Nature and Science

Every car that passed them along the road sent a wave of nauseous paranoia into Otto's chest, drowning him in anxiety. It hadn't helped his normally collected mind when Elle has insisted on making a stop to the local hardware store before they fled town, gathering an armful of black spray paint and taking them down another unmarked dirt road with more potholes than Grand Central Parkway. While her idea to paint over the deep scratch marks betraying where the T.M.H logos had once sat would make the van less conspicuous, an idea Otto appreciated, the trip had turned him into a fidgeting ball of nerves. Elle had paid cash but the entire errand seemed frivolous and risky at the time, even if it was beneficial in the long-run. As such, his metal arms swung around behind him, spying in every direction and twitching at every errant bird or breeze, and Otto had to focus on comforting the AIs so that they didn't burst out in anticipation and further ruin his coat.

“Are you done yet?” Otto sharply asked as Elle tossed yet another can into the ditch beside a fallow potato field.

“Aw, yeah,” Elle said, walking backwards a few feet to observe her handiwork. She overbalanced, almost toppling over into the ditch, and managed to right herself at the last second. She wiped her hands off on the paper sack the paint had been bagged in at the store and tossed it beside the abandoned cans.

“Litterbug,” Otto chided as he crawled back into the driver's seat of the van.

Elle jumped up beside him and gave him a shrug as Otto turned the key in the ignition. She began to do her window up. Otto curled his nose, leaving his down.

“Bit chilly with the wind, eh?” Elle asked him, nudging her chin at his open window.

“It smells like wet dog in here,” Otto replied. Eyeing her braid, still damp from her morning shower, his raised his brows at her pointedly.

She scowled at him before leaning her seat back and shimmying about until she found a comfortable position. It lasted a whole two minutes before she rigged it up again and turned to Otto as he navigated the dirt road.

“I thought Daffy said the vans had 'H.M.S.F' or something else written on them. Hinterland...Mammal Science Federation or something?”

“Maybe that's...a scout vehicle? They had two other vehicles. I didn't stop to read what their decals said. Regrettably, I didn't search their contents, either.”

“Pity,” Elle sighed. The corner of her mouth stretched sidelong while a lip pulled back. “Maybe there were more files in there. Keep your cool next time, eh?”

“You're one to talk,” Otto replied, faster than he intended. As Elle raised an eyebrow at him, he raised a single claw at her, its light glowing a gentle white. “You got a glance of these in operation and you bolted.”

Elle was quiet for the next several minutes, a slight frown fixed on her face as she looked pensively out the windshield. She pursed her lips, fidgeting with the tail end of her braid. Then, after a few moments of contemplation, she drew in a shuddering breath.

“I was running from a lot more than you.”

The sudden breaking of the silence jolted Otto and he looked over at her, an actuator turning to watch the road for him.

“I was running on instinct more so than running from you. I ran from you, sure. You were...well, frankly, Doc, that was terrifying what you did. Even how you destroyed their vans afterwards was something else. I only saw the scraps in the yard and all, but...after what they did to me, how they...well, how badly they beat me. Seeing what you could do when those arms of yours were up and running didn't bode well in that precise moment. Nothing did”

Wearing an almost apologetic cringe, Elle turned her head to give him a slight nod.

“Thanks for getting them off me. I don't think I said that yet. I'm not ungrateful... You're just...” She paused, a slight gasp of laughter escaping her throat. “I'm not the biggest dog in the junkyard anymore.”

She rubbed at her face with her hands, swearing in frustration.

“I haven't been beat like that in years. My everything hurts, I'm tired, and I'm hungry. Everything is just...terrible.”

Otto hummed in agreement.

“What do you call those things, anyway?”

“Things?” Otto asked before he contextualized what she had meant. “Oh, the arms.”

Otto moved a tentacle outwards, allowing the clawed head to rest on Elle's lap. The actuator turned to focus on Elle, rotating its claws until its optics system focused.

“These smart arms-”

“Smart like 'hey Google', smart?”

