18107/Cleaning House

Cleaning House
Date of Scene:	29 May 2024
Location:	Gotham City
Synopsis:	Damian goes on a date and blows it (see what I did there?) as a corporate takeover takes over and Gotham celebrates its newest stock market exchange.
Cast of Characters:	Carrie Kelley, Damian Wayne

---

Carrie Kelley has posed:
Carrie sits at the Bat computer. Large screens illuminating her face in an otherwise dark cave. She likes it like this which is unsurprising considering who she is and what she does. On one screen the text flows fast and free as it does a search on the face in that file from Brick Galaway's place. On the other screen is the news.

"Today we celebrate the opening of this illustrious facility and tomorrow trading begins putting Gotham on the map as the biggest digital stock exchange operator on the face of the planet. The supercomputers in this building can process fifty times more transactions that Wall street every hour."

The presenter is doing a good job of showing off the buildings interior offices but not showing any of the servers themselves. "With over 500 new jobs, starting tomorrow, Gigacorp is about to make its mark on Gotham in a way that will have the lasting impact of a Wayne."

Meanwhile in the entertainment district of Gotham City, Cathy Carter steps out of a taxi. She's running a little late for her date. A ding on her phone reminds her. Matchr found her someone with a 99% compatibility rating and having never seen such a high match before she was curious to meet this one. Damian Wayne. He looked cute.

The app automatically sets up the meet place and date. In this case Mr. Power's Amazing Chinese. The door rings a little bell as she steps in; no umbrella as today was one of the rare days where Gotham's notoriously bad weather had not dampened everything in its path.

Statuesque might best describe Cathy. She had the look of someone who had her shit together; though not entirely because she was trying to meet people using a dating app. Dark long hair and a dark eyes you could lose yourself in. Her gaze scans the little restaurant for her date.

Damian Wayne has posed:
There are two black SUVs with heavily tinted windows parked right outside of the restaurant with men in suits standing outside of them. The window tinting is illegal. The place where they are parked is illegal. But any GCPD officer who runs the plates will find them coming back registered to the Wayne Corporation. And that would be the end of that. Damian, of course, doesn't need bodyguards. But he has to put on a show. There are secrets to keep and identities to protect.

Inside the restaurant, two more men in suits are seated at a table drinking tea. Their choice of table is not a coincidence. They can see everything.

When the woman enters, Damian stands and lifts a hand in a wave. He is wearing a bespoke dark blue suit that was hand tailored for him just this morning. Black leather Prada shoes adorn his feet. A jet black Montblanc watch encircles his wrist. All in all his ensemble costs more than some people's cars. "Miss Carter?" he asks. He moves around to pull a chair out for her at the small, intimate table.

Carrie Kelley has posed:
There is a brief moment of pause from Carter. How could this be what she was matched with. Wayne as in -Wayne- not Wayne as in any ol' Wayne. He has security in the restaurant of all places. She steels that hesitation and takes the seat he's offered her.

"Damian. Please, call me Cat. All my friends do." She locks her phone and slides it in to her bag. "I had no idea someone like you would use Matchr." Her profile was simple enough; volunteers at an animal shelter, runs marathons, graduated business school. What research he did outside of the app also revealed that she works at Matchr. She didn't put that on her profile for obvious reasons.


---

At the Grandioso Apartments a few blocks away Malcolm Fitzgerald steps in to the elevator to go up to his pent house suits. The owner of Matchr but he owned many websites. It was more accurate to call him an angel investor than an owner because the day to day of the company didn't interest him - only whether it was turning a profit.

The elevator rises up to the 17rd floor and the doors ding but don't open. Confused he presses the door open button but nothing happens. The LCD display shows static for a moment before a digital eye peers back in low resolution. It blinks a moment and then disappears.

With a thunk the elevator shudders and then drops free fall to the bottom of the cellar. Malcolm barely even has time to comprehend his end before it takes him.


---

"This new facility comes with four super fibre optic network cables connecting it directly with Hong Kong, New York, London, and Singapore. It's guarded around the clock by both Newton Corp security -and- the Secret Service. A lot of money, digitally, will be moving through this place. Not even the Dark Knight himself could penetrate these walls."


