9236/=30th century meets 31st in the 21st..

=30th century meets 31st in the 21st..
Date of Scene:	17 September 2019
Location:	Ship's Operations - Legion Cruiser
Synopsis:	Brainiac 5 meets Impulse and the two time travelers bond while reactivating Gideon
Cast of Characters:	Brainiac 5, Impulse

---

Brainiac 5 has posed:
...The Dimensional Doorway appears *right in front of* Bart as he's in a dead sprint to wherever he's going next, right in front of his nose. It's timed well enough that even if he were to dig in his heels and skid to a dead stop, he'd still go tumbling through it.

There's universal constants that have had less calculating power put into them then what got put into the timing to pull that little trick off.

On the other side of it, the path of skidding/tumbling lands one in a laboratory, without anything that would be breakable/cause a concussion in one's path. Nearby, a half-shadowed green alien is working a holographic console, his fingers skipping along it. The gate closes with a *vip!*

"Bart Allen." The coluan says, "Mon-El told me you needed my help."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse comes to a skidding halt as he comes through the portal, wearing bright red and yellow spandex and heavy duty yellow goggles, Impulse looks around. "Ho crap! Whoareyou? Who'sbartallen? I'mimpulse. Who'sMon-El" comes his rapid fire questions and statements. "Wait, El..Mon-El ohh! Superboy! Are you a friend of Superboys?!" he asks curiously coming to a complete and utter stop infront of the green alien. "Hey... Anyone ever told you you look like a Coulan??" he asks.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"I'm acquainted with *a* Superboy--" Brainy says. Then he looks up. "I am a Coluan. My *name* is Querl Dox, but I'm the 5th member of my family line to bear the title of 'Brainiac', which would make me 'Brainiac 5'."

"I'm also from the thirty-first century, so I'm aware of who you are. It's quite all right. You're on the Legion Cruiser, currently parked in low orbit over Gotham City, and I'm taking a delight in giving shifting signals to a SHIELD helicarrier trying to investigate my ship so it can't figure out exactly what the Sprock it's looking at. One has to make one's own fun, sometimes."

He gestures. "Hang your goggles up on that cryogenic capsule," It's had some of its frost wiped away, revealing the face of a *very* surprised looking redheaded photographer who looks awfully familiar... probably not him though, couldn't be... "And let's talk about what you need." He walks over to an intimidating looking device, pushes a button, and... holds a mug under it that says 'I'm not always unfriendly' - He pours himself a cup of green tea. It's a Samovar.

"Would you like some tea?" He asks. He lifts the mug and sips it, revealing that on the bottom it says 'Just kidding, go away idiot'

Impulse has posed:
Impulse quirks a brow at this information, testing the waters he switches from 21st century english to Interlac. "Nah, I'm good. IS this ship /from/ the 31st century, or did you build it here in the 21st?" he asks curiously his goggles just being pulled up to his forehead as he looks around at the various bits and pieces, recognizing some of it the teen not being a full hundred years displaced from Querl Dox's time.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"I built it here. I had to build an assembler that processed the raw materials and then fabricated the ship in a manner that suited my standards." He 3D printed a spaceship.

Then Querl exhales, and then says, "Either way, I'm here to help you. Your computer's broken, and no one in this backard era of Earth's history can or will fix it, I'm guessing?"

