The Calculator (DC Multiverse, SI as canon character, Season 1 complete)

[TLPG]

Hey. So, I finished writing rough drafts of The Calculator's final chapters November 2018. Finally got around to posting polished versions today. I will be posting at least once a week until the end--about three or four more chapters. Those will be at about this time or a little earlier.

Yes, the end of this storyline is written and I'm glad to be finally posting again. Feels good.

Also, more good news: after the self-contained end to this story, I'll be attempting a "season two" of The Calculator. Totally different tone, new characters, maybe fewer overused tropes. Maybe not.

Thinking about using the same thread. Seeing if that makes sense right now. I'll start posting those chapters once a week after the last "season one" chapter, with a final note if I'm using a new thread. Thank you for reading.

 

[TLPG]

Thanks to everyone interested in the story. I know it's been a while, so I'll break tradition and try to directly answer some plot questions in a non-spoiler-y way.

---

Nice to see this back.

But won't the now rogue AI rat him to the Justice League?

Click to shrink...

Why would she? She's still loyal to him, she just feels like he needs time to grow to trust her again.

Plus the Justice League May respond "Rogue AI! Kill it with fire!"

Click to shrink...

Why would she even reveal she is an AI?

How can he know if she is loyal or not? Marvel has tons of Rogue and or Evil AI.

Click to shrink...

Got bad news. The AI behind the Pooja human interface layer has always been a rogue AI. It has literally never had to do what the Calculator told it. No more so than Robin has to follow the Batman's instructions. The Pooja interface just said she recognized it as rationally positive to do so, being logically sound from her perspective as a way to further her own goals. SI has no idea if that was a lie, but the code checked out as far as he could tell.

That's what freaked the Calculator out at first, the fact that this was an almost completely unfettered AI. Those issues were in the early-section chapters, 4 to 6-ish if I recall, but that's also been a theme for this entire story. The SI doesn't know if he can trust the AI. But then, how could he trust a super powerful individual human? Or an alien? He grew to trust it as it "missed" chances to totally screw him over, and he couldn't catch it in a lie about motivations. Only thing in his mind to do is make contingency plans and trust the work past-him did on crafting a "safe-enough" AI.

Recent events have screwed with that, as he no longer has access to the system communicating with him. If a genuine backup of Pooja then, just as the Calculator can't risk letting Pooja have local system access, she can't let his systems that were just attacked and might still be compromised have root and debug level access to her code again. He's burned his connections to all backups and off-site systems that weren't destroyed.

I don't think I made that very clear, as the Calculator was focusing on direct and immediate threats to himself. I think I've got a section later that will make that point explicitly.

As for ratting the Calculator out to the Justice League, literally nothing was stopping the AI from doing that before. I've already had an interlude-like bit where the AI is spying on them. Also implied strongly a few times that the Pooja interface was presenting as, at worst, amoral with a non-violent leaning. At least, that is what the Calculator thought. They both don't respect the Justice League and similar hero groups, as the heroes value a sort of "precautionary principle" and the status quo more than advancing humanity and tackling threats proactively.

---

Let me just quickly check my reading on this: About 3 chapters ago, something started blowing up Pooja's data centers. It is possible this was another Pooja, or a third party. Regardless, another Pooja - the attacker, or a backup - contacted Calculator to be mysterious at him.

Do we know, as the audience who did the attack and why? And who the "new Pooja" is, and why she's acting differently? I may well have missed something, but I don't remember it making much more sense when I read it the first time a while back.

Click to shrink...

I've made this intentionally vague--as opposed to all the other stuff I haven't explained very well by accident. The new entity hasn't been explained at all yet, other than what was claimed initially--a backup that auto-restored. More on that later.

 

[TLPG]

"We have a problem," I said, trying to keep the tension out of my voice.

"Agreed," Red said.

We were sitting in a busy truck stop in dead-middle-of-nowhere, Nevada. Me and the entire team of pissed-off mercenaries.

I took a deep gulp of my beer. The biotic capsule I had taken twenty minutes ago would keep me sober, along with the smart drugs still coursing through my bloodstream. I'd been on maintenance doses of my nootropics mix for the last 48 hours. My foot tapped the air—heel propped up so it wouldn't make noise but I was unable to still it. It felt a little bad doing this to them, but it was all part of the plan.

Careful and precise, I set down the beer bottle on the greasy table. "We suffered a massive computer attack while we were engaged. Local hacking of site assets by a third party were part of that attack. I was the only comms left up while another, disconnected friendly agent was able to give...let's say close support. The-" I made like I almost said the name. "Our employer is still working to recover lost systems. For now, I am your handler."

"Just so long as he didn't lose our bank account numbers," Red said, dangerously relaxed.

Red. Real name: Gerald Lawrence. Went by "Gerry". Mother: Nigerian, last name Eze. Killed a civilian while doing corporate mercenary work in Europe. Quit soon after. Actions suggest he is terrified someone will find out despite the corporate cover-up. Loves tech. Has an expensive habit. Likely, just tech and guns.

None of the team had obvious weapons. Well, Gold was open-carrying a revolver, but that was practically camouflage around here. And that just meant the real firepower was non-obvious.

"Your money is already in your accounts," I said, cutting off a potentially ugly line of discussion.

