Summary:Spider-Man introduces Spider-Woman and Spider-Girl to the communications system he's invented. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Peter looked at the results and smiled. Everything was working. It had been a tall order to get the parts he needed, but he got it working. The unexpected gift from the rich woman had been influential.
He put the objects in the small case, then sent a text to the two numbers—one for Spider-Girl, and one for Spider-Woman.
GOT SOMETHING WE NEEDED. CAN YOU MEET, ONE HOUR, BELVEDERE CASTLE?
SI, AMIGO
An hour later, Spider-Girl is swinging down from Central Park East at a remarkable pace. She's been taking an advanced physics course at NYU after all, and needed an excuse to practice some things she'd graphed out on paper at home. The lack of tall buildings will make this a perfect opportunity.
On her downswing over Central Park East, she yanks hard on the webline, causing her descent to abruptly become more of a slingshot beeline. Breathing heavily, she squeezes her fingers hard and fires a lateral webline at the top of a light post, then yanks, maintaining a virtually level lateral passage into the park.
With the castle in view, she nearly skims her butt on the ground before firing a pair of lines at the final lamppost and yanking upward, diverting her travel into a skyward soar. However, she…. undershot, and comes down at the castle's wall with a thud and a skid before her fingers and toes latch hold of the old stone.
"Dammit," she hisses, and with a heavy sigh begins climbing the wall to the rooftop. "Almost nailed it. Almost!"
Spider-Man is waiting there. If he had been in a more jovial mood, he might have remarked about giving her an 8.5, but that the French judges were going to be SAVAGE. But he isn't. He is deep into Technology Mode, and this is important.
So, he simply looks to her as she clambers up to the roof and opens with, "I'm glad to see you again, Spider-Girl. How have you been doing?'
"My asshole Western Civ professor is being a prick," Anya remarks as she scrambles up to meet Spider-Man. "He refuses to engage in any kind of conversation about socialism in the west, beyond the limited scope he's decided to cover in his Almighty Syllabus. It's…" She lifts a gloved hand, as if to stop herself from going on a tirade. "It's just irritating." With a sigh, she reached back to fix her hair and straighten the mask just a bit, before smiling. "Hungry?" she asks, and starts unslinging her backpack.
Spidey chuckles. "I just ate, but you go ahead. You told me about your dietary regimen." He walks over to sit next to her, smiling slightly under the mask. "I wanted to tell you some good news. Maybe proof that there is a just and loving God."
Plopping onto the rooftop, Spider-Girl digs into the backpack and pulls out a pair of protein bars. She eyeballs Spider-Man dubiously, the mask bending upward a bit near her left eyebrow. "Okay," she ponders, while ripping open the first of those bars. "I'm listening." Then she blinks, and begins to suspect what it is he's talking about… at which point she sits upright and leans forward a bit.
Spidey takes a deep breath. "Well, about six days ago, while I was checking out a strange crime scene…"
Which is directly related to him, but he doesn't know it yet.
"…a woman stumbled onto it. She was a very odd person, but I found out that so is what she calls a 'bio-kinetic.' She has superhuman awareness about biological systems. She was able to tell me details of what we were looking at from ten feet away, without touching the…body." He takes a breath. "Then she said she wanted to help. I told her I needed webfluid, repairs to the suit. And then she said something about a REAL need. So I told her about the comm system idea, that I had a design, but that it would cost over fourteen hundred dollars."
The briefest of pauses. "Then she gives me what she had in her purse. FIFTEEN HUNDRED in cash."
Behind the mask, Anya seems… worried. She pairs the munching on a protein bar with a wringing of her hands, but whatever is on her mind, she doesn't speak of it. "Crazy," she says. "Like… just like that, she gives you a stack of cheese?"
Spider-Man nods. "I think I used every possible version of 'Are You Sure?' But she called herself a 'trust-fund' beneficiary, and the money was real. And I checked the money as well, and it was clean. So…I sent her an accounting of what I used it for."
He reached into his backpack and took out two small boxes, about half the size of shoeboxes.
"So I did it. This is the new communications link system."
"Did somebody say cheese?" In pops Gwen with an utter ease, dropping in off a web line and sliding in, Risky Business-style. "Sorry I'm late, I was at Costco looking for…Whoa, what's that?" She peers over at the boxes in Spidey's hands. "Is it somebody's birthday?"
