When Spidey Met Oracle

Maybe some part of her was still waiting for Bruce to bail her out of this nonsense. After Leviathan had made its first direct strike, she'd assumed Bruce would re-allocate his pertinent resources now that he realized the threat they were facing was led by Talia Al'Ghul, the daughter of his most ruthless enemy and the mother of his son, Damian.

"Leviathan will work itself out in due time," Bruce had told her once they'd recovered. "You still know me well enough to know that I have a plan, don't you?"

"Of course," she assured him... and moreover herself. "But now that we know who's behind Leviathan, I just thought working this was more important than the WayneTech cover story with Lucius Fox we worked up for the Internet 3.0 stuff..."

"Nice try, Barbara," Bruce said. "You've still got work in the morning. If we're going to beat Talia, I need better ro-bats."

"Great," she muttered.

"Leviathan's invisible because it's legion," he explained seriously. "We need to start isolating and tracking her agents. That means putting names to some of these faces. State-of-the-art facial recognition software in the ro-bats could make all the difference. We might just need that edge to win."

Bruce had suggested that this annoying little trip to New York could be a nice little vacation from the storm that was coming, but honestly, it wasn't the doom and gloom of Batman, Inc.'s war with Leviathan that had been getting to Barbara.

Yes, Leviathan's assault had been terrible and harrowing, but the sad fact of it was, Babs was used to all of that. Fearing that the people she loved were all about to die at the hands of some terrible, global conspiracy shrouded in secrets and shadows was just another Wednesday for her. That day with Doctor Dedalus might have been a little more intense than she was used to, but it's not like she needed a break from all that. If anything, Barbara felt like she should have been back at work, helping Bruce puzzle this mystery out...

No. It was the daily grind at WayneTech that she needed to escape for a while. All those ten hour days under the harsh glare of fluorescent lighting with Lucius Fox hounding her twice a day for tedious paperwork and that kid in the cubicle across from her, Hiram Riddley, rambling on and on about ten-year-old episodes of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker. A girl could only take so much.

Somehow, the worst of both worlds managed to bleed together with this "vacation" of hers. It was the epitome of cog-in-the-corporate-machine responsibility, while still somehow integral to Batman's greater agenda in a way she couldn't control. She suspected that was part of Bruce's plan all along. There was undoubtedly a point to all this, but it still sucked.

Besides, there wasn't much she could do about any of that now.

Barbara had worked out how to integrate Horizon's Suspect Identification System into the ro-bat offensive programming, so she could probably just wing it. Maybe she was totally stressing over this whole presentation needlessly. Everyone told her she worried too much. Everybody except Bruce. It's just that when Barbara went anywhere, she liked to know everything she was dealing with, a consequence of life in a wheelchair.

Sure, she knew Max Modell. Who didn't? Modell was one of those guys who built personal computers in his garage back in the 80's. The difference between him, Wozniak, Gates and Jobs is that when he got bored with homemade PCs, he went on to construct a primitive Purple Ray projector powered by a cheap and dirty arc reactor. He eventually took all that money he'd initially made from computers to start up Horizon Labs, where he'd nurtured some of the greatest young scientific minds on the planet over the years. His former employees included the likes of Michael Holt and Silas Stone and even a few child prodigies. Brilliant prepubescents like Uatu Jackson.

Jackson had been the focus of Barbara's research on the current staff at Horizon, as she had wanted to learn as much as she could about the kid who'd created this software Lucius was so desperate to purchase. She hadn't, however, found the time to check out the rest of Modell's employees, and while she probably didn't really need to in order to pull off this deal, Babs was a born over-achiever.

So she tried to focus on what she did know as she signed in with reception. Besides her familiarity with Max and her background on Uatu, she had what she'd picked up doing a cursory web search with her smartphone during the drive over from Bruce's private hangar in Teterboro that morning.

The lab had been going through their own issues lately, mostly with City Hall. Apparently, the mayor's son, Colonel John Jameson, had become involved in Horizon's Apogee Space Station project. The Colonel had been one of NASA's top astronauts, so his work on the lab's privately funded space exploration initiative should have been a bonus, but they'd faced a few hiccups. Spencer Smythe, the Spider-Slayer, had used the launch of the Vertex shuttle as an avenue to take revenge upon Mayor Jameson. The Vertex made it to Apogee thanks to a heroic effort on the part of the New Avengers, but weeks later, there'd been a mishap on the station itself that the Future Foundation had helped clear up.

