72
"So, Peter," I began, deciding to drop the scientific jargon and cut to the chase. My voice came out heavier than expected in the quiet room. "In short, you've got a unique potential inside you. One that'll let you develop abilities similar to Gwen's."
Peter had been burning with curiosity, but now he froze. His gaze flicked to Gwen, then back to me.
"This is... serious?" Disbelief and boyish excitement warred in his voice. "This is... cool! But why do I get the feeling there's a big, fat 'but' hiding behind all this 'cool'?"
"Because your intuition's spot on." I allowed myself a slight smirk. I picked up the medallion from the table and held it out to him. The Iron Blood metal felt pleasantly cool against my palm. "Here. This little artifact is a tuning fork. It emits a signal you'll need to tune your soul to. And right now, I'm going to teach you how."
Peter took the medallion cautiously, examining it with the bewilderment of a scientist facing the inexplicable.
"So far, I don't understand anything," he admitted honestly. "What artifact? What soul? Is this... magic? John, these past few weeks, I've been ready to believe anything, but... how's this supposed to work? Do I just tune myself to a frequency and then become like Gwen? And why not you?"
"Too many questions, Pete." I gently stopped him. "I prefer to call this not magic but metaphysics; it's the science of the fundamental principles of reality. You can do this because you're 'chosen,' unlike me. As for the operating principle... it's complicated. But for starters, we need to master the first and most important step. So, put on the medallion, settle into the chair, and close your eyes."
Restraining the dozen more questions that threatened to burst from his tongue, Peter obeyed. The prospect of acquiring powers outweighed his scientific curiosity.
"Excellent," I continued once he had settled. "Now, forget about everything. Concentrate on the medallion. Just sit and think about that barely perceptible 'hum' that it emits. Don't try to hear it with your ears. Try to sense it. As soon as you can anchor this sensation in your mind, nod."
Thanks to Peter's highest compatibility with the Web, I knew this step wouldn't be difficult for him. Three minutes of tense silence passed before Peter slowly and hesitantly nodded. Everything was going even better than I had expected.
"Good. Now that you've learned to hear the external hum, it's time to hear your internal one. Yes, yes. Everyone has spiritual energy. The medallion is hanging right at your spiritual center. As a reference point, imagine the pleasant warmth that sometimes spreads in waves from your solar plexus throughout your entire body. I think you've experienced something similar. Your task is to summon this sensation by sheer force of will and hold it there. The medallion will help you."
Naturally, this was only a crude analogy, but the location of the spiritual center near the solar plexus should help him find the needed sensation. I activated my spiritual vision and observed how the dim spark of Peter's soul began to oscillate almost imperceptibly, in sync with his breathing.
Breathe deeply. Take a sharp, short exhale. On the exhale, pull in your stomach. Concentrate on the sensation.
After I spoke, Peter's spiritual imprint flashed slightly brighter. A barely perceptible tremor ran through his body, creating faint ripples in the Reishi surrounding him. I was amazed by his talent. Maybe my overly complicated plans weren't necessary? Maybe he was an ideal vessel even without me? I dismissed the thought. No. If that were the case, the Web would have chosen him already, not Gwen.
"Now, this is the most difficult part, Peter." My voice snapped him out of his trance. "You need to consciously alter the vibrations of your soul. You must match them to the medallion's signal. To do this, focus on both the external and internal frequencies simultaneously. Don't try to force them together. Just listen to both at once, and let your soul adjust to the standard on its own."
The next half-hour was torture for him. I saw his muscles tense. I watched beads of sweat form on his forehead.
"Don't tense up, Peter. Your resonance is becoming ragged, like an erratic heartbeat! Relax! Let the external frequency guide you. Yes. Like that. Excellent! You've caught the harmonic! Now, hold it! Just hold it!"
