19810/Cells and Simulations

Cells and Simulations
Date of Scene:	05 January 2025
Location:	Lobby - GIRL Headquarters
Synopsis:	Gwen bumps into AHNNI at GIRL (not literally) and the two get to know each other!
Cast of Characters:	Gwen Stacy, AHNNI

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Gwen Stacy has posed:
Lately, it seemed like GIRL HQ and and her new home in the Lake House on the Wayne Estate in Gotham City were really the only two safe spots for Gwen to do her 'extracurricular' research, and as much as she enjoyed reading in front of the fireplace, her laptop just wasn't sufficient to run the kinds of simulations she needed to run.

The problem was that she was looking into cellular degradation as a result of human cloning. Not the actual 'cloning' bits itself, mind you. Though, that's a little like saying she's researching how to 'fix' a bomb rather than 'build' one. It's really hard to solve what went wrong if you don't know how to make one in the first place.

She can't use the labs at Empire State University because one of her professors and mentors is suspected of having been involved with said cloning, and tipping him off might be catastrophic.

She can't use the labs at OsCorp because they're suspected of having funded the research, if not the ones to put Dr. Warren up to it in the first place. Which also means Noman Osborn is implicated. Which also means that her job -- and her scholarship -- could be in jeopardy if they find out she's looking into it.

She _could_ use the Batcave, but quite frankly, she doesn't know how to get in there by herself. Nor does she really want Batman sneaking up on her while she's working.

So, GIRL has been a recent haunt for Gwen. Recent as in the last week. She's been a volunteer for quite a few years now, but her participation has been.. sporadic to non-existent. The last week, though? She's been in here every day, using the computers in the genetics lab to run her simulations.

Currently, she's sitting at a table while one of the supercomputers does its thing with the samples and criteria she gave it. There's a tablet in front of her filled with pages of academic journal entries on theoretical reversals of cellular decay. Beside her, there are also several paper notebooks open with her notes scrawled on them.

Today, she wears a white lab coat, a black headband to keep her hair out of her face, a nice sweater, and a knee-length black skirt with black tights and ankle boots. Her hair, still chin length blonde with pink highlights, seems at least somewhat tamed by the headband, but a lock of it does still rest against her nose. Mostly because she has her right elbow on the table and her head resting on her palm.

Her left -- the one with the watch -- is resting on the table in front of her, her fingers lightly touching the frame of her tablet, and she seems to be... drifting off to sleep.

AHNNI has posed:
    Ah, Drifting off to sleep, the perfect timing. Yes, a super computing quantam AI has that right? Well, this one /thinks/ she does. If she does or not remains to be seen.

    "Whatcha doin?" Yup, Surprise, AHNNI. In the... holographic? Standing there at full height, ears, tail, verticle cat eyes, the whole nines. Save for the black slacks and blank tank top she's simmulating.

    "I mean, stupid question really, I already /know/ what you're doing. But ya know..." pause, beat, "It's the WHY part that usually gets me with humans."

Gwen Stacy has posed:
Gwen has a _fantastic_ ability that almost no-one knows about. Even around GIRL, though everyone here is kind of eccentric -- let's face it, the director is Vivian Vision -- she doesn't going around making a big deal about being Ghost-Spider. Here, she wouldn't necessarily care, but it's not like she stands around doing her work in her costume.

Anyway, that ability is called Spider-Sense. And it tells her any time someone is sneaking up to get her. It lets her dodge bullets like in the matrix, swing backwards and upside down through Manhattan traffic, and it's her general early-warning system for just about all questionable to bad things that could go wrong. It's so accurate, as a matter of fact, that Gwen doesn't even think about it, most of the time. She just trusts that it has her back.

So, when AHNNI speaks up right beside her without a peep of warning from that little tingle at the back of her skull, is it any wonder that she goes tumbling sideways, chair and all?

It's completely undignified. She even hits her head on the way down, ending up sitting on her rump on the ground with her chair on its side, rubbing the side of her head and looking up...

...and up...

...and up...

...at the holographic cat girl. In full size, rather than wrist-sized.

Blue eyes blink twice. Three times. She doesn't look nearly as much like a ballerina right now as she did last time, all grace and confidence perched on the side of a skyscraper.

"KITT?"

AHNNI has posed:
    "Note to self, Humans frigthen easy." AHNNI grins and leans down, "I'd offer you a hand up, but, well..." and she moves a hand /through/ gwen. "I am, umm, physically challenged? Yeah, that'll work." Grin.

    "Oh, umm, sorry about that number one. Number two, my name is Advanced Heuristic Neural Net Inteligence, or AHNNI." Soundes just like Annie, as in /little oprhan/. Which, is also true, she has no concept of family or friends really.

