DC: I am Bruce Wayne

Chapter 77: Homecoming (2)

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"No matter how careful your risk hedging is, there will still be holes in your plan! Realizing them and ensuring they are promptly dealt with, is the duty of those who stand at the top."

– Reiji Akaba, (Yu-Gi-Oh)

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<(Bruce Wayne POV)>

"Are you sure that you want to do this Bruce? I doubt these memories from 'his' mind's remnants have anything that can help you improve. According to what you have told me, 'he' might have one day become one of the most dangerous humans on the planet but that doesn't change the fact that this was his mind when he was just a nine-year-old. The advantages that you might get from the assimilation of his fractured mind are minuscule compared to the risks that would accompany it." Cortana voiced her concerns worriedly from her hologram form.

Yeah, Cortana knew my biggest secret, well, at least parts of it. She knew about me not being the original Bruce Wayne and only inhabiting the body of Bruce but she didn't know exactly who or what I was. She didn't ask as well since she didn't need to know. However, as a truly smart AI, I knew that she had her own theories of which the current me being a product of some sort of split personality disorder due to the trauma of him being shot at an early age was her biggest guess.

Of course, I didn't try to correct her. It would have been better for me if she didn't know my truth at all. But I needed her to have at least an idea about who I truly was or in this case not, because she was going to be inside my mind a lot, and sooner or later she was going to know that I am not exactly who everyone thinks I am. At least at that time, she would not assume the worst about me like I was some form of evil spirit inhabiting Bruce Wayne's body or something.

Plus she had absolute loyalty to me coded deep inside her. I was the reason for her existence. So she literally could never betray me by misusing that information somehow. Also, data like these had the highest level of confidentiality in her system, so no one would ever be able to access that data without the highest form of access required, something only I had.

"I know Cortana. But... it's still important that I do it. To both gain some closure to the previous Bruce's... death as well as to have a chance to improve my mindscape with his mind's remnants. Plus, imagine if you have a red button sitting in front of you for years and you have no idea what it does. Wouldn't you want to press it and see what happens just so that you could satisfy your curiosity?" I asked with a powerless shrug.

"No. My algorithms value caution way too much to do that. My curiosity doesn't increase with time like that of humans. I simply decide on whether to press a button of an unknown function based on my knowledge about the characteristics of the button, its advantages and disadvantages." Cortana answered as a matter of fact.

"... Well, I am your creator, so I know better than you. Now, just download those memories I am allowing you access to and help render and process them." I argued with a straight face as I put the amusphere on my head.

"Also, make a copy of my present consciousness while you are at it. Worse comes to worst, I'll at least always have a replacement mind in store to put into my body in case I ever suffer a mind death or.... mind erasure or something else along those lines. I think I should also design a portable device that would make a copy of my mind and store it in a secure server every day to prevent situations like that." I said the last part more to myself as I wondered if I could make a Cortical Stack like in the Netflix show, Altered Carbon.

Even Rick's mind-copying device in Rick and Morty paled in comparison to that particular piece of miraculous technology.

"Baka" Cortana muttered in an overly exaggerated tone before focusing on extracting the fragmented memories of the original Bruce from my mind which I permitted by lowering my mental shields and allowing her entry into some of the limited parts of my mind.