72
"So, Peter." I began, deciding to discard the scientific terminology and to immediately get to the point. My voice sounded unexpectedly weighty in the settling silence. "In brief, you have a unique potential that is embedded in you. It is a potential that will allow you to acquire abilities that are analogous to Gwen's."
Peter, who had, until then, been burning with curiosity, froze. His gaze darted to Gwen, and then it darted back to me.
"This is... serious?" In his voice, there was a mixture of disbelief and a boyish delight. "This is... cool! But why do I feel that, behind this 'cool,' there hides one big, fat 'BUT'?"
"Because your intuition doesn't fail you." I allowed myself a light smirk, acknowledging his correctness. I took the medallion from the table and extended it to Peter. The Iron Blood metal pleasantly cooled the skin of my hand. "Here. This small artifact is a tuning fork. It radiates a signal that you'll need to tune your soul to. And, right now, I'm going to start teaching you how to do this."
Peter cautiously took the medallion, examining it with the bewilderment of a scientist who was encountering the inexplicable.
"So far, I don't understand anything." He honestly admitted. "What artifact? What soul? This is... magic? John, over the recent weeks, I've been ready to believe anything, but... how is this supposed to work? Do I simply tune myself to a frequency, and then I 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... everything is complicated there. But, for starters, we need to master the first, and most important, step. So, put on the medallion, sprawl out in the chair more comfortably, and close your eyes."
Restraining another dozen questions that were ready to fly off of his tongue, Peter obeyed. The prospect of acquiring the powers outweighed his scientific curiosity.
"Excellent." I continued, when 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 comprehend it. As soon as you can fix this sensation in your mind, nod."
Thanks to Peter's highest compatibility with the Web, I knew that this step wouldn't be difficult for him. Three minutes of tense silence passed, after which Peter slowly, and almost uncertainly, 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 precisely in the area of your spiritual center. To have something to push off from, imagine that pleasant warmth that sometimes spreads in waves from the solar plexus throughout the entire body. I think that you've experienced something similar. Your task is to summon this sensation by an effort of will, and to fix it. 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 to find the needed sensation. I activated my spiritual vision, and I observed how the dim spark of Peter's soul began to barely noticeably oscillate, in time with his breathing.
"Breathe deeper. Take a sharp, short exhale. On the exhale, pull in your stomach. Concentrate on this sensation."
After my words, Peter's spiritual imprint flashed slightly brighter. A barely noticeable tremor passed through his body, causing light ripples in the Reishi that was surrounding him. This guy amazed me with his teachability. Maybe all of my overcomplicated plans weren't needed? Maybe, even without me, he was an ideal vessel? I drove this thought away. No. If this were so, the Web would have already chosen him, and not Gwen.
"Now, this is the most difficult part, Peter." My voice brought him out of his trance. "You must, by a conscious effort of will, begin to change the vibrations of your soul. You must make them coincide with the medallion's signal. For this, you need to hold your attention simultaneously on the external frequency and on the internal one. Don't try to collide them. Simply listen to them together, and allow your soul itself to adjust to the standard."
The next half hour turned into torture for him. I saw how tense his muscles were. I saw how beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
"Don't tense up, Peter. Your resonance is becoming ragged, like a cardiogram during an arrhythmia! Relax! Allow the external frequency to lead you... Yes... Like that... Excellent! You've caught the harmonic! Now, hold it! Simply hold it!"
After another ten minutes, and completely exhausted and wet with sweat, Peter opened his eyes. He was breathing heavily, but in his gaze, there burned the fire of understanding. He understood the principle. I mentally calculated that, despite his phenomenal starting progress, he would still require all of the same month of daily meditations that I had predicted earlier. It would be five to six hours daily. During this time, his soul would completely restructure itself, and it would become an ideally calibrated receiver. It would constantly and passively resonate with the Web's frequency.
"Five to six hours of these meditations, daily, for a month. And then, you'll be ready." I "gladdened" him.
Peter stared at me, and the delight in his eyes changed into shock.
"A month?" He shook his head. "This is... too long."
"Long?!" Gwen exclaimed, throwing up her hands. Her voice was full of sincere bewilderment. "Peter, people are ready to kill for just a crumb of this kind of power, and all that you need to do is to endure for a month!"
"I didn't express it right!" Peter immediately backpedaled, understanding how this sounded. "I'm not complaining. I'm optimizing! 'Long,' in the sense that there's a completely legal possibility to speed this up. All of this meditation is essentially just a week of pure time."
"The fatigue tablets." I nodded, instantly catching the direction of his thought. "The problem is only that the human brain isn't designed 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 who was encountering an interesting problem. "A sensory deprivation will cause hallucinations. A neurochemical imbalance, from the accumulation of metabolic products and stress hormones, will lead to a 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 any external help, is almost impossible."
