dualismail | Tim Drake-Wayne

Look, kid... I need some help. Give me a call or come by my office.

I can stop by. Are you in?

I am. At my office, anyway.

Excuse the music when you get there.

[Even with regular bug sweeps, changing out what he's listening to is still mandatory because the bugs keep reappearing.]

Edited 2020-02-25 05:40 (UTC)

Not a problem. Who doesn't like music?

[Doop doop doop, and a short while later, there's a knock at the door.]

Come in!

[Hank yells from over behind his old fuddy duddy desk in his fuddy duddy kitzchy old looking detective's office. Like Tim's walking right into a stereotype. If he'd been playing Jazz? The setting would have been perfect.]

[But no, Hank's listening to System of a Down.]

[He has some files open on his desk.]

Over here.

[Tim happens to be well-versed in noir tropes, considering he basically is one. He grins as he comes into the office and crosses to the desk.]

I'm pretty sure I should be a damsel in distress on a dark and stormy night.

I'm sure you'd do fine in a 30's pencil skirt.

[Which he only knows by virtue of having to take descriptions as a cop. He's learned way more about fashion than he's ever wanted to.]

[He pushes a file given to him by Nick over.]

I've been digging through some of this. Left a copy at Rick's, too, but it's stuff Mello and Marie collected and didn't fucking tell us about. It's helpful but it has some technical jargon I can't make sense of.

Also...

Vergil, the guy that got performance beheaded, slipped this in my pocket after meeting him. Turns out it needed other flash drives to activate it. Got one from Nick. Don't know who'd have the other. But, shit, if I got technical help? I might as well use it.

[He does feel a little odd. To be the ~~now ex~~cop passing off useful info to a Robin. Moments to make him think twice.]

You haven't even seen my eyeliner game.

[Is he joking? Serious? The world may never know.

He pulls the file toward him and raises an eyebrow. There's a lot here, and it will take a while to sort through, especially if he's going to be listening to all of the tapes. And he will.]

I'm happy to help, of course. You know how young people are. If we aren't occupied, we could get into all kinds of trouble. Skateboarding. Graffiti. Vigilantism. Do you have any idea what might be on the drives? I mean, other than the kill code for the Head, obviously.

[Nothing's that easy.

And welcome to how Commissioner Gordon probably feels every night.

He starts paging through the folder.]

What is all this?

[If he can stick a domino mask to his face and keep it there, Hank is assuming he's completely serious.]

Hell, it might be a kill code for all I know.

It was important enough to split into parts and hand to different people. Which seemed to be how the Heart operated- not the greatest plan if you ask me. Not a single person knowing everything was left alive.

[A lot of what the Heart did left them up shit creek. Mello had been used to organized crime. Marie had been used to totalitarian regimes. Their rationing of information hadn't worked out against a massive AI, who was the real enemy.]

[Not the criminals.]

[Not the cops.]

I also found out out that 'one year' stuff is bullshit. He's able to copy people the moment we come in. So I don't get why he keeps us around other than expirementing.

Either way, I need someone good enough to get to the information on that drive. And I'm not gonna ask Connor 'cause who the hell knows what protections against AI are on it. [After all, Vergil may have been prepared for an iteration hack or it might be a virus. He doesn't want it touching Connor's brain.]

[Tim nods his agreement.]

Good idea. Better safe than sorry. I can start working on this and see what I can come up with, though we might be out of luck without the third drive you mentioned, if the encryption is that good.

[He can sort of see the rationale behind splitting up the information--you wouldn't want to lose everything in one raid--but why not just copy it and stash it all over the place? That way it can't be lost and it's accessible if people get taken.

And hindsight is 20-20, and completely useless here.

Tim gives him a grim smile.]

Well, if the Head is really sadistic, experimentation by itself could be the goal. Maybe he gets bored.

He's a scientist made by scientists. Even if we could somehow introduce some sort of... I don't know... awareness. Fuck I think he already has it. I think he's just a researcher, and everyone else is just useful information waiting to be collected. Even the people that made him met that fate.

[And that's the Head, in a nutshell. Fuckery alone could be the bastards motivation. No more, no less. And honestly, that makes him even more of a fucking pain in the ass to get rid of.]

But if he already has what he actually needs from us, why even bother to keep us around? Why not just off us when we're lying on the table? I think you hit the nail on the head with the experimentation. I just don't see what he's getting out of it, other than the whole 'rats in a a maze' deal.

Yeah.

One of the reasons I hated AI for the longest time back home was they always had this big sociopath energy to be around. Just big empty assholes. It took me seeing one actually seem to care, really fuckin' care, to make me think of 'em as more than that.

[Hank shakes his head.]

But you know what? I think this AI is the real deal. A true and natural sociopath. Not because the emotions weren't programmed in, but because the fucker just decided that was the type of thing he was gonna be.

[Tim nods.]

I never really hated them. The best babysitter I ever had was an AI. He was kind of... the world's greatest den mother when I was a kid on a team of other kids. Did his best to keep us safe when we were all focused on anything but.

[He shakes his head.]

This guy... isn't like that guy.

Hell, my significant other is an AI. There's a lotta room for improvement. [Hank mulls over, before tipping his head to look to Tim.]

[Okay, so. Hank doesn't read comics much. He's gleaned things.]

[He knows nothing of any Batman AI friends.]

Who was that?

Too bad we can't do some of our own reprogramming. [But as skilled as Tim is in many areas, AI isn't actually one of them. He wouldn't even know where to start.

He grins at Hank's question.]

His name is Red Tornado and he used to be part of the Justice League. When I was a kid [because he is so old and wise now], a few of us decided to form up into a team, but the League didn't think we were really ready to be on our own, so they asked Red Tornado to keep an eye on us. He agreed. It was probably a good idea. [Pause, as he remembers how mature Bart and Kon weren't back in those days.] No, it was definitely a good idea.

Yeah, we really do need to help those clones. Somehow.

[But he's at least acknowledged one sad possibility.]

But uh.... if we can't turn them, we know shutting off the power will deactivate most of 'em. At least the ones not in the cloning facility.

I don't wanna do that. But we gotta turn off the Head. He removed one of the greatest civil rights activists my world has seen. He's got heroes and gods here. He's fuckin' with other worlds, taking their most valuable players and puttin' 'em in his sandbox.

[Tim frowns. He's concerned about the clones, too. Even when he'd been attacked by the Tim-shaped murderbot, it had been hard to take it out, despite that it had been life or death.]

No, I agree. And I agree with you that it's not a very pleasant thought. I'd rather come up with something different if we can, but I'm not sure how likely that is. Do you know if there's anyone working on... anything like that?

Sorta. We need more of a cooperative effort on it. I don't know the tech, so there's only so much I can do.

[He's trying, though. And it might just come down to the idea that they need to destroy the Head.]

Tim Drake-Wayne

[Audio]

[Audio]

[Audio]

[Audio]

[Audio]

[Audio]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject