It's About Time

Ch. 15

Lunch arrived and Peter was too excited to eat.  The first part of the tour had been so amazing Peter was worried his brain would explode with how cool everything was.  He had filmed the entire thing on his tablet and Ned had taken photos on his phone.  Once they had gotten their lunch, Ned, Michelle, and Peter all found a place to sit and eat.  Ned and Peter were working on uploading their videos and photos onto a cloud online so both of them could access everything.  Michelle split her time between watching them and looking around the cafeteria.  The boys didn't eat until Michelle told them they were going to regret it later.  They kept looking through Ned's photos as they ate and Peter's tablet uploaded the video to the online photo gallery they had created.

"Nerds,"  Flash said, walking past.  He glanced down at them then did a double take.  "Where'd you get that, Parker?"  he asked, pointing at Peter's tablet.  Peter glanced up at Flash then at his tablet.  His blood ran cold as he realised he had brought his tablet that hadn't been released to the public yet.  To make matters worse, his Stark phone wasn't even announced and he was holding it.

"It's just an old kindle,"  Peter lied, grabbing his tablet and trying to shove it in his backpack.  Flash grabbed it before he could and picked it up.

"This is the new Stark tablet!"  he exclaimed, looking at it in awe.  Michelle turned to face them and Peter looked at her for help.  "How'd you get this?  It isn't even released yet."  Peter gulped.

"I-I'm Mr. Stark's intern?"  he said.  "He g-gave it to me?"  Flash obviously didn't believe him.  Between the stuttering and the statements sounding more like questions, Peter's answer wasn't very believable.

"Don't lie to me, Penis,"  Flash snapped.  He continued admiring the tablet.  "Is there somewhere that sold them early?  Or did you steal it?"

"I didn't steal it!"  Peter yelled.  He jumped up to try and grab his tablet back, but Flash held it out of his reach.  "Flash, give it back!"

"Nah, I think I'm gonna keep this,"  Flash said.  He grinned and looked at Peter.  "Thanks for the free tablet."  Peter took a deep breath to try and keep from crying in frustration.  Flash couldn't keep his tablet.  If he did, questions about how he got it would rise up.  He had no doubt they would anyway, but he also knew if he could get his dad to just say he was an intern, they could settle those rumors.

"Karen, lock my tablet,"  Peter said.  Karen did as told and the tablet in Flash's hands turned off.  Flash stared down at it in shock then glared at Peter.

"What was that?  Who's Karen?"  he demanded.

"Give me my tablet back,"  Peter said.  He held out his hand but Flash just glared at him.  "I'll make it self destruct if you don't.  Karen's programmed to do that."

"You wouldn't destroy a tablet like this,"  Flash sneered.  Peter stared at Flash, waiting for him to hand Peter's tablet back.  At this point, other kids were watching and a few of the Google employees had looked over as well.  Peter just wanted to go back to being invisible. 

"Fine,"  Peter said.  He looked Flash in the eyes as he said, "Karen, self destruct tablet in ten seconds."  He was really hoping his dad hadn't actually installed a self destruct feature.  If he had, Peter was pretty sure he had more questions about why it had been installed than his dad would have about why he had used it. 

"Ten, nine,"  Karen started counting down from the tablet and Peter wanted to kill his dad.  Why would someone put a self destruct feature on a tablet?  "Five, four..."  Flash panicked and shoved the tablet back into Peter's arms and jumped back.

"Karen, stop!"  Peter said.  Karen stopped and the tablet unlocked.  His video upload had completed.  "Leave us alone, Flash,"  Peter said.  Flash rolled his eyes and walked off, but not before knocking the tablet out of Peter's hands and onto the ground.  He snickered as Peter sat down and picked up the tablet.  It remained perfectly unscratched, something he was glad his dad had been able to achieve.  "Karen, is there really a self destruct option?"  Peter asked, closing down his tablet and putting it back in his draw string bag.

"No,"  Karen replied.  Peter grinned.  Karen was easily the best AI ever.  Even better than FRIDAY if she could go along with Peter's plan of a fake self destruct feature.  "However, I am programmed to wipe all data and burn the core of whatever device ends up in the wrong hands if not returned within the allotted time period."  Peter frowned.

"What's the time period?"  he asked.

"Twelve minutes,"  Karen replied.  Of course it was.  Peter wasn't sure why, but twelve seemed to be the lucky number for all the Avengers.  He would have been more surprised if the number had been something other than twelve.