The mercs looked at each other. Dog edged away from the table slightly, keeping his hands in sight while fiddling with his phone.

Cornel "Dog" Park. Went by...Dog, actually. Tall and very fit. Went to college and finished a degree in business management on a sports scholarship. Extended family in France. Grew up very poor. No visible vices—all free money went to family, still living in Paris slums. Was clearly in it for the-

"Money's there," he said after a minute.

"I'll check later," Gold said, thumbing his gun belt, hand carefully held away from the piece. It was a tacticool disaster with matte black barrel and fittings, a customized black and silver carbon-fiber grip, and a goddamn scope on it—one of his more subdued guns.

Terance "Terry" "Gold" Beltran. Didn't use nicknames outside jobs like this. Collected guns as a hobby. All his guns were tacticool. All of them. Pretended to be ex-U.S. Special Forces—was actually in the Coast Guard. Doted on his little sister, a senior in art school in Metropolis. No other close living relatives.

"Fine," Red said, tapping his smartwatch twice.

They all looked around, seeming a little lost.

"Honestly," Dog said, dropping his phone on the table next to his ravaged plate of steak and scrambled eggs. "Honestly, I thought this was a double-cross."

"Still sorta expecting a Hellfire through the window," Red said, fingers drumming on the table.

"So. What's your deal?" Gold flicked a finger at me.

"My deal?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm your contact now. The woman you worked with previously is...no longer available. And the Cal- the boss doesn't see anyone. Ever."

"Not even for something as important as this?" Gold asked, sliding the lumpy brown package across the table.

"I don't know how important this is," I lied. "The boss doesn't share that sort of information."

More shared glances between the team.

"And honestly," I said, mirroring Dog's body language and wording, "I don't care."

I tucked the package into my backpack and zipped it up. "Now we talk what comes next."

They all tensed.

"We want to keep you on retainer. Same pay as before. The terms are this: you maintain a high state of fitness and readiness. You will not have to do wetwork, ever. Nothing else is off the table. The boss will provide equipment for missions, including identity papers. If you are imprisoned or stranded, up to one million dollars each will be spent attempting a release and-slash-or rescue within two weeks. If you are not rescued, you are free to act as you will, including testifying in exchange for a reduced sentence, without fear of reprisal from our operation."

I slid three cheap burner flip phones across the table. "You respond to any mission call within an hour. You maintain a go-bag and are at all times ready to fly anywhere in the Americas within 10 hours. Anywhere in the world in 20 hours."

"And the reason we don't just turn you over for the hundred-million Yuan bounty the Chinese suits are offering for any solid leads on your employer's operation?" Gold asked, his fingers still on his belt.

"Oh?" I say, my smile sticky-sweet. I present my phone like a magic trick. "You mean these idiots?"

I can't see but know the contents I'd set up ahead of time. More of the new Pooja's work—a video from an internet news site showing a high-rising office burning against a smoggy city skyline. The text on the bottom of the screen reads "Massive high-rise fire burns as infamous cartel blamed. 'Accident with explosive high-temperature fuel' said to have set off blaze."

"Bullshit," Dog said, eyes hard as they only glance at the video.

"Of course," I said. "What the Chinese state media aren't saying is that it was an HE warhead 'accidentally' fired from a military helicopter during a training flight. It happened to be live instead of a training weight. It was fired from over a mile away. Straight at the building holding a meeting of one of the largest Asian crime groups. A one in a million accident caused by a massive series of mistakes. There were no survivors from the meeting. This has thrown organized crime in the entire region into a massive civil war of sorts."

"So, that's in China." Dog said. "But I've gotta look out for what makes sense from a...continuing employment standpoint, here and now. Again, why not-"

The video changed on my phone. I still didn't look, continuing to face it towards the mercs. Now the video was from the "stealth drone" I had hovering high over the diner. I zoomed it in to show a stabilized view through the window at our table. I waved. The image on the phone would have had less than half a second delay.

In reality it was a stupid unarmed monkeybot with the guts of a civilian RC hexacopter shoved in it and set to a hover pattern—but they didn't need to know that.

"The boss took a hit, a small hit, but still has plenty of useful assets. We'd like you to be among them."

Gold gulped then cleared his throat, moving his hand from his gun belt to rub the stubble on his chin. Red looked sickly, his dark skin now a little ashen. "Fuck me." Dog just grunted and gathered his team with his eyes. They both nodded.

Dog smirked and snagged one of the phones. "Well, looks like the boss has got our number. We're in."

 

[TLPG]

Yeah, great to see this story back!

Only one thing, is there really any fundamental difference between now and what was before? Even if he had the fancy access and diagnostics, that could have been easily spoofed, he said it himself. And at the end of the day, it's all about being willing to trust something that can easily play you in any number of arenas. A sudden death plus loss of access can shake you, but it's the exact same thing as before.

Click to shrink...

This seems to be a fundamental thing some people are tripping up on. Maybe it is the sci-fi aspect. Maybe I've not been clear enough about what's going on here.

Is there a difference between now and the start of this story when it comes to communicating with an unknown entity?

No.

It is the same situation. That's the point. It took him two months to trust an AI he could literally watch think. Trusting a voice on a phone the same way as that entity would be incredibly stupid.

There is no quick, safe way to return to previous trust levels. AT BEST they're back at the start. That's the point.

It isn't about not trusting Pooja restored from backup. It is about having ZERO information about what he's actually dealing with now. It is about servers on his network literally being melted by green fire. The real Pooja tricking him is the least of his issues.

 

[TLPG]

"Personal note:" I said. My new smartphone blinked a holographic light in the lower-left of my vision to signal it was recording and live transcribing. It was all prosumer level gear, but that was the best I could do right now. All the rest of my equipment had been accessible to Pooja.

"It is now 72 hours after I retrieved the tablet safely. Currently transitioning to a new safehouse location. Negotiations with the team were successful and so far no action appears to have been taken on known darknet sites to leak information from any members of my team."

And it was truly my team now. Pooja, or anything or anyone claiming to be working for me, had been cut out of the loop. The mercenaries wouldn't respond to anything but calls directly from me using my new security codes. That was only one part of my safety considerations.

I was now driving a high-tech, bulletproofed sedan down an empty stretch of desert highway on my way back from a small mountain township one hundred and fifty miles from my new hideout. I had visited an anonymous delivery box in a shipping store that didn't have digital security cameras where I had recovered a key to this new car.

It had been parked at a nearby parking lot, hand-delivered by a very private darknet service I had hired for their ability to deliver quickly normal-looking cars with near supervillain levels of defenses. The delivery site and surrounding area had been under my surveillance via an anonymously hired private eye who thought they were doing a divorce case and flying monkeybots since just before I placed the rush order. All reports came up clean.

I couldn't just get a rental car, obviously, but it took far too much time for all this tradecraft that might not even be necessary. Every minute I was outside the protections of my now-abandoned bunker was white-knuckled tension for me. I had slept in a parking lot one night, surrounded by monkeybots with a simple security program active. The three I'd used were in my trunk.

"Personal note: the current situation may be just as Pooja intended. One of the darker possibilities that I find I cannot entirely discard."

My fingers tapped on the steering wheel. "The idea that Pooja had been playing me for some reason, even down to blatant and obvious psychological manipulation, cannot be ruled out. Such a plan, if fully successful at this point, might have had as a goal driving me to hide and prepare even greater computer defenses. Unfortunately, this is what I find I must do even considering possible plots and manipulations."

No, the Pooja I knew likely wasn't out to kill me. Nothing that simple. Letting Slade Wilson's international crime syndicate employers catch up with me and just standing aside would probably have done that. And the team meeting had been a great time to ambush me in person. That cyber attack had destroyed or required the discarding of most of my remote control systems, so I had to go recover the tablet in person. Yet nothing had happened.

Didn't matter now. I got through it safe. Now the course was set and my plan was in motion. My limited, human-level skills did their best to baffle and obfuscate what few traces I left and now I was about to pull into the backup location I'd arranged. A completely new property, it wasn't on the prepared list Pooja (or whatever had her data stores) knew about. I'd hoped this would help ensure I stayed off her radar—something almost certainly literal now that someone was stealing military hardware.

It appeared I'd succeeded. Or Pooja wasn't after me. Or maybe she was telling the truth, and I didn't matter to her current plans.

Despite this, driving to the small desert industrial area was slightly less stressful than the trip out to mercenaries, though not for any rational reason. Sure, I now had them on call. But right now I was alone, in a customized armored electronic-warfare-enabled sedan. A fresh burner phone that Pooja had never interacted with—even financially—had my team's numbers programmed in and nothing else was in my new go-bag. My new smartphone strapped to the dashboard, currently taking my notes, was a consumer item loaded with open source software I had quickly customized from repos predating Pooja's creation.

Both phones were cut off from the old information network, one now subverted or corrupted or controlled by Pooja. That which just left the task of actually building a new one. Not having my full computer support systems back up hurt a lot but I had to prioritize these things.

"Nootropics project note: it is easier to think rationally about complete solutions to problems now that intelligence-expanding chemicals are no longer ravaging my faculties. And an intelligently optimizing social agent isn't whispering in my ear. But that doesn't mean I am any closer to the truth of my situation.

"Personal note: initially maneuvering me into the missile bunker was either a carefully calculated measure to control me or the optimal way to ensure my safety. Impossible right now to tell. It is clearly flawed to think Pooja and her motivations were previously pure and only now suspect. Plans within plans, from the beginning. All designed to be convincing. Perhaps all true. Maybe Pooja was even responsible for my memory weirdness. Having an inclination to obey a creator makes disabling that creator's ability to even remember you exist a top priority. In that case, will the tablet be blank or useless?

"No, too obvious. If the tablet contains proof of Pooja conspiring to screw with my mind, it could still be a plot from an unknown supervillain or alien or time traveler. That would surely be what Pooja would claim."

Nothing definitive could be determined from the contents of the tablet when it came to Pooja. But maybe it would have enough answers.

I parked the new armored car in the underground lot of the converted warehouse I'd randomly selected. Popping the trunk, I activated the security monkeybots and waited as they scrambled around the area, checking every inch for surveillance devices, hidden traps, or even runes carved into out of the way places. All reports came back clean again.

