2014.01.22 - Identity Crisis, Volume 6

Some weeks had passed since the meeting in the old station, but eventually Jane had done the call. "The other has made his move." was all she had said on the phone besides a quick 'pick me up'. Not that she had a clear idea if or who 'the other' was.

Some hours later Jane stood at the right busstop in lower gotham, the broken light just giving enough light to see the sheemes of the cars passing while she searched some shelter under the leaking roof from the rain. All her belongings were in the dufflebag over her shoulder as a dark car pulled to the stop, the back door opening. "You again. Got the call?" Jane said as she tossed in the heavy baggage and toof the seat, her hand clenching around a short wooden stick in her pocket as she pulled the door close.

Mack switches on the fare meter, lighting the Gotham Knights Taxi medallion attached to the dark blue sedan, as the young woman tosses her baggage and slides into the car. "Always," he says, Jersey accent strong. "That's why you got given the number you did."

The good thing about Mack? He's not the inquisitive sort. Or, at least, he doesn't pepper the young woman with questions. He simply pulls away from the curb and starts to drive, taking a somewhat indirect route to the neighborhood in which Oracle's designated safehouse is located.

Not that Jane could complain. The last nights had not given too much of sleep. "Thanks for the ride." she just said as she waited. Trying to remember the way would be of no use at all - In case she did not like the place she would search for an other hideout.

As the ride eventually came to an end, Jane still had kept the hand clenched around the short stick - even if it would be of little use through the punching resistant wall between the driver and the passenger of the cab.

"You're welcome."

Mack's not the aggressive type, in any case. At least, not against his legitimate passengers. And she qualifies. He pulls into the drive at the safehouse and shuts off the meter. Oracle will handle the charge, so he writes out a receipt and turns to hand it to her. "Give this to Grace inside," he tells her. "She'll get you settled."

That said, he waits for her to grab all her stuff and get into the house before he finally pulls away.

Peering at the bill Jane nods, tucking it into the pocket with a short movement before she opens the door and exits, pulling the baggage out. Once again in the rain. Taking a look at the location she ended, she takes a few slow steps to check the bells or knocker to announce her arrival, before she actually tests the door. Where did she ended herself in?

Grace is at the door before Jane can do much more than raise her hand to knock. She's a compactly built woman with dark skin and darker hair pulled back in a loose bun. There's an athleticism about her that suggest physical competence in some sort of hand-to-hand and her dark eyes have that 'observant' look about them found in expert cops, investigators, and crime-fighters. For all that, however, she has a friendly expression on her broad face and after making a quick, automatic, visual check of the street, steps back out of the way to let the girl in.

"You must be J.R." she says. "Welcome home."

"JR... If you want to abbreviate it like that, sure." Jane tells as she steps past Grace, her jacket wet from the rain. "So this is it?" she asks, taking a look around the entrence hall, one hand in the pocket where the bill and short cut piece of broomstick are tucked, the other at the carierstrap of the bag. "Is O here?" is all she asks as she eventually places the bag on the floor to get out of the soaked leather jacket. "I have a few questions."

Grace locks the door behind Jane, but steps back so that the girl can see the lock. It's a simple bolt, easy to flip from the inside, but requiring a bit of force from the outside. It's not their main line of defence, after all.

She moves past Jane, toward the kitchen. "She's not," she answers. "But, there's a computer in the study on the main floor by which you can reach her. Dinner's at five, if you want it; otherwise, you can make your own later. The fridge and cupboards are usually full. There are three bedrooms upstairs. Mine is beside the study on the main floor. You can have your pick of any but that one. There's a gym in the basement, the laundry room, and the panic room. You're responsible for your own laundry and picking up after yourself; I'm not your mother. That said, if you're going out, I'd like some indication of when to expect you back -- for your safety as well as mine. There's a card on the dresser in each of the bedrooms with the house number on it. Take it. Memorize it, if you can. I advise against going out often, but it's your life and we're not the US Marshal. Oh. And my name is Grace."