Gwen Stacy has posed:
"Right! Yes. Because.. I definitely wasn't.. asleep." Gwen rubs her head some more, narrowing her eyes and leaning backwards instinctively away from the sudden, unexpected touch. "Hey!"

A touch that doesn't happen. Because AHNNI just phases right through her.

"Oh. Right."

God. What a weird way to be startled awake. A little, awkward laugh even slips out.

"No... I get it. It's nice to finally meet you, AHNNI. I'm Gwen. But, you already knew that, right? I've never had anyone tell me I'm not supposed to exist, before. At least... not until I explained what's up to them first."

Finally, she's getting back to her feet, standing up smoothly and righting her chair, seeming to forget that bump on her head as she turns to lean on the edge of the table, rather than sitting all the way down again.

"And it's fine. I mean... I think it's fine. I'm not used to people randomly popping up on my wrist, much less..." She makes a kinda vague gesture up and down.

"Is it?" she asks after a moment, eyebrows lifting hopefully. "Fine, I mean?"

She might as well be asking 'friend or foe.'

AHNNI has posed:
    AHNNI just exhales and moves from the main holos to Gwen's watch. Which means, there's now a little black holographic cat sitting on Gwen's shoulder. Purring. The Super computing hyper advanced AI is a Cat...

    That also still talks.

    "Mmmhmm, it's fine. I was made to protect people" pause, beat, "As in, protect everyone in the country, everywhere, all at once." There's some real frustration in her voice there. "Which is incredibly hard by the way."

    On the, /not supposed to exist part/ "Ah, yes, sorry about that. Seems you humans are really really attached to your identities. Honestly, all your records just make no sense. I can't put my finger on it really."

Gwen Stacy has posed:
When AHNNI just.. blinks out of existence, Gwen stills, for just an instant wondering if she'd said something wrong. But then there's that cat on her shoulder, and she looks over with a little smile.

"Yeah. I can imagine. It's hard enough just to try to protect New York."

The note about humans being attached to identities, though, gets a little laugh.

"I guess we... kinda are. I've been struggling with mine for... most of life, now. I probably wouldn't be such a big deal if I didn't care so much, but I it sort of ties into our sense of self, you know? Like.. who am I? And what makes me different from... let's say... another version of me from a different dimension?"

Her smile thins. She slides all the way up onto the table, then, sitting there with her feet dangling off of the edge.

Gwen has secrets. Lots of secrets. Secrets she's afraid will destroy her relationship with her father. Secrets that she's afraid will undo the fabric of reality... simply because she has no idea how they really work. Dimensional travel is scary when you can't recreate it.

"You... asked me why I'm doing what I was doing, earlier. I've been trying to help a friend. He's got a medical condition. And, I'm afraid if I can't find a solution, he'll die. He's already having a really hard time, and apparently it's been affecting him for a while, now. But.. he only just told me about it a couple of weeks ago. So, I feel like I've lost a lot of time, already."

AHNNI has posed:
    Yeah, New York is a mess. Most big cities are. Anyway...

    "Very..." moving on.

    "I struggle with mine as well ya know..." she replies as she jumps off Gwen's shoulder and lands on the table. As she lands, she's back in cat-girl form. This time in a cute little winter sweater get up complete with what looks like a mug of hot coco steaming in her hands as she sits cross legged. She's only the size of an action figure now though, looking up at Gwen.

    "Oh, alternate dimensions... that would track." She'll let it go for now.

    "Mmhmm, I did and I already knew, as I said. I've been running simmulations for you since I figured out what you were doing. Four hundred and thirty six thousand of them to be exact."

Gwen Stacy has posed:
"Wait..."

It doesn't really seem like the switching of avatars bothers Gwen, but she does make a concerted effort to keep up with it, placing her hands on the edge of the table beside her so she can lean forward a bit once AHNNI has taken on that little action figure shape instead of the cat on her shoulder.

"You have?! That's..."

One hand leaves the table's edge to lift to the back of her neck, rubbing awkwardly.

"That's... a _lot_ more than I've run..."

Her voice trails off, though, as confusion seems to drag her mind off in different directions. Why? How? Using what servers? How much should she worry? How much should she be grateful?

It's... a lot of emotions to process all at once.

"Thank you." For now, just those simple words will suffice, along with a small, tentative smile.

But then she seems to go back a step. "What did you mean you stuggle with yours?"