All of this had resulted in some sudden friction with municipal resources, with the mayor publicly stating that the work performed at Horizon Labs presented a imminent threat to the City of New York, even going so far as to cut off their power. Babs was sure her own father could understand the impulse, in theory if not in practice, as she knew how protective the Commissioner had been of her since her injury. At the same time, Dad had never tried to abuse his authority to take her out of harm's way... because he knew she'd never forgive him. Mayor Jameson showed no kind of similar restraint, though, but it wasn't like Max Modell and his team had been idle during this brief interruption of normal operation. Horizon's staff had taken the Zenith, their mobile sea-lab, into international waters while they helped provide tech support for the Avengers' efforts against the Sinister Six's recent global assault.

Barbara couldn't imagine that Jameson's issues with Modell and his crew were helped by the fact that so many of their recent headlines seemed so centered on... on a certain New York based superhero she herself had been avoiding for the last several months. The lab had been designated the new CDC during the spider-virus epidemic, and not including those run-ins with Smythe and the Sinister Six, there'd been a number of incidents involving meta-criminals like the Hobgoblin and the Lizard -- all of whom had a certain web-swinging do-gooder in common.

She almost had to wonder...

"Ah, Miss Gordon," Max greeted her shortly after her security screening. "Always a pleasure."

Max Modell was a great big bear of a man, but there was always this twinkle of gentle kindness in his eyes. Barbara had been avoiding this meeting for so long she had actually forgotten how much she used to enjoy visiting this place back in the day.

"You look fantastic!" Max told her. "How long has it been? Since Clocktower Systems launched out in Platinum Flats?"

"Actually, Horizon did some work on Kord Tower, but you were on vacation, I think," she said. "My circumstances have changed since then."

"So, I'm aware," Modell tutted. "WayneTech, Miss Gordon? How utterly pedestrian. Let me show you something..."

As she followed Max through the Atrium, Horizon's social hub where employees were encouraged to gather and converse with their fellow scientists, she got brief snippets of the kinds of conversations she dreamed of having during her undergrad years.

"I just don't buy into this 'Infinite Earth' model of the multiverse. If Oa's the center of the galaxy, and the Milky Way's roughly 200 million light years from the Great Attractor, the notion that this planet is somehow the lynch pin to all meta-universal interpenetrating dimensions is the height of human hubris..."

"...you're seriously trying to tell me that you prefer Ray Palmer's miniaturization methodology to Hank Pym's...?"

"...it's a quantum leap in the realization of virtual reality within a practical information network in the least, but the greater implication is that the Internet 3.0 might be the first step to the Bose-Einstein quantum computer..."

It was a marvelous thing to wander through.

"I love that," Modell said to her suddenly.

"Me too," Barbara smiled. "You've got an amazing set of people working here, Mr. Modell."

"Not them," Max corrected. "You."

"What?"

"The way you always light up when you're here, Miss Gordon," he said, leading her into a secured wing she'd never been to before. "Like I've always said, I think you'd be a good fit here."

"What is this, Max?" Barbara asked, following him down a long corridor to a door marked LAB 6.

"This is the research and development division," he explained."My private think tank. Seven interdependent labs where my best and brightest do their thing. There's an opening right now, if you're interested."

"You don't need any more IT support than you've already got, Mr. Modell," she sighed. "For godsakes, Max, you're the guy in charge. I mean..."

"I know, I know," he groaned. "Every computer you've used since high school was a Horizon model, right? Sheesh... Why do you kids insist on making me feel old?"

"Sorry," she smirked.

"That's okay, because I'm not talking IT for a computer scientist of your caliber," he said. "There's an open spot on the research team now. The Lucky Seven, I like to call it. I could set you up right here and you could do whatever you want, Barbara. We've all taken a glimpse at that Internet 3.0. release candidate WayneTech sent out last week. It's pretty impressive... and it's got your fingerprints all over it."

"Internet 3.0's a WayneTech patent," she said uneasily.