So, there's the opening lecture, delivered with business-like precision. Grace is willing to be friendly, but she's under no illusion that the people she's watching over at this place aren't always ready or willing to reciprocate it.

"Jane Roe." Jane replies with a little gruff in her voice, hanging up the jacket. "Like Doe. Like anyone who has no name." What else to say to her explanation? "Not expected you to be my mom. But would have expected O to be here." Well, the O comes with a smirk and a pronunciation that sounds a bit French. "I take it I should not take the card out of the house, right? To not compromise it."

A short few seconds Jane is still, then she opens the duffle bag and pulls out the laptop in its casing "Do we have a W-Lan or wired?" she asks. "Just prefer to get my machine to the line as well."

"O," Grace says with a mild shrug, taking a whistling kettle off the burner and pouring water over a tea bag, into a mug, "is a very busy woman. She manages several networks and countless operations. This is a safehouse, not her home. And since we didn't know until you made the call to Mack when you might be arriving, it would be counterproductive for her to camp out here waiting for you. The computer through which you can reach her is in the study. There's also an instruction sheet in the top righthand drawer of the desk that will help you get your own machine online through the guest network."

"She seems to have time enough to stalk some databases, but sure." Jane places her machine on the table as Grace makes the tea "I'm not picky concerning drinks and food. As long as it is filling the guts it is good." Flipping open the screen she starts it up, waiting for the OS to have loaded. Not Windows or iOS, so much is sure from the red Icosahedron rotating on the black screen. A few code lines appear as Jane types, a little antenna appearing on one of the solid's faces "Just checking the functions" she sais as she leans back into the seat, her head sinking to her chest as she seems to doze off within a second, but even as the fingers have stopped to type on the keyboard more lines appear.

Grace continues with her tea preparations, not bothering to answer the girl's comment on Oracle. Truth be told, Grace hasn't actually met the superhacker face-to-face, in the flesh. Once upon a time, it bothered her. Now? She's just used to it. And she figures Jane might as well get used to it, too. When the girl appears to doze off, however, Grace leaves her be.

It only takes a few minutes, maybe three or four, in which the PC seems to start to work through several tests, te faces of the Icosahedron filling with symbols and glyphs, as if smeone was drawing a magic circle. Which was not too Far from the reality indeed, as it was some kind of techno-magic - the applications were started without a prewritten prgram and without a hand to give the commands but it was directly the mind of Jane. Finally she seems to resurface from the nap, the eyes however not sleepy at all, possibly a bit wide. "All systems green and running." Eying the teapot she closes the Laptop, slipping it back into its casing before she resumes. "What else can you tell me about O that is not on the net? Besides that she is your employer I mean. But let me guess, you'll tell me to ask her myself."

"I could tell you a story. A pretty boring and short one." Jane answered with a smirk, picking up a cup from the shelf and filling it with some tea before sitting dwn again. "It's not a fairy tale, so no once upon a time there was, but more something you are likely more used to. A girl wakes up in a place she does not know, the head aching. Next she knows is that she's in hospital. Nothings obviously wrong with her, just no one has an idea who she is. Did she trust anyone? No. Neither the Docs, nor the nurses, not even the files. What happened to her? Who knows, I guess she went out of the Hospital and was never seen again." Taking a sip from the tea she relaxes against the back of the chair, staying like that a few minutes in which she stared absently into the cup. She did just gave a hint of herself, but wrapped as if she would speak about someone entirely different. Partly that was true - she was no longer that blank sheet of paper but one with a few markings, scribbles and black dots on it. "Dinner is at five you said? I'll try to see if I can catch O." she eventually said and stood up, picking up the Laptop and then the dufflebag before she went up to the assigned room.