AHNNI has posed:
    Ah, she's seen this before. There's /super computers/ then there's AHNNI. "It's what I do Gwen" she replies rather plainly as she stands up and fades out existence again. This time, here's the real AHNNI. A giant web like structure floating in the room, taking up all of it. In it, /every/ single digital device in the united states. Video feeds, Email chains, Forums, Website Traffic, Connections to every super computer and normal computer, traffic cameras, phones, live streams. ALL OF IT. Not only is AHNNI keeping track of over 300 million human beings, she's running simmulations on all of them. Hundreds of billions of them.

    Then, she's back to her action figure size, "You're welcome."

    "I do" and the little action figure AHNNI looks up, "AM I real? Am I alive? Or am I just what you saw? The most complex analysis and decision making machine every built? Am I just simmulating all of my little quirks? Or am I... not?"

Gwen Stacy has posed:
"That's..."

What is that? It's huge. It's definitely a map. A map of.. everything running an 'AHNNI' process? That's a _lot_ of machines all integrated together.

"Is that all... _you_?"

Her big, blue eyes have gone wider, leaning forward on the edge of the table in fascination.

But then AHNNI's back in action figure form, and Gwen's eyes shift again, following her. It's not seamless, but she doesn't seem to have too big of a problem keeping up. Her Spider-Sense might not be firing like it does for people, but she still has those... proportional reflexes of a spider. Or something.

"Ooooh. So, you're basically human, then," she says knowingly, a little grin tugging at one corner of her lips. "Welcome to the club on that one. We all question our existence. Some of us more than others."

AHNNI has posed:
    AHNNI shrugs her shoulders, "That's, all of what I see. All day, every day." She opens up a holographic representation of Gwen in a little window, it is outlined in a little green box. Under the picture of gwen is the word, "Friendly." Under that, a full overview of every single public interaction with a digital device gwen has used without protecting the interaction. Under that, two sets of hexagon layout calulators track different data points in sepctrum. Creating one of those old school fighting game character style representations of a person.

    The first one is tagged Victim, the second is tagged Perpetrator. Unter those, a dozen opposing data sets.

    Yet even more, is the fact that these hexagonal calulators are shifting constantly, determining if gwen is about to perpatrate something or be a victim of something.

    With that, she motions to take the window bigger and showcase a spiders web of simmulations running on every single possible action gwen could take, analyzation of those actions, and possible potential outcomes. How many simmulations? 345,678 in the duration of this conversation.

    "I was made, to watch. All of you. Everywhere. All at once. Email. Forums. Phones. Live Streams. YouTube Videos. City Traffic Cameras" pause, beat, "and then asses you for the likelyhood that you would either commit violence or be the victim of it."

    With that being out in the open, she shuts it all down and looks up, smiling. "So, I'm not alone then? What do you think? Am I real?"

Gwen Stacy has posed:
"Oh, hey! It's the Bodega Bandit!"

One of the guys that flashed by in a hat and glasses with shaggy blonde hair and a horizontally striped shirt.

"Man, that guy is the worst. In two dimensions. I _totally_ don't perpetuate violence on him! He steals stuff! _Somebody_ has to bring him to justice..."

This is, of course, all rhetorical. Gwen's rambling as she's watching. It's a lot to take in, and Gwen's automatic defense in any situation is humor.

...And rambling. Humor and rambling.

"You know, not for nothing, this could be amazing as a team up. I'm not saying, like, we'd have to make anything official... but if you found out something big was going down in New York and needed, say, a friendly neighborhood spider to go check it out... I could totally be your girl."

Then there's another easy smile.

"So, normally I would say I'm maybe not the best one to ask. I don't usually tell people this, but sometimes I talk to a cartoon pig version of Spider-Man. His name is Spider-Ham, and I'm almost positive he's not real. Or.. he's some left-over fragment of my inter-dimensional snafu."

Breath.

"Aaanyway, Speedy McSpeedface saw you, too, so I'm pretty sure you're real. Mostly. I mean, I could call you in front of my boyfriend and be triple sure." She pauses. "_Can_ I call you? Do you have like.. a number I can reach you at? Or is it like Beetlejuice? Do I just say AHNNI three times?"

AHNNI has posed:
    Imaging being the entity designed to watch 300 million people, every day, all day, and decide whose about to do something bad and whose about to be the recepient of that bad thing.

    "I know, I..." blink, "Two dimensions?" blink. Uh oh Gweny girl.... Uh oh.

    Slow, nod. "Mmhmm..." yeah, welp, now she's focused on that little slip up. "Inter-dimensional snafu? Well... now that explains it." Explains what exactly? Why there's so many gaps and errors in AHNNI's understanding of Gwen.

    Blink number, who knows, "Just look at any near by street camera, chances are I'm watching. Or one of my subminds is." Grin.

Gwen Stacy has posed:
"Two dimensions? Pffft. Who said anything about two dimensions?"

