The Baxter Foundation was, depending on how one chose to describe it, either an institution that nurtured exceptional young scientific minds by giving them access to resources and mentorship they would not otherwise have, or one of the most significant concentrations of raw intellectual potential per square meter in New York City.
Both descriptions were accurate and not mutually exclusive.
Peter stood outside it for a moment before going in.
He adjusted his expression into the one he had been practicing, calm and composed and professional, the expression of someone who belongs in a room and owns it.
He went inside.
The receptionist at the front desk handled his arrival efficiently. A brief phone call. A gesture toward the waiting area.
He sat.
He had been sitting for approximately two minutes when a voice reached him from across the lobby.
"Mr. Parker?"
The voice was clear and soft and belonged to a woman who appeared to be somewhere between seventeen and twenty, which was a wider range than it should have been but his ability to assess age had never been reliable.
She had straight blonde hair cut to shoulder length, blue eyes behind black-framed glasses that were doing a considerable amount of work in the direction of understated elegance, and she was wearing a lab coat that fit her well enough to confirm that it was not hiding anything that needed to be hidden.
Peter's brain produced an assessment before he had consciously authorized one.
"Beautiful," he said.
He said it at a volume that was clearly audible.
The woman stopped.
A blush appeared, rapid and genuine, followed by the specific expression of someone who has received a compliment they did not expect and does not have an immediate response for.
"Th.... thank you for the compliment," she managed. "I suppose."
"Excuse my behavior," Peter said, standing. "What I said was unintentional. I was not expecting my guide to be..." he gestured vaguely, which did not help his case, "and if I made you uncomfortable I apologize."
"No," she said, recovering. "No, it is fine, I was just surprised." She shook her head once. "It is nothing."
"Good." He extended his hand. "I am Peter Parker."
"It is a pleasure," she said, shaking it. "I am Susan Storm."
"Susan Storm." He let that land properly. "It is a pleasure to meet you. I will say that the photographs do not do you justice."
The blush returned, and this time it stayed.
"Oh! Th.... thank you." She regrouped with a speed that suggested practice. "My father asked me to come collect you.... Could you follow me, please?"
"Lead the way," he said.
The walk to Dr. Storm's office was more of a conversation than a transit. Susan asked about his research, what topic he would be presenting, what direction his work was going in.
He gave her enough to be genuinely interesting without revealing the full scope of it, partly because he wanted to save the complete picture for the meeting itself and partly because watching Susan Storm become increasingly engaged with a topic she found scientifically compelling was its own form of entertainment.
She had studied biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biochemistry, which explained the depth of her interest and the precision of her follow-up questions.
Dr. Franklin Storm was standing when they entered his office, which was the posture of someone who treats a meeting as worth the formality of being on his feet.
He was broad-shouldered and warm in the way of people who are genuinely comfortable with being in charge, and he smiled when he saw them.
"You must be Peter Parker," he said, crossing the room and extending his hand. "It is a pleasure to meet you, son."
"The pleasure is mine, Doctor," Peter said, shaking it.
"I would introduce you to my daughter but I suspect she has already taken care of that."
He glanced at Susan with the specific expression of a parent who is mildly exasperated and entirely proud at the same time.
She gave him a small smile. "I apologize for anything she may have done. She is sometimes very curious."
"Not at all, sir. I was surprised by the depth of her knowledge, and I am not easily surprised.... Your daughter is very intelligent."
Franklin Storm smiled the way fathers smile when someone says something praiseworthy about their children.
"That is true," he said. He straightened slightly. "Now. Let us get to it. I am seeing that you seem to have brought a project, Good....Tell me what you have."
"Two projects to be precise, sir," Peter said.
He began to talk.
The first project was about the treatment.
The mechanism was a controlled integration of stem cells with trace amounts of DNA from organisms with high-level regenerative capacity, lizards being the obvious candidate but not the only one.
The goal was not limb regeneration, that was Dr. Connors' focus and he was going to let Connors work on that for now.
The goal was cellular repair at a level that addressed the first and second stages of cancer, eliminated the biological mechanism underlying most sexually transmitted diseases, and opened a pathway toward correcting conditions that had been categorized as permanent, the deaf, the colorblind, the mute, and others whose limitations were not neurological in origin but structural.
The key was that Connors had fixated on the regenerative capacity and missed the corrective capacity entirely.
The serum could do more than grow back what was lost. It could fix what had never worked correctly in the first place.
May's voice was somewhere in the back of that idea.
When you help one, you help everyone.
He had not mentioned limb regeneration in the presentation because he had not yet solved the problem of preventing the subject from becoming a large reptilian monster, and presenting an incomplete solution to a problem that was not yet public knowledge seemed premature.
The second project was Baymax. Oh yes, that Baymax
He explained the concept of an autonomous medical assistance robot capable of non-invasive diagnosis and basic treatment, designed to operate in hospital environments and reduce the burden on nursing staff and emergency departments during peak periods.
The design philosophy was accessibility rather than capability, a machine that could handle a significant percentage of standard patient interactions, freeing human medical staff for the cases that genuinely required human judgment.
He answered every question Franklin and Susan asked, and there were several, because both of them were operating at a level where the questions were not clarifications but genuine intellectual engagement.
The conversation moved faster than most conversations he had been part of in either life.
At some point he registered that Franklin Storm had stopped looking at him with the polite interest of a senior academic evaluating a junior applicant and had started looking at him the way people look at something that has surprised them.
A long silence seem to settled over the office when he finished the explanation
Franklin Storm leaned back in his chair.
"I must say, Peter," he said, "I am pleasantly surprised.
More than pleasantly. Your theory is sound, your methodology is rigorous, and frankly this approach is substantially more elegant than anything currently in use.
Congratulations on thinking of something genuinely brilliant."
"Thank you, sir. The primary reason for presenting it here is to ask whether the Baxter Foundation would be willing to accept me as an intern and help finance the project.
I have the ideas and the capability but not the resources or the credibility to pursue it independently."
"Of course,"
Franklin said, without hesitation. "I would consider it a genuine privilege to be part of something like this.
You are approved, Mr. Parker. My daughter will see you out, and I will personally make sure the other executives are briefed and brought on board as quickly as possible."
"Thank you, Sir. That means a great deal."
Peter and Susan left the office together.
"Better than expected?" Susan said, as soon as the door closed behind them.
"I will admit it went well," he said.
"Well?" She stopped walking and turned to look at him.
"Peter, I have never seen my father respond to anything the way he just responded to you.
I study in this building. I have sat through dozens of presentations by people with doctorates and decades of experience, and I have never seen him look like that."
She shook her head. "You are extraordinary. I did not expect to find someone with knowledge at the same level as mine, and you brought ideas I would never have thought of."
"Thank you for that," he said.
"Genuinely." He glanced at the corridor ahead of them.
"Unfortunately, I have other obligations and it is time for me to go. It was a real pleasure meeting you and the Sir Storm. I hope to see you soon."
"Likewise," she said. "See you later."
She turned and walked back down the corridor they had come from.
Peter watched for approximately two seconds, turned, said goodbye to the receptionist on the way out, and stepped into the afternoon.