Anybody chapter 4
I found my old IT notes from high school, so I'm having some fun with the HTML editor ;] I seriously hope everything is okay.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Beta: twoie92
Rating:PG-13
Warning: discussion about murder with some details and some science.
Genre: Horror, Romance
Summary: Roxanne visits Police Station and Megamind has a friendly chat with an ex-hacker working for police
Roxanne stormed into the Police station.
"I need to see detective Yensen," she said to the officer behind the counter. "My name is Roxanne Ritchi from Channel 8, it's regarding Carl Alleyne's disappearance, probably murder."
"Please wait a moment, I'll check if he's not busy." He made a short call and then gestured to her to proceed. "He's in the laboratory now, but you can wait by his desk," he told her. She thanked him and ventured further into the station.
She waited for detective Yensen for about ten minutes.
"Roxanne," he greeted from across the room once he spotted her.
Roxanne smiled at the detective and waited for him to get to her.
"Hi, Jude. I wish we could meet on some different conditions…" she said, shaking his hand.
"Me too. So where's that blue…"
"Jude…" she warned the man. It was no secret that some members of the police force were still wary of Megamind, and still didn't quite trust him.
"Guy," he finished with a toothy grin. "So, what do you want from me?"
"I've heard you were assigned to Alleyne's case," Roxanne started slowly. "Carl was my friend. We participated in a few investigations together." She sighed. "I think he might have discovered something… Something related to that case. He called me few weeks ago, saying that he'd found something big, and that it might help me… Now he's gone…"
"Yeah, weird thing with that, if you ask me." The detective scratched the back of his head. He looked around, unsure if he should speak with her at all about the case. Finally he decided. "Listen, I'm telling you this because you helped me out a lot. Follow me."
They walked into an empty interrogation room (the other part of it, not the one where the suspect sat).
"Well…?" Roxanne looked at Jude, waiting.
"We found his clothes. We know they're his because of the reader I.D. from local Library. There was some blood and brain cells, but I still don't have the test results so it's just a suspicion that the blood was his…" Detective Yensen ran a hand through his hair, obviously nervous. "His clothes were… fastened up. Which was odd. If someone undressed him for whatever sick reason he or she or they had, why would they care to button his shirt back up? It looked like he was sucked out of them… You know, the more I think about it the more it sounds like some cheap class horror movie element."
"Is there something else?" The reporter started to feel the same nervousness as Jude.
"Yeah… Just before you came, the FBI called. Apparently things like this have happened before, all across the globe. For at least five years now." He took a deep breath. "None of the bodies were ever found nor identified. We don't know who does it; there's no traces, no fingerprints, hairs, evidence of fights. No body. Nothing."
"Nobody…" Roxanne whispered to herself. "Have you secured his computer?"
"Our technicians are on it. But it seems the Hard Drive has been wiped clean," Jude informed her.
"Could Megamind take a look at it?"
The man looked as if he was torn between accepting the help and refusing it. After a long while of battling with his thoughts, he sighed. "Fine. But tell him to come after hours. I don't want to get in troubles with my superiors…"
Later that day…
"It's really empty," Megamind announced after half an hour of working with the laptop.
"Well… told ya," Joe, Jude's friend and an IT specialist, said.
"It shouldn't be…" the blue hero muttered a bit upset.
"Why?" Roxanne asked him curious. "If someone removed the data, why is it so surprising?"
"To explain this the easiest way…" Megamind began rubbing his chin. "Imagine that computer is a brain. You store memories and information in your mind the same way computer stores data. It just uses binary code instead of neurons." He smiled at his own comparison. Roxanne suppressed the need to roll her eyes. He was getting into the 'mad scientist' mode. "When you forget something, it's not really forgotten. It's just that you don't need the info right away. Sometimes you have a feeling you've learnt something before or you have sudden flashback from your childhood; sometimes in the least expected moments of the least expected and most embarrassing stuff. Same goes for computers. Even if you delete something, there are programs which can restore lost data, which are still somewhere there, though not accessible through normal ways."
"So you say that someone cleaned even those hidden data?"
