InsaneJournal

It was hard not to feel his heart skip a beat to be here, in the Mad Genius’ laboratory. It was like skipping time and stepping into a future he found himself desperately wanting to live within. What was this place built of and could he even understand it? Maybe with enough time - what did he have but time?

He’d always chased his bliss, chased his curiosity and interests. But this new found knowledge of a life run over and over made him even more intent on doing just that. Being in a place like this made him wonder once again if he wasn’t running the right path in heroism, but should be trying to build something like this place.

“This is… really… wow,” Gio said breathlessly.

The lab really was a misnomer to Rosie. Her entire home was simply just an extension of this place, every room built around to somehow connect to the large space of experimentation. It was an ever growing madcap that fit what needs she had, which could change in the moment.

"Yeah." Rosie laughed comfortably as she led him through the main sliding door after going through security. "There isn't really a grand tour, everything changes all the time. But Carl is fully integrated in everything here so all you have to do is ask for anything."

Gio seemed to think about that for a moment, then decided to pop a question.

“Carl, what is my current body temperature?” he asked, looking around the room.

"100 degrees fahrenheit, consistent with previous temperature readings on record and thus no reason for concern." Carl's voice came cheerfully through the room.

“So… basically this is the apex of surveillance in this house,” Gio said with a chuckle - of course not only was there thermal imaging, but he’d compared him to an established record. “It’s amazing the government hasn’t thrown money at you.”

"There's always more data to collect!" Rosie answered cheerfully. And yes she understood in theory that people had privacy concerns but she often found that those concerns were highlighted by security they did not currently know was already lost anyway. Rosie at least had a level of control for it.

"Oh I have plenty of patents on that end. And I'm sure once I retire it's going to be easy pickings."

“I’m sure,” Gio echoed as his mind sort of whirred distractedly. “So… take me on the tour.”

She grinned widely at him. "What are you most interested in seeing? This is the main lab, but I've different sections, operations, and experiments throughout the house and grounds."

Gio smiled brightly. “I mean… you can’t ask me. Because I’ll say everything. Especially the experiments. But you were going to show me some of the integrations you’ve done with… like, the fight. And predictive modelling. Is that all done here?”

"Oh right. I did talk about that." Rosie chirped happily as she walked over to a display table. "Carl, pull up predictive protocol."

The table lit up, a warm blue glow that hummed with an energy that always delighted Rosie. "All right. So just input who you want, the scenario, and then we can run a simulation based on my best gathered data."

Gio considered it for a few moments as his eyes skittered hungrily over the display. “Okaaay… let’s… take… Rowan. Let’s take Rowan trying to corral a human-shark hybrid attacking Rodeo Drive.”

It sounded wild, but Rowan was something of an unknown quantity in the world of HeroTV. She seemed a good jumping off point to understand the capacity of the modeling.

"Oooo. Good choice. She's new, so my data is still very preliminary on her. Carl, run Gio's parameters with current build on Naiad. Scenario, interception to event already in place with Naiad being called in to currently unknown hybrid shark assailant." Though with her recent unintentional mission, it had provided more feedback for Rosie to work with. It also gave important information on how the woman dealt with failure. After mission behavior could be very helpful in predicting for future missions.

There was a shimmer in the blue before the light rose up to create a replica of Rodeo drive. As the program ran, it gave it's best estimate for the threat parameters given the threat was a model instead of a specific profile. But defaults could be helpful. The shimmering blue Naiad came into view and the scenario played out.

According to Rosie's current parameters, Naiad would struggle on her own. But a simulated com request popped up as a small window, listing percentages of likelihood for different backup requests. "Most likely backup request is Prism."

Gio watched it with amazement, his eyes focused from the Shark-person to Rowan, then to his own name low on the list of requested back-up, then back to the Shark-person.

“What information do you use to construct these? Just HeroTV footage?” he asked as the Shark-person chewed down through a street pole and swung the Rodeo sign like a baseball bat at Naiad.

"Carl and I source whatever available information I can gather. Herotv, personal observations, social media." Rosie ticked off sources automatically. "I'm always tweaking the codes to make the models better with less data."

"What… what about if you're trying to identify someone?" Gio asked carefully. "Could you… I don't know… use this to match someone? Like, say Chameleon? The face changes, the clothes change. If you don't see them do the actual change, could you spot them in the data?"

