Chapter 10 - I am Spider Tobey

It's-a me, Peter Parker! Surprised? Thought I was a short plumber? You thought wrong.

Let me tell you what I've been up to since building DUM-E.

I've done a lot, but let me focus on the main things.

First, I needed a lot of materials for my plans, some of which couldn't be bought with money, and even if they could, I wouldn’t be able to afford them—like Tritium, a material estimated to exist in only 11kg on Earth. This is the same material Doctor Oct used to make his artificial sun.

Speaking of Tritium, it's interesting how it differs from the Tritium of my previous universe. In fact, there's a material in this universe called Tririum, which is actually the same as the Tritium from my old universe, but that's not the point.

The Tritium in this universe is quite different, being one of the most miraculous elements I've ever seen and absolutely essential for many of my future plans. Fortunately, I have a way to acquire much more than just 11 kg.

Alright, let's finally talk about what I did.

First, using the materials I had, I had Arm-2 create a cargo drone small enough to fit through the door… I couldn’t make it bigger due to lab limitations, so it had to fit through the entrance. And to avoid risks, I also couldn't assemble it outside. But despite its small size, it could carry up to 500 kg (1,102 pounds) of weight, which was enough for my plans.

After that, using the remaining materials, I created nanobots. Yes, nanobots! These little guys I built were basically construction monsters. Using nanotech, they were extremely flexible and could take various shapes. The only problem was that they required energy. But I solved that—I gave them the ability to generate energy by processing organic material.

I had trouble making nanotech because it's extremely small, complicated, and has an absurd energy consumption for its size. But ever since we arrived in this world, the AI chip and I have been optimizing the designs. It wasn’t something that happened overnight—it took years of countless days and nights of thinking and simulations to get here. So, once we started, we managed to create a machine capable of producing nanotech after two months—though my bank account took a massive hit in the process.

I had to trick my uncle and aunt into thinking our finances were fine so they wouldn’t worry. Even so, it was nearly impossible to pull this off with the money I had. So, the machine I built to manufacture nanotech was only about a handspan in length.

"Sigh... You practically drained me to build you," I muttered with a bitter smile, staring at the palm-sized machine. What made it worse was that once it created a single nanobot, it would no longer be useful—because the nanobots I designed could build anything, including more of themselves.

Soon, the machine started working, producing an impressive 24 nanobots per day—one nanobot per hour. However, I only had enough materials to make 50. Okay, it was slow, but considering my budget, it was already impressive that I could make them at all. Fortunately, the nanobots it created were far superior to the machine itself.

One thing I added to both the nanobots and the drone was camouflage technology.

So, I placed the 24 nanobots produced that day into the drone and sent them—cloaked—to a tech junkyard.

‘AI chip, have the nanobots dismantle materials and load them onto the drone. Make sure to isolate any radioactive waste. When the nanobots are low on energy, have them break down organic waste into energy. Once the drone is full, send it back here. Always prioritize dismantling materials necessary for nanobot production. Have the nanobots in the lab replicate themselves using the incoming materials. Also, as demand increases, have them create more drones to transport materials if the existing ones can't keep up.’ I mentally commanded the AI chip.

[Beep Objectives set. Initiating operation. Would you like to name the mission, Host?]

‘Uh-huh, call it Operation Dissemination… Sorry, that’s the best I could come up with.’

[Beep Mission named.]

…

..

.

After that, I discreetly began eliminating waste from New York and surrounding areas, recycling both electronic and common trash. The nanobots could break down anything—for example, they could decompose a concrete block into cement, stone, and other residual materials. They could even deconstruct themselves, so I didn’t mind using all available materials to create them. If I ever needed the raw materials, I could just break the nanobots back down.

I didn’t remove too much trash to avoid drawing attention, but sometimes I had the nanobots—let’s call them NB from now on—burrow under piles of garbage, extract the necessary materials, and leave the structure stable so no one would notice anything had been moved.

Since my small lab couldn’t store so many materials, I had the NB construct an underground base outside the city.

Then, I had the NB create several drones and sent a drone with an NB to multiple cities across the country. Their mission was to use each city's waste to build a storage base, fill it with materials, and replicate as many NB as possible. Each base also had the directive to create a new NB and drone and send them to another city with the same mission.

Now, I no longer have an infrastructure or materials problem, but I still lack some of the most important and hardest-to-get materials… and I mean that quite literally, since some of them are extremely unstable and radioactive—but you get what I mean.

But while the NB replicated, I didn’t sit idly by. Using the materials I had, I started constructing another project… well, that’s what I would like to say, but the next project required some rare materials, which would take some time for the NB to collect.