After another ten minutes, completely exhausted and drenched in sweat, Peter opened his eyes. He was breathing heavily, but his gaze burned with the fire of understanding. He grasped the principle. I mentally calculated that, despite his phenomenal starting progress, he would still require the full month of daily meditations I had predicted earlier. Five to six hours a day. During this time, his soul would completely restructure itself, becoming a perfectly calibrated receiver. It would constantly and passively resonate with the Web's frequency.
"Five to six hours of meditation, every day, for a month. And then, you'll be ready," I said, giving him the good news.
Peter stared at me, and the delight in his eyes turned to shock.
"A month?" He shook his head. "This is... too long."
"Long?!" Gwen exclaimed, throwing her hands up. Her voice was full of genuine bewilderment. "Peter, people are ready to kill for just a crumb of this kind of power, and all you need to do is endure for a month!"
"I didn't express that right!" Peter immediately backpedaled, realizing how that sounded. "I'm not complaining. I'm optimizing! 'Long,' in the sense that there's a legitimate way to speed this up. All this meditation is essentially just a week of actual time."
"The fatigue tablets," I said, instantly catching the direction of his thoughts. "The only problem is that the human brain isn't built for seventy-two hours of continuous concentration. Even if the body doesn't tire, the mind will simply break."
"Precisely," Peter agreed, and his eyes lit up with the excitement of a scientist encountering an interesting problem. "Sensory deprivation will cause hallucinations. Neurochemical imbalance from the accumulation of metabolic byproducts and stress hormones will lead to mental burnout. And most importantly." He looked at me. "I endured the last half hour only thanks to your constant support. Holding one thought for longer than several minutes without external help is almost impossible."
"But you raised the topic of acceleration while perfectly understanding all these complexities," I smiled, anticipating his conclusion. "So you want to create a drug that doesn't simply stimulate, but puts the brain into an ideal, stable state for deep meditation?"
"Exactly!" Peter snapped his fingers. "Not a stimulant, but a stabilizer! A formula that purifies the synapses, balances the neurotransmitters, and creates ideal conditions for focused concentration. Yeah, this'll be an all-nighter, but think how much time it'll save us down the line!"
"I wouldn't want to keep Gwen here until morning." I shook my head, bringing us back to reality. "But if we release her, there's a chance they'll immediately put us under constant surveillance."
I'd like to trust Fury, but trusting Hydra, which has entrenched itself in his organization. No, thank you.
"Then we change the order of operations," Peter immediately proposed. "First, we handle the wiretaps while Gwen's still here to serve as our 'detector.' Then we release her and work on the neuro-stabilizer in peace. The security issue needs to be addressed anyway, so it's better to do it sooner rather than later. Leaving this kind of vulnerability is madness."
"You're right," I agreed. "Gwen, can we tax your senses for another couple of hours?"
"No problem." The girl shrugged. "I'm actually interested to see what you'll come up with to deal with all this spy gear. They've probably got not just microphones, but cameras, hidden transmitters, thermal imagers..."
"You've encouraged us." Peter let out a long breath. "And we still can't just jam everything without interfering with the sensitive lab equipment..."
"Jammers are the Stone Age." I cut in. "We won't build a wall. We'll create a smart fog. An active defense system that generates a localized, dynamically changing field. It'll find, classify, and precisely neutralize each threat separately, leaving our equipment untouched."
"Quite the fancy wrapping," Gwen said, clapping theatrically with a smile.
"Anything for my devoted fan." I gave her a playful bow. "And now, to the engineering lab. Work waits for no one."
We walked down the corridor. On the way, I remembered that I'd pulled Peter away from his microscope. "By the way, how's the research going? Any progress?"
"Well, I isolated the gene clusters responsible for the comprehensive physical enhancement," he said matter-of-factly. "Based on those, it's already possible to create the first test samples of the serum. Um..."
"Super-Lizard." Gwen supplied the obvious, if slightly absurd, name with a smirk.
"Super-Lizard it is." Peter didn't argue. "As for a full-fledged regenerative formula, like I said earlier, we're practically starting from scratch there. Even on NZT, this will take some time. And I still haven't made any headway with Eric's blood."