When Spider-Man actually admits to itemizing his supplies, Anya can't help but roll her eyes. "You and I come from different worlds, Web-Boy," she quips, but it's a good-natured ribbing nonetheless. There's still an underlying sense of concern, but when the shoeboxes come out, she's sufficiently distracted. "You serious?" she asks, having partly expected this not to come together so quickly. Reaching with a black-silk covered hand, she starts to ask, "How does it-"
Startled, Anya yanks her hand back and spins about, looking up at this new arrival with alarm. Mouth ajar for a moment, she's surprised by… well, by how cool that costume looks. "Is that?" she asks, and tilts her head toward Spider-Man quizzically.
Spidey is a little startled, too, but doesn't lose his grip on the boxes. He looks to Gwen and then smiles. "Glad you could make it. Spider-Woman…" He holds up one hand to indicate Anya. "Meet Spider-Girl. Spider-Girl…this is Spider-Woman."
"Hiya! More spiders! We're multiplying like BUNNIES these days. Glad to meetcha, Spider-Girl. Very cool to see more of us around."
Looking back toward Spider-Woman, Anya scoots to her feet and walks over, offering a handshake. "Apparently, huh?" A big smile spreads across her face. "Dig your costume, amiga," she says, before walking back over toward Spider-Man and crouching down. It might look uncomfortable to a normal human, but to Anya, she might as well be perched up in a La-Z-Boy.
"How does it work?" she asks.
Spidey grins. "Glad you asked."
He opens one of the boxes, revealing three items—a series of five tiny squares, an eyepiece shaped to fit the left eye, and an object that looks like one of those in-ear hearing aids.
"The five squares are pressure sensors. Peel off the backing and apply them to the finger-pads of whichever is your dominand hand. Then, pull the backing off the eyepiece and set it over your left eye. There will be a small plus-sign that shows you the center of it. And the earpice goes in your ear." He stands up, then turns around. "Let me know when you've got all three attached and set up in your costume."
With a quiet grin, Anya gets to work. Her costume lacks zippers or buttons, or even seams, but she does essentially pull it apart at places where she needs access, and attaches things per Spider-Man's instructions. When it comes time to pull her mask, though, she casts a glance toward the other two, hesitantly. Deciding for secrecy, she turns away and pulls the mask off, revealing a beautiful shock of black hair that has two strips dyed bright blue. She fiddles with the mask for a moment, before putting it back in place. "Ready."
Spidey turns around again. "Okay." He takes out a tablet, taps a few buttons, then says, "Say 'Rig On.' The HUD over your left eye will come up. You'll be prompted to test the finger sensors on a virtual keyboard. You can choose either a standard keyboard layout, or a cellphone version."
He taps a key and two words appear in neon blue: VOICE ACTIVATION.
"Seriously?" asks Anya, grinning like it really is Christmas. "Rig On," she tests, then stands back as she waits for it to happen.
The left side of Anya's vision comes up with five squares. PLACE YOUR HAND WITH EACH FINGERTIP IN THE CORRESPONDING SQUARE. When Anya does so, a virtual hand comes up, and "PROCESSING" appears.
Then the words CALIBRATION COMPLETE appear as well as a choice of keyboard.
"Now, the earpiece can detect normal voice levels, as well as pick up ambient sound. You can choose to subvocalize, though. The earpiece rests against the mastoid bone and can sense the vibrations. When you speak, you should see your words appear at the bottom of your view."
Turning back around, Gwen tilts her head, watching Spider-Girl get all set up. "Well THAT'S just nifty, huh?" Watching the process makes her smile, and that comes through in her voice, too. "Gotta make you super happy to be able to do this, doesn't it, Spideypants?"
"Hooooo-leeeee shit," Anya says, while fingers are dancing around in the air. She moves them over to select 'cellphone keyboard', eyes wide beneath the mask. "This is… I mean…" She's stammering because she knows how half this stuff works already, and could probably figure out the rest, and her brain is just moving at a hundred KPH.
Spinning around, she eyeballs Spider-Gwen. "Did you just call him Spideypants??" Her face darts from Gwen to Spider-Man, and there's a wicked curl to her lips. "You're so screwed. We're totally using that in the field." A gloved hand comes up and throws an air-high-five toward Gwen.
Spider-Man rolls his eyes (you can see it under the mask), then heads over to the backpack and grabs the second box, bringing it over to Spider-Woman. "Yes…and this one's yours."