Dumping the Bag on the floor, Jane picked up the setup instructions before she once again pulls out the laptop from its case, resuming the session. Following the instructions she stops after just at point three of the description "Activate the net... great, this is written for Windows... And I have a non-standard OS." Slamming the screen shut she picked up both Laptop and sheet as she went to the library to try her luck in calling Oracle from the PC there.

Grace absorbs what Jane says to her, and files it away to pass on to Oracle later. It's not a surprise the girl chooses third person to tell her story. A lot of the people that pass through this place do. She lets her go, however, saying only, "Dinner's at five."

The library computer, however, uses as unique an operating system as Jane's own computer does -- perhaps with the simple difference that it's not technomagic. It's just Oracle's own OS. It can interface with programs built for most other systems without great difficulty, particularly if Oracle or DELPHI is directing it. The desktop, however, has a few obvious icons -- internet, IM, word processing, and a small icon that resembles the face of Oracle's green avatar.

While Jane used her Laptop with what best could be described as Cyberpathy, it's OS was simple enough - However while it featured almost any programming language with a fitting assembler as well as standard internet protocols, it did not feature any special protocols by itself. Which was why jane got upset on the standard Windows explanation - it used some of the built in Windows functions she would have to code up herself to manage any encryption. Clicking the green face icon, she plced her Laptop right next to the screen, opening it right next to it. "Let's hope she's home and there is some crisscross cable in the drawer..." she muttered as she peeked into the named parts of the desk, waiting for the contact to be established.

One drawer at the bottom reveals a router rack. While it may not provide a crisscross cable, at the very least it will allow a hard port interface. Generally, Oracle doesn't provide extra equipment for people, except by special arrangement. After all, it's not as if she's ever had to prepare for a Cyberpath, before. Most people are content to use a webcam and mic or simply type into the IM interface, after all.

Nevertheless, connection can be made. And, ultimately, Oracle's avatar appears on the screen. "I see you arrived safely," she says by way of greeting. "I'm glad."

"Arriving somewhere is quite easy when you don't get followed physically." Jane talked back, sighing as she could not find a cable to wire up her machine with the net directly - which would reduce the workload by simply copy and pasting the code. "Thanks again for the offer, but isn't it a bit of overkill? I mean, what- or whoever kills my digital existence all the time has not tried to send a hitman or such at me even once - in about 2 months while I searched for it. Anyways, I have a little problem with the Wireless." Turning the laptop so Oracle could see the screen she smirked into the webcam. "That's not a fancy Background for Windows, that is something else. The /info sais it's Phoenixegg 4.2.812.4." Ok, she hid her lamp a bit as she knew some more about what it could do, but she had not touched each and any of it yet - and for sure not the nerve to crack herself into the heavily encrypted network each morning.

"Give me a moment," Oracle replies. Her avatar closes its eyes for a moment, while the woman behind it gives DELPHI instructions to find the laptop's wireless signature and hook her into the house network. The avatar reopens its eyes. "That should open a port for you," she says evenly. No, the girl's not very likely going to get past DELPHI's firewalls, but the network will at least give her access to the outside world, now.

"In any case, putting you up at the safehouse is less about someone targeting you physically and more about giving you some place secure to crash, and some place where we can work to figure out just what's going on with you."

"Or the data on me. Probably should call it a night though. Thanks for the help with the Laptop, I'll take a nap till dinner. Hear you later, k?" Jane replied, turning the laptop back to herself, typing a single line to set up an alarm clock. "I'll try to contact Ashes, just to let the creep know I'm not dead." Which would actually mean writing an e-mail to herself. She did intend to keep the masquerade with the seperate hacker up for as long as possible for now - even if a non-standard OS like the one she had was already a pretty strong hint that either she had hardware she couldn't use or she was more than the eye can see. "You have anything you want to ask still?"

"Not for the moment," Oracle replies. "It's enough to know you're safe and settling. Speak with Grace if you need anything. I'm available via the computer, most of the time."

Which doesn't suggest she's going to move into the house in person, anytime soon. But, that's Oracle for you.