"You've done more in less than a day than I expected to accomplish in a week," I said sincerely.
Truly, even now, while I possessed an entire library of knowledge in my head, I couldn't help but admire his genius. Someone steeped in science since childhood thought differently from a "cheater" like me, who'd simply had knowledge loaded into his brain. He had a researcher's intuition, something I sorely lacked. I had doubted him in vain. However, back then, there had been grounds for doubt, given the red beast. But fortunately, everything was fine now.
In the engineering lab, creative chaos reigned. Time was short. We didn't want to keep Gwen longer than necessary, so we began working at a feverish pace.
"The brain of the system," I tossed out, unfolding the holographic CAD in front of me. My fingers danced in the air, weaving the chip's complex architecture from threads of light. "We don't need a universal processor. Unfortunately, we don't have the equipment for that anyway. Instead, we'll make do with a highly specialized beast, one tailored for a single task. It'll handle field analysis and real-time control. It'll be an FPGA."
"Got it. A field-programmable gate array," Peter responded immediately, his eyes following my every movement. "It's a classic, and the architecture can be reconfigured on the fly. Leave the photolithography and nano-assembly to me. The materials science lab will handle it."
I nodded, sending the finished schematic to his terminal. The next step was the emitters.
"While you're giving birth to our 'brain,' I'll deal with the 'voice'," I said, clearing the old hologram and starting a new one. From light and air, I wove a complex polyhedral structure designed for ceiling mounting. "It'll house three types of emitters. A phased ultrasound array to counter microphones. A microlaser array against optics. And directed multi-spectral RF antennas to jam any transmitters."
I sent the housing to the polymer 3D printer and personally handled the emitters themselves. My experience with the vibro-gloves paid off. Hundreds of microscopic components were mounted with jeweler's precision at the robotic assembly station. When Peter returned with the finished chip, still warm, the body was already waiting for him on the table. We connected them, and at the assembly station, the heart of our future defense system came to life. Its working name was "Anti-Jammer-3000." The name definitely still needed some work.
"The hardware is only half the battle," I said once we'd installed the device in the center of the lab. "Now, what's the most important thing in a woman? The soul! Well, in this case, it's the software."
We immersed ourselves in the work again, sketching algorithms on the interactive board. In the end, we settled on an elegant three-tier system that would operate constantly in the background.
"Level one: the 'Hunter.'" I explained, primarily to Gwen, as I drew the diagrams. "The system turns the entire laboratory into active sonar. It constantly scans the space with weak, coded signals across all spectra. This way, we create and constantly update a real-time 3D map of all electronic devices. It analyzes unique fingerprints. It analyzes the resonance of microphone membranes. It analyzes lens reflections. It analyzes the radio frequency background of chips. All our equipment is entered into a 'white list.' Everything else is a threat by default. Yes, we'll have to sacrifice our personal smartphones in the laboratories, but it's not a great loss."
"Level two: the 'Classifier.'" Peter continued. "When it detects a 'stranger,' the system instantly analyzes its fingerprint and determines its type. It determines if it's acoustic, optical, or a transmitter... And depending on the threat type, it passes targeting to the third level."
"Level three: the 'Neutralizer.'" I concluded. "This is where the most interesting part begins. Against a microphone, the system calculates an inverted sound wave in anti-phase and directs it precisely at the diaphragm. The microphone isn't simply deafened. It hears perfect silence. Against a camera, we determine the lens position and use a microlaser to project a chaotic pattern of light directly onto the matrix. The camera isn't simply blinded. It goes crazy from the meaningless ripples. And with transmitters, it's even simpler. We determine the exact frequency and jam that specific narrow channel with garbage data. Ordinary Wi-Fi works perfectly, but the bug can't transmit a single bit."
[Device "Comprehensive Multifunctional Field Emitter" created. Complexity: Normal. Received +300 OP!]