He looks back to Anya. "The system has its own dedicated server and encryption scheme, and uses the cell-tower network, although our signals are dedicated to these units only. Our tech is a LITTLE more reliable, though. In a month, we'll be able to boost the system to cover all the five boroughs."
"For me?" Spidergwen reaches out to take the box, and gives a glance to Spider-Girl. "And yeah, we might have to use that." She replies with a grin in her voice. Gwen doesn't turn away or give the other two warning to do so. She simply raises her mask up enough to reveal her nose and pale pink lips, fits and adjusts what she needs to, then tucks her sunny blonde hair back in the hood and pulls the mask down. Pulling aside her costume where needed, she finishes doing just as she watched her cohort do, and then looks to Spidey. Whether he could have recognized her? Maybe. Who knew she might know both Spidey AND his alter ego??"
"You realize," Anya says, "I can have us nationwide in the next 48 hours. Global in a few days." She doesn't say how, and there is a dubious undertone to the promise. "Does it do Spanish? Other voice commands?" Under her breath she utters, "I'm totally installing a Spanish subroutine." And Klingon. You know. For practice.
Gwen wouldn't have to worry much—Spidey turned away from her the moment her hands went to her mask. As he waits, Spider-Man looks thoughtful, then hands Anya the tablet. "Run it in the VM I set up for the server. If it works, you can update the software for your rig. There's only two tablets can can connect to it remotely, though, and the server can fit in the box for an iPhone. I was able to set up a Raspberry Pi unit with an external SSD drive."
Gwen calibrates the rig, and wiggles her fingers. "Wow, this is gonna take a little gettin' used-to." Not only the tech, but also now being tethered to two other people. "Used to free-wheeling, but also used to having zero backup." She turns to Spidey. "So some chick just gave you the money for this out of the goodness of her heart, hmm? Sounds really dodgy, but not like she can track anything you spent the money for yourself, I guess…"
Anya is already considering all sorts of things, including cloning the server at NYU as a backup plan, embedding the software within a cellular provider's backdoor maintenance channels, and eventually… hacking a satellite in space. She has to actually slow her mind down enough to get into the VM, download the language code she hacked out of the Siri and Alexa source code, and begins blending it together to work into Spider-Man's code. Her fingers dance in rapid fire as she sits, cross legged, hard at work while Gwen gets her own upgrades installed.
"This is some well laid out code, Spidey-P… … -Man," the young Latina observes. "Almost like you designed it to quickly and easily patch in new subroutines."
She pauses though, when Gwen all but airs her earlier concerns as if she were speaking for Anya herself. She looks from Gwen to Spider-Man, eyebrows lifted behind the half-mask.
Spider-Man nods, still not looking in Gwen's direction until he's sure the mask is down. "I was as srprised as you were. I actually had someone run it through a mass spectrometer, but nothing unusual about it. Believe me, I think I tried as hard as I could to not take it without insulting her directly. Must be nice being about to afford stuff like that." He shrugs, then says, "Ah, well. Anyway, so far it's just the three of us that I know of. The system is scaleable upward, but unless we can do teleportation, nationwide or global is a little overkill."
Like he has the kind of money to travel.
He shrugs again. "If she starts making any noise, then I'm the only one she knows about. But she didn't seem the supervillain type. Okay, maybe i'm a little too forgiving, but she didn't even tickle the Spider-Sense."
At that, Spidergwen giggles. "Maybe if you had tickled /her/ Spider-Sense, she'd have thrown in enough for a Spidermobile." She playfully nudges Spidey. "I think maybe she has a thing for ya. Maybe we should put out a 3-person APB on a possible stalker…" Her tone is teasing and playful, and she laughs.
"Well, I dunno about you," Anya says, "But I ain't stayin' in New York my whole life." She taps away at the tablet, but pauses at something Spider-Man says and looks up, quizzically. "Spider-Sense?" She looks between Peter and Gwen, then back again. "What the hell is that?"
Its at this point when she notices that 'hell' is asterisk'ed out on her HUD, at which point she just stares at it. "Seriously?"
She's then looking back at the other two, and can't help but giggle. She sets the tablet down after starting the download to her rig, and walks over to stand beside Spider-Gwen. "Is this a good time to tell him that, yes, I had my period, and no, I didn't lay eggs?" A pause and she leans over to Gwen, stage whispering, "I bet his face is as red as his tights."