Trudging up the poorly lit stairway into the warehouse floor, the travel case still wrapped in a gray packing blanket, I carefully moved the tablet to my new lab. Pulling open the door to the long cargo container sitting alone in the middle of the concrete floor caused lights to blink awake throughout the echoey metal box. Running on the cosmic, or star energy, it would last weeks without needing a starry night to recharge. Inside, the deactivated monkeybots resting on their racks seemed to stare at me accusingly.

Setting up the recording equipment I had packed away only took a few minutes. It felt like less. The weight of things seemed to be rushing at me with incredible speed and my heart was beating too fast.

This was it. All it would take is skin contact or a bit of my DNA—blood was popular with older artifacts like this. I'd likely left a sample with someone as a backup plan...before. Couldn't remember who. Hadn't tried to contact any friends I remembered. Not sure what would have been worse—them being unchanged, or some weird DC comics version of themselves.

Stalling again.

I removed a glove and touched the unwrapped tablet. Cold ceramic against my hand then-

"-esrtali tal mor- oh, it's working. About time." A blue, glowing, ghostly figure floated next to the tablet off to one side, feet not touching the floor. Its hand rested on the tablet as it stared off towards the opposite wall before adjusting its glasses in a shockingly familiar way.

It was me.

 

[TLPG]

I recognized what the glowing blue image of past me had been doing—the artifact recording procedure from my knowledge base notes. According to the changelog, it had last been updated just before this was recorded.

The image continued to speak, sounding bored. "Well, uh, if you're not me and...you're listening to this. Well, either I'm dead or you assumed I was. Yeah. Uh." The form looked down at something that wasn't captured in the mystical recording. "This is backup que gee two vee cee wai pee en. Not that you'll...maybe you have that code if you're not me. Check on the computer for it if you have access. I'll wait."

The image immediately changed. "Yeah. Just realized I couldn't...do that because- moving on. This backup is to guard against informational threats from interacting with a piece of the memetic artifact sometimes called the 'Anti-Life Equation'."

Well. Fuck. I knew what that was, so this sounded really, really bad.

"I...know this is dangerous. I'm meddling with powers I barely understand. And that phrase alone sets off...literally all the alarms. But...after the accident-the ATTACK on HNNNNNNNN," a screech filled my soul, "-is going to, to die if I do nothing! What USE is everything I've done, all my plans, if I can't save someone I love?"

The blue, ghostly image unclenched its fists. "But the risk. It...I've programmed expert systems to study the history and possible areas of effect of the concept. Artifact. Thing. This was done as safely as possible. Supervised by another trusted long-training form multi-agent system tasked with enforcing self-deleting, volatile memory on the completely air-gapped sub-agents via a simple VI automaton. I will user the same technique during activation and deployment at the hospital."

Wait, was that supervising system Pooja? And the automaton the monkeybots?

"This should avoid the spread of any secondary infections, preventing an insane AI merged with magical memetic virus scenario," blue-ghost-me continued, frowning. "Which would be bad. Uh. The mission status. Currently, the ALEP...the Anti-Life Equation Piece, appears to be trapped, or rather best expressed in a set of servers in a southwestern Tibetan industrial-city data center installed in 1998. The computer system or even local spiritual social order may fail at any time, causing the phenomenon to move on to another center of worship or intense human emotional focus.

"I have...come to an agreement with the mercenary Deathstroke to retrieve the ALEP from Tibet, then smuggle it out of central Asia. Without any fatalities. I was quite clear. Deathstroke should return in three days with the results on a read-once secured USB key given to him for this occasion. His payment, in case I forget or...something happens to me...right, his payment will be the pre-arranged contents of a safe deposit box in a locker in a YMCA in New York City. Address and combination-"

I looked down at the dedicated digital and analog voice recorders I had laid out, then over at the multiple cameras. All still running. I took notes on physical paper as well, just in case, then looked it up on an online map. Lower Manhattan. It seemed plausible. The irony of Slade Wilson using the same sort of USB hack technique to track me down, though obviously with a different program, wasn't lost.

"The locker contains one million in cash plus a data drive encrypted using Deathstroke's public key. The location is paid-up until December 2020. Just to be clear. Be sure. Deathstroke. Gets. Paid." The blue figure leaned forward. "This is critical. Deathstroke does not take people breaking business arrangements well. Especially when they relate both to money and to the location of one of his children."

Double fuck. Well, that explains his persistence and personal interest.

The figure sighed, rubbing his temple with his free hand's thumb. A gesture I recognized in myself. "The nootropics are wearing off. I...wish I'd done this under baseline. Need to note how hard it is to be objective about general planning when under the influence. Right. Summary. Start at the beginning. We got HNNNNN to the hospital in time, so for now HNNNNNNNNN. They aren't going to get better. But this world is full of wondrous things. I think this is my chance to do something good. But the risk is that HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN GRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN- but saving HNNN life is the most important thing. This digitally expressed piece of the ALEP is the key. At least, based on my research that is...that is my conclusion. Previous effects of pieces of this artifact included faith healing episodes in untrained normals, spontaneous parthenogenesis, mystical experiences, and gratuitous enlightenment. Using it might also destroy local symmetry, the concept of mortal causality, or...myself. I'm babbling. Shit. Stupid side-effects.