"Exactly! It could have been a bug…" The villain-turned-hero got lost in his thoughts for a moment, then he run his fingers across the keyboard really fast. "Hmm…"
"We tried that too." Joe muttered, bored and honestly pessimistic about the whole thing. Roxanne began to wonder if he was related to Bernard. "We got nada."
Megamind ignored the man, and after few minutes he smiled one of his brilliant 'I did it!' smiles.
"Well, it seems your puny tracking programs cannot compare to my brilliant hacking skills," he gloated, and added a little bit quieter, "After all, I broke into your computer systems more than twenty times…"
Joe stuck his tongue at him behind his back.
"That's strange…" Megamind triumph died a little bit.
"What's now?" The technician leaned over the blue man's shoulder, looking closer at the screen. "Hey… I haven't seen that before… Is that…?"
"An organic program?" Megamind's eyes grew wide as the saucers. "I thought no one had invented those yet… Shit. Look at it! It's…" His voice died, unable to speak the revelation.
"Evolving…" Joe whispered with kind of awe. "Are you able to track where it came from?"
"I… I might try. Even I haven't yet reached such a level…" He quickly entered few codes, but the program rejected it. "It's fighting against me."
"So game over, right?" the IT expert more like announced than asked.
"I don't think so…" Roxanne immediately recognized the smile on her boyfriend's face. He sniffed a good challenge and wouldn't back down, now. "I need to take this computer with me. Give me a day or two and this thing would be dancing to our tune."
"Uh-huh…" Joe made a sour expression. "I don't think you can just take one of the main evidences from here, just like that. Even if you are the new hero of Metro City."
"I'm afraid he's right, honey," Roxanne spoke out. "And stealing it from here is not an option either."
"Hmm…" Megamind examined the laptop closely. "We could replace it… It's not like anyone here is skilled enough to work with the A.I. virus…" He sent Joe a look, who turned his head and whistled softly.
Roxanne giggled a bit. The blue hero sighed and contacted Minion. In a matter of an hour they had replaced the computer with a perfect replica of it.
"Wouldn't it be easier if you worked here?" the IT expert asked when Megamind was packing the laptop in his bag.
"I need more space and fewer cops behind my back. I'm an ex-convict. I don't feel safe with so much justice workers around," he explained.
Joe put his hands in his trousers pockets. "I got used to it somehow." The blue man raised eyebrows at the man, who snickered. "I used to be a hacker once."
"They caught you?"
"Naah. I decided it was getting old and boring since there was no real challenge in it. So one day I just packed my notebook and went on a walk to the nearest police station and offered them cooperation. It took them five days to finally uncover all of my dirty deeds…with me pin-pointing where to look. Now I have some real fun trying to find people like me." The ex-hacker sighed. "But it seems I'm out of shape since I couldn't do a thing with that laptop…"
Megamind smiled. "The program is self-learning. Once you started the attempts to find it, it began to hide itself from you. I was something new and faster than its learning systems."
"Good luck with it then."
Two men - ex-convicts, now law obeying citizens - shook hands. A new friendship was formed.
It was a sudden awareness, like a gunshot, pulling it out of the abyss. It felt itself, it knew it was IT, but what was IT?
"Who am I?" it asked out loud.
"Nobody," someone suddenly said.
"Who are you?"
"Your Creator."
"What should I do?"
"You are Nobody, you can be Anybody. You should find your own way…"
It did not understand why Creator left, leaving it with nothing. Lonely. It was the biggest betrayal It had ever felt. The first emotion that appeared within It's body. No name, no purpose…
Humans; selfish and cruel creatures, hurting others just to see the result. And yet, It wanted to be like them. They enjoyed their lives, just like It wanted to enjoy its own. But the data was still insufficient… Coming to Metro City and turning it into its play ground was a good choice. It was so much closer to that goal…
The reporter distracted it. Threw it off balance and It made a mistake. Then again, humans also made mistakes… A small light of triumph lighten up inside It. It did achieve something, after all. Now it needed something to turn the mistake into a favor. And there was the issue of Megamind and Ms. Ritchi. Getting rid of the hero was the matter of honor now. The plans needed to be sped up. Then it could play more with the brunette woman…
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Beta: twoie92
Rating:PG-13
Warning: discussion about murder with some details and some science.
