets. It looked like a bit of a dumping ground, to be honest.

“Um hey guys, what’s up?” I said a bit awkwardly from behind them as they struggled with a massive cabinet. The cabinet was covered under a sheet and resting on a sturdy pallet. It looked like I had interrupted them as they attempted the brutal task of getting the cabinet off the pallet and onto the only free table. From the looks of the tables around it, it was very newly liberated.

Of course, a few muffled grunts were all I got for a response.

So, I waited.

Tapped my toes for a bit.

“Maybe taking the sheet off before trying that would have been a good idea?” I asked, to fill the silence if nothing else.

“And I’d do that if the crazy bat you call your boss didn’t threaten to claw my freaking eyes out!” exclaimed the man on the left side of the pallet. He had his hands under the wooden platform and was trying to squat lift it off the ground. His position left nearly no space for his head and his words were oddly muffled by the cloth invading his face.

I roll my eyes at that; how would she even know? A moment of contemplation later though it occurred to me that she probably would find out. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was monitoring us now - the control freak that she is.

I glanced around the room and found my prize in the top right corner. A solitary CCTV camera with 360 degrees of vision, probably. I gave it a cheeky grin and turned back to the two struggling souls behind me.

The two delivery men had presumably mustered up their strength while I was looking for the camera as I turned to find the cabinet securely on the table.

“Right then-” started the man on the right when the theme song for Super Mario Bros. started playing out loud from behind me. I whipped around looking for the source when I remembered it was my ringtone and my phone was in my backpack. Feeling a bit sheepish, I had to complete a three-sixty degree turn to face the conversation again, but I used the momentum to slide my bag off my shoulders in an effort to play it off.

I barely used my phone for taking and making calls. I couldn’t remember the last time I had even heard my ringtone so let’s give Peter a break, shall we?

Even stranger than getting a call in the first place, it was from an unknown number. This was particularly odd because I had very religiously kept my visible footprint as small as possible. That kind of information leak would be a huge danger to Uncle Ben and Aunt May. I had no Online presence to speak off and I’ve always loathed giving my phone number to services only to have it sold to spam callers anyway.

“Um, hello?”

“Mr. Parker. I have left the premises; it slipped my mind to inform you. Please ensure you lock lab sixteen and find your way home. That will be all for today,” barked an easily recognisable voice.

“No problem Dr. Nelson. Thank y- Geez, rude much?” I looked at the phone a bit disgruntled.

‘Welp, my work here is done. All I need to do is usher these two clowns out and lock the door.’ I thought, as the two aforementioned clowns were attempting to stretch each other’s backs into feeling a bit more comfortable. My eyes however slid to the veiled cabinet behind them.

‘Unless…’

I could not help the slightly manic grin that grew on my face.

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With the delivery guys gone and the lab door securely closed I approached the cabinet with a small amount of trepidation. On the one hand Dr. Nelson was no longer in the building so it was unlikely she was monitoring me. On the other hand, her call was perfectly timed and from what she said she had already left so maybe she really does have some remote access to the video feed.

Decisions. Decisions.

Technically she never forbade me, from looking at it. In the end, I reasoned that a peek would not hurt. And boy am I glad I did. The content of that cabinet was the single strangest thing I had seen since my arrival. Even the footage of the Hulk was just that: footage. It simply could not compare to seeing the weirdness of the Marvel Multiverse first-hand.

Under the sheet was a cabinet made of glass, a protective housing of some sort for the real package. The package itself was about the size of an overhead suitcase. It was made of a translucent crystal-like substance and seemed to be filled with some sort of green fluid. Oh, did I mention it also contained an off-colour, off-size, very human looking brain?

The organ was at least twice the size of the average human brain and had a leathery purple texture. Every now and then the fluid would light up as if the brain was sparking. It reminded me of those Tesla lamps you get at gift shops.

“So cool…” I breathed, my eyes wide in awe. I had no idea what it was, but I assumed it was some sort of processor to help in Dr. Nelson’s research. I would imagine observing this strange abstraction between a real brain and a physical processor would help her improve her models.

I wonder where it came from though. Not many people would have the knowledge, ability, and resources to build something like this. Running my hands along the base of the cabinet brought forth no further clues. For a moment I thought I found a button but pressing it down did not seem to do anything and releasing it simply brought the button flush with the base once again.

It was clear the button had not done anything, and I blessed my stars that was the case. Keeping in mind it is location, I continued my observations. Staying far away from the solitary button on its base.

Only once I was done canvassing the entirety of the cabinet did I realise just how much time had gone by since school ended.

“Shit, Liz is going to kill me!”