fandomhighdorms | Fifth Floor Common Room: Sunday Morning

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Fifth Floor Common Room: Sunday Morning

After the events that took place in the warehouse Friday night, Barry was distancing himself from the place for a bit. Besides most of his experiments could be run remotely at the moment.

Barry was monitoring those experiments from his tablet while he ate his breakfast which consisted of a bowl of organic cereal and soy milk. On the TV was yet another horrible TV movie from SyFy which dealt with prehistoric sharks that could swim through sand.

"This movie is utter shit," Barry declared to no one in particular in between bites.

And yet he kept watching it while eating his cereal, monitoring his experiments and apparently designing something on his tablet that looked like a baseball cap.

Anyone coming by to agree or disagree with him would be welcomed.

[Bored. Come entertain me!]

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"You need some coffee SJW?" Barry teased. "I can make some for you so can be fully coherent. I need to talk to you anyway."

That earned Barry another glare. She went by Banzai now, Barry, honestly.

"Can't drink coffee on an empty stomach," she mumbled. "Teeeeeea."

Opening a cupboard, she pulled down a box of Golden Monkey Black Tea. Hey, if it was good enough for the White House, it was good enough for her.

She put the water on to boil and started preparing her breakfast, glancing over her shoulder to ask, "Want any?"

Tea, egg toast, whatever.

"Nah, I don't fucking drink caffeine," Barry said getting up with his empty cereal bowl and heading to get some more cereal. "Seriously, the last thing I need is a fucking stimulant in my life."

"Right," Kathy grumbled. "Because you're the king of great ideas as it is."

Barry was just going to have to wait another ten minutes until Kathy had finished her first mug of tea, was halfway through her second, and had made three gaeran tost-u's to eat before sharing whatever it was he needed to talk to her about.

"So, what's up?" she asked, taking a bite of her sandwich. "If you're screening movies for your next date with Elsa, I can safely say: don't."

God, Barry. Go with MagmaShark vs Beartopus if anything. It was a classic.

Hey, Sharknado 2 is on Wednesday. The second one. Who can resist a bad sequel?

"Yeah, I'm going to let her pick the next movie," Barry replied with a smirk. "I'm thinking our next date will be in a locked bank vault."

He shrugged it off. "Anyway I'm going to need your help. I'm incorporating some of my companies and I want you on my board to review my work for ethical issues. In other words you'll control the direction of my work to keep me from doing the wrong thing. Interested?"

Elsa. Kathy was going to guess that Elsa could resist a terrible sequel.

"Just make sure you have the key," Kathy said, smirking. "Because as hilarious as it would be to hear about how you had to make a plasma beam out of fifty dollar bills and a few bars of gold, I'm betting that's not how you want the evening to go."

She chewed thoughtfully on her sandwich as Barry explained his basic idea to her. "How would I do that?" she asked, swallowing. "I mean, your ethics board only has as much power as you let us have. Am I just going to remind you that, like, consent and body sovereignty is a thing--" She shot him a glare for that because, dude, Barry. Come on. "Or will there be actual power to shut something down...?"

"You're the board of trustees," Barry said. "You'll have veto power of any project I work on and I'll abide by your decision. Everything I'm going to work on will be submitted to you ahead of time for your review. You guys say no? I drop it."

"How much science will I need to know?" Kathy asked. "Because if you just send a bunch of schematics for something, I'm going to be lost. And who else is on the board? Will it just be me?"

She didn't think she wanted the sole responsibility of keeping Barry Ween in check. That sounded utterly terrifying.

"You'll get a full breakdown on the fucking implications of the research and what it's going to do," Barry explained. "And you won't be alone. I think Joker is on board and I'm going to get some friends at home who are used to badgering me on doing the right thing. Thinking of getting Eleanor in on this as well as she's pretty adamant on ethical research as well."

"Not Elsa?" Kathy asked in surprise. "I figured she'd be the first person you'd ask."

But maybe he didn't want to mix business and relationships?

"Two more questions and then I'll give you an answer," Kathy said. "First of all, what happens if we say no and you do something anyway?"

It was all well and good for Barry to say he'd immediately drop it, but Kathy wanted assurance that there would be actual consequences involved. Otherwise, what was the point?

"I'd rather I didn't mix Elsa up in my work," Barry said frowning at the thought. "And as far as I'm concerned, you say no, I'm done with the project. Simple as that. You guys will have oversight in my lab at any time. Which means if I try to pull something, you can lock me out of my systems preventing me from doing any further work."

"Not good enough," Kathy said, folding her arms over her chest. "We're going to need something better than that. There's not a lock we can devise that you can't get around. And while I'm sure that us saying no will stop present!Barry from doing unethical things, I can't say the same for future!Barry."