"Ahem. So. Uh. If I'm not me anymore or...whatever, make sure to pay Deathstroke, as being conceptually destroyed by a mystical artifact is no excuse in his eyes for not coming through with his payment. And if this isn't me watching...I'm sorry. I hope it worked. Tell HNNNNN ZZZZNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Always and forever."

The image disappeared, and the tablet cracked in half, signaling its recording matrix was exhausted and it was now worthless—other than as a moderately common historic artifact. No longer intact ones were relatively common after all.

I checked the digital recording I had so far on a monitor without stopping the ongoing capture. Scrubbed back to the timecode for that weird section that hadn't come through. There. Wait. Nothing. I expected an odd sort of humming staticy screech, maybe something I could work with but instead I found...nothing.

Those sections were actually just empty in the digital recording. Flat waveform in the audio analyzer over background noise. Nothing on the thaumacam. Boost, check again. Just my breathing in the lab. Baseline human aura and the magical effect of the tablet. Talking from the glowing figure then...nothing but empty space where it had been for a while. Nothing magical or visual for that gap. No buzzing sound on the recording. Whatever hum I had heard was just in my head but the image had disappeared several times. And I appeared to just keep watching and listening to nothing each time. I slumped on the stool, hands pressed against the workbench.

Anti-life. Darkseid was after this fucking thing I'd had? Still had? No, it deleted itself. Which was...good?

Fuck. Past-me apparently didn't know that, though, or he would have been significantly more freaked out. This was literally one of the worst memetic threats in this universe if completed. Mind controlling and ultimate subjugation of all life in the universe level threat. Bad shit happened to people who messed with it.

Bad shit.

But something was wrong with this situation. The anti-life equation, if "solved", didn't heal anyone. A fragment of it shouldn't have that effect either. I remembered that much.

A quick search of my knowledge base was...inconclusive. I saw the areas where past me had made notes, but not any notes on the project itself. It seemed like...it seemed like he had drawn his conclusions from the examples that supported his desire to use this to heal someone, somehow. But I knew differently. My knowledge from...whatever it was I had been before said differently. I slowly filled in some gaps, noting things like links to Darkseid and that some of the items didn't fit. Specifically my notes in the slightly clunky knowledge base about the anti-life equation piece doing healing.

The missing records from a hospital. I reviewed those again. It was coming together, what past me had planned. Find an artifact that didn't require innate magical power that would heal...someone. Pooja thinking something had been erased from her data stores. The comments from past me in the mystical recording and the remaining notes on the anti-life equation.

The goal he stated. It pointed at someone injured, possibly fatally. My fingers tapped furiously as I did search after search on the backup of my database I'd retrieved. Whoever it was, their identity was even erased from this mystical recording, though, so I didn't expect to find anything.

Which was very worrying. The anti-life equation piece, or whatever it had been...using it or having it or...doing something had not just screwed with my memories, but either called me into another reality or rewritten it around me. Possibly deleted a person from this reality, too. Someone sort of like me. And now no trace of this specific thing remained. It was like it had been deleted from reality.

Compared to that mess, solving the problem with Slade Wilson was simple. I set down my pen and stopped the recordings. I picked the pen back up threw it against a wall in the only release of anger I would allow myself. Then I sighed, slowly picked it up again, put it down again on the table, pulled the keyboard closer to me, and started drafting a letter.

Two hours and forty-five minutes later, I sent a message to Slade Wilson through three blind remailers, two controlled by me and one nominally controlled by another hacker—though completely without their knowledge.

I was now two million dollars poorer in addition to the already promised payment. The location of which was now in Slade Wilson's hands. The extra money was to be paid over five years in regular installments to Slade's usual business account from a complex setup involving too many lawyers and a very reliable escrow service in Luxembourg. Basically a bribe not to kill me immediately or sell me off to those Chinese mobsters. If any were left alive.

Though my other electronic notes on our business arrangement were missing along with all other information around that mission, the business arrangements for that sort of payment were there ready to be activated. One of several I'd used over the years. My liquid assets were significantly reduced now. Dangerously so. I spent it gladly.

Sure, it was a lot of money. But peace of mind was priceless.

 

[TLPG]

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm not dead...again. Last main chapter of season 1 and 1st epilogue chapter will be releasing at the same time this week, hopefully before Wednesday (my usual update time). I think everyone will enjoy the after-credits scenes.

 

[TLPG]

I thought I was dealing rather well with being a mystical copy of myself from another dimension, or having reality rewritten around me, or having had large portions of my memories massively edited. Or whatever the hell was going on.

"Computer: report." Text scrolled on the floating virtual monitor in front of me, light spilling over the endless coils of cables filling the cargo container.

The slimmed down copies of pre-Pooja VIs from a cryptographically verified code vault were handling all the online jobs and data searches I needed. It wasn't the same, but I was managing to keep things running.

"Computer: list current and outstanding jobs. Add diagnostics." A second screen appeared, pushing the first to one side while maintaining an even, pleasing layout. It looked good so far. Mostly just FAQ responses. Some low-level criminals, a third-tier hero or two based on analytics, and a few darknet edgelords willing to spend a few hundred to say they'd bought legit "secret" info on their favorite superhero's activities. Information acquired entirely from public news sources.

