SEASON TWO
Brian Jameson stood before his assembled class. The room was set up like a lecture hall and made it easy for Brian to speak to his interns despite their laptops strewn about with an air of frustrated genius,
"...the divisions I'll be hiring you to will need your expertise to be effective. I've hand picked each of you because of your unique qualifications, some of you are Gifted, others of you are brilliant, analytical or possess technical insight that I've found to be extremely valuable to our work. All of you are reasonable enough to see the merit in secrecy of these systems. The computer language I'm teaching you will be proprietary and emulates a human mind, therefore will have greater recall abilities, associative capabilities and are an intuitive learning platform. I've selected each of you because each of you will learn a piece of this computational library, compartmentalizing this language so that hacking it will be virtually impossible. This will prevent misuse or outright failure."
"Imagine an issue where nullifier-handcuffs could be hacked? So you can see the issues that might arise there," Brian said. He looks at his watch and back to his class,
"Ok, we'll meet back here Monday, you'll each find your final lessons. Class dismissed -- have a good weekend."
He gathered his satchel and stuffed his laptop into it.
His recent elevation into the spotlight had afforded him a few perks of visibility. The first was that several computer science undergrads had offered their services to him, to intern with him. He couldn't say no to the chance to make things better, to affect a new generation in a positive way. He did hand select each of the interns out of those whom applied to his tutelage. A few were a bit shady, and they had an even more thorough background checking. Six were felons of one sort or another, but all of those he recruited were hackers he found.
So he had become a posterboy for nerds, great.
He refocused his thoughts. Johnny-5 had been scouring the web for signs of life from the Namidian wave, after their recent defeat they had been all but silent, however no major movements had been detected. The AI had reconnected with Meta after the Gaultown battle. Happy to have been able to help, relieved that his maker was safe.
He began to walk to his office, through the halls of the Ranier bldg., downtown Seattle, his new home.
After that it almost looked like it would be old times, but unfortunately that was not to be. As calculated, media coverage had been plaguing his every move afterwords and it seemed all but impossible to retreat back to his old anonymous life. So instead the pair had begun to step into that limelight. Attempting to champion causes and defend the ITSDA's actions.
What he began to realize very quickly, was that there would be no way for ITSDA to move forward without significant growing pains or die trying. Meta hadn't wanted to stay much anyways, but Jill Irvine had reached out. He did owe her his life, if not for her he would've likely been assassinated on Interstate-70 that fateful day. So he owed her and her team. He would help in any way he could, but having been rendered crippled for their actions that day, the ITSDA would not be able to effectively combat the Namidian Wave. They were condemned for what was essentially a two day war, the battle of Chicago, Gaultown and New York had irreparably damaged their credibility with the public and as a result, the United Nations; they had simply been doing what the organization had been designed for.
That had been what had kept him up late at night before they went to trial. Having decided that a new course needed to be plotted, Brian made a rough outline of a foundation, a non-profit organization that would deal with the destruction, the impotence of the populace at large and potency of the unrestrained Gifted. He would need heroes, he would need policy makers and diplomats, he would need researchers as well as media to effect the goals that seemed clear to him, but he knew where not so easily identified to the world. The world needed a hand, and the foundation needed to be the one to give it, because the ITSDA could not.
That's how the Gaultown Foundation had been born, or GTF for those who needed acronyms. Brian knew that in order to do this they would need money and manpower, and probably a lot of it quickly. So he set Johnny-5 on the case, selecting for background, accomplishments, and potential, if they were gifted made no difference to Brian, he had hardly considered himself gifted for a long time before he donned the Meta-suit. Besides, he knew that Gifted weren't the only minds on the planet that mattered, and that was important to represent within his organization, Gifted and Non-gifted alike, working together.
The money was harder, because Meta had never needed great sums, he hadn't focused his particular set of skills on the subject. Now however he was learning a great deal. He had already accidentally created a bit of a hiccup in the stock market, something which his analysis had accurately forecast that he had thought would be hardly noticeable but enough to startle many investors apparently, something that had been beyond his ability to see. He knew that too good an application of his talents could greatly upset the delicate economy after that, so he simply toned it down, which still afforded him a great deal of cash, just a slightly slower stream of it.
With cash flowing in, he began to buy start-ups and the Ranier Bldg. A large condominium location near Pike Place Market by the waterfront in Seattle's Belltown district. A place to start from. He spent some of the capital on upgrading the building's old electrical systems, and upgrading them with various emergency protocols and surveillance systems. In addition the twenty story building held space for twenty condominiums after renovating several of the floors. The top floor held the operations level a place to invite guests, convene meetings and hold lectures like the one he just dismissed. Work would be ongoing for the rest of the building, but soon it would be complete.
The plan was to seed these graduate students into the start-ups he had bought and relocated to the Ranier building to begin work on various projects like the inhibitor cuffs, designed to baffle Gifted powers in a controlled way (he was always concerned when he heard of out of control gifted), or to disarm them entirely (or psychopaths like Kane). So far he could only temporarily make this happen in his prototypes. It was something which would bolster belief in the Foundation's causes and solve the problem of Police ineffectiveness against Gifted.
Meanwhile Johnny-5 had begun to divert some of his attention to the seeking out of researchers whose fields of study would help to move things forward, as well as candidates for PR and diplomacy, team training and special efforts. The list was growing by the day.
He found himself in the lounge and he propped his feet up on the couch as he laid back to do some work, newly installed plexisteel windows allowed light through to illuminate the room with Seattle's first sunny day in the intervening time since he'd moved in.
Already names were beginning to crop up. Several of them had fought with him in Gaultown...He began to dial the first name on the list using his retinal contact interface.
"Hello, this is Brian Jameson, yes, Meta the bright bulb..., yes, everything's fine....Oh, nice, you're with Peter too? Great say hi for me, I actually called because I have an opportunity opening up that I think you both might find interesting...because as you know, everything is actually not fine."
This message was last edited by the player at 10:04, Sun 12 June 2016.