---

Carrie glances up at the monitor as the news reporter invokes one of Batman's names. She smirks with amusement at the brag and then looks back to the search monitor. A hit comes up. Then another. Then several more. An older photo from the Soviet Era; 1989 just two years before the union fell.

The men are dressed in lab coats and all look very proud of themselves. Project: Oversight. The location of the photo from the angle of the shadow on the ground and the date it was taken gives her the Czech Republic.

"Hello hello. What have we here," she begins to type. It's hard to keep secrets of old over 40 years later. "Huh. Czech computer scientists claim to have created artificial intelligence. That seems unlikely but you never know. Let's see where you went from there." Her fingers type furiously now she's on the hunt.

Damian Wayne has posed:
Damian pushes the chair in like a gentleman. He is Gotham royalty and though he dislikes it, he knows how to act the role. To deviate from it for even an instant would be to potentially put his identity at risk. That part doesn't bother him. But even after living the horrific life he lived, these people here in Gotham - Bruce and his many surrogate children -- accepted him unconditionally. It is /their/ identities he works so hard to protect. And to compromise himself is to potentially compromise them. So he tolerates the bodyguards and the armored SUVs and the ridiculous clothes he is wearing now. How many animal shelters could he fund with the money the overpriced tailor who made this suit was given?

"Yes," he says as he takes his seat. "I am one of /those/ Waynes. But I assure you, Cat, I'm not an asshole." He quirks a small grin. "And yes, I use Matchr. My own judgement with dating has proven...off balance. So I figured I'd let a computer do the work."

A server approaches the table and introduces himself. Damian says to the man, "A bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothchild, 2010, please and thank you." That's a $1,200 bottle of wine.

"Mr. Wayne, we're not really that kind of...kind of restaurant. We don't ha..."

"My social secretary called ahead. There should be a bottle breathing in the back."

"Ye...yes, sir." And nobody questions his youthful appearance or the fact that he is 19 years old. Nobody cards a Wayne in this town.

Okay, maybe he /is/ an asshole after all.

"So, Cat, I understand we have a mutual love for animal welfare."

Carrie Kelley has posed:
Cathy pauses a moment when he says he's not an asshole but then orders a very fancy bottle of wine the restaurant doesn't even have that he had his secretary bring over before hand anyway. Well at the very least she'll have a hell of a story to tell her friends.

"Ah haa.. yes. I just love animals. You give them a little love and they give you their entire world. That kind of trust is rare and - well I guess I'm a bit of a romantic. I like the idea of finding a person I can share my world with too."

There's a ding on Damian's phone. There's no sender and it is a simple infographic - a short video of him with lines and markings and measurements. It's a gait recognition analysis.


---

The trial gets more and more interesting as the computer scientists go their own ways after the collapse of the CCCP. The code itself seems to change hands a few times. Until it finally settles in to a set of confusingly complicated dummy corporations. The more Carrie digs the less she finds - usually these things lead back to a few people but this seems to lead in circles. She's never seen anything quite like it.

She bites her bottom lip as she stares at the screen in puzzlement. A few of the leads turn back in to real companies. A mining operation here, a logistics company there. The portfolio is all over the map but all earning very well. And then she finds something very strange in the mix.

"Huh?" she says to herself as she stares at a dating app. A very successful dating app. Matchr.


--

Gina Heart gets in to her car at Matchr headquarters in Gotham City. It had been a long and difficult day. Tomorrow would be chaos but the bosses made their demands and she acted on their orders. Total liquidation.

She drives through the maze of car parking spots to emerging out in to the dark of Gotham's night illuminated by street lamps.

The GPS navigation screen turns to static for a moment and then a digital eye appears and turns to look at Gina. It blinks once and then disappears.

Bollards suddenly raise up out of the ground and capture the back of her car. The force bumps her forward and she hits her head on the dash. The air bag should have deployed but it did not. In her daze she looks up to see bright lights as an autonomous garbage truck slams in to the front drivers side of her car.