“What? They're compatible with a multitude of different technology, including Oscorp nano-tech. I suppose they could connect to a search engine, if I had the right cables and inputs. Anyways, they were created for the purpose of achieving fusion.”

“Your failed experiment.”

Otto winced behind his sunglasses.

“Mhm. They were designed to operate in an environment that no human could enter. My experiment was magnificent,” he explained, smirking slightly as he recalled the beauty of the first star's birth. Very quickly he swallowed his satisfaction, forcing himself to stop remembering the day of his demonstration. “As such, the AI is incredibly intelligent and adaptable, and the arms themselves are impervious to heat and magnetism,” he carried on.

Elle gave him an incredulous look. “And you control them with that chip on your neck?”

He smiled and shook his head slowly.

“Not quite. The chip ensures that their AI does not override my own consciousness. It allows me to have full control over them, rather than the other way around. Nano wires-” Otto gestured to the back of his neck where melted pins and connectors had sunk into his skin, the scars travelling down the length of his spine beneath his coat. “-feed directly into my cerebellum. These connectors that bind them to me are what allows me to control them.”

“...so,” Elle began, and Otto immediately recognized her tone. She had already spotted the flaw with his most incredible invention. “If the chip is destroyed, then what stops the AI from just...doing what it wants? If it even can form autonomous thought.”

“It can,” Otto said through his clenched teeth. “And the chip has failed once before.”

Elle whistled, leaning forward to inspect the claw. She cupped her hands around it, bringing it up closer to her face. “What did you do, huh? What did you do?”

“It's not a dog,” Otto grumbled. “What happened was...”

He trailed off, wincing as he remembered waking up in the hospital after his fusion experiment failed, after the lab had been destroyed, after Rosie had-

Not now, Otto reprimanded himself. Now is not the time nor place. You have to focus on the road.

His half-hearted lie gave him a moment to compose himself. Swallowing the memories, he tried to explain how the chip had failed after an uncontrollable spike broke through the containment field.

“Spider-Man appeared out of no where, tried to shut it all down. I didn't let him. I should have, but... there was an electric surge and...the chip shattered, allowing AI had taken over my mind and pursue it's programmed objectives; build and complete the experiment.”

“Did people die?” Elle asked him once he was finished. Her question, neither quiet nor gently pulled, struck harder than any punch.

“Yes,” he whispered, suddenly glad his eyes were forced to hide behind shaded lenses.

Elle watched him after that, and he pointedly refused to look at her or answer any further, focusing his attention on the road. She gently sniffed the air before drawing in a deep inhale.

“Okay. Okay...” she mumbled, nodding to herself. “So!” she exclaimed, her lack of subtlety a mercy to Otto. “Seems to me like those...things of yours can do more than just huck bodies. Can they see? Hear? Do they talk?”

Otto's lips thinned as he wondered how much Elle had caught onto. She wasn't stupid, he had learned that, but he couldn't fathom her figuring things out based on anything more than context of what she'd heard and witnessed in the past week or so. She didn't have an educated air about her, regardless of her ability to survive the woods with a slick ease. Her wisdom had been gained through experience, and while there was nothing wrong with that, she was unrefined. Perhaps, Otto thought, observant qualities were what had helped her succeed by herself, as with any wolf or other forest-dwelling creature.

After her first tangle with the T.M.H, he wondered how long suspicion and paranoia must have guided her. He was lucky she took him in.

“They can...see. They feed me imagery through a camera by their interior light. Think of a split screen display on a monitor, but five ways. My vision and theirs. They can hear, through a microphone that feeds me their audio receptions via our neurological link, but they do not talk, out loud. They...tell me things. Through my mind-” He tapped at his temple with a finger. “-they have their own consciousness. Like when you think to yourself, but there's more than one internal dialogue happening. They're also full of handy equipment. Tools and such.”

“Saw one of them spike a guy through the face the other night, but sure, we can call that a 'tool'.”

