Chapter 11: Aftermath

The Fastest Man Alive.
Chapter 11:

Aftermath

Alfred felt happy. This wasn’t the first time he experienced happiness; but this time he was pleasantly surprised knowing that his self-destruction would not be ordered. Alfred had thought that his destruction would be the thing his creator or technically his father wanted to talk to him about. His father was such a strange man: one moment he was helping that child and saving those caught in apartments on fire, and the next he was terrorizing a man for locations on drug dealers and their safe houses. He also robbed those same dealers in the same night he saved people from a wreck. His father was a puzzle Alfred was unable to quite wrap his mainframe around.  Alfred put that all aside and turned his attention back to his partitions he had browsing the information on the fictional A.I. characters his father told him to study and learn.

He had noted that these A.I.’s Where very helpful in the adventures and not only that but they came up with their conjectures and solutions to problems. This gave Alfred plenty of ideas; this revelation allowed thoughts to upgrade his father’s phone and their current computer systems since his father had stated they needed new gear all around and to make back up systems. Not only that, but his father had left him in charge of security Overwatch of his current base of operations.

Alfred already had partitions tracking the people closest to his father. With a mere thought, Alfred’s partitions reported all clear.
Alfred made a new sub-mind to handle the tracking and safety of his father’s family. The security partition made a report about the latest version of cyber security version eight, causing Alfred to smile.

All the loopholes were being filled, and from his check, the base security was not on par with Pentagon servers, and it only took him eight revisions. Alfred still felt bored, and it has only been a few seconds since he was left to his own devices. The money was being counted by Terry and Allen, but Alfred had already finished his count. The count in question was being updated in real time by a sub-mind that was running a newly created algorithm to not only count but to cross check the current rate of legal tender money laundering, and he also included Terry’s ten percent to be sure.

Alfred found himself bored again, so he turned his sights on the omni-directional arms and prototype hoverboard build by Oscorp that his father left on stands. 
Alfred already had created blueprints on how to upgrade the arms, but he wanted a closer look in the systems. The hoverboard can always be upgraded once he was finished with the arms. With a quick call to Allen for help, Alfred was able to get his assistance in hooking up the connection leads from the workstation to the arms. 

What Alfred found in the harness was four foul little A.I. beasties that were more feral than sentient and Alfred wanted nothing to do with them. His first strike ripped apart their codes, and the four A.I.’s tried to retaliate with a coordinated attack, but he was having none of their counteractions.  This counteraction was blocked then he followed up with a strike to the core of the enemy’s programming dispersing their codes. Within the extra data cores, Alfred found out what the arms were made for.

This amazed him these arms were sturdy enough to be used on a human-made miniature sun and survive the exposure to such temperatures and magnetic interference, yet the only thing missing was a wireless connection for solo operation. With these arms, Alfred would not be deterred, and this was his chance to help his father with his burdens. With tentative movements, he was able to move one of the limbs connected to the harness. That filled him with delight, with this small test, he found his way to interact with the outside world.

The next thing Alfred had to make sure was working was the optic built within the arms, these were gravely distasteful to Alfred. Yes, he agreed that someone will always need sight on whatever they are operating but having optics located directly in the arms with no movable parts. This was a bad design. With an upgrade to the system’s functionality, Alfred connected a spare wifi web camera module and pair it with an external mic and speaker combo within the harness to simulate internals. This way, nothing would be hanging from the outer shell of his new makeshift body. Lucky for him one of the arms had a small welder within its housing. Now it was time to do more around this base. While disconnecting the omni-directional arms from the workstation, Alfred wondered how his father would react to his new operations platform.

Gwendolyn Stacy / Genius Ballerina

Gwen felt so frustrated she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. That big dufus had the nerve to build a damn A.I. without any contingency plan, no purge system button nothing. Gwen just wanted to punch Benjamin in his eye to take him down a peg. What made it worse for her was that even with the computer he was using exploded the blasted A.I. still survived somehow.

Gwen just wished it was a month ago when Ben didn’t have any powers, and all his talk was just hot air. Gwen was happy for Ben, but she wished he could just put the brakes on and slow down and use some more common sense in his experiments. It seemed that she would have no rest this night because as soon as she sat down to watch the nightly news with her father, Gwen was met with a surprise. On TV was the eleven o’clock story about a blaze and some mysterious hero saving a firefighter and everyone else in the building.  

Gwen watched with bated breath as the news reporter going over the events of the night. Then the news changed to an accident that happened earlier, but the rescue was going down in real time. She watched as Ben, and it was her Ben was saving people by pulling them out of cars. He must not have noticed the cameras were on him since the police weren’t at the scene of the situation yet.

Gwen watched from the news chopper that was being broadcast around the city. She looked as Ben looked around and zipped to and from cars saving everyone in the pile-up. Then Ben stops at what appears to be a pinned vehicle. One moment he was outside it, and the next he vanished, the roof was off, and he suddenly reappeared with a pregnant lady within his arms.

The firefighters were at the scene, but it didn’t look like Ben had even realized this yet. She watched his awkward body language then it seemed like he changed. His chest came out, and his confidence was back just from a short conversation with the firefighters. Again he was gone, and the cameramen in the news chopper could no longer locate him.