--

The presenter goes through several vault like doors and the cameras are shut off briefly. When they come back on they are inside the heavily guarded server room. "In these walls house the largest super computer every made on planet Earth. They don't measure Gigahertz like we do with our laptops and gaming consoles. Here they measure in Exahertz at the very limits of theoretical processing speeds. That's 10 to the 18 power speed, or roughly 10 to the 12 times faster than your custom gaming PC."

Damian Wayne has posed:
There is actually a momentary lament for Damian as this woman starts describing her attitude toward animal welfare. ~I could live on a farm and rescue animals for the rest of my life with someone like this. No more fighting. No more wars. No more killing.~

~Shut up, Damian. It's a pipe dream. That kind of life is for /other/ people. /Normal/ people.~

"Oh! Well remind me to introduce you to my..." His stops talking as his phone dings. He peers down and sees immediately that he has been tracked. A normal person -- the kind of person who might, say, get to live on a farm and rescue animals for the rest of his life -- would be flooded with adrenaline and fear right now. Pupils would dilate to illuminate threats. Hands would shake. Skin would moisten. Breathing rate would increase. But Damian isn't normal. He is a born, bred, and raised killing machine. He knows only problems and solutions to problems.

"I'm so very sorry, Cat," Damian says as he stands. He snaps his fingers in the air. "Jack, Braden, quickly," he says to the two bodyguards sitting across the room. They immediately stand and approach. "Put Miss Carter in a vehicle and bring her to Wayne Tower and put her in a secure location until you hear from me. Do it now."

Damian looks to his literally 60-second-old date. "Cat, please listen to me. Your life is in danger. Please trust me. Go with these men, you will be safe."

Damian pulls off his tie as he walks toward the kitchen. He drops it on the ground as he passes the waiter with his wine. That tie cost $800. He doesn't normally wear cheap ties, but it was all that was available on short notice. As he passes through the kitchen and out the rear door of the restaurant he clicks his Wayne Enterprises phone into encrypted mode. He dials the relay that forwards the call to a satellite that forwards the call to another satellite that forwards the call to a relay in Calcutta, and through a hundred some-odd cell towers until it dials Delphi's phone.

Carrie Kelley has posed:
Agent Turnbull looks down at his phone. The DEO Team is ready outside the house of notorious drug trafficker Henry Blankman. An ironic name for someone they had been tracking for years and all of a sudden intel fell right in to their lap.

'Your mission is a Go!'

Turnbull gives the signal. The heavily armed assault team moves in.

Nathan Durann, lead engineer at Matchr, ducks behind his couch as his teenager opens fire with the nerf gun. They are laughing. Nathan ducks back up and returns fire when the doors are kicked in.5r
The SWAT team is expecting to face off against one of the nations most deadly drug kingpins and.. they make a mistake.


--

The map of Gotham starts to ping up more and more incidents. Calls to 911, calls to the police, calls for ambulances. Deaths everywhere and all in such quick succession. Carrie goes to hit the emergency button. Something big is going down and the team needs to --- the screens flicker a moment. A large digital eye peers out of the bat computer screen.

They have a special button under the desk for situations just like this. She hits it. The batcave goes dark.


--

"... and I for one welcome our new stock exchange super computer overlord. Gigacorp's brilliant new Artificial Intelligence system is what makes the real magic work to control the sheer magnitude of trades that this facility will be processing. All under the supervision of the stock trading team working here and the executives."


--

Damian's phone makes a clicking sound as it is picked up. A voice, not Carrie's, answers. It sounds ...generic... "Robin." is all it says. A ding on his phone in encrypted mode shows another photo. Another short video, same gait analytics. Someone has matched Damian Wayne to Robin. The kind of data search required to do that would need a super computer beyond belief and the stubbornness not to give up looking for that needle in a haystack.

The screen turns in to a digital eye that looks at Damian briefly. The voice speaks again, "Good. Bye."

Inside the restaurant in the kitchen Damian just walked through the gas erupts as the cities digital regulators fail. The restaurant explodes.