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.
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."
Code:
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."
Code:
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."
Code:
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."