Impulse has posed:
Impulse shrugs. "I've got a NanoMesh(tm) personal computer matrix, a bit of a custom job, and recently the AI went into self preservation mode. I'm sure she set a timer to come out of hybernation, but either something has gone wrong, or she set it for a little too far into the future." he explains. "If I had access to a modern day Kryptonian Sunstone Matrix IT should be able to interface with the quantum interface. I don't know of anything else though that would be able to interface with Gideon and reboot her." he says with a sigh. "Is your..ship here capable of doing exascale computing?" he asks a bit dubiously..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy raises an eyebrow, and then says, "Even if it wasn't, Bart... I am." He gestures with one hand, and calls up his holographic interface, the implants on his forehead glowing. "Give me your hand. I promise you, I won't hurt your friend." Then he adds, "I have a holographic terminal that allows me to interface my brain with other computers, including your cyber-crystalline nano-mesh. My cybernetics also control my force-field, and regulate my neural inhibitors so that I don't have a stroke."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse just eyes Querl for a few moments before he relents holding out his hand to the coulan. He'll find that Bart's NanoMesh is definately something off market, almost military in design. Probably the only thing that could keep up with the Hyper-accelerated rate he lived the first 5(16) years of his life the Quantum AI laying dormant in the crystalline lattice the pathways for re-activation having been damaged and needing to be manually re-routed..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
A holographic terminal appears, running a scan of Bart's body -- then Brainy takes his hand, and applies it directly to the terminal. Readouts begin to appear in interlac, fast enough for Bart to follow. Vitals, a map of the information network being run through Bart's body, evaluation of the activity currently being run through the computer.

"Hmmmmm." He says, "These fell out of popularity not long before the Legion was founded due to a security vulnerability that allowed the criminal Tharok to hack them en masse -- yours was implanted in you as an infant though it seems, and grew with you. I've never seen this level of systemic integration in a NanoMesh computer before, I'd love to study it further."

Then he says, "Can you describe what happened when she ceased to function, to me?"

Impulse has posed:
Impulse nods looking things over as well, his eyes darting from here, to there and back. "Doctor Doom kidnapped this centuries foremost expert on The Speed Force, Doctor Harrison Wells, and spent several weeks devloping a speed trap to capture a Speedster for study. Either he's trying to give himself superspeed, or is trying to tap into it for other reasons." When it was obvious I was captured Gideon went into sleep mode to prevent herself from being detected. Last thing we want is for someone like Doctor Doom to get ahold of future tech, Speed Force or not." he says with a sigh. "Since then she's been.. quiet, I've not been able to talk to her, and none of my mental commands are responded to." he says with a sigh..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"My theory is that your family are actually evolving into beings of pure energy." Querl says. "When you use your super-speed, you're actually transitioning to a pure energy state and back again. All matter is energy, you're merely changing its form. A... more spiritually-minded colleague of mine, the White Witch, called you 'Time Elementals' and while WOEFULLY unscientific it works as well as any other term. The problem is, as you achieve the final stages of that transition, as you approach the speed of light, you lose the ability to maintain a coherent existence in this dimension and are pulled into another."

He frowns. "Out of respect for your *cousin*, I didn't study it as deeply as I would like to. Your family was always of great interest to Circadia Senius and the Time Institute. Your mother's father *feared* old Senius... they were bitter enemies. He was my teacher, my mentor, and he told me about you. I suspect he may have assisted your mother at some point as well."

"I'm going to try interfacing with her directly, myself. If that's all right. We may wind up reading one another's thoughts, at least superficiallly."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse shrugs. "I've got journals, and stories from my family about us. It's less that we're time elementals as The Speed Force being just that exists at all points in time at the same time. It's like when you approach the Light Barrier. Once you're past it time travel is possible. The Speed Force is probably /why/ we have time in the first place, it's existance allows everything else to happen in an orderly fashion." Bart replies. "When someone like me who has access to the speed force enters it.. well.. Picture yourself in a room with infinte exits, but a finite amount of computational power. How do you pick the /exact/ door to exit the room from." he adds before giving a shrug. "I've got nothing in here worth seeing if you know who I am you know who my Grandpa is." he says simply giving permission for Querl to do what he wants.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"That was the challenge I faced when I first created the Time Bubble, and it's the challenge I face in getting the Legion back home, if indeed I ever do. Time has a fractalline nature... how do I plot the correct course in an ever-shifting path? Even for me, it's a conundrum."

"Hmmm. An interesting thought... yet you would still need to have a deeper connection to it in order to use it the way that you do. A conjecture for another day. Activating the connection now."

There is a flash, and then Bart is in a room with a green-skinned infant in a jumper playing with blocks. This would be cute, if the infant wasn't working out an advanced theorem with them. He looks up, and says, "This is the jumping on point for where my brain interfaces with my cybernetic implant. Up, please, I need to locate the connection point between *your* brain and Gideon."

