Forged in fear

You're Kind of Like Me | 18

Peter was sitting in his room, everyone else was still in the kitchen, most likely discussing him and HYDRA but Peter just needed some time away. He sighed and sat up, bored after counting the speckles on the ceiling, and quite frankly, he wasn't sure if he double counted some or not.

He got up from his bed and went to the window, he sat down at the desk chair that faced it and just watched. He never really realized how big this place was and the outside was beautiful. After the years and years of barely ever going outside, the times he did were just for missions and even that he barely remembered, he just wanted to get out there. It seemed like that period of isolation from the world really gave him a new appreciation for nature and it's true beauty.

Just then Peter was started by something he saw moving in the corner of his eye. It was just crawling along the window seal, then it started to actually climb up the window. He remembered that Mr. Stark and Steve said he could ask their AI Friday for help if he ever needed so he tried to test it out.

"Uhm, Friday?" Peter hesitantly asked, looking up to the ceiling.

"Yes Peter?" She replied sweetly.

"What's that?" Peter asked pointing at the bug on the window.

"That's a spider Peter." She responded. Huh, Peter thought to himself. Peter tapped the glass behind the spider and the spider quickly reacted, slightly jumping.

"Can you tell me about spiders Friday?" Peter asked intrigued by it.

"Of course. Spiders are arachnids, not insects, because unlike insects, spiders have eight legs while insects only have six. Insects also have antennae while spiders do not. Most spiders produce silk from their spinneret glands located at the tip of their abdomen which they use to make spider webs. Each gland produces a thread for a special purpose, for example, dragline silk, the silk used to create webs, sticky silk for trapping prey, or fine silk for wrapping it. Dragline silk, when spun, is very strong and tough, so much so that at the same density of steel, it would ultimately be stronger."

Peter was very interested by this all, but he was more of a chemistry and technology kind of guy, that alongside the basics were what HYDRA would teach him, the important stuff for his field, never about spiders, so much so that he didn't even know what they were called till now. So he wanted to get more technical, for the sake of his own understanding.

"What's the tensile strength of spiders silk?" Peter asked laying his head down on his desk.

"The tensile strength of spiders silk is roughly 1.3 GPa. Spiders silk is made up of chains of amino acids, so basically it is simply a protein, which they get from the food they eat. The two primary amino acids being glycine and alanine. Spiders senses are a little different however. They do not have ears this can't hear and despite have eight or less eyes, their eyesight is fairly poor. So they rely on touch and vibration when finding prey. To do this, all spiders have unique mechanoreceptory organs called slit sensilla which allows them to sense minute mechanical strains on their exoskeleton. This sixth sense makes it easy for spiders to judge things like the size, weight, and possibly even the type of creature that gets caught in their webs. In regards to humans, because the hairs on their legs are so sensitive, they can even detect the vibrations of human speech from meters away. Their sensitivity of vibrations is very fine tuned. The hairs on a spiders legs are also what allow for them to crawl on basically any surface, walls, windows, and even ceilings are easily accessible. They ultimately use them ask magnets. Spiders are also extremely sensitive to bright light and are more suitable for being in low light conditions."

Peter started thinking as he tapped on the window next to the spider watching as it jumped and reacted to the vibration. "You're kind of like me aren't you?" Peter softly said to himself. Sensitivity, and in a way enhanced senses, all he was missing were the ability to make spiderwebs and produce silk out his butt, but he was kinda glad he wasn't able to.