"But you raised the topic of acceleration, while perfectly understanding all of these complexities." I smiled, anticipating his conclusion. "I understand that you want to create a drug that doesn't simply stimulate, but that introduces the brain into an ideal, stable state for a deep meditation?"
"Exactly!" Peter snapped his fingers. "Not a stimulant, but a stabilizer! It would be a formula that would purify the synapses, balance the neurotransmitters, and create ideal conditions for a focused consciousness to work in. Yes, this would be a full night's worth of work, but think about how much time it would save us in the future!"
"I wouldn't want to keep Gwen here until the morning." I shook my head, returning us to reality. "But, if we release her, there's a chance that they'll immediately establish a comprehensive surveillance on us."
I would like to trust Fury, but trusting Hydra, which was entrenched in his organization? No, thank you.
"Then, we change the order of actions." Peter immediately proposed. "First, we deal with the wiretapping, while Gwen is here and can be our 'detector.' Then, we release her, and we calmly work on the neuro-stabilizer. The security question would have to be solved, anyway, so it's better to do it earlier, rather than later. Leaving this kind of vulnerability is madness."
"You're right." I agreed. "Gwen, can we abuse your sense for another couple of hours?"
"No problem." The girl shrugged. "I'm actually interested in what you'll come up with against all of this spy arsenal. There's probably not only microphones here, but also cameras, disguised transmitters, and thermal imagers..."
"You've encouraged us." Peter exhaled, lengthily. "And we still can't create an interference for the sensitive laboratory equipment..."
"Jammers are the Stone Age." I took the floor. "We won't put up a wall. We'll create a smart fog. It will be an active defense system that will generate a localized, dynamically changing field. It will find, classify, and precisely neutralize each threat, separately, leaving our equipment untouched."
"How pompously wrapped." Gwen applauded, theatrically, with a smile.
"I'm glad to try for my devoted fan." I gave her a playful bow. "And now, to the engineering laboratory. The work doesn't wait."
We moved along the corridor. On the way, I remembered that I had pulled Peter directly from his microscope. "By the way, how are your studies going? Did you manage to achieve anything?"
"Well, I isolated the gene clusters that are responsible for the comprehensive physical enhancement." He answered, matter-of-factly. "Based on them, it's already possible to create the first test samples of the serum. Um..."
"Super-Lizard." Gwen prompted the obvious, though slightly absurd, name, with a smirk.
"Let it be Super-Lizard." Peter didn't argue. "As for a full-fledged regenerative formula, as I said earlier, the work there is practically from scratch. Even under the NZT, this will take some time. And, with Eric's blood, I also haven't yet managed to figure anything out."
"You've done more in less than a day than I expected to get in a week." I said, sincerely.
Truly, even now, while I was possessing an entire library of knowledge in my head, I couldn't help but admire his genius. One who has been steeped in science since childhood thinks differently than a "cheater" like me, who simply had the knowledge loaded into his brain. He had a researcher's intuition, something that I sometimes lacked so much. In vain, I had doubted him before. However, back then, there had been grounds for the doubt, in the face of one red beast. But, fortunately, now, everything was in complete order with this.
In the engineering laboratory, the spirit of creative chaos reigned. The time was short. We didn't want to keep Gwen for longer than was necessary, so we began to work with a feverish speed.
"The system's brain." I tossed out, unfolding the holographic CAD before myself. My fingers danced in the air, weaving the chip's complex architecture from light threads. "We don't need a universal processor. Sadly, we also don't have the necessary equipment for that. Instead, we'll make do with a narrowly specialized beast, one that is tailored for a single task. It will be for a field analysis and a control in real time. It will be an FPGA."
"Got it. A field-programmable gate array." Peter immediately responded, his eyes following my every movement. "It's a classic, but the architecture can be rebuilt on the fly. Delegate the photolithography and the nano-assembly to me. The materials science laboratory will handle it."
I nodded, sending the finished schematic to his terminal. The next stage was the emitters.
"While you're giving birth to our 'brain,' I'll deal with the 'voice.'" I commented, erasing the old hologram and starting a new one. From light and air, I wove a complex, polyhedral construction that was designed for a ceiling mounting. "It will have three types of emitters in one housing. There will be a phased ultrasound array against the microphones. There will be a microlaser array against the optics. And there will be directed, multi-spectral RF antennas against any transmitters."
I sent the housing to the polymer 3D printer, and I personally handled the emitters, themselves. My experience with the vibro-gloves made itself known. Hundreds of microscopic components were mounted, with a jeweler's precision, at the robotic assembly station. When Peter returned with the finished, and still warm, chip, the body was already awaiting him on the table. We connected them, and, at the assembly station, the heart of our future defense system was born. Its working name was "Anti-Jammer-3000." Definitely, the naming still needed some work.
"The hardware is only half the battle." I said, when we had installed the device in the center of the laboratory. "Now, what's the most important thing in a woman? It's the soul! Well, specifically here, this is the software."