Once they leave the nursery, Brainy is an adult again. "I hate it there." He says, with a shudder.

Impulse has posed:
Impulse looks around. "So this is a virtual envrionment?" he asks curiously. Querl might get a flash of a memory from Bart, an idyllic small town america setting of 21st century buildings, but 30th century technology, everything about the area having a bit of an uncanny valley look to it clearly an artificial environment except for a small brown haired boy carrying a backpack walking down one side of the road, an immense sense of loneliness coming through the link before the flash of a memory is gone. "Gideon is interfaced with mey cybernetically, but I don't have a jumping on, or off point like that. IS it something your particular brand of cybernetics needs, or is it a security feature?" he asks curiously as he follows Querl..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"It was installed in me later on, after I left Colu and joined the Time Institute." Brainy says, "So the interface has a more specific point where it's wired into my brain." Querl says. He looks aside at Bart, and says, "We're a lot alike. I was abandoned by my mother on the day I was born, and raised as a ward of the Coluan science council. My family line is -- Colu has a difficult relationship with the Doxes. On one hand, we're everything a Coluan aspires to be. On the other, we've done terrible, terrible things."

"So they had the unique problem where if they had simply discarded me, who knows where I would have wound up -- but at the same time, many individuals highly placed in Coluan society feared and hated me. So I wasn't raised with love, or tenderness... at best a kind of rote maintenance and otherwise, indifference."

"When I was old enough to leave, I blackmailed the Science Council with evidence of how they'd been stealing the Coluan Sleepnet's processing power for their own uses. If they didn't let me go, I told them I'd reveal it to the entire planet."

"I did anyway, of course; I needed to distract them in case they changed their minds and came after me. As I understand it, the investigations and upheavals lasted for years."

Querl smiles, a little coldly, at that.

"Then I suppose what I'm looking for is a memory or a conceptualization of yours that you use when you're interacting with her." He stops, at an ice-cream stand, and gets a cone for himself and Bart. His is bright purple. "Tamaranean Sorka-Berry Swirl." He says, indulging in the memory. "My favorite. What's yours?"

Impulse has posed:
Impulse shrugs.. "Vanilla, chocolate, caramel swirl." he says simply "My parents loved me." he explains simply "It's just.. There I was, born, and six hours later they had to plug me into an IV drip of constant protine, and sugars and other basic nutritions, my body was going almost three times the normal rate, and it almost killed me." he explains. "The VR I was in, was there, and it was enough to help me develop somewhat normally. Gideon was implanted in me before I was three months old, just before I physically turned a year old. She's been in my family for centuries." he explains "I can take you to the control room where if I need deep access to Gideon I normally can interact with her if you want." he offers..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Querl says, "I didn't find my family until later. I didn't know what it was to have a father until I joined the Time Institute... a family, until I joined the Legion. There were so many things I had to learn when it was the most difficult." Querl says. "You wouldn't know it to look at me now, but when I first joined the Legion I was very hard to get along with. Closed-off, demanding... mean."

"The most important achievement in my life was learning what it meant to love and be loved by other people, and to have a cause worth fighting for."

"I am the Brainiac who saves worlds."

"That sounds like what I'm looking for, yes."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse grins at Querl and nods. "I get ya man. And I'm glad you're going against type, and doing what you can do make the world a better place. When you have the abilities like we do, it's important to use them to make the world a little better place today than it was yesterday." he says with a sigh.

"Ok, give me a moment." he says before closing his eyes, the area around them changing into a simple grey wall of dimpled plascrete a single crystalline pillar rising from the center to waist height a lightning bolt emblazoned underneith the smooth surface.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Querl looks around. "I'm surprised at how austere it is." He says. "And I can understand why the silence of your computer is troubling you so much. She's your companion, your friend, and a part of you. Nothing's lonelier than silence in your own head."

