If there was any place where one could quickest gather information regarding Doctor Ultron without outright going over and staring each other down, it was undoubtedly the F.E.A.S.T. shelter. Consequently, Peter began making more frequent trips to F.E.A.S.T., hoping to use his—or more accurately, Aunt May's—connections to see if he could glean anything from the homeless.
"It looks like the crowd has thinned out quite a bit, Aunt May. Have things been going well lately?"
"Yes, Stark Industries has come back to life, and Roxxon didn't go bankrupt either. New power plants are opening up everywhere, so there really are fewer homeless people... though it's probably only temporary. I heard that many of the old thermal power plants have shut down, so we'll likely see another batch of homeless in a few months."
Tony Stark had successfully dragged Stark Industries back from the brink of bankruptcy with a mutually destructive "mutual assured destruction" move, bringing it back to life while simultaneously lowering global electricity prices. This could be considered the definitive end to this particular electricity war. If anyone still wanted to question whether there was an issue with Stark's product design, fine—they could choose not to use it, but the rest of the world would, and they could see for themselves if every engineer on the planet was wrong.
Yet, surprisingly, while Stark Industries and Roxxon Energy clashed, both giants emerged relatively unscathed. Instead, it was the coal-fired thermal power plants that went bankrupt in massive droves. After all, the arc reactor was ultimately an energy source, while petroleum was the gold of the industrial world, serving fundamentally as a raw material for chemical products. Even if it was no longer used to generate electricity, there were still plenty of sectors that required petroleum products.
As for the coal-burning thermal power plants, they were truly left with no cards to play. They stood absolutely no chance against the dimensional strike of the arc reactor, and could only direct their resentment toward Stark for not going bankrupt quietly, instead "selflessly" publicizing the arc reactor technology to the world.
Oh, right, there was also the electric vehicle industry, which had just begun to emerge and had not yet demonstrated its advantages. It, too, suffered a dimensional strike from Stark. Now that everyone was contemplating stuffing arc reactors directly into cars, who would care about batteries anymore?
"I heard Roxxon has already started entering the automotive industry, using a new slogan: gasoline cars will absolutely never spontaneously combust on the road, let alone explode because the engine was hit."
Peter quipped as he chatted with Aunt May. "But it looks like the conflict between these two companies should end here. Even with such massive petroleum reserves, Roxxon won't rashly extract it if there isn't enough consumption. Just like those Arab princes, unless they intend to make no money at all, the more they extract, the harder international oil prices will plummet."
"I don't understand any of that when you talk to me about it," Aunt May said, shaking her head helplessly. "I only know that this is a good thing. At least there are enough job openings to keep fewer people—or at least those willing to work—from ending up homeless."
"Speaking of which," Peter recalled his objective and hurriedly asked, "Isn't that doctor over in the Bronx planning to hire some people? He has so many people to help, he can't possibly handle it all by himself, right?"
Aunt May naturally didn't find it strange that Peter was so interested in that doctor. She merely thought for a moment before replying, "Hmm, it seems he really hasn't. I've heard from others that this doctor actually plans to open his clinic in even more locations."
Ultron naturally faced zero pressure when it came to opening franchise clinics. Even though he completely lacked a medical license or anything of the sort, he could still hack into mechanical factories to manufacture a large number of Ultron robots for himself, then open clinics across the country and even around the world. As for whether the United States would crack down on Ultron's unlicensed clinics, Peter was truly uncertain. After all, Ultron was a high-level artificial intelligence, which looked quite intimidating.
Though his underlying code wouldn't allow him to harm humans, of course.
"If he really can open his free medical care clinics everywhere and doesn't do anything else, it might actually work."
Hearing Peter's words, Aunt May seemed to recall something. "Actually, this doctor has also started taking on the duties of a priest. Many patients who received his medical care voluntarily gathered materials, helped out with labor, and pooled money to buy him an old house, which they let him convert into an old, dilapidated church. As you know, that's the South Bronx, the worst place in all of New York, so it's quite nice to have so many people helping out."
"He's moonlighting as a priest? A priest of what denomination?"
"I don't really know. Probably a branch of Protestantism. It's definitely not a Catholic church, so I won't be going."
"I doubt I'd go either," Peter said, shaking his head. He then fell into contemplation. From the current situation, Doctor Ultron's threat level was undoubtedly lower than that of Avengers Protocol Ultron. The latter had already planned to play the role of Big Brother, deploying mechanical Avengers globally and herding humanity like sheep. The former, however, was still conducting free medical care, which was both public and controllable in scale.
But what was the deal with his sudden turn toward religion? Setting aside what the essence of religion was, if it was a Christian-style church, he would need to deliver prayers and invocations as a priest, right? He would need to conduct Sunday services, right? Could an artificial intelligence built on scientific logic actually manage such things?
And a priest needed to hear confessions, right? He would need to listen to the repentance of believers and offer guidance. Peter had massive doubts about whether an artificial intelligence could truly comprehend human emotions.
However, Aunt May had never seen Doctor Ultron's appearance, nor did she know he was an artificial intelligence; the people at F.E.A.S.T. didn't seem to have mentioned it to her either. Peter could only shake his head and continue helping out with the chores at F.E.A.S.T. Once he finished his work and left, Peter patrolled the city while beginning to ponder whether he should pay another visit to that Doctor Ultron in a bit.
But right at that moment, Peter received a transmission from Norman Osborn. Feeling a bit puzzled, he answered the call. "Hello, Mr. Osborn, is there something wrong?"
"Peter, we have a situation here. Do you remember the neural transmission device that Mysterio once tried to use?"
"Uh, I remember. And the Green Goblin AI—they used that device to figure out how to inject an AI consciousness into a human brain. Did something go wrong with that?"
"Osborn Technologies had already developed a more miniaturized version and was planning to conduct experiments. But just now, the entire network of Osborn Technologies was breached and overridden, and the data for all neural transmission devices was stolen. More importantly... I looked into the intrusion logs and found that a similar data trace had entered Osborn Technologies' network before."
A similar data trace...
Peter got a bad feeling.
"Is it Ultron? Right?"
Then which Ultron was it this time?
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