T H E B A T M A N
T H E B A T M A N
Only the wan green of the console screens illuminated the dingy room, throwing a sickly glow across Edward Nashton's face as he pushed back his slick and unkempt hair and replaced his glasses before diving back into the mainframe, his typing rapid and feverish as he approached his goal. He was close, oh-so-close, but something eluded him, some final key to the puzzle, an infinitesimal but paramount element that was the otherwise-missing glue to hold all the framework together. He'd worked for months, years even, at first in theory, but now putting it all together in practice, making it real, making it tangible; he felt giddy, frantic, but also frustrated. He'd never stumbled like this before, never hit this kind of roadblock. He wasn't used to his mind being bested.
"What has a bed, but never sleeps?" Came a voice from the far side of the room, as Eddie was suddenly blinded by bulbs sparking into life overhead; Deidre Vance, his research associate, strode across and raised the blinds that covered the university lab's windows, further flash-banging him with the early-morning sun cresting over Gotham's skyline. Eddie looked out over the university campus and saw students slowly beginning to trickle in, ready to start a new day of academia, and realised he'd worked overnight once again. He turned to Deidre, who looked at him with a mix of amusement and exasperation, and chuckled as he removed his glasses to rub his eyes that were undoubtedly bloodshot.
"A river, Dee." He answered, and she smiled and shook her head, shoving a paper cup of faculty-lounge coffee into his chest as she walked past him to look at the consoles he had plugged himself into for the last nine hours.
"EENH." She said, imitating the harsh noise of a gameshow buzzer, "I'm sorry, the answer we were looking for was 'Professor Edward Nashton'. Better luck next time!"
Eddie threw a hand to his forehead in mock tragedy as she chuckled watching him in the reflection of the screen, and then he took a greedy slurp of the coffee, letting the scalding and bitter drink splash into his empty stomach.
"God, I'm starving." He said, mostly to himself, but Deidre nodded her head and gestured to the counter top by the door. She'd brought breakfast - a few pastries from the cafeteria - and next to those, a fresh shirt and change of tie. Eddie dutifully ate and changed while Deidre typed away, finishing a few lines of code she'd interrupted Eddie working on and then saving before shutting the console down.
"You can't keep doing this Eddie, you're running yourself ragged." She said, that well-practiced tone of voice, not unlike a mother scolding her child, creeping back in to her words. "Besides, it's too cold this time of year to sleep alone..." the mother-tone was completely gone with this addition, and Eddie smirked, raising his eyebrows at Deidre. He moved to peck her cheek, which she made a big show of graciously permitting.
"It'll be
worth it, Dee." He said, moving back towards the pastries. "We're so close! You've seen the code. I just need to figure out the final piece."
"Well, Eddie, maybe it would be easier to work things out with 8 hours of rest powering that massive melon, instead of..." Deidre picked up assorted discarded junk food from the floor under the desk. "
Funyuns and Mr. Pibb? Really Eddie? I pity your students."
Eddie patted his stomach, which groaned seemingly on cue as soda, onion rings, pastry and coffee coagulated in his gut. "I pity my intestinal tract more." He joked, and Dee just groaned, binning the trash and moving to sip her own coffee.
The two sat in silence, with only the soft whirring of the computer servers backdropping their quiet contemplation of caffeine.
"Anyway," Deidre said with a start, jolting Eddie who'd nearly began napping over the rim of his cup, "it's not your students that'll be suffering today." She put on a wry smile, watching the over-worked cogs in Edward's head kick back into gear as he turned over dates, agendas, appointments in his head.
"No, no! Not today!
Surely not today! Next week!"
"Today, Eddie." Deidre said with inarguable finality, weary but amused. "He's coming
today."
-
The air still smelled of petrichor as Bruce Wayne stepped out from the car, door held open dutifully by Alfred, who picked lint from Bruce's collar with one hand as he closed the door with the other. Bruce smoothed himself down, shaking away enduring memories of the night before. Foundation had done wonders to hide the bags under his eyes, but what lingered
behind his eyes was harder to conceal.
"Remind me once more, Alfred?" Bruce asked, and if there was even a hint of exasperation at what would be the fifth repetition this morning, you couldn't tell from Alfred's stone-faced demeanour.
"The Wayne Foundation has been funding Professor Nashton's research efforts for some time, sir, through the 'City of Progress' grant program that you set up a few years ago. Unfortunately, while I don't doubt the good professor has been working tirelessly, Wayne Enterprises' board members are becoming somewhat antsy at his dearth of practical output."
Bruce looked up at the university buildings. "And I'm here to check on what he's been doing with money the board believes belongs in their pockets?"
Again, if Alfred found amusement in Bruce's wit, he didn't show it. "Quite, sir. Better Bruce Wayne, philanthropist and CEO of Wayne Enterprises, than some board stooge already paid off to shut him down."
Bruce double-took at Alfred's candour; he was rarely this vocally critical of the Enterprises boardroom. "You believe Professor Nashton does good work?"
"I do, sir. He is the finest mind in the city, perhaps the country; and he has afforded himself his position through keen intellect and a work ethic that rivals those in present company. He is the kind of man Gotham needs to help lead the city into a bright future. I am loathe to think that those work-shy lackadaisicals would shut down his projects for what amounts to pocket change to them."
Alfred cleared his throat, and this time, he allowed a flash of ignominy to cross his face. Bruce waved away the incoming apology.