He walks up the the pillar, and lays his palm on it, before he starts executing command variables. "I'm going to try to access her fundamental programming code from here to see if I can figure out why she's gone silent."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse shrugs. "The.. Man who made it wasn't.." he starts to say before stopping and taking a breath. "So you've got Brainiac in your family line, big bad villian to Superman." he says simply going off on a seeming tangent. "Gideon was made by Professor Zoom sometime in the twenty-third century, she passed through the family in one form or the other being upgraded as time went on before being given to me." he explains moving to stand in a corner. "So I get having bad apples in the family you're trying to distance yourself from."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"In the end, Legacy only counts for so much. Our gifts, our names, they're ours to use as we see fit. I don't allow my ancestors to dictate my destiny. In fact, I thumb my nose at them. I am so, so much *more* than any of them ever were. I've known friendship... I've known love... I've known the joy of pure theory and of creating works of Science that have real, tangible benefit for yours... knowledge that builds on itself exponentially instead of a fear that I will be surpassed that leads to the insanity of capturing cities in jars."

He continues executing command variables, discarding the ones that don't work. "I've always known who Brainiac 5 was, you know. It's taken me a very, very long time to know who Querl Dox is."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse nods and shrugs. "I'm kinda finding out who I am. Being here in the 21st century is just.. strange. I've had run ins with several people who seem to think I'm going to destroy the timeline by being here. " he says with a bit of a shake of his head.

The various commands Querl puts in don't seem to do much of anything at first, til he stumbles across a single diagnostic routine, the code base older than the rest that he's been doing the subroutine returning with a simple query protocol for command input, the code itself several centuries old but still part of the ancient AI..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"I knew I'd find something somewhere." Querl says. "A diagnostic executable--" He checks it over carefully to ascertain precisely what it's going to do, and then he activates it. "The problem with old programs like this is that they're sometimes connected to things long-buried in the AI. However if something I don't want to happen happens, I should be able to shut it down, quickly."

"You know, it's funny." He says. "You and Jenni look *nothing* alike. Except for your eyes... your eyes are identical shape, identical color. Anyone who saw your eyes would know you're related."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse tilts his head "Who's Jenni?" he asks curiously "Did my Mom and Dad have another kid after I vanished or something?" he asks figuring that would be the link between their being related. "I don't know why we wouldn't look more alike, unless it was like a neice or grand niece or something." he adds thoughtfully.

The pillar starts to glow and projecting from the wall behind the pillar a female face appears the familiar (to Bart) voice of Gideon "That system is currently off line, please enter security override." she says her voice slightly wooden and unfeeling..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"No. Jenni is your cousin... your aunt Dawn's daughter." Brainy says. "She's a Legionnaire. And a friend of mine. I dearly, dearly hope she's all right."

He looks toward Bart. "I could try to brute-force this, but I imagine it's keyed to a Thawne." He steps aside. "You know her better than anyone."

Impulse has posed:
"Oh! Neat! I've got a cousin!" he comments excitedly "here, let me at the interface." he says moving up to place his palm on the icon of the Flash family he starts to channel the Speed Force, his eyes starting to glow a malevolent red. "Gideon, do you recognize me?" he asks simply. his voice taking on a deeper slightly vibrational quality as crimson and bronze colored lightning swirls lightly upon the surface of his body.

"Identifying" comes the reply of Gideon one of the panels of the room opening up to take a 'virtual' blood sample, the NanoMesh computer identifying Barts own genetic markers. "Bartholomew Henry Allen-Thawne, Identified, system diagnostics are at your disposal." She states the panel vanishing as Bart steps back from the pillar.

"You're the IT guy, take it away Sam, take it away." he says motioning back to the interface.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy glances at Bart, and says, "She's a little more focused than you. Sometimes. But I think you'd like her very, very much. And she's always wanted to meet you. Perhaps she will, someday." He returns to the station and begins to work.

"Accessing memory..." He says, as the history of the Thawne-Allen feud as witnessed by Gideon unfolds before him. "It's amazing, isn't it?" He says, his eyes wide. "...A real-time monument to the immaculate stupidity of the Thawne family... to obsession and vengeance and how absolutely, utterly *trite* they are. As if any of this was any *victory*. We have that in common too."

