章 4: The results
I woke up with groggy eyes, struggling to shake off the remnants of sleep. I forced myself to go through my daily routine, all the while trying to shake off the sluggishness. As I sat down to eat breakfast, I decided to check the video I uploaded last night. And, as expected, no views—just as I thought. YouTube isn't exactly a platform where you can easily stand out, especially when you're posting at the ungodly hour of 2:00 in the morning.
I headed to school, grabbing my stuff from the lockers, when suddenly, my Spidey sense kicked in. Unlike Peter's usual instinct to jump out of the way or dodge and make it look like an accident, I calmly walked off to the side. Behind me, Flash screamed out in pain, clutching his broken wrist after slamming it into the lockers where I had just been standing.
Seriously, who the hell throws a full-force punch to the back of someone's head and expects them not to get hurt? At this rate, Flash is going to seriously injure someone if this keeps up.
I went through my classes, letting Peter be the good kid he always was, answering all the questions while I sat there in a posture that screamed disinterest. It was actually kind of funny—seeing this lazy, zombie-like guy, but then hearing his mouth spout off answers like an overenthusiastic monkey. The teachers didn't know what to make of it, so they kept questioning me even more.
As school ended, I was about to leave and wander around for a bit before heading home. Honestly, what would I even do if I went home now? I was on my way to a bakery when a guy tapped my shoulder. "Hey, is this you?" he asked, showing me a video on his phone. My heart nearly stopped when I saw it—my video had hit 2 million views.
"Yeah," Peter replied shyly while I tried to process what I was seeing.
"Man, it's so cool how you made this with stuff just lying around your room. But why do you have gas cartridges lying around your house?" he asked.
I quickly responded, "Oh, I just said that to sound funny. I actually spent around $800 on that video."
"Holy shit," he said, and we both sat down in the bakery, grabbing some pastries while we talked about the video.
---
**Flashback: Five Hours Ago**
Ned Leeds had just wrapped up with his coding friends. They were supposed to finish a project and get paid, but these guys forgot to mention they had day jobs. Now, the job that needed to be done by Monday was completely screwed. Frustrated, Ned decided to unwind by watching some mindless YouTube videos. As soon as he opened the app, the first video on his homepage caught his attention. It was titled *I SPY Myself Part 1: The Oxygenator* and featured a thumbnail of a kid about his age in a suit, underwater, with something in his mouth that was bubbling the surrounding water.
Curious, Ned clicked on the video. It started with the kid from the thumbnail, standing in a lab coat in what appeared to be a storeroom.
"Are we rolling?" the kid asked, and an older voice replied from behind the camera, "Yes, we are, Peter." The kid started talking, "You might have seen James Bond, Jason Bourne, or any other spy movie where they have a gadget that lets them breathe underwater."
"Like a scuba tank?" the older man interjected.
"No, not that, Uncle Ben. I meant this," Peter said as a clip from a James Bond movie played, showing Bond using a smaller version of the device from the thumbnail to breathe underwater.
"So, I watched that and thought, 'That is so fucking cool, right?'" Peter was interrupted by Uncle Ben's stern voice, "Language, Peter."
Peter winced, "Sorry," and then continued to talk about the device.
Ned was beginning to lose interest as Peter rambled on about the technical details, explaining how it wasn't possible to make such a device because gas cartridges didn't have enough PSI, throwing in some PSI statistics and calculations that made Ned's eyes glaze over. But then Peter said something that made Ned perk up, "We can infer from all this that it's impossible to make an exact replica, so I made an inferior version with some parts lying around in my room." As he spoke, Peter placed the device from the thumbnail onto the table.
Ned was impressed—this guy watched a movie and then just decided to make something like that? "This device won't last as long as the one in the movie, and it's bulkier," Peter explained before going into how he made each part, with the centerpiece being 3D-printed to hold together the two cartridges.
"So now that you know how it was made, I'm going to stress this one more time: do NOT Fucking try to make this yourself. It's really, really dangerous."
