Episode 1 – Captain, because pilot is overused.
From one childhood show to another, well not quite childhood. Where was I shoved, I was shoved in to the Arrowverse. I tried to grab my hosts memories but as much as I had practiced the mental technique there was no mystical force to back it up. Fuck I didn't have magic. I could feel as the memory palace fell in on itself, brains were not evolved to hold memories of five decades. Five centuries or six centuries is out of the question. I wanted to freak out about threats but I could not name any of the side characters from this show, world, verse. Fuck I didn't have magic.
Then my patron Rob actually pulled there wait, I could feel my memories of flash refreshed, it was like I had just binged it over the last week shoved into my mind from my o.g. life. But my life after I had been taken, there were vague hints about the world I was assuming I was copied from. Minecraft was a prominent activity during the memories, there was something about crypto currencies, and being stuck inside. It was good to know that my family was fine and not dealing with a missing child, I tried to put these memories in my mind palace, but I was fucking magicless. Something really interesting was the post season 6 content, it must have aired after I was first shoved in to the H.P. universe, but I have memories for the other t.v. Show too. An a whole bunch of memes I had no context for bur goes the money printer, perry this you casual, Hippity, hoppity get of my property. That last one was just great, I was absolutely going to use it.
Now first things first, magic. My OG power and tool, maybe I didn't have any internal magic, I open my self to feel the currents of any mystical force. Nothing, yet but I had memories of magic practitioners there a John Consintine, there should be a world soul could feel, maybe it's more (angelic or demonic) spiritual magic. The spiritual magic from human collectives, it's the unpredictable stuff. I can't remember why, thinking of using it registers as a bad idea, and a sense spiritual magic could be taking years there is a feeling of risk and death, but that's wrong not knowing why spiritual magic is a bad plan. It's that's assuming john isn't just be all powerful Meta-human that is limited to thinking it's magic, because Meta-powers represent a high amount of explained things themselves.
I pushed harder on my openings, it was from frustration, but immediately I knew it was wrong more sense from my forgotten memories. What if I couldn't sense the magic of a world soul because I had forgot how, it was a terrifying thought. I meditated there for an hour running the gauntlet and finding no magical potential from the world soul, human spiritual magic or myself. I had even lost meditating well, I knew I could do meditating for a day. I didn't know if it meant a 8,12,16 or 24 hour day but even a 8 fold reduction tells me a lot about how much practice I had lost with my knowledge.
After my hour and minor breakdown, if I didn't have access to my magic, I was going to need to start moving, without host memories of specific local knowledge, information would be good start. I opened my new eyes. And looked around this room of collage kid, textbooks, American football equipment, the super comfortable office chair that I could not help myself from siting in and slowly spinning around to the room. Single bed, wardrobe with a mirror, open curtains and window. There was a lack of dust or dirt that made me worry I was now some kind of neat freak. Looking at the mirror I didn't recognise myself, not a main character and not a side character from the flash or the other shows, otherwise I would have recognised myself immediately. At least I was still a guy I was not looking forward to when the rob would rob me of that comfort.
I opened a wallet some cash a subway token card and no help with my identity. Who doesn't have a driver's licence or credit card, luckily the phone was better it gave me a date and news, today is the day one Oliver Queen made a miracle return to Star City. No, there was a party celebrating the return, because it was the first anniversary of his return. The phone had no need for a password and the Facebook app already logged in. I'm Hannibal Bates, well shit.
I was a minor villain in flash. It was rather interesting, I was the one character I would not recognise, in a few months' time I should be getting a shapeshifting power from the particle accelerator explosion. My Patrion made a good call refreshing these memories, I would have been left floundering have not connected the canonical dots to the information on this phone, I had a few months to prepare to make the most of this upcoming crisis. And then another nine months to prep for Barry waking up and temporal follow trying to bend back into the shape it was accustomed to, I left my room to analyse the living space.