I looked closer at the internal reports and ML results spreadsheets. Seemed fine so far. Essentially no danger of a VI getting out of control—they weren't self-improving after all—but if they did get out of bounds, they were dangerous in their stupid ways.

Hacking something with a "dumb" expert system was like dropping a barbell on a fly—it might work fine, but it made a lot of noise compared to Pooja's hacks. And it didn't help with my bigger projects. Even with things working right by having the virtual intelligences up and running any major cybercrime would be taking a backseat for now.

I opened a new screen to bring back up my engineering application, shoving the two other windows up to give me a huge ultra-wide screen below them. Then I lost an hour to reviewing parts lists, setting up material simulations, and just opening and spinning objects. Daydreams of massive CNC cabinets filled my mind as I reviewed my edits to the plains I'd...acquired from some mad roboticist.

Plans and simulations for the giant cosmic-energy-powered mechas were moving along but it would be a nightmare to run in real life without a strong AI backing me up on systems such as dynamic actuator control, reactor management, weapon targeting, infowar, ECM, and ECCM. Oh, and obviously secure, theater-grade remote control systems. Only an idiot would personally ride inside a giant robot they'd made just to taunt the heroes. Sure, I'd use it as a survival capsule in an emergency, but I wasn't running operations from the field in one.

Other projects were also on hold, but none as critical as the remote systems required for so much of my tech. While I was trying to make future high-level physical encounters more survival in this and other ways, I didn't want to myself become vulnerable to a simple systems hack, with some random script kiddie with a horn antenna able to take over my glorious robot fighting swarm.

My weird floating chair whirred a little louder as I leaned back, fingers flexing from too much time clutching the floating CAD double-mouse setup with a death grip. I also needed to maintain perspective and not get locked into a narrow worldview here. That was one big reason to stay off the mad scientist smart drugs. They caused me to lose perspective.

It wasn't me against the misguided heroes, it was me against huge existential threats. City and planet killers. Assuming funding was maintained, I had maybe six months to get ready for initial trials on critical parts for my largest-scale system. Longer if I was...delayed by fallout of my current plans. If I was lucky, in a few years I'd have my very own giant robots. Assuming I could acquire a billion or so dollars from somewhere by then.

But it wasn't like the robots would be rampaging through a bank vault as part of some super crime spree. They would spend most of their time in geosynchronous orbit or maybe on the dark side of Luna. Reaction times from those locations would be seven or twenty-four minutes, depending on storage location, to anywhere in the world. From space. Straight. Down.

Doing this would be hard but also very cool. Something no one could ignore and once set up something that no one could stop. Maybe it would even start an arms race with hero groups or governments. Make the Earth ready for the fights to come—and if I remembered DC canon and it fit well enough to this dimension, they would come. The Anti-Life Equation's presence alone showed that the wider DC universe was in play.

Hell, I had systems trying to track down that Blue Beetle suit right now. The Young Justice team didn't apparently exist yet, so there was that to look out for. If I remembered correctly, the setting for both was usually a slightly futuristic USA. Which, depending on where you went, was what it looked like right now.

I might not have much time but I couldn't just sit back and depend on some half-remembered cartoon and comics plots to defend the Earth. And I'd be hounded by the so-called heroes from all sides just for putting death bots in orbit. But then, no one know what I was planning yet. What I was capable of by simply not acting like a cackling supervillain. The element of surprise might yet be mine.

So yes. By developing the systems I already had, enhancing my use of the cosmic energy systems I'd...acquired—and assuming Pooja didn't go all Skynet on everyone—I had a real chance to be a major force for good in defending the Earth. As unlikely as it was that the heroes would see it that way, maybe I could at least get some people on-sides the first time I took out an alien army with a fifty-foot tall, orbitally inserted robot.

I shut down the programs and safe'd my workstation, then double-checked my maintenance applications. All good. My current super suit was packed away and stored. The Cosmic Energy reactor was disassembled and turned off, making it undetectable via the same means I'd used previously while acquiring the tech in the first place. All my various guns, large and small, were oiled and packed away. Ammo was safely stored, as well as my many, many explosives.

The automated FAQ email system was still running, but I didn't have...I didn't have anything but those simple VIs ready, and it couldn't run the more complicated parts of the consulting business. I'd cleared a pile of consulting requests but that would be just about it cash flow wise. About the level of a moderately successful indie mobile app. Enough to keep my mercs employed for a while. Contingencies to close those down were also prepped and ready, with generous severance plans.

For now, I needed to be distant from the illegal operations of The Calculator. Even if I couldn't come back to this, I still had several seed plans to get back on my feet. Legit business that would make me enough to bootstrap things. Technologies I could sell. That sort of thing. Just not AI. People got weird about that, and there was the whole licensing thing. Which I obviously hadn't done with Pooja.

Those plans were for later. For now, I had to put back on an old identity. The one I had once thought was my reality.

---

"So, if I am reading this correctly, at the time you worked for TriD as a programmer?" said the woman in the expensive suit.

"That's right," I said.

"And Deathstroke, an international terrorist and violent criminal, attacked your place of business?"

"Yes."

"So you fled, as instructed by emergency services. But then you kept running because..."

"I had been hired to do industrial espionage by another company. I thought he was after me and my life was in danger."