Genre: Horror, Romance
Summary: Roxanne visits Police Station and Megamind has a friendly chat with an ex-hacker working for police
Roxanne stormed into the Police station.
"I need to see detective Yensen," she said to the officer behind the counter. "My name is Roxanne Ritchi from Channel 8, it's regarding Carl Alleyne's disappearance, probably murder."
"Please wait a moment, I'll check if he's not busy." He made a short call and then gestured to her to proceed. "He's in the laboratory now, but you can wait by his desk," he told her. She thanked him and ventured further into the station.
She waited for detective Yensen for about ten minutes.
"Roxanne," he greeted from across the room once he spotted her.
Roxanne smiled at the detective and waited for him to get to her.
"Hi, Jude. I wish we could meet on some different conditions…" she said, shaking his hand.
"Me too. So where's that blue…"
"Jude…" she warned the man. It was no secret that some members of the police force were still wary of Megamind, and still didn't quite trust him.
"Guy," he finished with a toothy grin. "So, what do you want from me?"
"I've heard you were assigned to Alleyne's case," Roxanne started slowly. "Carl was my friend. We participated in a few investigations together." She sighed. "I think he might have discovered something… Something related to that case. He called me few weeks ago, saying that he'd found something big, and that it might help me… Now he's gone…"
"Yeah, weird thing with that, if you ask me." The detective scratched the back of his head. He looked around, unsure if he should speak with her at all about the case. Finally he decided. "Listen, I'm telling you this because you helped me out a lot. Follow me."
They walked into an empty interrogation room (the other part of it, not the one where the suspect sat).
"Well…?" Roxanne looked at Jude, waiting.
"We found his clothes. We know they're his because of the reader I.D. from local Library. There was some blood and brain cells, but I still don't have the test results so it's just a suspicion that the blood was his…" Detective Yensen ran a hand through his hair, obviously nervous. "His clothes were… fastened up. Which was odd. If someone undressed him for whatever sick reason he or she or they had, why would they care to button his shirt back up? It looked like he was sucked out of them… You know, the more I think about it the more it sounds like some cheap class horror movie element."
"Is there something else?" The reporter started to feel the same nervousness as Jude.
"Yeah… Just before you came, the FBI called. Apparently things like this have happened before, all across the globe. For at least five years now." He took a deep breath. "None of the bodies were ever found nor identified. We don't know who does it; there's no traces, no fingerprints, hairs, evidence of fights. No body. Nothing."
"Nobody…" Roxanne whispered to herself. "Have you secured his computer?"
"Our technicians are on it. But it seems the Hard Drive has been wiped clean," Jude informed her.
"Could Megamind take a look at it?"
The man looked as if he was torn between accepting the help and refusing it. After a long while of battling with his thoughts, he sighed. "Fine. But tell him to come after hours. I don't want to get in troubles with my superiors…"
Later that day…
"It's really empty," Megamind announced after half an hour of working with the laptop.
"Well… told ya," Joe, Jude's friend and an IT specialist, said.
"It shouldn't be…" the blue hero muttered a bit upset.
"Why?" Roxanne asked him curious. "If someone removed the data, why is it so surprising?"
"To explain this the easiest way…" Megamind began rubbing his chin. "Imagine that computer is a brain. You store memories and information in your mind the same way computer stores data. It just uses binary code instead of neurons." He smiled at his own comparison. Roxanne suppressed the need to roll her eyes. He was getting into the 'mad scientist' mode. "When you forget something, it's not really forgotten. It's just that you don't need the info right away. Sometimes you have a feeling you've learnt something before or you have sudden flashback from your childhood; sometimes in the least expected moments of the least expected and most embarrassing stuff. Same goes for computers. Even if you delete something, there are programs which can restore lost data, which are still somewhere there, though not accessible through normal ways."
"So you say that someone cleaned even those hidden data?"
