Paradox

Chapter Three

Or... A Chat with the Butler

By: VincentM

"Lunchtime!"

Richie grunted something in reply to the person calling him, huffing in satisfaction as the final transistor snapped into place. He crawled away from the time machine, suddenly painfully aware of his sore, aching muscles and rumbling stomach. He rubbed his eyes furiously, his glasses sliding up to this forehead. They burned and stung as though they'd been scrubbed with sea salt. He wondered when he last blinked.

And... lunchtime? Richie eyes widened in surprise. That much time had really passed? He looked around the Batcave in slight confusion. Since it was underground, he didn't notice the day wearing on. He actually had no idea when Batman and Robin had wandered off.

He finally set eyes on who had called to him. Alfred smiled warmly at Richie as he made his way down the long staircase from the mansion above. In his hands he held a silver tray, the gilded edges sparkling in the dim light. Sandwiches sat in a neat pile atop of it, perfectly garnished in an artful, beautiful fashion that seemed somehow off to Richie, given the circumstances.

"What time is it?" Richie asked, groaning as he struggled to his feet. His knees tried to buckle, probably due to his sitting in one position for so long, but he held his ground. He felt stiff all over.

"Well past lunch, actually," Alfred said, setting the tray on a nearby table. He pulled an entire table setting seemingly out of the air. There was even a tiny vase with a flower in it. Two glass bottles of soda bubbled next the tray and Richie licked his lips. "You've been working non-stop for several hours. I was concerned, sir."

Staggering as gracefully as possible over to the table, pausing only to hit a few buttons on Batman's massive computer, Richie collapsed in the closest chair. He picked up a bottle of soda, the cold sensation a relief to his pained joints. "Thanks, Mr. Pennyworth," he said as he took a sip, the liquid sugar doing wonders for his parched throat. "I didn't realize it was that late. Where are Batman and Robin?"

"Master Bruce is at work at the moment and Master Tim is hopefully in school, sir," Alfred replied, still standing quite formally. "At least, that's where he's supposed to be."

The last part was muttered more than spoken, an underlying bit of frustration breaking through Alfred's perfectly polite tone. It made Richie smile. Picking up one of the sandwiches, he nearly laughed in amusement when he saw the crusts were cut off. Sniffing it before taking a bite, he looked up at Alfred, raising an eyebrow. "Tunafish?" he asked.

"I'm told it's brainfood, sir."

"Probably because it has so much dolphin in it," Richie said with a toothy grin, then took a bite. It tasted wonderful, not at all like the three for a dollar canned stuff he had back in Dakota. He suspected it might be fresh.

Alfred smiled. "Probably so, sir."

Swallowing, Richie shook his head. "You don't have to call me, 'sir', Mr. Pennyworth," he told the other man, feeling uncomfortable. Richie wasn't a rich man and certainly not important enough to warrant this kind of treatment.

Alfred seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded. "Very well, Richard," he said, "but then there is no need to call me, 'Mr. Pennyworth'. Alfred will do."

"Fair enough," Richie said, smiling. He found he was rather fond of Alfred's smooth, British accent. It was helping to soothe his nerves, even though hearing his proper first name spoken with such class was a little off-putting. He gestured to the chair next to him. "Please, have a seat. Eat with me. I feel weird eating alone."

At first, Alfred seemed inclined to decline, then, perhaps understanding Richie better than most ever did, he conceded, sitting as requesting. He took the sandwich Richie handed to him without a moment's hesitation, though he looked vaguely amused at the very concept. Richie felt better now that the other man was sitting down, although it still looked like his spine was made a rebar, much different from Richie's current, undignified slouch.

Backpack crawled up the side of the table, settling itself next to the silver tray. Alfred watched on curiously as Richie removed a small hand-held from the robot, staring intently at several readouts. He nodded slowly.

"How go the repairs, Richard?" Alfred asked, breaking Richie's almost zombie-like concentration on the handheld.

He put it to the side, but not far enough away that he couldn't glance at it from time to time. "Well," he began slowly, taking another sandwich in hand, "I had to rebuild large portions of the machine and completely rewrite the software, which is what I have downloading into it right now. It's going to take a couple of hours. Processors only work so fast, I'm afraid. Still, if everything works like it's supposed to, Static will be back by nightfall."

"How remarkable," Alfred said with undisguised awe.

"Yeah, it's a pretty cool piece of technology," Richie agreed, then smirked. "That doesn't mean I'm not going to take a sledgehammer to it as soon as Static is home, though, mind you."

"Actually, I was referring to you, Richard," Alfred said. "You have an amazing gift.

Gift? Richie was stunned speechless, the soda bottle frozen halfway to his lips. A gift? His so-called powers were the furthest thing from a gift he could imagine. Putting the soda bottle down hard on the table, Richie shook his head.

"It's not a gift," he said bitterly. "It's a curse."