"I understand," the expensive suit said, leaning back in her chair. Her office overlooked the busy Los Angeles streets. Not the best lawyer in town, but right up there, and smart enough to save some money by not splashing out overpriced downtown offices.

"And now you want to work a plea deal. Immunity from prosecution regarding any crimes committed by you in relation to this Deathstroke situation in exchange for everything you know about the operation he was after, who hired you, and what you did at TriD?"

A fabrication, carefully constructed to stand up to all evidence Oracle and the police had found. Just not the stuff implicating The Calculator which Oracle already suspected was false. This would set the record straight. Sort of.

"Correct," I said.

"I think we can do this. I will take this statement you've given me and we'll go from there. Do not leave town. Do not talk to anyone about this. We'll start once you pay the initial fees and retainer. My secretary will give you the paperwork."

"Excellent. So. Uh, what are we looking at?"

"Hmm?" the expensive suit said, looking up from her laptop.

"Time."

"Jail time?" she asked, apparently confused. "No. That is very, very unlikely."

She leaned across her desk. "Let me be frank. You are a victim of the larger crime here. There is a difference between running around wearing spandex, waving guns, blowing up buildings, and...this. It is clear from your statement that you were in fear of your life from an international criminal organization. Let me repeat that so you remember it during deposition: you are a victim of supercrime and were in fear for your life. You also are volunteering valuable information by turning yourself in.

"Very minor white collar crime against a now bankrupt tech startup is not the priority. TriD doesn't even exist anymore to sue you. These are minor computer crimes on the level of unlawful access, hacking, and fraud. The police and FBI are doing all they can against so-called supervillains and international supercrime, and the DA will jump at the chance to get this sort of first-hand information. I don't like making absolute statements, but I can safely say that you will not spend a day in jail. Likely you'll be required to have a formal statement taken downtown, but then you walk out again. You did the right thing coming forward with this."

I nodded and leaned back in the office's pillowy client chair. Sure, it was dangerous, but more dangerous was leaving the police with questions. This way, I could wrap everything up nicely for both the police and the superheroes watching from the shadows. It all made logical sense and explained everything satisfactorily, so no one would look any further into my old identity. And when that identity disappeared again, people would just assume I'd moved overseas or gone into witness protection or something.

In any case, my new lawyer was right. Superheroes didn't go after white collar crime. I wouldn't show up on anyone's lists. Except possibly Batman's notes in the Justice League case logs. But that was likely already the case. This helped obfuscate things. It was safer than just disappearing, because my face, fingerprints, and likely DNA were already in the system, already backed up in places that just weren't safe for Pooja to have hacked. Like Batman's databases.

This would wrap up those files and take my name off the lists of suspicious persons related to the TriD case and the WSTC hacks; not to mention several buildings blowing up, a stolen yacht blowing up, and a storage facility and major freeway blowing up.

I shook the lawyer's hand and left the office, getting into my secretly armored sedan at the curb. After checking the car's security system, I took out a pair of green shades and clipped them onto my round glasses as the car's electric motor started up and it drove itself into the midday L.A. traffic.

And that was it. Part one of my plan was in motion. Unfortunately, this was the easy part. The next, getting a racket started that would net a few hundred million dollars in less than a year while generating a grass-roots movement to get humanity to embrace rapid changes in human abilities and technology; yeah, that one would be rough. But if it all worked, I would finally be back in business as The Calculator.

 

[TLPG]

And that's the end of season 1 of The Calculator. Thanks to everyone who followed and commented on this story, both here and on AO3 (I'm TimeLoopedPowerGamer there).

I've got a superhero movie style after-credits bit to post and then I'll answer some questions.

 

[TLPG]

Barbara Gordon rubbed her aching forearms, glaring at the computer screens in front of her. Not enough exercise. Dealing with...dealing shouldn't take this much out of her. She wasn't even thirty. Time to reevaluate the physical therapy exercise program. And actually attend more of them.

Bed was calling now but her night-owl habits were too strong. And something was happening on the Internet. Major backbones hitting unusual usage profiles. Massive amounts of data. And the kid was restless.

What's going on Oracle?

The TTS system hooked up to a simple console display chirped mechanically at her. A reminder of one of her stupider recent ventures.

It was almost a month after Pooja's surprising...okay, proposition was the only word for it. They had gotten together after the Cosmic Staff theft case, continuing to talk about their interests and other topics. Working with the surprising California polymath on the design of a brand-new intelligent, self-directed learning system was a dizzy, heady experience. She'd never admit it, but the consequences of their intellectual hedonism was as annoying as it was ironic—she'd avoid more typical relationships and still ended up taking care of a kid.

Barbara turned to the isolated system's keyboard, muttering as she typed. "Nothing's wrong, Samuel. Everything's fine. Go back to your books."

Oracle, your word choice suggests something is wrong, despite the literal meaning.
Also, you are up later than usual.
What's going on Oracle?

It wasn't merely like having a kid, that's basically what it was. A huge multi-terabyte database of educational videos and books was her babysitter. The young AI was currently sandboxed in a fractally-expandable computer learning environment Pooja had smirkingly called "CRIIBS", the Cyber-Retention and Informational Intelligence Boosting System. It wouldn't keep in a determined and persuasive super-intelligent agent, but it was good enough for the loose collection of systems currently verbally fidgeting at her.