"In theory, with enough data, I could make at least a reasonable approximation." Rosie considered before looking at Gio. "It sounds like a fun challenge. Did you have someone in mind?"

“I… do. But… what if there was no social media? Like… you know… what if someone was a villain and got locked up for 20 years, then started up again? What sort of data could you reference?” Gio pressed with a sort of wary thoughtfulness.

There was a thoughtful frown that took over her features, scrunching her thought wrinkles into her forehead. "You want to look at historical data?" That was a new problem indeed. "It'd depend on what records have been digitized. But it's in theory possible if you've a starting point. I do have age progression programs that could be used for approximation. But there are public records, libraries, heritage databases. It'd be a lot more patchwork."

It was some consolation that Rosie looked puzzled; it was good to know that it wasn’t a super easy get even for someone as astronomically intelligent as her.

“What sort of information would you need as a starting point? Like, what’s the minimum?” Gio asked. God knew that was basically what he had.

Eyebrows raised as she raised a hand to pause the simulation. "What you got?" She asked honestly. "I mean. This could be hypothetical but it doesn't seem like. If you don't want to tell me why, you don't have to."

Once again, it was John Drew’s voice in his head, warning about spread. Rosie was outside of his circle of friends and the circle of his mentors. She didn’t know Matthew and she didn’t work for Wondercorp. She’d welcomed him here but they weren’t super tight. Did he shade the truth? Was it worth it for the information she could grant? How protective was he of this secret when everyone so far had been so accommodating?

It hadn’t been his intention when he came over, but the snowball of it was so big that he felt he just had to run with it instead of trying to outrun it.

“I do. It’s not hypothetical. I didn’t.. I mean, this isn’t what I thought about when I came over, but looking at all of this… kind of feels serendipitous. I mean, if you can’t figure it out, it’s probably not figure-out-able. Right?” he suggested with a weak half-smile.

Rosie cocked her head and considered Gio curiously. "Well. I don't know what I'm trying to figure out. But I'm willing to help, whatever it is. I'm always up for an interesting puzzle and people don't bring them to me often."

Gio couldn’t help but smile a bit wider at that. “I mean… I’m pretty sure you haven’t had a puzzle like this. If you have, we’ve got a whole other thing to talk about.” Realizing that he was starting to fidget with the end of his shirt, he made a conscious effort to be still.

“I realize that this isn’t a forever sort of secret, but I’m trying to keep it one until I have a full… well, as much understanding as I can get on the subject before it all comes out publicly. So… I’m asking if this could stay between us. What I’m going to ask you.”

Rosie nodded along with this. His body language did seem to communicate that this was uncomfortable for him. "Anything you tell me will be recorded in Carl's network. But no one's been able to get through my security layers in a very long time, so the chance of breach is highly unlikely. But you would have to be okay with it being stored there because I'll need it to work."

“I know,” he said with a nod. “Good thing too. It’s another data point. The person you’re looking for is me.”

Gio’s hands reached back to grip the table so that he could lean a little rather than stand up straight like he was giving a book report. “There’s a part of my powers that very few people know about. That I only very recently found out about. When I die, I don’t stay dead. My body kicks over anew, like a phoenix. Haven’t been able to figure out if that’s a literal phoenix, with the fire and everything, but there’s suddenly a baby, and that baby grows up and...” he trailed off, gesturing at himself, “here I am. And while I don’t have any memories of, you know, previous iterations, I know something about who the last one was. I just don’t know, you know, if there were any before that.”

Now with that Rosie's eyes lit up. This was something completely new. Fully restorative regeneration, cyclical lives. Fascinating. It was not lost on her that perhaps Gio's nature had more in common with Carl that her own. Multiple iterations, copies that might not know about themselves. Now this was a puzzle.

"Okay. Tell me what you know. Carl will record everything. I can work to build a program to see what we can get." The excitement of the build was clear in her voice. But she needed her parameters before she could build a program.

“I mean… you have some data. Right? Just like you have Rowan’s. In so far as I know we’re identical. Powers are definitely identical. Apparently I have birthmark in the same spot. My previous life, the name I have is Matthew Giovanni, but I don’t know necessarily that was the name he had continuously. He was a villain in Los Angeles in the 80’s before he was incarcerated, so I imagine there’s some digitized files from newspapers. I know that before he was in LA, he was in Vegas, but Ms. Price said she was pretty sure he was from somewhere in the South, thought she never asked where. Oh. And I have a birthday. For Matt. 1/6/60,” he explained, then shrugged. “But like the name, I don’t know if he just picked that date or if it’s real.”