"Peter!" Uncle Ben's voice admonished from off-camera.
Peter defended himself, "No, Uncle Ben, I have to really stress this point." Uncle Ben reluctantly agreed, "Fine."
The funny banter between them made Ned chuckle, reminding him of the time he shouted out curse words from the rooftop and got caught by his mom. That was an ass-beating he'd never forget.
"The reason it's dangerous," Peter continued, "is because this gas cartridge carries about 1200 PSI of air pressure. If it all gets sent into my lungs at once, well, let me show you what would happen." Peter stabbed the cartridge into a watermelon and released the pressure all at once. The resulting explosion blew chunks of watermelon everywhere, staining Peter's lab coat. The red of the watermelon was a vivid reminder of what could happen to someone's lungs.
The visual left Ned with a cold sweat, praying that Peter wouldn't actually try this just for some YouTube views. But, of course, Peter did the exact opposite of what any sane person would do. "So, I'm going to test this thing on myself," Peter declared.
Ned choked on his drink, nearly coughing up a lung. Was this guy seriously going to risk his life for a YouTube video?
"Peter, you're not going to do this," Uncle Ben's voice was firm. "You can keep blowing up watermelons if you want. At least they're easier to clean up. Blood is really hard to get off walls."
Ned was nodding in agreement with Uncle Ben until the last part of the statement raised a red flag. Peter seemed suspicious in the video as well, "How do you know that blood is hard to clea—"
"Whatever, you're not risking your life for this video," Uncle Ben interrupted.
Peter panicked, "No, no, no, that was just a prototype. I already made the full version with all the bits and bobbles. SEE?" He held up a much more refined version of the device, which looked better and had a larger nozzle.
"This one has a special nozzle that only gives me one breath of air when I push the back in, like an asthma inhaler." That tempered Ned's fear a bit. Peter had actually thought this through.
Uncle Ben seemed to relax as well, "Fine, but where can we test this?"
Peter hesitated before answering, "I spent most of the money I saved up on renting a pool."
Uncle Ben's surprised shout of "You did what?!" had Ned laughing out loud.
---
The video cut to Peter standing by a pool, dressed in a suit. Ned had to admit, he looked pretty sharp in that suit. "Are you sure you have to do this in my suit?" Uncle Ben's voice asked from off-camera.
Peter turned around and replied, "Of course I do! Spies always wear suits," as he began climbing the ladder to a tall diving board.
"Peter, you don't know how to dive!" Uncle Ben shouted from below, and Ned's heart skipped a beat. If Peter didn't know how to dive properly, this could go horribly wrong.
"Spies don't either, but they do it because they have to!" Peter shouted back.
Ned wanted to scream at the screen. What was Peter thinking?
"No, Peter, they definitely know how to dive," Uncle Ben tried to reason with him.
But Peter was already at the edge of the board, taking deep breaths, visibly steeling himself for the jump. Ned's heart was pounding in his chest as he watched Peter jump...and jump...and jump, each time higher than the last. It was overkill, but Peter was clearly doing it for the dramatic effect. Ned held his breath as Peter finally made the leap, diving into the water just as the video cut.
The scene shifted to an underwater shot, the calm blue of the pool disturbed by a cloud of bubbles that eventually revealed Peter, in his suit, searching his pockets for something. He pulled out the device from earlier, activated the pump mechanism, and took a breath before swimming around the pool, the camera following his every move. A few moments later, Uncle Ben surfaced for air but kept the camera trained on Peter, who was still swimming underwater.
The video ended with a quote from Uncle Ben as he sat at the side of the pool, recording his nephew, who had been underwater for nearly ten minutes.
"When someone says the sky is your limit, tell them the sky is easy. What's deep under the sea? That, that is hard."
Uncle Ben's deep voice offered a pearl of wisdom before he suddenly started ranting like a conspiracy theorist, "Because why the hell would NASA research the ocean before deciding space is better..." His rant was cut off by Peter gasping for air as he surfaced
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