I left the room to find myself in a cramped apartment it was dingy. There B.O. was covered by worse mildew, it was like an entirely different world. If my cleanliness reactionary it's seemed a good reaction. There was a kitchen with a tap and sick, a too small to dishwash, a mini fridge not a real fridge and a induction hot plate, the minifridge had a small freezer section that held a single tray of ice. In the fridge there was bread, cheese and beer, the first cupboard was literally a store of dirty dishes that looked waiting to be washed, they could be too big for the dishwasher, the second cupboard was a bit better a lot of ramen, rice and noodles and the third cupboard had the clean dishes and a steel pot.
There was a bathroom that reminded me of the bedroom and a second bedroom with a guy sleeping that remedied me of the living area. I went back to what I hoped was my bedroom and laid down on what I hoped was my bed. And continued to gather information about my life from this phone. Contacts and text conversations were invaluable for this, I had a girlfriend that I was having a clearly toxic effect on. My roommate, my best friend Jacob Fisher, a teller as first national bank. And there was at least an hourly phone call with my Grann every Saturday. I think a person named Garth was my weed dealer, the contact was 'The Garth, (seller of exotic plants)'. My mom was dead according to the family bio, and dad was missing.
There was a telling lack of parental communication from the dad, there was an Uncle Timmy that had texts that read as familial and there was a boss that was expecting me to work (I would have to find out where I'm employed) this weekend. My banking information actually had a pin, but I was going to be easy enough to socially engineer my way to access the account, though I was not expecting much, debt if anything. Considering it looked like I did half a year of college 5 years ago, though never stopped acting like or thinking of myself as a college student even though I dropped out after the first semester. It was clear I portrayed myself as history major to a girlfriend Kayla and a med major to grann.
I had three months no skills that would quick let me leverage value, and any old way I had made money was gone with magic. And memories of how gone with it, I was unnerved with the idea to attempt smithing, what if I had lost most of my skill with it too, it's slow and would not pay enough anyway. But I did have corrupted knowledge of 500 years of human development from this technology base, the was after the death of billions so not as great as it could be, but good none the less.
And now I was in 20th century America a place where the privatisation of Knowladge and profit off knowledge was truly phenomenal, I could set up a company and start copying using what I could sense as correct and incorrect, patenting and trademarking all on this phone. I had played portal during the show in my refreshed memories and I couldn't help myself. Aperture labs was born and plans where started for a machine that almost acted like perpetual motion engine and any good knockoffs were ready to be patented. I could remember a generalisation because they were so impressive.
The engine I was a tenth remembering had something like 99.7% efficiency, if I could realise it, the engine would represent the next economic revolution. It would take, I can't remember it. But I could feel 99.7% was correct, and I know it is possible. I don't know how long it would take but once I had made a blue print, I would give it ten years, and any company not using Aperture Engine or a knockoff was going to be bankrupt or in a unrecoverable death spiral of toxic debt, simply out competed by the adaptors. It was too difficult to SketchUp on my phone, so the rest of the day would be getting in to the laptop, my first round of code breaking with names and dates was no good. I took a break and got some food.
I had some bread and was going to get some bottled water, but Jacob came out of his room. I made sure to have a mouth full, it was a rare person that mumble though a mouth full of food.
"Hey." I gave a replying nod and he continued, "got to go to work in a few hours." ThIs was punctuated by his stretching, arms behind his head moving from side to side. "Can you drop me off on your way to Kayla's?"
I looked at a person who seemed genuinely oblivious to a change in there roommate, was it already time of that obliviousness going to disappear. This moment of truth, came down to if Jacob was asking a genuine question, a request of habit or was it more ritualistic behaviour and expectation. I made the "no" as nonchalant as possible and it was fine.
I got an exasperated, "I'm going to have to take the bus because you're fighting again." Interesting I had been dealing with a request of habit but activated a built in excuse, were Jacob and myself friends? Because clearly it made no sense for me to be seeing Kayla if I was fighting with her.
