'It's easier to eat a watermelon through your ass than graduate from this university!'
A student proverb.
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Truly, everything is learned through comparison. If I had previously believed Connors was taking me seriously, I now understood that I had simply known him very, very poorly. A monster genuinely lived inside him, but it was not the Lizard. The pace of research on my carcass dropped sharply. The Symbiote showed no desire to reveal its secrets, and neither Doc's brilliant mind nor mine—yes, yes, I am extremely modest—had produced new ideas for investigating it.
Curt devoted all the freed time to me. More precisely, to my education, damn it. Our manner of study changed. At night, he assigned me material to learn—why had I ever admitted that I did not need sleep? Why?—and when he arrived in the morning, he answered my questions, administered several tests on the completed topics, and then moved us on to practical laboratory work.
It was hard. Although that word could not fully convey the experience. It was—rage on—DAMNED HARD—rage off. Yes. Better.
I thought I would fail. Exhaustion accumulated like a rolling snowball. Physically, I remained fresh and energetic; I could not even imagine what sort of loads might tire a symbiote. Mentally and emotionally, however...
Like every normal student, I began seeking ways to make life easier. And I found one. This was how it happened. I sat reading another organic-chemistry textbook. Of all subjects, this one came to me worst and provoked durable hatred. Naturally, under Murphy's Law, chemistry formed almost the foundation of molecular biology, and I needed to know it at a very respectable level.
The good Doctor Mengele, as I had affectionately begun calling Curt (He had strongly objected to the comparison and demanded to know what he had done to deserve it. When I explained that it was for his inhuman treatment of a poor anim... ah... biological weapon, he smiled with terrible malice and said that this was not yet inhuman treatment, but if I insisted... Then he doubled the amount of assigned material. My pleas for mercy went entirely unanswered.), had buried me under an entire stack of additional literature that I was expected to master within the four and a half hours remaining before my torm.. teacher arrived. So I read the damned book and tried to understand all the interwoven benzene rings, catalysts, and other horrors.
Then something happened. While reading, I entered a state resembling a trance. Though, in my opinion, 'semi-combat mode' would have been more accurate. My consciousness became crystal clear and my thoughts formed orderly ranks, yet my emotions remained. I looked at the textbook and caught myself knowing what the next chapter contained even before opening it. More than that, I did not merely know it. I understood how and why the reactions described there occurred. My surprise knew no bounds. That was precisely how I understood that my emotions remained. The intensity of the feeling broke my concentration and threw me out of the trance.
"Oh. What was that?"
I shook my head and noted that I was asking myself this question with increasing frequency.
It felt as though I had read the textbook before. But how? Then I understood. Parker. He had been Doc's assistant and had probably studied the same program. And I've never noticed anything like this in myself before... Yeah, but even the most powerful computer can't process a large amount of data instantly, and here we're talking about almost 25 years of life, including not only 'picture and sound', but also smells, tactile sensations... a whole bunch of everything! Had I gained freedom to understanding of genetics through the experience of Peter, who was, between ourselves, a very intelligent young man? (We would politely ignore the fact that in daily life he sometimes became a complete idiot.)
Yes, of course. Put out your pocket and wait for the free gift.
I could indeed excavate from my memories a large number of textbooks Spider-Man had read. But I came no closer to understanding what was written in them. I still had to read them, albeit 'from memory.' Then how had I grasped the essence of the first book? I possessed no sensible theory. I decided to finish today's assigned material and, when Connors arrived in the morning, make him happy with another trick of my organism.
The result was predictable.
Curt became ecstatic and spent an hour shaking details out of me, down to what I had been thinking, where I had been sitting, and at what point in the chapter the state had seized me. Fortunately, I escaped the question of why the Symbiote possessed memories of such specialized literature by pretending to be a hose. We spent approximately a week proposing, testing, and rejecting a variety of theories, from connecting to Earth's noosphere to opening a third eye and awakening prophetic powers. According to the latter idea, the knowledge came from my future self, who had already read the books.
Only after a week did the first real results appear. The secret lay in associative chains.
Because Venom possessed absolute memory, it could not hold all knowledge in 'working memory.' Most information was stored in 'long-term memory,' which had been completely destroyed by my arrival, though that was not currently relevant.
Memories acquired through 'devouring' were automatically sent into the 'far drawer,' while daily life could access only what remained in working memory. Through associative links, however, we learned to attach certain memories from long-term storage to active memory. No, it was not a free ride, but it accelerated learning by an order of magnitude.
The process worked as follows.
I read another textbook while in trance—three days were required before I stopped falling out of it at every sneeze; by the end I felt I had defeated my organism, though I earned a headache—while simultaneously finding the same book in long-term memory. Then I tried to overlay the memory on the present moment. It was difficult and tedious. Things obvious to Parker often raised questions for me, forcing frequent trips to reference materials. But the ability to 'swallow' a book as thick as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia within a couple of hours justified everything.
At that pace, I survived until mid-August, when I understood that the situation could not continue. I needed a day off or I was definitely going to murder someone. I suspected that 'someone' had a habit of answering to the surname Connors. I spent the night online, reading the city's news for the month in which I had effectively been absent from life.
It had been surprisingly quiet. Spider-Man continued catching petty criminals, though in a metropolis of eight million people even ten Spider-Men would not make much difference. But Parker was Parker. The month's central event had been the successful orbital launch of a shuttle carrying probes intended to study the lunar surface.
I breathed in relief. Somewhere deep down, I had feared His Majesty Canon would attempt to restore the plot to its familiar path and I would have to fly up and breathe vacuum. I had not traveled backward through time, but the theory of the 'historical groove,' opposed to Bradbury's butterfly effect, partly applied to my situation. According to it, no matter what changes were introduced into an established timeline, events would strive to neutralize the outside influence and return to their original track.
For me, that might have meant Spider-Man entering Connors's laboratory for some reason, catching me in an ambiguous situation—reforming clothes from black slime, for example—switching into police-siren mode, refusing to listen, and beginning a conflict whose chain of coincidences would still end with my miserable fate at the space center.
Or something similar could have happened during one of my trips through the city. Or in some other fashion. It was a frightening possibility. It forced me to monitor circumstances carefully and remain quieter than water and lower than grass. I tolerated Connors's academic tyranny partly for that reason, not only because I genuinely wanted to understand myself and acquire strong documents for life in this world—including an elite Columbia University diploma.
But nothing happened. That was wonderful. When the professor returned in the morning, my joy at the news inspired me to present him with an ultimatum: either I received twenty-four hours of rest, or he received a thoroughly feral biological weapon created by an advanced civilization and equipped with a sick but extremely rich imagination.
Doc looked at my pale, gloomy face and took the warning seriously. He took it so seriously that he even tried to give me a small sum of money for 'airing out,' as he phrased it. I refused. I already owed him for the rest of my life, and taking money from a disabled man supporting a family made me shudder.
I again promised myself to help Curt with his arm at the first opportunity. I had developed one idea for avoiding a Bonding. Then I stepped into the city. I stood in the street and enjoyed the sounds of the metropolis. Enjoying the smells was impossible; they did not exactly resemble perfume. A full day of rest and idleness lay ahead, and nearly eight thousand green dollars waited in my pocket.
What should I do? I thought I knew.
A young, black-haired man in a heavy leather coat walked down the street, quietly humming to himself.