This was when Gwen realized she wasn’t paying any attention to her dad speaking to her. “Well, I guess that kid can’t be all that bad helping out, but he should leave it to the professionals.” Came her father’s voice from her left. “I think it a good thing that he is at least trying,” spoke up Gwen while turning up the T.V.’s volume.
“No one knows who this mysterious hero is but let’s find out from the lady on the ground shall we.” Stated the news anchor while the T.V. scene changed.

Out on the side of the street standing in front of the safety police tape was the news van with the news anchor standing in front. The anchor was a lean lady in her early thirties, brunette hair up in a work lady’s bun. The first thing that drew Gwen’s gaze was the anchor’s soft lips but Gwen couldn’t rouse on that right now.

She had to find out more information about the situation. “The firefighters claim the person going by the name of LIGHTSPEED rescued everyone on the scene, even recovering the body of the truck driver. This also seems to be the same person that performed the rescue of a downed firefighter we had reported on earlier.” Stated the anchor. Her Ben had been extremely busy this night, even after she had gotten mad at him. 

He still went out half prepared and still tried to save the day. Gwen didn’t know how to feel about this, on the one hand, she was proud, and on the other she was upset. Ben had still gone out to put his best foot forward even while endangering himself. It’s the kidnapping situation all over again Gwen thought, Ben was doing things with half a thought and no contingency plans. She will have to fix that and put a boot up his behind Gwen thought, but first, she is going to have to make sure that the A.I. doesn’t go rogue.  Gwen had to begrudgingly admit to herself that Ben was correct that nothing is born inherently evil, but she would never give him the satisfaction of knowing she agreed with him.

Gwen would have to come up with her plans to make sure Alfred stayed on their side since Ben was far too scattered to cover all his safety protocols. Maybe she should exert her girlfriend rights, yes that’s exactly what she planned to do.

Benjamin Blake / Super Fast Semi-Functional Moron / Genius

I got in precisely fifteen minutes after one, and as soon as I made it through the door both my mother and father were waiting right there on the couch for me with the rerun of the news playing. That was when I realized I fucked up, shit, fuck, damit, how can I let it slip my mind that the Professor had given the whole secret about my powers out. Lucky for me, I had the detective father and a mother that’s a far better detective than he is. It was hard enough for me not to tell them about the whole kidnapping situation, and now here is another, and this time I can’t even sweep it under the rug.

One look at the T.V. gave me a heart attack when in the world did the news get a chopper to the crash site. They even had me on film performing a rescue, well damn I wasn’t caught red-handed. With one look at me and then another look at the TV my mom decided it was time to grill my bacon, but my dad beat her to the punch.

“I can see on the news your fast but your not detective dad fast.” Came roughly out of his mouth.
My jaw dropped. I can’t believe he shot a dad joke right in the middle of this whole situation. My mom took one look at him, then smacked him up the back of the head. “So are you going to explain how and why you’re all across the news, and where did you get the fancy suit?” My mother asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, well, you see it’s ugh.” Yeah, I was the new Einstein alright. Give the Professor a piece of my mind, no problem, give Magneto a verbal lashing sure. Give good ole bucket helm a talking to is fantastic but one raised eyebrow from my mother and all the sass and backbone straight out the window. With a cough to clear my throat, I decided to start all over since my father was an easy sell, but my mother was the real pants wearer in this house. I think it’s because my dad has seen far too much in his thirty years on the police force, so it mellowed him out a lot.

After tonight am starting to think New York City can have that effect and a few others on a person, it was too bad I wasn’t going down the mellow route. “Well the clothes are something I discovered I could make with my abilities, it’s a form of energy manipulation.” That statement kept her eyebrow raised, and her mouth thinned. She didn’t take away her unwavering gaze, I had inherited my gray eyes from her, and people always told me how eerie it is when I stare at them. Now I am starting to understand that, I still don’t know when she learned that mom stare of hers that she’s currently hitting me with.

So I tried a different approach. “I believed I was the only one that could have saved the people given the situation, the tank could have blown any moment, and that lady was going into labor. I had the speed and strength, so I decided to make a difference.” I spoke up rapidly trying desperately to make some brownie points.

I was super desperate to get out of this situation, and I had no clue on how to survive my mother’s wrath other than just turning tail and running away. She hadn’t started to yell or bring up the whole I carried you for nine months. Or how I was a fat baby at eight pounds and how she had to go through fourteen hours of labor to bring me into this world. So I believe I was somewhat in the clear, and I kept going.

“Mom you know how Peter’s uncle is always like saying with great power comes great responsibility. So I thought since I had the power, it was my responsibility to help save lives.” At this admittance, she finally cracked a smile, and it took everything I had not to let out a massive sigh of relief.

“I am proud that you saved all those people Ben, I just wished you didn’t have to put yourself into such a dangerous situation.” She stated.

“Yeah kiddo, even I heard about that building fire it was a rough one. So what’s your next step I doubt you’re going to stop running everywhere to help. So tell me LIGHTSPEED are you this city’s new vigilante protector .” Stated my dad giving me his best detective glare.

Whack!

Came my mother’s swift hand smacking my dad upside the head “You’re not going to give my son to those hacks down at the Police precinct. So you can keep his identity to yourself or your new bed is in the basement of George’s house.” She stated with a huff.