But I was a bit weary, I had seen no signs of fight and depending on Jacobs and Kayla's level of interaction using the excuse would not be a good idea. So, I went with a milder "just not going to see her today".
I was hit was a jokingly light-hearted, "voluntarily." Instead of verbally responding I took a bite of my food and grunted with an affirmative sound.
"umm-hum" apparently, I was meant to be above grunting. Because I got exasperation not a houmous chuckle I was aiming for.
But with all of the subtextual information from the body language and the like I was getting a handle on this relationship, So I hit back with a deadpan "I have a clean room." The exasperation disappeared, but it was a moment before he broke the tension with a grin and we shared a huff of amusement, finally I had decided, "No not GF troubles, I'm going to see gran."
"So, what did you going to put on that bread? Did you finish off the Nutella?" It was a nice comfortable change of topic.
"No, you can go ahead." I was tempted to use some jam but I had already consumed a piece, and the activity of looking through draws, getting out cutlery fumbling around the prospect of jam was just was not tempting enough. Jacob left the Nutella and had some butter spread on toast and after a bit more conversation just asking Jacob about the news and whatnot, I was back at the laptop trying to get the password.
Some time passed I when to common words and combination there upon, I moved to classic number combos, 1234, 0246, etc, the first letters from quotes of things Hannibal liked athletes, famous people from history, Jacob headed out. I moved to "funny" numbers, it was 6969420 HA. HA. HA. With a program called CadPro insead of the ubiquitous SketchUp I started some proper designs for the Van Der Waals engine, what I had was clearly not functional.
The next day with my proper designs I started the patent process, it was long but important to get good, I could count this as a knockoff. I read research and read foot notes for about half a day, before I found something called the Stirling engine my sense pinged at me harder that anything else and after a bit more reading, I incorporated the energy recycling I had just learnt about. I put the design in for patenting and moved on to more reading, by the time for bed I hadn't interacted with anyone. The next day I made tow designs I got a light ping about material and another when looking at the gears but I also went out and about after I started the patent for those two, while out I saw the woman, I would call Gran.
It was evening and time to explore my new city, what a well-designed place, I only drove my car half a block before I started walking, to take it all in, I even saw Jitters. Each building had it's own character, there where lots of little shops, things were clean, it was a long walk to grans house but even along these big roads there was plenty of greenery and air, I didn't smell exhaust once. The t.v.'s in bus stops, the lack of homeless (something is fishy) about, there not being one person on the streets. There are people that choose to try it out and find the freedom more valuably that the trappings of shelter and guaranteed food. In a pop of 14 million there had got to be a few. I would find something to explain the lack homelessness later.
Gran didn't notice anything off about me she was an open book and doing the classic of asking for a picture of me when I was a kid got the family albums out and family history flowing, I leant about the rest of my dead grandparents, and even a Romanian Great Great grandfather. I found out I was a reserved kid and my mom died from cancer. Dad was in and out of the picture both figuratively and literally
Walking home I found Jitters the coffee house for the characters was doing a trivia night so I went in for a light dinner, for some reason the tea made be gag I hope that his is not a permanent condition. No wonder Hannibal when into crime if he could not have calming tea from time to time. And the food was so small that I was still peckish, at least the trivia was interesting, there was a female beetle, a king of England and Big Belly Burger was equivalent to if In and Out had expanded like McDonalds. Afterwards, I didn't sign up for a team but did ask too be notified for future events, now it was time to get back to the car.
After my jaunt it was two months of tedium, look at current research make a designed and sense what I could, hardly leaving the apartment, Jacob thought I was depressed, I didn't answer calls from Kayla and work, and gran didn't call expecting me too. There was even a Trivia night that I skipped because I had just discovered the how to manage the recycling of energy while varying the input.