"I trust your judgement, Alfred. And you're right, when it comes to the board. But there are deeper things wrong with this city."
Alfred nodded solemnly. "I saw your report. Ghastly business. Let us hope that the good lieutenant can keep the more concerning details from the press."
"Gordon is doing all he can; only he and Leslie know the true details around the body. Still, though -
someone in the GCPD is connected."
"One thing at a time, Master Bruce." Alfred advised, opening the driver-side door and taking a seat, a copy of the morning's Gotham Gazette and a filled thermos ready and waiting on the passenger seat. Chauffer was one of the many roles Alfred was a seasoned professional at.
Bruce looked towards the main campus gates, and the central research building beyond. He rolled his shoulders, and slipped on the mask.
-
"-and so you see, Mr Wayne, the idea is not for us to develop an artificial intelligence - instead, to allow an artificial intelligence the space to develop
itself!" Nashton concluded, having talked excitedly about his work from the university reception all the way up past his office and into his main research laboratory. Bruce stood in the doorway as Edward hurriedly set to booting up the mainframe, eager to show his investor his life's work. Bruce was impressed; from what Nashton had explained, and what he could see of the server capacity, this was a massive project, in a near-experimental field, that the professor seemed to have been making un-impeded strides in for months. There was some real weight to what Nashton sought to accomplish; however, there were equally heavy concerns.
"What about the risk of losing control? True AI has only ever been discussed in theoretic - once it's online, there's no way to control what it might be capable of." Bruce asked, and Eddie nodded carefully.
"Of course, there is always inherent risk in all forms of progress; but we do what we can to mitigate -
without compromising. Is an artificial intelligence any more dangerous than an organic one? Under the right conditions, either can be as
destructive as the other. Living in Gotham, Mr. Wayne, has taught me that lesson well enough."
Bruce cocked an eyebrow, but chose not to comment. There was some validity in Edward's argument. "Please, Professor, Bruce is fine - how have you worked to mitigate the risks?"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Bruce. As impressive as the network is, it remains - since its conception - a closed circuit. There is no, nor has there ever been, an existing connection to the wider university network - nor Gotham's, nor the world. We drip-feed information in through manual upload, directly to the server. Together with basic guidance code, we simply create an environment in which a developing mind takes the right...direction. Like raising a child."
Bruce extended a hand, which Eddie eagerly shook. "Well, I must say I'm impressed, professor. And you can rest easy that Wayne Enterprises is confident that the grant money is going towards true breakthroughs. It'll certainly ease the minds of the board to know you're on the cusp of release."
Eddie's grip loosened slightly and he cleared his throat. "Yes, yes, on the cusp indeed..." he trailed off, and Bruce gave him a quizzical look.
"Hit a roadblock, professor?"
"Not so much a block as a minor stumble, Mr. Way- Bruce. It's close to completion, close enough to
see it, but there's one missing piece of the puzzle, something eluding me. It's smart -
so smart - but it still 'thinks' like a computer."
"How do you mean, Edward?" Bruce pressed, keen to help if he could offer advice.
"How to explain...computers think vertically. Logically. If x, then y, resulting in z. You can tell it to solve an infinite amount of calculations, but it can only do it with the right amount of starting data, and then extrapolating it out to logical conclusions and solutions. But a computer doesn't have any imagination, and if you ask it to make 2 and 2 into 5, it can't do it, because the logic doesn't work."
Bruce took a moment of thought.
"When I was a boy, Alfred used to distract me with riddles. I got good at solving them, so they weren't much of a distraction at all, and so the riddles had to get harder. And then, one day, Alfred told me a riddle I
couldn't solve. It pestered me for days, buzzing around my head. I lost sleep over that riddle."
Edward's face lit up, his own adoration of puzzles and brain-benders plain as day. "Do share, Bruce."
"Two men walk into a restaurant. They are seated at the same table, order the same dish, and are served at the same time. After they both take their first bite, one man leaves the restaurant and kills himself. Why?"
Edward's previously elated face crumpled under the weight of disappointment that he could not offer an answer to Bruce's riddle. "Why?"
Bruce smiled his own wry smile. "Years previous, both men had been marooned on a deserted island. Starving, the second man had managed to provide food, and told the other it was swordfish he'd speared from the sea. Having ordered swordfish at the restaurant, the first man realised he'd never tasted swordfish before, and that what he'd eaten on the island had instead been the flesh of his son who had died in the accident that had marooned them. Consumed by grief and guilt, he killed himself."
Eddie raised his own eyebrow. "That's rather dark, Mr. Wayne."
"I was a rather dark child for a time, Professor Nashton. The riddle distracted me well. The lesson I learnt - if an answer doesn't present itself from the given information, you may have to invent your own. Lateral thinking is a skill as important as any other - thinking
around the problem. Perhaps there's a way to teach it to your digital mind."
Edward turned to look at the mainframe console, sleep-deprived gears working on overtime as he turned the ideas over in his mind.
"Food for thought, regardless." Bruce said, dismissing the conversation. "Riddles are fun, but I'll leave the
truly difficult problems to great minds like yours." He clapped a hand to Eddie's shoulder, taking his arm in a handshake again. "But tell me - when you unveil your great accomplishment - what will be its
name?"
Edward smiled the biggest smile he'd give that day, and answered proudly: "The Encrypted Network Intelligence Grid and Mainframe Archive."
Bruce chuckled. "Clever, Eddie." He looked at the console screen, glowing softly green, awaiting input. "Very clever."
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