"And I'd never dream of infringing upon it," Max assured her. "I can't imagine what you'd come up with if you weren't held back by Bruce Wayne's corporate agenda. Direct neural interfacing? Next generation artificial intelligence? One of my employees is on the verge of a breakthrough creating three-dimensional photonic crystals from an exotic material that could revolutionize communications technologies, especially if we had the right kind of forward-thinking computer scientist on site..."

"You're telling me you don't have any idea what to do with that kind of thing, Mr. Modell?" Barbara scoffed.

"I'm old school," he smirked. "I made the kind of computers the young folks remember using in high school. Besides, I didn't build these labs for me. I made them to give the next generation of innovators their chance to build the future. If you want to change the world a little more, I'd be happy to give you the resources to do so. This particular lab was home to one of the world's foremost hematologists, but it could easily be retrofitted for your fields of interest..."

"I'm happy where I am, Max," she said.

Immediately after making this statement, Barbara realized that it was true.

As much as she'd initially bristled at the situation, she actually enjoyed going to work in the Wayne Enterprise Complex. She kind of liked all that back and forth between her and Lucius Fox. She appreciated being humbled when he was right and she was wrong, thrived by the challenge of it. Babs even had a soft spot for that nerd, Ridley. She was starting to suspect that WayneTech might be the only thing that might keep her from ending up like Bruce.

Don't get her wrong, Barbara loved Bruce Wayne. Not in some gross puppy dog way, but in a real, inspiring way. She loved everything he was willing to sacrifice to make Gotham City the dream he had in his heart... because what Bruce was willing to give up had inevitably become his heart itself. He would never spare himself a thousand and one nights of dark ugliness and probably the loss of his family's fortune, and he was starting to become that soulless monster he'd been keeping at bay within -- the same one so many people thought he'd already become. Batman was too smart not to realize that saving Gotham meant the loss of every last trace of the little boy Thomas and Martha brought into the world. So were she and Alfred and Dick and Tim and hopefully Damian.

Barbara didn't know about the rest, but she figured that initial revelation was when Dick quit being Robin to find his own way as Nightwing. There was a part of her that always regretted that she hadn't gone with him -- that feared her continued loyalty to Bruce and his singular mission was one of the wedges between them -- but she'd stayed because she convinced herself there was some angle to Batman's mad, desperate quest that she just wasn't seeing. Something that would save Bruce Wayne's soul as well as the city he'd champion to the end, but now, after all these years, she'd been working toward his impossible dream just too long to see it ending any other way...

She could live with that if he could. And Barbara had little doubt that Bruce Wayne -- selfless, generous, so ultimately kind Bruce -- could live with that... But she wanted more for herself. When Bruce was done -- when Barbara Gordon was done supporting him and his mission -- she wanted to be able to take everything he'd taught her out into the world and maintain his legacy... on a grander scale.

Barbara knew that the only way she could do that was if she stuck with Lucius Fox for as long as he'd put up with her. Because like her dad and Bruce and even Amanda frikkin' Waller, Fox had things to teach Barbara about how the world worked. Things she couldn't glean working under Max Modell's light touch.

"Members of the think tank are afforded the kind of autonomy here that I can't imagine you've enjoyed with Wayne Enterprises," Modell tempted, continuing his pitch. "The salary is more than competitive... and honestly, after some of the setbacks we've faced with some former employees, I'd really like to place someone I can trust in this lab, Miss Gordon."

"I appreciate the offer, Max, really," she told him, "but I belong in Gotham right now."

"Whatever you say," he sighed. "You understand, though, I had to try. I just hope Bruce Wayne knows how lucky he is to have you."

"He does, Max." And for the first time in her life, Barbara didn't doubt it.

"Fine, be that way," he smiled. "Come along, now, Miss Gordon. Let's head next door so I can introduce you to the kind of brilliant young man you don't want for a coworker..."

*

Goddamn did Sajani Jaffrey hate Peter Parker.

Sajani had been working in Lab 2 at Horizon for almost three years, so she'd encountered her fair share of brilliant assholes. Hell, Michael Morbius, the unrepentant supervillain Max had working out of Lab 6 until recently had actually taken a bite out of her a week or so back. And yet, there was something about Parker that had really worked its way right under her skin.