After the two months, I couldn't tell if Jacob was worried about me or worried about me being able to pay my half of the rent. I had made 59 designs, almost two per day, and finally had a good understanding not just about the engine but how reliable my memory sense was. I had refined the patent process to and art half an hour on the website, while the patent was being patented I would brainstorm and research for my next idea or memory then a 3 min call. The engine never got too 99.7% efficiency in the simulator that was part of CadPro, but I was sceptical of it anyway. But it was pushing 90%, 30% better than the rest, the hard part was the Van Der Waals force and magnets, it took half my time to figure out how to make it a frictionless interaction.
But I had a theoretically working design, that half the science articles I read told me would not work. Still, it was not quite time to start strong arming multibillion dollar corporations in to paying me for the privilege to build my tech. The life I now lived had just a bit one optional point of vulnerability, Kayal my girlfriend. Jacob and Gran both being unoptional.
Kayla the girlfriend, I would have of forgot about her if I didn't have over 75 texts and missed calls over the past two months, when I final made it to her place she screamed at me for ghosting her, I was patient between a spitting 'you fuck' and the third 'and one more th…' yelled through a closed door. My patients paid off with the middle of that being, "we are so broken up." Her shocked face was probably vindicating after the 14 minutes of my life I was not getting back, but the vindication was probably not worth whatever else was also waiting on the other side of the door.
Now discounting my ex there was non-human vector I would need to protect myself from, I don't know how the previous Hannible Baites got a girlfriend because there was not that much socialising, a few forums that declared to be anonymous, it really brought out the worst in this guy. And then there is he could not control himself when it came to rash purchasing, I was selling off all the random stuff to keep paying rent and I had about 3 more months. But it was this little impulse control and general pettiness is what I needed to fix, all the social platforms where he is not anonymous were filled with less offensive arguments but still problematic for leveraging money out of multibillion dollar corporations. Why pay for something when you can steal it and then smear the creator in court. So I deleted the accounts and remade them, only about half the people accepted my friendship requests.
Next was a trivia night, I spotted a Ronny and Caitlin. WWW 1 started when the leader of Prussia was poisoned, there were moving walkways not Escalator's and Roosevelt was pronounced Roosevelt. This time I had some food before arriving, some drunkish collage kids asked me to join them mid game, Marty, Sam, Darcy and Reece. They were ok considering there alcohol intake.
Back at the apartment, Jacob had some pizza and was watching the final Quarter of an NFL game, American football. There was some random state in blue apparently, they were my favourite, good colure and they had a cool animal, dolphins. Whereas Jacob supported the local team that was not playing and had a cougar.
NFL is ok as it goes but I much prefer highlights of any high level sport, it's all the best bits without sitting though the non-highlighted bits where there are no incredible feats of skill or luck. I did sit with Jacob because I was feeling the bodily reaction of nostalgia, slightly different from the cognitive type. The present feeling because I most assuredly did this as a child transformed what was lame and would have been mined numbing to something that ranked just above the trivia.
I got big sleep it was going to be a big day tomorrow. I had some Nutella on toast, and got a boiler plate standard contract for leasing proprietary technology designs, before heading to the patent office in the inner city the grid layout and abundance of cars made the traffic something appalling. I got there in time to beat the lunch break my patents had been processed over the last few months including my most valuable one I put in for processing just yesterday. I used money I swiped from Jacob and decided it was a great time to head to the bank.
My bank, the Central City Monetary Institute gave me a proper report, I was left with $4,184 before hitting my limit of 15,000 there must not have been a housing crash in 2008, could I find some mortgage backed securities to short. It was well past lunch as I strolled in to the only multinational engine manufacturing conglomerate to have an office in Central City, Caterpillar.
I would have done more research about the company and executives especially regarding their stance on new and innovative tech. But Caterpillar was the only company I was targeting that has an office in Central City, and it was stated to be here to have a jump on the technological industry. It could be looking for new tech or could be here due to the need for high power low volume engines and has an office here of eased business interaction. Walking past the secretary and security I hit the top level of the button on the elevator.