ACT 2: Meanwhile, Randy Robertson is having a hard time keeping himself awake as he’s shopping for shoes with Gloria Grant. Trying to evade the painful moment, Randy makes up a phony story about how he was suppose to spend time with Peter. Gloria, aware that this may be a lie, denies Randy’s plea to depart.

ACT 3: Spider-Man, astonished by Stromm’s request, refuses to help him die, stating that “killing people, for whatever reason, that’s against the rules”. Stromm tries to convince Spider-Man to assist him in dying, since his single death could prevent more deaths to occur if the machine ever took over his mind and body.

ACT 4: Back home, Peter asks his aunt May for guidance about the difficult dilemma he’s faced with. She shares with Peter a story about her cancerous uncle Horace who took his life with a revolver provided by none other than her father. Shedding a few tears, she tells him how difficult it had been for her to keep this secret away from everybody, although she realizes that “it was a long time ago and that it doesn’t really matter anymore”.

ACT 5: Agreeing to help out Stromm with his ordeal, Peter goes on the Internet into a private chat room and downloads to his computer a copy of the operating system that Stromm’s former neural network has become. Saving that information on disk, he asks Shea if he would create a computer virus that could destroy Stromm’s operating system. Shea agrees and completes the task as requested by Peter.

ACT 6: Spider-Man makes his way back to Stromm’s hideout and introduces the disk containing the virus into Stromm’s operating system. The virus does its job…although, the virus created by Shea was indeed a loop program, putting Stromm’s on standby until Spider-Man can find a way to get him out of this mess. As he departs, Spider-Man promises to be back. The story ends with Stromm wandering in some kind of digitized universe…

TO BE CONTINUED?