“It was meant for finer detailing, originally,” Otto grumbled. “The top two also have an inner set of claws more delicate then the ones you've seen. The lower ones are for strength, hence their more industrial appearance. They're reinforced in order to haul, lift, or manipulate heavier substances and materials. They are my muscle, so to speak.”

“Top two? Doc, count again; you're missing a limb!”

“Yes, well...would you believe a goblin severed it?”

“Your life is so wild, man!” Elle laughed. “So what do you call them?”

“They're...my arms?” Otto tried.

“No, I mean yeah, but no. Do they have names? Are they just... 'the boys'? How do they address you? Or do they communicate like that?”

“To be completely honest, as they were designed, and as the AI advanced, the top right one seemed apt at far more delicate tasks. Almost...feminine, even to my assistants. Rosie was the one who first noticed.”

There it was. Her name, at last in the open. Otto swallowed, hard, and tried to speak but nothing came out. He dreaded each second that ticked by but Elle merely inhaled the air again, crinkled her nose, and looked down at the camera examining her from inside the claw.

“Cool. The others are... what, masculine? They crush beer cans and cat-call?”

“No,” Otto said, forcing himself to smile despite the churning acid in his chest. “The missing one just always seemed to be inclined to more complex and minute maneuvers. It was the one that would handle tasks that required extreme precision, and it was exceptionally apt at small tasks such as...taking my glasses off, or handing me a pencil.”

“Oh, neat!” Elle smiled wryly at the claw in her hands. “And what do you do, beautiful? You're a slim boy so you must be super delicate too; yes you are, yes you are...”

“They're not dogs!” Otto insisted, suddenly annoyed by Elle's simpering tone.

“Well you can't just keep calling them 'the arms'. Name them!” she cried in a mocking voice, pulling the claw to her face. Otto scowled as the claw followed the turn of her head, going so far as to press into Elle's cheek as she nestled into the metal. “Name your son!”

“They are like my arms, or any other limb, for that matter! They-”

Otto's mouth hung slack. His eyes narrowed briefly as he pondered her proposal.

“...funny you should say that.”

“Say what?”

“Ever since the chip failed the first time, the AIs refer to me as...well...”

It was embarrassing, Otto discovered. He had never told anyone that the AI hailed him as a familial figure, not that being Doctor Octopus gave him many opportunities for philosophical conversation, but it had always seemed somewhat accidentally egotistical. So, he never addressed it, and simply passed it off as a glitch or a weird quirk, perhaps programmed by one of the lab technicians as a joke or a prank. He had never anthropomorphized the tentacles, yet found himself loath to admit he had had missed them when they had ceased operating. The absent head on the top right arm proved mildly irritating, not just in that it was missing but also in that he felt like he had actually lost a physical piece of himself.

“Father,” he finally spat out, wondering if he appreciated the artificial affection or if it irritated him that Elle now knew the secret saccharine personality trait of his AIs.

Elle snorted, restraining her laughter.

“You're joking? They call you 'father?'”

She looked at the claw, and Otto frowned as the actuator mimicked her motion perfectly to return her gaze.

“Do you love your daddy? Oh, papa! Papa!” she said mockingly, giving her satirical voices of the actuator a ridiculous accent. “My oil needs to be changed! Papa, my gears are clogged and I can't get up!”

Pa...Pa?

Papa?

Papa!

Papa! Papa! Papa!

“No, don't you dare!” Otto snarled at the voices in his head. He snapped his head towards Elle, leaning sideways so she would hear him growl in anger.

“My...children...are not...French.”

“They could be, if you let them access Google-Translate. Oui, oui, mes petits!”

“Fine! Name them, then!” Otto snapped. “Since this is obviously not something you're going to let go.”

“Oh, hell no, not in a million years, 'papa'! Anyways,” Elle sighed happily,content with her mockery. “They're your creations. You name 'em.”

“You, you nasty little traitor,” Otto sneered at the actuator in Elle's hands, which opened its claws slightly in anticipation. “You can be...uhm.”

Oh, crap. I've never named so much as a hamster before.

Papa?

The actuator angled itself up, rotating its head in curiosity.