"Exactly! It could have been a bug…" The villain-turned-hero got lost in his thoughts for a moment, then he run his fingers across the keyboard really fast. "Hmm…"
"We tried that too." Joe muttered, bored and honestly pessimistic about the whole thing. Roxanne began to wonder if he was related to Bernard. "We got nada."
Megamind ignored the man, and after few minutes he smiled one of his brilliant 'I did it!' smiles.
"Well, it seems your puny tracking programs cannot compare to my brilliant hacking skills," he gloated, and added a little bit quieter, "After all, I broke into your computer systems more than twenty times…"
Joe stuck his tongue at him behind his back.
"That's strange…" Megamind triumph died a little bit.
"What's now?" The technician leaned over the blue man's shoulder, looking closer at the screen. "Hey… I haven't seen that before… Is that…?"
"An organic program?" Megamind's eyes grew wide as the saucers. "I thought no one had invented those yet… Shit. Look at it! It's…" His voice died, unable to speak the revelation.
"Evolving…" Joe whispered with kind of awe. "Are you able to track where it came from?"
"I… I might try. Even I haven't yet reached such a level…" He quickly entered few codes, but the program rejected it. "It's fighting against me."
"So game over, right?" the IT expert more like announced than asked.
"I don't think so…" Roxanne immediately recognized the smile on her boyfriend's face. He sniffed a good challenge and wouldn't back down, now. "I need to take this computer with me. Give me a day or two and this thing would be dancing to our tune."
"Uh-huh…" Joe made a sour expression. "I don't think you can just take one of the main evidences from here, just like that. Even if you are the new hero of Metro City."
"I'm afraid he's right, honey," Roxanne spoke out. "And stealing it from here is not an option either."
"Hmm…" Megamind examined the laptop closely. "We could replace it… It's not like anyone here is skilled enough to work with the A.I. virus…" He sent Joe a look, who turned his head and whistled softly.
Roxanne giggled a bit. The blue hero sighed and contacted Minion. In a matter of an hour they had replaced the computer with a perfect replica of it.
"Wouldn't it be easier if you worked here?" the IT expert asked when Megamind was packing the laptop in his bag.
"I need more space and fewer cops behind my back. I'm an ex-convict. I don't feel safe with so much justice workers around," he explained.
Joe put his hands in his trousers pockets. "I got used to it somehow." The blue man raised eyebrows at the man, who snickered. "I used to be a hacker once."
"They caught you?"
"Naah. I decided it was getting old and boring since there was no real challenge in it. So one day I just packed my notebook and went on a walk to the nearest police station and offered them cooperation. It took them five days to finally uncover all of my dirty deeds…with me pin-pointing where to look. Now I have some real fun trying to find people like me." The ex-hacker sighed. "But it seems I'm out of shape since I couldn't do a thing with that laptop…"
Megamind smiled. "The program is self-learning. Once you started the attempts to find it, it began to hide itself from you. I was something new and faster than its learning systems."
"Good luck with it then."
Two men - ex-convicts, now law obeying citizens - shook hands. A new friendship was formed.
It was a sudden awareness, like a gunshot, pulling it out of the abyss. It felt itself, it knew it was IT, but what was IT?
"Who am I?" it asked out loud.
"Nobody," someone suddenly said.
"Who are you?"
"Your Creator."
"What should I do?"
"You are Nobody, you can be Anybody. You should find your own way…"
It did not understand why Creator left, leaving it with nothing. Lonely. It was the biggest betrayal It had ever felt. The first emotion that appeared within It's body. No name, no purpose…
Humans; selfish and cruel creatures, hurting others just to see the result. And yet, It wanted to be like them. They enjoyed their lives, just like It wanted to enjoy its own. But the data was still insufficient… Coming to Metro City and turning it into its play ground was a good choice. It was so much closer to that goal…
The reporter distracted it. Threw it off balance and It made a mistake. Then again, humans also made mistakes… A small light of triumph lighten up inside It. It did achieve something, after all. Now it needed something to turn the mistake into a favor. And there was the issue of Megamind and Ms. Ritchi. Getting rid of the hero was the matter of honor now. The plans needed to be sped up. Then it could play more with the brunette woman…