"Nonsense," Alfred said with a wave of his hand. "You are extremely intelligent, a rare characteristic to possess these days. More importantly, you are using that intelligence to make a positive difference in the world. Why would you call that a curse?"

"Because I'm not me anymore," Richie said. He reached down and picked morosely at a piece of lettuce used as garnish on the tray, tearing it into little pieces. "Sometimes, my brain is so busy, I feel like it's going to explode. I've got ideas you can't imagine, thoughts that don't feel like my own. I keep wondering if I'm going crazy. Nothing keeps my interest and, occasionally, things make so much sense, they cease to make sense anymore, if that makes any sense."

Alfred was giving him a strange look and Richie reviewed that last sentence in his head, then frowned.

"See what I mean?" he moaned helplessly.

"So it will take some getting used to," Alfred replied, looking at Richie fondly. "That is true with anything. That can't be all that's troubling you."

"It's not." Richie sighed. The lettuce was in chunks too small to tear anymore. He started on the parsley. "Nobody trusts me. Not that I blame them, of course, but still..."

"Whatever gave you that impression?"

Richie didn't say anything at first. Everything was so much more complicated now. At times like these, he longed for the days when the most he had to worry about was passing his math test with at least a 'C' and not getting kicked out of his house. Now, he had to worry about the world not finding out he was a super genius and, well, not getting kicked out of his house, which was looking more and more likely these days. The fights with his father were getting worse.

But that was neither here nor there.

"Most of the people that were affected by the Big Bang are evil or insane, sometimes both," Richie said at last. "Most of them were bad news to begin with, but some were just regular kids who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They still lost it in the end. I'm doing good now, but... what if that changes? What if I slip?"

So many thoughts kept bouncing around his head. Richie estimated at least seventy percent of them would qualify as less-than-ethical. He didn't act on those thoughts, involving everything from bombs to bioweapons, but that didn't mean they weren't there and that the ideas he had - devastating ideas - weren't feasible. He'd kept himself in check by sheer will and a firm streak of morality he suspected he picked up from Virgil's father, of all places, but that didn't mean he wasn't tempted.

His life was hard. He knew the statistics for kids like him. Coming from a broken, low-income home, with an emotionally abusive father and a doormat for a mother... if not for Virgil, he'd probably be on drugs right now. Or dead. But, these days, everything was so stressful, not only at home, but also at school, and with the crime fighting... how much would it take to push him over the edge?

Not much, he suspected, and it scared the hell out of him.

"The Justice League doesn't trust me," Richie continued, shaking his head in a futile gesture to clear it, "especially after Braniac."

"That was a tragic set of circumstances, to be sure," Alfred said, "but it certainly was not your fault. Why do you believe that would have affected their opinion of you?"

"Let me put it this way," Richie said, resting his elbows on the table. "When Braniac downloaded itself into Backpack, it was looking for a way to escape the Watchtower and begin regenerating itself so it could carry out its archiving program. In order to carry this out, it originally enlisted me to be the body to get the things it needed to rebuild. However, while in the midst of that rebuild, it discovered something. It discovered a processor faster than anything mechanical could manage, a processor that was so quick, so efficient, that it made even the most advanced technology seem obsolete. It jumped on the chance to integrate the processor immediately. It used Backpack as a way to connect with that processor, since the method for doing so almost seamlessly was already ingrained in my robot's programming. That processor was this." Richie tapped the side of his head. "My brain."

Silence fell over the cavern, broken only occasionally by the distant squeaking of bats. Richie gave Alfred time to come to terms with what he'd just said, picking up another sandwich and toying with it. At last, Alfred spoke.

"Oh, my."

Richie thought that summed up the situation perfectly.

"Exactly," he said, slumping back in his chair, nibbling on the sandwich. He gave Alfred a wry grin. "You know, Static told me the Justice League originally intended to take me out in order to eliminate Braniac. I think it's safe to assume they had motivations for that beyond the fate of the world. Last thing they probably want to deal with in the future is an evil super genius, you know?"

Alfred frowned at that. "I do not believe the Justice League advocates the terminal prevention of future evil acts prior to them being committed."

"Maybe not," Richie conceded, "but they are trying to distance me from Static. They've more or less offered him a place in the Justice League when he's older, something that was not offered to me. They probably think I'm something of a liability. They don't trust me."

"Master Bruce trusts you," Alfred replied. "You would not be here if he didn't."

"I guess."

Richie was skeptical of that. After all, if Batman really trusted him, why was Virgil summoned to Gotham alone? Timecode was a Dakota villain, a disgruntled scientist from Alva Industries whose work Richie had been monitoring for some time. It was one of the reasons he'd slipped to Gotham, probably realizing that Gear was on his trail, not to mention the fact that Gotham villains could pay him more for his services.