“Harry. Because you're annoying, like the Osborn boy.”

The head immediately shrunk back into Elle's lap and turned away to avoid its creator's glare.

“Mean,” Elle cooed. “Meanie man. Angry nerd.”

“...annoying, but useful,” Otto added, suddenly feeling very guilty. “Perpetually trying to serve his father's whims.”

The younger Osborn hadn't always been an entitled business mogul. When the boy had been young, and still dreamed of impressing his father rather than living in his ghostly shadow, Otto had been rather fond of the kid. He had seen him as an innocent babe, as a sweet and idealistic young boy...and then, he had known the man Harry had become, struggling with his father's legacy rather than building his own. Always trying to be his father rather than be whoever he himself had wanted to become.

Days long since passed, Otto thought, wondering if Norman had made it to his own timeline, even if it had been the moment before his glider dealt him his death. Perhaps he was lost in the future as well. Perhaps he was in the past. Had Norman, or Marco, jumped twenty some odd years themselves? Did Curt, hell, did anyone know his name anymore? He wasn't about to seek out Rosie's family, but he didn't know anyone else.

If they could get to New York, Otto could investigate, could figure things out...

“So mean to his little ones,” Elle continued cooing at the disappointed actuator.

“Larry,” Otto rattled off, gesturing to the lower left arm with itself. “And...Moe, I guess. ”

“Eeny, meany, miny, Moe! Wait, like the original Stooges? That's terrible.”

“I'm not good at this,” Otto admitted.

“Pfft, you're telling me. Okay, do better this time; how about the top right? She's gone but not forgotten.”

“Flo.”

This time, Otto was rather pleased with himself. 'Flo' had been the name of one of the coding technicians. She had been nice enough, one of a scant few women working on the project, anyway, and the name happened to rhyme.

“That's...so creative, Doc.”

“Shut up,” Otto grumbled, unable to hide his burgeoning smile nor the flush of his face. “I never had children. This is new to me.”

Elle cackled with glee, slapping her knee and clapping her hands in delight. “Spoken like a first-time father.”

“What about you?” Otto asked. He immediately regretted it, recalling Elle's cherished photograph in her jacket pocket, remembering the abandoned toys in her ruined car. He had missed friendly socialization, true, but the mood in the van instantly turned cold and he felt incredibly foolish.

“I had a son,” Elle answered simply. After a minute, her voice softly added, “He died.”

“I'm sorry,” Otto quietly said. He thought of the name, Gregory, scrawled in crayon or marker on the pictures on her fridge. “May I ask what happened?”

“Shit happens. Life isn't fair,” Elle said, her voice steady even through the threat of anger around the edges. “Death isn't either.”

Otto had heard her say that before. Back in the cabin, referring to his inoperable tentacles, she had said it almost comfortingly to him, a trace of empathy lacing her surprisingly sage turn of phrase. Now, referring to the life of a human, her own child, it seemed less sympathetic and more of a shield against the ugly side of nature.

Lowering the back of her chair again, Elle laid her head against the rest and tipped her hat down so the wide brim covered her face. It was a clear statement, louder than any words could have conveyed, and he couldn't blame her; that was not a topic Elle would speak to him about. Just like his Rosie...

He chewed on his lower lip, wondering if it would make things worse or better to ask about the father of her child. Deep down, he knew nothing but ire could come of such and, for once, he wasn't curious. His eyes stung and he decided against it; he couldn't speak about Rosie yet, after all, and he didn't know if he ever would be able to talk about her openly again without shattering like fine bone china. He had his story of heart break and Elle clearly had hers; there was no need to make things more wretched than he already had. Cracks ran deep through them both; why open the cupboard when one couldn't use the set.

When the silence became too thick to breath, Otto turned the radio on. He lowered the volume when the sensors in the tentacle, still curled in Elle's lap, informed him she was still awake. Regardless of her silence, her steady breathing, her attempts to look like she was consciously anywhere but there, he could play along. Who was he not to oblige her, Otto thought, and he let the shaky signal from the local station fade in and out.