Sajani wasn't all that surprised. The people who ended up in Lab 7 had a long-standing history of pissing her off. When she first started, Ryan Choi had quickly become the bane of her working day. After Choi skipped out for a professorship at Ivy University, it'd been Serling Roquette, whose work in recombinant extra-terrestrial genetics had consistently butted heads with Sajani's own research into xeno-biology. While Sajani had been focusing on Kree and Daxamite technology during the five months Roquette had occupied Lab 7, she'd always worried that there was only room for one xenologist at Horizon and Max was just waiting to see who came up with the best tech before he ousted one of them. In the end, Roquette left on her own... The government recruited her again with a lucrative offer when the New Krypton situation exploded, and Lab 7 was vacant for almost half a year before Parker showed up.

As far as Sajani was concerned, he'd been nothing but trouble from the start.

It was maybe five minutes after the guy set foot in the building before Sajani's reverbium experiment -- her eight-month long endeavor to synthesize an artificial vibranium compound -- literally blew up in her face. Sajani knew she could have stabilized the material, given time, but Parker, the presumptuous fuckwit, somehow beat her to the control console and corrected her math, during his interview. Then, after he got the job, he ripped off her research for those stupid noise-reduction headphones of his. Sure, the work Parker had produced since then wasn't bad, like that impact resistant polymer he'd developed, but she figured he'd stolen all that from someone else, too. And it wasn't just that which stoked the burning fire of her Parker-hate. Oh, no.

He was flakey for one. Any time you set an appointment with him, if he didn't show up late, then he left in the middle with some lamoid excuse. And he'd have this weird, squinty look on his face as he ran off, like he had a migraine headache, acid reflux and acute constipation all at once. Sajani had seen that look so often by now she was convinced Parker might have some kind of brain tumor, but no. He was probably just being an asshole.

That would all be annoying enough on its own, but he was so goddamn self-righteous on top of all this. Two weeks after he started working, he went on this tirade in the Atrium just because everyone wasn't catatonic after Spider-Man failed to stop some nutcase from blowing up a bank. And then there was that ridiculous video-speech he'd posted on the Daily Bugle website after he got infected with spider-powers. There Parker was, perched on a streetlamp, begging everybody else with the spider-island bug to risk their lives fighting a riot in Bryant Park with the Avengers. Sajani could do whatever a spider could, too, but you didn't see her telling everybody how to live their lives.

Even worse than all the earnest moralizing was the fact that Parker was an idiot. Okay. He was a genius just like the rest of the Lucky Seven. He probably tested through the roof, but he was obviously an idiotic genius. Every time Sajani tired to engage him intellectually, he disappointed.

Take this shrinking debate they'd gotten into in the Atrium this morning... Parker had taken a look at her latest experiment because he was on "double check duty" -- this wholly unnecessary new policy of Max's in which he had the think tank members review each other's new projects as a safety review. Part of Sajani's invention involved condensing synthetically derived Kryptonian crystalline material to manipulate its atomic structure, and Parker thought her use of Pym Particles was a mistake for some reason.

"Parker, you're seriously trying to tell me that you prefer Ray Palmer's miniaturization methodology to Hank Pym's?" she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. "Pym's a better scientist than Palmer hands down. And you're telling me your B.F.F. Spider-Man would rather be hanging out with the Atom instead of Giant Man?"

"I never said that," Parker insisted, the waffling douche bag. "You're putting words in my mouth. All I said is that Palmer's method is the best way to accomplish what you're going for."

"Pym Particles are way better than that white dwarf crap!"

"Pym Particles are more versatile, sure," Parker admitted, "but that's the whole problem right there. They can make something smaller just the same as they can make something bigger."

"Which is awesome!"

"Unless all you want to do is make something smaller. If that's what your design requires, and you want to cut down on the extraneous variables of your project, Palmer's white dwarf lensing approach is the way to go. You don't have to waste your time trying to calibrate the charge of the power source or worry about inadvertent inversions dependent on the particle flow. Unless it's saturated with chronoton particles or adverse fourth dimensional radiation, white dwarf energy is always going to make something smaller or revert it to its regular size. And you can readily retain all of the mass and density if you're worried about structural integrity, while the fractal elasticity of Pym Particles will still allow for low level wave fluctuation from frequencies as low as insect brain activity."