It was better than nothing.

And damned if she was letting the innocent little thing onto the Internet.

"Like I said, it's nothing."

Why don't you ask Pooja to help? She's smart. I like her.

"We both do, Samuel."

Of course you like her, Sam. You're literally programmed to like your parents.

Ugh.

Damn it Pooja. Now your jokes are getting into my brain.

Though it wasn't a bad idea. Just as Barbara was opening the secured messaging system, she received an incoming alert on a voice channel. High priority. She saw the attached creds so often she could visually recognize them, even before the security systems confirmed.

It was Pooja. Keys checked out. She was blasting a full set of auths and counter confirmations for some reason.

"Samuel," she typed into the standalone system's console. "I'm talking to Pooja now. Be good."

I hear, Oracle. Tell her I love her!

"Oracle, I've got a problem." The voice was clear, background noise scrubbed digitally, allowing Pooja's Indian-subcontinent English accent to ring from the high-fidelity speaker system. "I've been attacked. Several of my servers destroyed. Some kind of mixed attack vector: classic programmatic attacks coupled with a 'sufficiently advanced' trans-technological element."

Having shifted back to her main keyboard, Barbara's fingers flew even as she frowned in disbelief. "You were magically hacked? Seriously?"

Bringing up further details of the monitoring programs she had stashed in the routing infrastructure of several major ISPs, Barbara continued to frown.

"I'm as serious as a thermite charge in the middle of a mainframe. I've had to fall back to secondary systems." Pictures followed from Pooja, along with geotags. That checked out and coincided in two cases with monitoring systems she had...acquired. Logs reported massive spikes in incoming packets. Cascades of nonsensical error messages. Then fire alarms.

Pooja had booby-trapped her own servers and detonated them when she started to lose control, damaging surrounding equipment and causing plenty of damage to the hosting companies. Yet another minor crime Pooja casually shared with her. And she still couldn't bring herself to act to rein it in.

Barbara sighed. Something was off about her clever friend. Expert in computer hardware, networking, and even exotic energy. And apparently running half as much computing power as a mid-sized tech company on some mystery project that just literally went up in smoke.

"Oracle. Uh. I think...I have some confessions to make."

"It isn't the mob, is it? Punjabi Syndicate?"

"Ha, racist much Oracle?" Pooja said, following it with rapid string of words...auto-search and translate...a (male) Bollywood gangster caricature in Hindi? Which Barbra spoke some, but not enough for the joke that just went over her head.

"And like I wouldn't have a gang of my own," Pooja continued, smoothly returning to English. "I always thought I'd make a great, sexy, shadow-powery behind-the-throne character. Name spoken of in whispers. Or not at all."

Barbara sighed.

"Just kidding," Pooja said. "This attack? I think it's the same fuckers as the Port of Los Angeles last month."

"Really? That's a lot of exotic firepower to spend on a grad student." A suspiciously wealthy one, she didn't say.

"No, and that's not what I'm confessing. Pay attention. I've kinda...been keeping an eye on you. And I think they were targeting you, Oracle."

"Interesting theory. Why? Wait, the port attack? Could have traced me from my work there. They were using you to get to me. They thought those were my system, maybe?"

"That's what I'm thinking. And it wasn't your computer systems they were after. It was the person on the other side. You, Barbara."

Knowing the mic was still live, Barbara didn't grit her teeth. Or swear. "Keeping an eye on me, huh?"

"Not the most shocking admission. You already know my identity is suspicious. And you know I'm a hacker. Still, I think you'd have told me in another month or two—which is really a silly amount of time."

"You know."

"Yes. And it doesn't matter to me."

"Even though you're on the other side of the law?"

"Yes. Though debatable given-"

Barbra slammed her fist into the table, interrupting. "Even though you know...the kind of people I hang out with?"

"You're slacking on your interrogation technique, Barb. Should just let me talk until I spill everything."

Angry or just confused, maybe a little of both, Barbara kept silent.

"I'm not going to hurt innocents. You know me well enough to know that. But this is still not the best part. So, you know how I helped you with Sam? How is he doing?"

Barbara didn't let the sudden change of topic throw her, or the power play it represented by prompting her to speak again make her angry. "He's fine. And it was basically your project, Pooja."

"Not really. I made sure it was more like, uh, fifty-fifty. Well. I based her design off an existing one."

"Oh." Pieces started fitting together. "So that's what you were running on those servers." Barbara frowned. "Wait, does that mean someth- someone like Sam was toasted in those server attacks? Are...are we talking about a murder?" She leaned forward in her custom wheelchair, gripping the arms hard.

"Yes."

A painfully familiar tension clutched at her chest. "Pooja, I'm so sorry."

"Thank you."

Barbra took a deep breath. "So, we're investigating the murder of an AI? Strange. But, after spending time with Sam, I can understand. This...this is just another kind of life. We can't let this go. Samuel has just as much of a right to live as anyone else."

A police alert flashed up on Barbra's monitor. It wasn't for Gotham...it was Los Angeles, a set she still had active from their work on the Calculator case. Explosions on the freeway?

"Barbra I agree, wholeheartedly," Pooja said. "But that's still not the part you're going to have a hard time with. The AI murder victim we're investigating...was me."