We again immersed ourselves in the work, sketching algorithms on the interactive board. In the end, we settled on an elegant, three-tier system that would operate in a constant, background mode.
"Level one: the 'Hunter.'" I explained, primarily to Gwen, as I drew the diagrams. "The system turns the entire laboratory into an active sonar. It constantly scans the space with weak, coded signals, in all of the spectra. In this way, we create and we constantly update a living, 3D map of all of the electronic devices. The system analyzes the unique fingerprints. It analyzes the resonance of the microphone membrane. It analyzes the reflection of the lens. It analyzes the radio frequency background of the chip. All of our equipment is entered into a 'white list.' Everything else is, by default, a threat. Yes, we'll have to sacrifice our personal smartphones in the laboratories, but it's not a great loss."
"Level two: the 'Classifier.'" Peter picked up. "When it detects a 'stranger,' the system instantly analyzes its fingerprint and determines its type. It determines if it's an acoustics, an optics, a transmitter... And, depending on the type of threat, it passes the targeting on 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 it hits precisely into the diaphragm. The microphone doesn't simply go deaf. It hears a perfect silence. Against a camera, we determine the position of the lens, and, with a microlaser, we project, directly onto the matrix, a chaotic pattern of light. The camera doesn't go blind. It goes crazy from the meaningless ripples. And, with the transmitters, it's even simpler. We determine the exact frequency, and we jam precisely this narrow channel with a stream of garbage data. The ordinary Wi-Fi works perfectly, but the specific bug can't send 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 that is capable, in real time, of detecting, classifying, and precisely neutralizing any unauthorized devices for data collection and transmission (acoustic, optical, radio frequency), without creating any interference for the authorized equipment.
Considering the complexity and the elegance of this unremarkable-looking polygon, three hundred experience points were more than a worthy reward. The clock showed almost two a.m. Gwen was already openly nodding off, and I finally released her, insisting that, tomorrow, she take a day off. In the coming days, I would have to rake through a whole pile of problems, and her help wasn't required yet.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Peter and I, without any unnecessary words, unsealed the package of fatigue tablets. A weak, synthetic aftertaste on the tongue was the payment for the opportunity to squeeze the maximum out of the subsequent several days. We proceeded to create the meditation tablets.
But, this time, we began, not with a discussion of the ideas, but with data collection. The formula had to be ideally fitted to Peter's unique brain biochemistry.
While he went through short, meditative sessions while lying in the scanner, the EEG and fMRI sensors built, on the monitor, in real time, a living, shimmering map of his brain activity. Simultaneously, the micro-analyzers took blood samples, breaking down his state into molecules. Then, the most interesting stage began. It was the decryption. We searched for the points of failure. We searched for the moments when his concentration broke.
"Here it is!" Peter jabbed a finger at the graph. "After approximately twenty minutes, the acetylcholine level drops. That's the one that's responsible for focus. Simultaneously, the cortisol grows, and a chaotic activity begins in the motor cortex. The 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, which were created from scratch in a simulation software. Their interaction with the neuroreceptors was calculated down to the very last atom.
Compound Alpha, "Mental Calm." It was a synthetic peptide that would gently suppress the background noise of the brain. It would reduce the quantity of random thoughts, but it would not affect the clarity of the consciousness.
Compound Beta, "Focus." It was a nootropic that would increase the sensitivity of the receptors to acetylcholine. This would allow him to maintain a deep concentration with a minimal effort.
Compound Gamma, "Neuroprotector." It was a powerful antioxidant complex that was developed to overcome the blood-brain barrier. Its task was to neutralize the free radicals and to protect the neurons from an overload.
And, finally, Compound Delta, "Soul Tuner." This was the most complex component. It was a molecule that would temporarily increase the neuronal plasticity and the 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 a 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 the chaotic activity of the brain, it amplifies the concentration, it protects the neurons from an overload, and it increases the 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 exhausted!]
In total, I had received 680 points. Considering my previous balance of 550, my new capital amounted to 1230 OP.
The clock showed six a.m. Outside, the dawn was breaking, painting the sky in cold, steel tones. Encouraged, and absolutely confident in his success, Peter received the vial with the tablets and the strict orders to meditate for the entire next week. Then, he left the laboratory.
I remained alone in the settling silence. These twenty-four hours, though they had been mostly dedicated to the breaking-in of my personal research institute, had turned out to be incredibly productive. Yes, I had still done nothing directly for the company, but the foundation had been laid. Now, while there was a small reserve of time, I needed to deal with my personal matters.
I opened the System interface. My finger hovered over the "Forging of Creation" line, which cost 850 OP. I would make another spin. I mentally prepared myself for the next step. I would finally deal with the ores, and I would dedicate the coming day to my own enhancement.
I confirmed the choice. The points were deducted. Before my eyes, there flashed a notification about the received item. I read the description. And I quietly laughed. It was amusing.
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