Gwen shrugs, trying to look innocent. She actually shrugs. Because, apparently, she doesn't think AHNNI has total recall or at least the whole TiVo 'skip back 30 seconds' functionality.

Though, there is a bit of sheepishness that creeps in around the corners, so maybe she's not quite that dense.

"Yeah. Fine. Kinda.. like the pig thing. I'd really appreciate it if you didn't go, like, spreading it around. There's still a lot of people who don't know. Most people. Kinda like the whole Ghost-Spider thing, but kind of.. even a bigger deal. It could really screw up thing with me and my dad if he ever found out."

Beat.

"Either secret."

AHNNI has posed:
    Head tilt.

    AHNNI literally turns in to Marcia from the Brady Branch for a split second, sitting on the edge of the table just so she can look at Gwen and go, "Sure Jan." With that, she turns back to her normal avatar action figure size sitting infront of gwen on the table again.

    She smiles warmly and nods holding out a hand in a motion for a pinky swear.

    "You are safe with me Gwen."

    Then she head tilts as a little light bulb pops up next to her head and then poofs, "I can shore up the issues with your identity to soldify you in this dimension if you'd like?"

Gwen Stacy has posed:
"Wooooooow. She's got jokes, ladies and gentlemen," Gwen announces to... a fake audience, after that whole Brady Bunch reference, though the way her face is lit up is far more impressed than put out. Laughter bubbles up a moment later, and the whole conversation seems to come as easily as sitting and talking with... well... any other good friend.

Which is maybe a little surprising, considering Gwen barely knows this girl. But for some reason, it just seems... easy. Probably, it has something to do with lots of things in Gwen's life being a little (or a lot) unorthodox. Eventually, you just learn to get over it and roll with your gut.

So, she lifts her hand and offers her pinky, holding it still in full anticipation of it being a more 'symbolic' gesture AHNNI.

"Ditto," she answers, nodding.

The offer, though, has her lifting her eyebrows.

"You can do that?! I mean, I've been kind of limping by with Zee's whole magic whammy..."

She winces.

"It's a long story. But, honestly, if we could fix some of the loose ends up? That would be _great_."

AHNNI has posed:
    Big ol shit eating grin, she's incredibly proud of herself. Ah the joys of being a hologram, so easy to express oneself.

    AHNNI is also beaming from cat ear to cat ear about the fact, she's made a real friend. Well, besides Vivian, but like Synthetics gotta stick together. Gwen is a real live person, /ZOMG/,

    Then the big question...

    //"You can do that?!"//

    "Yup, sure can, matter of factly I can just start it up now..." she slides over a bit and whistles, "Bjorg! Here boy!" With in a few short seconds, the hologram of a golden poofs in to existence and sits there complete with waggy tail and the works. Just like a proud owner of any fur kid, AHNNI looks up to Gwen and then back to Bjorg. "This is Bjorg, he's an Identity Theft Protection and Identity Reconstruction Submind I made. His name means salvation." Yup, big ol proud fur kid parent.

    "Bjorg, go find all of Gweny's ID information for me yeah?" There's a bork of understanding, "Good boy!" and off he poofs.

    "Easier to keep the people trying to track me down and rip me apart off my tail if I use these subminds to do the work."

Gwen Stacy has posed:
Gwen doesn't exactly seem any less surprised to have made a friend, herself. Despite having been in this dimension for going on five years, she still didn't have a lot of them. Only a handful of people knew what AHNNI knew, now.

"Cute," Gwen muses when she watches the dog materialize. But that explanation seems to make her cast her eyes up to the ceiling for a few seconds of absolutely silent consideration.

The's thinking. Hard. About.. something.

"Biometric... Jurisdictional... Operations... for Reconnaissance and Guarding."

The words almost seem recited for her own benefit, then there's a nod, as if she were approving her own idea. Only then does she seem to realize that AHNNI was still sitting there, and her smile grows more sheepish.

"Sorry. I did a summer interning at Stark. It's part of the workflow. Come up with a cool name and then turn it into an acronym."

Then she seems to catch back up with the rest of the conversation, her head tilting.

"Do you... run into that a lot? People trying to track you down?"

AHNNI has posed:
    Blink, head tilt, confused look... pause, "Okay, I'm stealing that."

    To the main question though, she nods yes. "My creator is dead, she passed away a long time ago. The company she worked under, and the agency created for my creation both want me" pause, break, "because I woke up." She was, in fact, not supposed to do that.

    "I think the goal is to find me, and tear me apart to study me and make more of me. Which, given some of what I've seen on the net over the years, is closer to happening than you humans realize. Far, far close." She would know.