Rosie focused intently on this information. Categories of data filtered through her mind and the digital one of Carl's at the same time. It was more information than she expected, and if he was a public figure of some notoriety then that would likely make information easier to find.

She nodded, information tabulated and stored. "And what end result do you want? Just whatever information I can dig up?"

Gio’s mouth slid open. “I mean. Yeah. I don’t know… I don’t know if Matt was the first or if… you know.” He didn’t clarify further, but instead leaped aside that particular topic. “I’ve been trying to, you know, put myself in a better position next time around. Like, I don’t know if he’ll care, but I sure as hell do now, so… I mean. Stands to reason.”

Multiples were a possibility, obviously. "I'll cast the data as far as I can. It's going to become more difficult the less photography there is, and with less advanced photography. Generationally speaking it's still really recent technology." Her hands hovered over the table and she began inputting information as she spoke. "Now if your interest is in creating data for your future incarnation, that's something different as well. You'd need to setup fail-safes to make sure a new you is found by particular people, as well as having setup fail-safes and authorizations. Now if you have an integrated setup like Carl's that would actually make it fairly simple. Though I wonder if an implant would survive the experience. It'd be impossible to test."

“I mean, they’re mostly videos that I made. That I have on a hard drive, fingerprint access. But I can’t… I mean, I don’t know what I do about making sure certain people find me. Like… I have people I told. Presumably if a baby shows up that doesn’t sleep, it’s going to be fairly easy to put 2 and 2 together. Although my parents did a pretty good job of keeping that a secret…”

It was obvious from the way he was reasoning on the fly that for all the thinking he’d done on the subject, it was all circuitous and not evidence based. It was all the more reason he wanted concrete answers -- he couldn’t keep turning this all over and over in head with no resolution.

"You'd want to set up a trust as well." Rosie added off hand. "Financially speaking, if you want to continue to exert control. But as for an infant that doesn't sleep that'd all depend on if whoever has you reporting something like that."

Rosie wasn't speaking towards any particular plan, she was simply speaking aloud. Of what she might do. Could do. "Do you know if your fingerprints would change? It's entirely possible they might even with your DNA remaining exactly the same. Though if Matthew has fingerprints on file with his arrest record I could probably find a way to get those though Evan would be pissed if he found out because I'd probably have to get into an official database. But in theory we could confirm if that's a good failsafe."

Gio looked at Rosie with widening eyes. He leaned forward a little bit, the words falling out of his mouth before his brain could really put on the breaks.

“Can you do that? Get into an official database?” He paused a moment. “What kind of database?” He paused a moment. “The FBI database?”

Rosie laughed automatically. "Of course I could. It's more a matter of should than could. Or legality. As Evan and legal remind me on a semi-monthly basis."

Gio’s mouth pursed into a frown. “I mean. Matthew’s is definitely there. He was locked up in super max.”

Was he really considering this? Gio had never been an any-means-necessary person, but he’d never needed to be either. He’d never had a barrier that couldn’t be surmounted whether by time or dedication or his moderate wealth. Breaking the law for something he wanted… well… that was bad.

His face fell, but less because of her oblique admonishment and more because he knew that he had just considered getting someone else to commit a crime on his behalf. Bad Gio.

“You’re right though. That’s… god, and on top of everything else with the Act right now. You shouldn’t.”

"Aww, you sound like Evan." Rosie teased good naturedly. "Well. Less resigned. But I can build this, go off of what public information I can find, and we can go from there?"

“That would be incredibly kind of you. Thank you. Thank you,” Gio said again, more pointedly. It was a hard thing to explain needing to know - he’d certainly had tried with a number of people and each time had felt limited and stupid. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

She shrugged easily at that. "You're right. I don't. But it sounds like fun, so why not?" She turned away from the code she was writing and grinned at him. "Do you still want more of a tour? You can wander around if you want while I work on this. Carl will let you know of anything's restricted cause of safety or whatever."

Gio’s smile became wider and, if possible, more genuine. “Ahhh, yeah. That would be awesome. Come on, Carl,” he said, as if he was an actual passenger that could come along with him instead of, you know, integrated into the whole house. “Let’s explore.”