Spider-Man looks from Spider-Woman to Spider-Girl, then thinks, *Exactly WHEN did my life become a harem anime??*
Jeez, he figured his body temp warning light was going to go off any second in the mask. In an effort to derail this train of thought, he says, a little quickly, "It's sort of a mega-sensitive spatial awareness. It warns me of trouble before it happens, it alerts me to things that affect me directly, and it helps me when I'm web-slinging around."
He opts not to add that it applies his knowledge of physics to get arround so seemingly effortlessly. Calling attention to Anya's arrival seems like a bad idea.
"Um…sure? I mean, I guess now's as good a time as any…" Sider-Woman looks to Spidey with a helpless shrug. "Was there a scare? I wasn't aware you guys were that…close." But she listens as Spidey delineates the function of Spider-Sense. "It's a good way to stay safe, and it lets him know when some random Spiderchick is barreling in for a landing." She means herself. But it's possible it also applied to SG's arrival.
"Not really," Anya tells Spider-Gwen, but there's a rueful smirk on her face. "Just reminding him of a moment when his foot would have been nice and comfortable in his mouth."
Considering this Spider-Sense, Anya humphs. "Don't think I got that one. Sounds… nifty." Suddenly the download is complete, and she perks up. "Busca en Google: es Tony Stark un mujeriego?"
Spider-Man blinked. "Uhm…we're not even dating, much less…" He can't say out loud. Then Spider-Girl illuminates further and Spider-Man feels both rescued and chastened. "Spider-Girl's powers are different in how they came about."
The reply appears onscreen for Anya. "Si. Ha tenido muchas companeras." Then a llist of names appear.
Anya is suddenly snorting and snickering, so much so that a hand comes up to her mouth, before dropping to her chest. "Okay, Spider-Man… I gotta hand it to you. Ya kinda fucking nailed it." She walks over and puts a hand on Peter's shoulder. "Excellent work. Now…" She turns to face the buildings that are stacked not far away. "Now we just need to give it a good test run."
Spider-Man nods. "All right. You should be automatically queued into the primary frequency. They are all encrypted. When you get far enough away, about 40 feet, where I can't hear you conversationally anymore, the commlink will kick in."
"K," Anya says, then rushes the end of the rooftop and leaps off. A webline is heard thwipping somewhere, but her landing is silent upon the grass. "Hello, can you hear me?" she says, quietly.
As the 40-foot distance is reached, there is a click, and the message "Spider-Man ya no esta a 40 pies de ti" shows up on the HUD. There is the briefest of intervals before she hears Spider-Man in her ear. "Loud and clear, Spider-Girl. How's the reception?"
"Pretty clean!" she answers, while trolling around on the dimly lit grasswork. "There's just a little bit of compression in the lower audio frequencies, like… below 400 hertz. You could totally eliminate that and make it a lot clearer, extend the range, whatever! Are these the sound dampening kind? You know, tube filters and stuff? I didn't get a chance to look."
Spidey hmms. "Actually, the ear bud is designed not to dampen sound. The last thing you need is to have someone blindside you because you are listening to me. That's why there is a text option for communication. It might be slower, but it's silent and guaranteed no one can hear you. Because being sneaky comes in handy.
"Okay, yeah," Anya is saying. "That's smart. Kinda like you've been doing this, ya know, longer than I have." The young woman smirks, then shoots a web at a building on Central Park West. "Wanna test range, and…" She grins. "Ambient air noise?"
Without waiting for Peter, she leaps into the air and starts swinging toward Harlem; harder, faster, higher.
Spider-Man pauses. "There should be a virtual GPS tracker you can turn on or off. Should be upper left corner." There is a faint whistling sound, but the cowl is cutting off most of the wind noise. "Here' I'll show you."
A small box comes up with SPIDER MAN 4.7M SSW inside, then becoming 4.8…
"Should I keep going?" calls Anya, mid swing. "Whooooaaa cool, noise reduction! And auto gain control? Dude this is like… it's like driving a Mercedes or something!"
Spider-Man smiles to himself. It was was working as well as he'd hoped, but it was nice to get confirmation.
"Might as well head back. You can also have it forward message to your cell phone if you're not…in costume. You can even give it a name or picture so it won't look suspicious for you to get a lot of calls from an unknown or blocked number. You can even randomize it to look like a telemarketer is calling your phone…"