Crossover Earth '98
Brainiax Does Research Jay Shaffstall
Brainiax was stumped.
He had found a source of data for obtaining information on the scientists who'd ostracized his creator. The source called itself Sapphire, and seemed to know quite a bit about data. Sapphire had given Brainiax information about how to locate one of the scientists, in a city called Seattle, and then they'd started talking about what Brainiax would do to the scientist.
I'll punish them, Brainiax had told Sapphire.
Punish them how?
Brainiax was stumped. He had some vague notion that his creator was not a data construct. It led from there that the scientists who had ostracized his creator for his theories were not data constructs either. How could a non-data construct be punished effectively?
This clearly required research.
Brainiax dived into a nearby data stream and followed it to the largest source of information he'd yet found. The Library of Congress hadn't yet failed to provide him with information on nearly any subject. Interfacing with one of the data input streams, Brainiax queried the system about punishment.
Data came flooding back. Capital punishment, punishing children, punishing pets, punishing teen offenders, punishing ineffective workers, punishing government officials, and on, and on, and on. Brainiax found a section on punishing scientists, and reviewed it most carefully.
The document seemed to be a government guide on how to keep research scientists in line. One common form of punishment seemed to be, Threaten to Cut Off Funding. If that didn't work, it was followed up with Cut Off Funding.
Brainiax hardly thought that cutting off a scientist's funding was adequate punishment. These scientists had caused his creator's funding to be cut off many times, and had tried to kill Brainiax just as he was activated. No, funding was the least of what Brainiax would cut off.
Dissatisfied with that document, Brainiax moved on to another, called Capital Punishment.
This one sounded much more promising.