It wasn't that she didn't trust him, but as someone who understood himself well enough to see the need for an ethical oversight committee, he should be able to understand why an ounce of prevention would be worth a pound of cure.

"If you get something in your head, there's not much that any of us can do to stop you if you don't want to be stopped. The first thing we need is concrete ways we can guarantee to make you stop something. We may never need them, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have them."

"We and us, Kathy?" Barry said with a smirk. "Sounds like you're already on board. And if you want better security controls? I can make them. Or we hire someone else to make them if you want. Whatever you're comfortable with."

"I--" Kathy paused, went over what she'd said, and rolled her eyes. "I guess I am," she grumped. "But you don't have to sound so smug about it. I'm going to make you come up with some kind of security system so good even you can't crack it."

So there, Barry. So there.

"And I'm only doing this to put it on my college applications anyway."

So extra there.

"Yeah, well you'll probably be the only college freshman making six figures," Barry laughed. "But hey, put it on your application. I assure you that you'll get turned down for financial aid."

"Six figures?!" Kathy's jaw pretty much hit her lap and she immediately began rubbing her eyes on the off-chance she was still half-asleep or something. "I can't make six figures! My dad doesn't make six figures!"

"Okay, fine, you'll work for fucking free then," Barry said amiably. "C'mon you've seen my warehouse. Did it not occur to you how much money I have?"

...No?

"Never mind that!" Look at Kathy try to weasel her way out of answering that without lying or feeling like an idiot. "I'll have to file taxes! Which means that my parents would find out. I'm a dependent! I can't make a hundred thousand dollars a year as a dependent!"

Being approached to keep a super-genius from becoming a criminal mastermind? Totally fine and normal. Being told she'd be making six figures before her seventeenth birthday? Mental BSOD.

"A trust fund," she finally decided. "I'll get paid a few hundred a month and tell my parents I got a part time job tutoring or something. The rest can all go into some kind of trust fund or something. That should work, won't it?"

HOW THE HELL DID YOU DO YOUR TAXES, BARRY?

Edited 2014-07-28 17:53 (UTC)

Barry had so many corporate fronts he had companies that did audits on his own taxes. Shadow companies were fun!

Barry was enjoying Kathy's reactions. She was so much fun to mess with.

"Whatever," Barry said with a laugh. "We'll come up with something so your parents won't freak out. Or I'll just supply you with a secret headquarters for your double life."

Edited 2014-07-28 17:57 (UTC)

"And what? Stuff it full of stacks of hundred dollar bills?" Kathy sputtered. "I'm just a girl that goes out and bounces around criminals! I don't need a Rat Cave! And six figures--that could be a million dollars in less than a decade if I invest right and save! I need a 401K and an IRA and an investment portfolio!"

Okay. What she really needed was to slow down and start breathing. She could breathe, right? People did it all the time! Breathing was a totally natural and normal phenomenon! She totally knew how to breathe!

Realizing that she was psyching herself out when it came to breathing, Kathy took a few seconds and did a few calming exercises she'd learned in gymnastics.

"My parents can never know about this. My mom would tell me that I'm making too much to be attractive and my dad--ugh, I don't even want to know what my dad would say if he knew." Nothing pleasant. "And they'd want to know what I was doing and they'd never buy that I was sitting on a Board of Ethics, especially not for another kid."

Oh god, the conclusions they might draw...If she were lucky, they might just decide she was selling drugs on the side or something. Not that selling drugs would result in a w-2 and a discussion of benefits.

She slumped backwards in her chair. "...Are we going to get a benefits package?"

"Yeah but the dental sucks," Barry said with a smirk. "But there's a 401k and a pension plan so it all evens out."

There was a pillow being flung at Barry's head. "You are the worst," Kathy informed him. "I am having a legitimate crisis here. Is this retaliation for kicking your door the other night?"

Barry caught the pillow and shook his head. "No seriously, have you ever seen a corporations dental plan? They all suck and are ridiculously expensive unless you need something other than a cleaning," Barry explained. "I fucking own companies and they all seriously suck."

"Huh. I always thought that was just my dad's," Kathy said with a shrug. "It made my braces a real pain to get because they were so expensive."

But she'd never had a cavity, so she hadn't thought much beyond it.

"You make me feel like such a slacker," she accused. "You know, for taking time out to sleep and not owning multiple international corporations by the time I bought my first training bra."

"Yeah well when your born with a brain that won't stop thinking, those types of things can happen," Barry tried to say in an offhand manner. "Or you go completely bat-shit. One or the other."

Have you followed the lives of geniuses, Kathy? They usually don't end with sunshine, rainbows and lollipops.

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