A comprehensive, active counter-intelligence system. It dynamically creates a localized protective field capable of detecting, classifying, and precisely neutralizing any unauthorized data collection and transmission devices (acoustic, optical, or radio-frequency) in real-time, without interfering with authorized equipment.
Considering the complexity and elegance of this unremarkable-looking polygon, three hundred experience points were more than a worthy reward. The clock read nearly 2 a.m. Gwen was already nodding off, and I finally released her, insisting that she take tomorrow off. In the coming days, I would have to work through a mountain of problems, and her help wasn't needed yet.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Peter and I unsealed the package of fatigue tablets without a word. The weak, synthetic aftertaste on the tongue was the price for the opportunity to squeeze the maximum out of the next several days. We proceeded to create the meditation tablets.
But this time, we didn't begin with a discussion of ideas, but with data collection. The formula had to be perfectly tailored to Peter's unique brain biochemistry.
As he underwent short meditative sessions while lying in the scanner, the EEG and fMRI sensors built a living, shimmering map of his brain activity on the monitor in real-time. Simultaneously, micro-analyzers took blood samples, breaking down his state to the molecular level. Then came the most interesting stage: decryption. We searched for points of failure. We searched for the moments when his concentration broke.
"Here it is!" Peter jabbed his finger at the graph. "After approximately twenty minutes, acetylcholine levels drop. That's the one responsible for focus. Simultaneously, cortisol rises and chaotic activity begins in the motor cortex. Thoughts start wandering, and the body starts twitching."
Based on this data, and primarily thanks to Peter's biochemical genius, we proceeded to design the molecules. There were four unique compounds created from scratch in simulation software. Their interaction with neuroreceptors was calculated down to the last atom.
Compound Alpha, "Mental Calm." It was a synthetic peptide that would gently suppress background noise in the brain. It would reduce the number of random thoughts without affecting the clarity of consciousness.
Compound Beta, "Focus." It was a nootropic that would increase receptor sensitivity to acetylcholine. This would allow him to maintain deep concentration with minimal effort.
Compound Gamma, "Neuroprotector." It was a powerful antioxidant complex developed to cross the blood-brain barrier. Its task was to neutralize free radicals and protect neurons from overload.
And finally, Compound Delta, "Soul Tuner." This was the most complex component. It was a molecule that would temporarily increase neuronal plasticity and sensitivity to subtle energy fields. This would make Peter's brain incredibly receptive to the signal from the Spiritual Tuning Fork.
We loaded the formulas into the automated chemical synthesis reactor. Several hours of measured humming passed, and the machine produced a small batch of high-purity drug. I immediately pressed it into dozens of neat tablets.
[Medicine "Meditation Tablet" created. Complexity: Normal. Received +200 OP!]
A comprehensive neuro-stabilizer. It suppresses chaotic brain activity, amplifies concentration, protects neurons from overload, and increases receptivity to metaphysical resonances. Its effectiveness for the recipient, Peter Parker, is increased by 15-20%.
...
[Medicine "Meditation Tablet" created. Complexity: Normal. The OP accrual limit for creating this item has been reached!]
In total, I'd earned 680 points. Combined with my previous balance of 550, I now had 1230 OP.
The clock read six a.m. Outside, dawn was breaking, painting the sky in cold, steel tones. Encouraged and absolutely confident in his success, Peter received the vial of tablets and strict orders to meditate for the entire upcoming week. Then he left the laboratory.
I remained alone in the settling silence. These past twenty-four hours, mostly dedicated to breaking in at my personal research institute, had turned out to be incredibly productive. Yes, I still hadn't done anything directly for the company, but the foundation had been laid. Now that I had a small window of time, I needed to take care of personal matters.
I opened the System interface. My finger hovered over the "Forging of Creation" line, which cost 850 OP. I would take another spin. I mentally prepared myself for the next step. I would finally handle the ores and dedicate the coming day to my own enhancement.
I confirmed the choice. The points were deducted. A notification flashed before my eyes, displaying the item I'd received. I read the description and laughed quietly. It was amusing.
//=================//
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