Sept 5: Google-y Eyes

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh sat in a corner of the common room with his combo tablet in laptop mode, searching both the net and the school database for anything on the crystal cave or incidents around the Braddock lighthouse. He also ran a search for cooling equipment with the part number 458713.

[Narrator]

The serial number brings up all kinds of unrelated things, none of which seem particularly helpful in any way. His other search, however, brings up some old newspaper articles that talk about how the mansion was the place of some kind of battle in the past, back when the Braddock family had lived here. It doesn't go into detail about who they fought, though some reports and rumors seem to indicate that the family's butler attacked them.

[Toshiro Narumi]

So he looked into the butler.

[Narrator]

There's very little information to be found on him except for the name 'Jeeves'. It seems very little public knowledge is available. Of course Tosh might have access to some not-as-public information now, being a member of the X-Teams.

[Toshiro Narumi]

He turned his attention to the X-Team database to search for anything on the incident.

[Narrator]

The name Jeeves only brings up one significant hit and that is as an alias of Mastermind, the mansions former computer-system. Apparently the system had somehow become connected to the crystal-filled caverns underneath the mansion and had, on several occasions, attacked the Braddock family until the system had finally been destroyed over a decade ago. The remnants of that must have been what Tosh found scattered on the cavern floor, but the X-Team files make no mention of any construction happening inside the caverns after that and the system he'd found definitely looked newer than these records.

[Toshiro Narumi]

A rogue AI... rebuilt in secret? I really don't like this.

He tried finding who destroyed it. He also looked for old floorplans showing how to get below the lighthouse.

[Narrator]

Apparently the crystal-computer was destroyed by Captain Britain himself. There's not really any mention about it beyond that, the mansion having gone unused for a long time until reclamation efforts began that ultimately led to the University being built. Digging into it some documents mention a Dr. Minamida being part of the people who worked on the construction, especially the Point and it's computer systems.

The available floorplans show no access to anything below the X-Men facilities. They do show an emergency passage from the mansion to the Point, but nothing about any shafts or even the crystal caverns. If any exist then they're not in the plans.

[Toshiro Narumi]

He thought and checked up Dr. Minamida herself, wondering what connection she could possibly haveto Mastermind.

[Narrator]

There's not a lot of information to be found, but when he does stumble upon a picture of Dr. Minamida she doesn't really look like the woman that Mad knows. For one she's significantly older, at least in her 50s, and has black hair. Some double-checking on the date of the article shows that this work happened almost a decade ago, mainly focusing on the rebuilding of the previously destroyed lighthouse, years before the University project began. A quick search reveals Dr. Minamida to be Ashlie's mother, according to the files he can find.

[Toshiro Narumi]

He looked for what Dr. Minamida's academic specialty is. He had some suspicions.

[Narrator]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, her degree is in computer science.

[Toshiro Narumi]

He checked if her thesis or any writings were publicly available.

[Narrator]

Her thesis is available and titled "K-Means Clustering with Automatic Determination of K Using a Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm with Applications to Classify n-dimensional Vector Problem Solving"

[Toshiro Narumi]

Getting more curious, he searched the document for mention of artificial intelligence.

[Narrator]

Nothing in particular regarding AIs is mentioned in the thesis. Beyond that there's very little information available to begin with and Tosh doesn't find anything with any amount of detail to it. It seems Dr. Minamida was either very secretive or a very private person.

[Toshiro Narumi]

He sighed. The mystery was only deepening and he was finding nothing to ease his concerns. He needed someone he could talk to about, but who?