Timecode wasn't the typical, bang-'em-up, bring-'em-in sort of villain His early experiments mostly involved sending inanimate objects a few hours into the future, nothing that was particularly illegal. After the incident with Timezone a few months back, though, Richie developed a passing interest in time travel theories, which is how he got involved in the first place. When Timecode started trafficking people, rather than rolls of duct tape, Richie knew they were in for trouble. He'd even gone so far as to forward all of his information on the man to Batman personally.

And, yet, only Virgil went to Gotham in the end.

Richie knew, without a doubt, that if he'd been present, none of this would have happened. He wouldn't be sitting here eating tuna fish with Bruce Wayne's butler, waiting for his software to download into the machine that had dragged his best friend to a time unknown. The machine would be dismantled to the point where it would be a very large paperweight, or possibly a nice conversation piece for a living room, and he would be in Dakota right now, feeling his brain melt from boredom in Algebra class, passing notes that he knew would make Virgil smile.

"I should have been here," Richie said, kicking the table leg out of spite. "Batman didn't want me to come. I don't know why, but now look at this mess we're in."

"I believe he though you were too close to the situation," Alfred remarked quietly. "He is aware of your recent investigations into Alva Industries and that Timecode was involved in the research you found so interesting. Am I correct?"

Richie blinked stupidly at the butler. "How did he know about that?"

"He's Batman, of course."

Of course. Richie laughed, though there was no joy in the sound. Of course Batman knew. Batman probably knew what he had for breakfast two weeks ago, the crazy stalker/control freak. Still, something wasn't adding up.

"But what difference does it make if I hack into a couple of Alva's systems?" Richie asked. "Wouldn't that make me that much more valuable to a mission of this sort?"

"From what I understand, Batman was growing concerned that you were allowing yourself to get too close to Alva, too interested in his projects," Alfred said. "The man is... less than scrupulous in his business dealings. Any offer he could make you might be tempting. Batman feared you might be swayed, as it were."

Richie smirked. "And I guess we wouldn't want my innocent self with this marvelous brain crossing over to the dark side, right?"

"Quite." Alfred swept up the garnish pieces littering the table, putting them neatly on one corner of the now empty tray. "Master Bruce has been following your development with keen interest," the butler said, almost as if it were an off-hand comment. "As I said, intelligence is a rare commodity these days, intelligence coupled with morality even more so. Finding scientists he can trust, either in the business world or in his other projects, is always something of a challenge for Master Bruce. So long as you keep to your current path, there may very well be a future for you with Waynetech."

Richie's jaw fell open. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. A job with Waynetech? A real job? Where he would get paid to bring his ideas to life and share them with an employer he was reasonably sure he could trust? All the resources at his disposal, all the theories he could finally test, all the things he could do... The opportunities were almost unimaginable.

When Richie thought about his future, he saw doom and gloom. He always assumed he and Virgil would be forever trying to keep their secret lives a secret, while slowly sinking into bankruptcy at the cost of maintaining their alternate personas. While most kids his age were getting excited about college, it didn't seem nearly as interesting to Richie as it once did. What was the point? They couldn't teach him anything he wouldn't figure out on his own.

But working for Bruce Wayne, working for Batman... that was... that was...

"Cool," Richie said at last, though his voice hardly sounded like his own.

"Yes. Very... cool," Alfred agreed, taking the empty soda bottle out of Richie's nerveless fingers. "In addition to some very exciting projects in the Research and Development department of Waynetech, I know Master Bruce has been considering some upgrades of a more... personal nature. He mentioned something about putting a kind of circuitry net into his costume and reworking the AI in many of his vehicles. You'll have to discuss it with him when he returns from work, of course. It's all a bit over my head, I'm afraid."

Richie nodded dumbly.

"In the meantime," Alfred continued, "I'll allow you to continue your work down here, now that I feel better knowing you've eaten." Alfred stood and gathered the tray, holding it in one hand. With his other, he reached down and squeezed Richie's shoulder in a friendly gesture. "Simply call if you need anything, Richard."

Richie gave a little half-wave as Alfred departed back up the stairs. The shocked expression gradually left his face, replaced with a broad grin. Jumping up from his chair, he couldn't hold back a little victory dance.

Something told him he'd just been interviewed, in a way. Alfred was probably instructed to come downstairs and make small talk with him, just to make sure he was sane. From how his conversation with the old butler ended, Richie had a very good feeling about how he'd done.

"This is so, so cool!" he said to Backpack, which didn't respond in the slightest. That was just as well. Richie talked to the robot all the time, but it wasn't programmed to respond back. If it did, well, then Richie would be worried. "I have a future! A real future! This is... I've got to tell Virgil!"

Walking over to Batman's massive computer console, Richie hit it gently on its side.

"Download faster," he said, waving his finger at the machine.

Suddenly, the future didn't look nearly as dim.

To Be Continued...

A/N: One more chapter to go! (BTW: Is anyone else getting really irritated by FF.net's stripping of certain characters? What, I can't use astriks as dividers anymore? Sheesh!) Anyway, review if you feel like it! As I said, feedback is always appreciated!