Harry looked at the notebook with curiosity.
- Well, I'm making a list of different fantastical things I'd like to have in reality. Want to help?
"Yeah," Harry's eyes lit up with enthusiasm. "Let's split up the comics and look for stuff like that."
- Come on. Whoever finds the most gadgets wins.
Children, like many adults, are susceptible to excitement. But in children, competitiveness is especially pronounced. Just give them the semblance of a game competition in which they must win, and they will do so with joy and put forth great effort. So Harry Potter became lit up with enthusiasm, one might say, ablaze. He began sifting through comics one after another.
"A glider, like the Green Goblin from Spider-Man!" Harry blurted out.
"That'll do," Richard wrote in his notebook.
- Also the steel tentacles of Doctor Octavius.
- Hmm... Harry, you didn't get comics, but a treasure trove of gadgets.
"In Spider-Man comics, the villains have all sorts of cool gadgets," Harry said happily. "If I had any, I'd use them for good."
"Yeah! Like ferrying old ladies across the street in a glider?!" Richard asked sarcastically.
"No, but..." Potter was confused. "Well, you know, fighting criminals."
"The police are supposed to fight criminals. Comics, of course, make it all sound funny, but if you think about it, heroes break the law. Yes, they fight villains, but often in the process they cause more destruction than the villain himself could ever hope to. If heroes fought villains legally, they'd be obligated not only to apprehend the criminal, but also to turn him over to the police, testify before the investigator, and testify in court. From the outside, a hero's battle with a villain looks like a battle between several people with superpowers. It's not always clear who's good and who's bad."
"Spider-Man is good!" Harry declared indignantly.
"Yes, that's true. But I believe Peter Parker could be of more use to humanity if he were engaged in scientific research than if he were running around the streets chasing hooligans."
"Nothing of the sort!" Harry insisted.
- Hm? Harry, let's count. How many people does Spider-Man save in a day?
Harry Potter thoughtfully ruffled his unruly hair and sank into thought for a while.
- Well... About three or four people.
"I don't think it's that many, but whatever. Let's assume the maximum is four people per day. Let's say he works seven days a week and is lucky enough to spot that many bad guys every day. Multiply that by three hundred and sixty-five days a year. That's one thousand four hundred and sixty people per year."
"Something like that, but sometimes he saves a lot of people," Harry noted. "Like when the bandits took hostages in the bank."
"Okay, let's round it up to fifteen hundred. Let's assume Spider-Man has enough health to heroically patrol the streets for about thirty years. Then he'll be too old for that."
To Harry, anyone over twenty seemed old. He thought about it, calculating that Peter Parker would be about forty-five by then.
"Probably," Potter drawled. "It'll be hard for such an old man to jump on a web."
"I'd also like to overlook the fact that all this time, Peter Parker will be living hand-to-mouth, working part-time as a journalist. He'll have a meager pension, no work experience, no insurance, and won't even be able to get a mortgage. And now, no longer young but not yet an old man, penniless and unable to continue chasing criminals, he'll console himself with the thought that he's saved a whopping forty-five thousand people in his lifetime. Not a bad number, huh?"
"I told you so!" Harry Potter declared happily. "You see, Spider-Man can save a lot of people."
"Yes, but scientist Peter Parker can save even more people," Richard countered. "Let's imagine Peter graduated from university and became a regular assistant to Dr. Connors. Then he continued his mentor's research and perfected a cure for regenerating lost organs. This cure was launched into mass production and sold in pharmacies. Now tell me, Harry, how many people need a cure like this?"
"I don't know," Potter shrugged.
"One in three people on the planet, Harry. But even if you take into account the disabled and those who need organ transplants, that's about a billion people. And this medicine will continue to save lives even after Dr. Parker retires and lives in a luxurious house bought with the Nobel Prize. And he'll still have a tidy sum left in his account for inventing the medicine. So, Harry, what's better: being rich and famous and saving a billion people, or remaining poor and unknown and saving forty-five thousand?"
Harry Potter froze, like a modern computer. The boy's eyes stared into the distance.
"A billion?" he muttered. "That's a lot..."
"That's a fucking lot, Harry! More than forty-five thousand, almost twenty-three thousand times. Harry, the real heroes are doctors and scientists. The former save thousands of lives every day. The latter create new technologies that make people's lives easier, help them stay healthy and live longer."
For a while, the boys enthusiastically compiled the list. Richard could easily have included numerous technologies from his past world, but he studiously avoided this, searching for the most similar gadgets in comics. Thus, young Rich handed the victory over to Harry. Potter was delighted and genuinely amused; he had never had such a good time.
It all ended with a knock on the door.
"Come in," Richard replied.
The door swung open and John's head appeared in the opening.
- Mr. Richie, Mr. Potter, it's time to go down to dinner.
- Thank you, John. Harry, this is my valet, his name is John.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," Harry said politely.
The dinner was a solemn affair. Harry felt out of place; it was his first time in such a spacious dining room. And meeting a real duke was something incredible. It was one thing to interact with someone his own age, even though he knew he was a lord, but quite another to meet a grown man.