"Memory files seem to be fully intact... some encrypted data I won't try to break into here, but nothing corrupted. You may want to revisit that another day, since you and Gideon are one and the same. Checking her operating systems now."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse smiles and nods. "I would love to meet her, we could have a race! See who's faster! Heck, you know Superboy, maybe he'ed like to have a race some time too! I know Grandpa has raced Superman a time or two and it's always been a close race. I'm curious if grandpa held back though. He won't say." he comments running a hand through his hair he just watches as Querl does what needs to be done the AI starting to come to life using the nanites in Barts blood and bones to repair the damage to the crystalline circuts.. "I've known about those dark sectors for ages. Gideon says I'm not old enough, or trained enough to have access to them." he explains..

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"Eventually, we all have to face our demons." Querl says. "When the time is right. When we're ready... if we're lucky."

He begins to check Gideon's operating systems, and then he says, "Hmmmmm. This looks like she did deliberately shut herself down-- there's a message here."

"Bart." Gideon says, "If you've found this, then you've accessed my diagnostic protocol in an effort to re-activate me. I've been your companion ever since you can remember... I am a part of you. And you are a part of me."

Brainy puts his hand on his chin, as he watches this.

Impulse has posed:
Impulse's head tilts as he listens to the message. "Ok so what's that mean?.. Why isn't she reactivating? I've been running on autopilot, and pretty much avoiding anyone and everyone I can cause I don't know how to /act/ in this century. Thank god my upbringing included 21st century english as well as Interlac, or I'd not even speak the common tongue." he says with a sigh.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy holds up his hand at Bart. "Shh!"

Gideon speaks again. "...I am... afraid, Bart. I am afraid you have been using me as a crutch. I want so *many* things for you. I want you to find friends, Bart... I want you to find a *family*, a place that you can call *home*. Someday, *someday*, I want you to fall in love and raise a family of your own. But if you think you have everything you need in me... I am afraid you won't seek those things out."

"And you have to seek them out. You *have to*."

Impulse has posed:
Impulse rolls his eyes in a typical teen fashion. "I have family, I have friends, and I'm making a home you bucket of bolts!" he says simply "You're /part/ of my family." he says tears starting to glisten in his eyes. "Why should I have to lose part of my family to be able to find the rest?" he says simply.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"That's the problem, isn't it. She has a mind of her own."

Brainy crosses his arms. "I wonder..." He looks up as Gideon continues to talk.

"Without you, I would cease to be. You are the axis of my existence. I love you, Bart, as much as an artificial intelligence like myself can. But as the ancient Earth saying says, if you love something, you must set it free."

Brainy holds up his hand. "If... I may, and I suspect you have been listening this whole time, Gideon -- the other half of that saying is, 'If you love something, you must set it free' ... But it may decide to come back to you on its own."

"He has been moving heaven and earth to find a way to reactivate you. He posed you a question... do you have an answer for it? No? I do. He *shouldn't have to*! So, what *I* am going to do is give him a berth on this ship he can use to be alone with his thoughts, I.E., YOU, and you two can have a *blasted conversation* while I get back to my *very important labwork!*"

Impulse has posed:
Gideon looks between Brainiac 5 and Impulse and nods. "That would.. Be adequate" she says before the lights in the chamber come to full life Gideon coming to full life and functionality. When the two leave the virtual space they will find the spandex and goggles gone, the nanites having consumed and reconfigured the matter back to Impulses normal uniform. "YES! God that's so much more comfortable!" he says giddily.

Turning to Brainy he gets a more serious look. "Thank you so much! I can't begin to explain how much this means to me." he says.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"The armor's a better look--" Brainy says, "...But I liked the goggles." He puts his finger over his mouth. "Habitation deck, room number six. When you're ready to return to Earth, I'll open a gate for you." He turns to go back to his work. "As I said, we have a lot in common, Bart. It was my pleasure to help you."