Stark had a peculiar attitude towards electronic devices. He didn't necessarily strive for extreme practicality or aesthetics, but he wanted every bit of his electronic equipment under his control. Therefore, he would never allow anything useless or beyond his control inside any of his electronic devices.
His phone was also a customized product of Stark Industries, mainly because commercially available phones contained too much redundant data that was hard to clean. If possible, Stark wanted control over every line of code in every software. He would feel anxious if anything went beyond his control.
So, when he opened the phone of his alternate universe self, Stark's heart skipped a beat. The numerous app icons scattered messily across the phone's home screen would have seemed untidy even to a regular person.
Ignoring his throbbing headache, Stark focused on the app icons and their names, and soon found the previously mentioned spider app icon, the one with the spider symbol found on Spiderman's chest.
Stark guessed that this Spider App could be related to Spider Man, and he was here to find Spider Man, so he eagerly clicked into the application.
After opening it, the first screen displayed a standard welcome message. A user profile indicated by a single human figure icon was on the right, and a community interface with three human figure icons was on the left.
Stark first clicked on the user profile, where he saw an Iron Armor face mask as the avatar, a nickname of "Anthony Stark", a string of IDs, more than 1200 points, and a very simple introduction, "Experimenting when free, don't chat with me!"
Stark held the phone away from his face, collected his chin, and adopted the posture of an elder struggling with their smartphone. He clicked on the community icon on the side of the application again.
As soon as he entered, even Stark Industries' high-tech phone froze for a moment. Just looking at the string of message notifications, Stark felt a buzzing sensation in his head as if it disturbed his eyes.
At the bottom of the community interface screen, there was a small "+" symbol. After tapping it, several circular icons would pop up representing task assignment categories. There was also a small speech bubble at the top showing "99+" messages.
The pull-down page displayed various selfies of Spidermen, photos taken by them, scenic photos, and large blocks of text.
A sweep to the left revealed a variety of videos, while a sweep to the right revealed one completed task after another.
Stark rubbed his forehead. He hardly had time to ponder why there were so many Spidermen before his worry shifted to the ears of the superheroes in this universe.
Stark hesitated, then lightly tapped the small bubble at the top with the "99+" message notification. The next second, he hurriedly pressed the return key, as the speed at which messages popped up instantly gave him a fear of replying to messages.
Stark sighed, gently swiped his finger, switched to the task completion interface, and saw that there were hundreds of tasks listed under the avatars and nicknames. Most of them were specific projects or topics, followed by the positions within these projects and topics, such as experimental assistants or project leaders.
Below the name of the task was a progress bar showing the current percentage of task completion and status. If a task was temporarily suspended, the progress bar turned red, while the progress bar for ongoing tasks was blue.
Below the progress bar, it showed 'Commissioner:', and then there were the avatars of Spidermen and their names.
Stark realized that the topmost task said, "Deliver something to Loki in Asgard."
Well, that was indeed Loki. Stark rolled his eyes. He used his thumb to lightly tap this task, and then found that the task progress showed 6%. The commissioner was Gwen Spiderman. The estimated completion time was two hours, and no anomalies had been reported so far.
Instantly, Stark connected all the dots — this so-called Spider App was actually for assigning tasks to Spidermen. In other words, there's a high chance that there's not just one Spiderman in this universe, but many. Could this place be the hometown of Spiderman?
But how can Spiderman have a hometown?
Stark wondered. If he recalled correctly, Peter had told him that his superpower came from a spider. He was bitten by the spider and gained extraordinary powers. But the spider was a native Earth spider. What does it have to do with other universes?
Stark speculated a bit and thought, since he had already traveled across universes, it implied that there are multiple universes in the world. So, there could well be a universe that serves as the headquarters for all Spidermen in various universes.
He then realized that therefore, it's very likely that Spider Man being taken away by the mysterious power wasn't an accident. Perhaps Spiderman's headquarters had sent someone to rescue him.
Stark carefully recalled the scene when Peter Parker disappeared. At that time, he was too busy looking at the black flames. But now, he remembered a detail.
The Spiderman suit he prepared for Peter had signaling functions. A miniature chip was installed on the side of the face mask. Once it detected a signal, it would emit a faint glow. If a call was connected, it would directly notify the owner of the suit.
Although the battlefield was chaotic at the time, Stark was holding Peter. He remembered that just before Peter was engulfed by the black flames, the signal detection device on the side of the face guard seemed to flicker.
Under those circumstances, it was unlikely that anyone would call Spiderman, so it might have been Spiderman himself who sent out the signal.
Was there a possibility that he had traveled to Spiderman's headquarters before and they had left detection equipment on him? Once he was in danger, a distress signal would be sent out and someone would come to his rescue?
The more Stark thought about it, the more he felt his speculation could be correct. So, he picked up his phone anxiously, and started to sift through the Spider App trying to find that familiar face.
Stark was sure that he would not recognize wrongly. No father would mistake his own son. But there were too many Spidermen in the chat group, the screen scrolled too quickly, and before Stark could click on their avatars, the messages they sent were already replaced by new ones.
Helpless, Stark could only click on the search icon of the community interface. He paused for a moment, then entered a name - "Peter Parker".
Then it displayed 120,000 search results, all of which were records of Peter Parker's messages.