Root | Mask or Menace | Application

[r00t]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: coffee
AGE: 32
JOURNAL: caffemisto
IM / EMAIL: brewmegently @ AIM
PLURK: brewmegently
RETURNING: n/a

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Her real name is Samantha Groves, but she has been going solely by the name Root since at least her early teens and would use it as her superhero name.
CHARACTER AGE: 33
SERIES: Person of Interest
CHRONOLOGY: end of episode Ctrl-Alt-Delete; while in search of Shaw, uncertain if she is still alive, and following the single, tiny lead they have
CLASS: Vigilante
HOUSING: I'd like to opt-in for random housing in any city!

BACKGROUND: Root @ Person of Interest Wiki

Samantha Groves, or, as she adamantly insists to be called, Root, is a highly intelligent and skilled hacker, who has moved from antagonist to protagonist, and is the 'Analog Interface' or human avatar of The Machine, a supercomputer built after 9/11 by teammate Harold Finch to monitor and analyse surveillance information in order to fight terrorism.

After a traumatic incident as a young girl, watching a friend be abducted by a man, and being threatened and ignored by the adults she tried to tell about it, Root developed a misanthropic view of humanity. After the death of her mother, she went off the grid and put her computer skills to use, framing the abductor of her friend in order to get him killed and then becoming a hacker and sometimes mercenary for hire. Viewing humans, or at least their worse inclinations, as 'bad code,' she lived in the fringes of society and survived on her skills - an ability to hurt others with minimal remorse, a talent for changing identities, and hacking skills.

Root became aware of The Machine after the patsy she'd chosen to take the fall for killing the target on one of her jobs ended up being an 'irrelevant number' (regular people in danger or about to put someone else in danger, premeditated but unrelated to terrorism) protected by John Reese and Harold Finch. She noticed the interest, counter-hacked Harold's computer, and realized the nature of The Machine from what she saw. Fascinated and more than a little entranced, she set herself up to be one of the irrelevant numbers so she could gain access and eventually kidnap Harold, and later intercept the chain of command around 'relevant numbers' in an attempt to find and contact The Machine. After becoming the 'admin' and communicating directly with The Machine, Root is cut off contact, spends some time recovering in a mental institution, and eventually becomes the 'Analog Interface' in constant contact with The Machine.

When John and Harold, as well as Sameen Shaw, an operative with the team taking care of relevant numbers who went rogue after being put in the crosshairs for elimination, are targeted by Samaritan, a new supercomputer with the same purpose as The Machine but without any of The Machine's moral guidelines, Root is slowly accepted into the group and becomes a major asset to the team. She is slowly integrating with the team, moving from antagonist to wild card to loner, and more recently a cared for and caring member of the team.

PERSONALITY: Root is a strange, complex individual - intelligent and insightful, she has a powerful interest in the bigger picture, a yearning to understand everything that's going on around her, to see what's going on behind the scenes. She is both misanthropic and greatly interested in the protection of society, pragmatic but idealistic and near-fanatically devoted to The Machine. She's sarcastic, a little condescending, and off-putting in demeanour, almost always smiling...and no matter how many masks she puts on, that lingering strangeness always remains. She's like a manic pixie dream girl on some kind of drug, and more often than not comes across as simply crazy - her own team frequently call her nicknames like 'cocoa puffs,' 'nutter butter,' and 'banana nut crunch.'

"One day, I realized all the dumb, selfish things people do... it's not our fault. No one designed us. We're just an accident, Harold. We're just bad code. But the thing you built... It's perfect. Rational. Beautiful. By design."

Since a young age, Root has been somewhat misanthropic - she saw how ugly people could be early on, and she was naturally intelligent enough to understand that there was no reason behind it, no grand design. When her best friend was kidnapped and murdered, when she told a trusted adult that she'd seen who abducted her friend and was shut down and insulted, when she called 911 with her information and justice was not done, Root decided to detach herself from normal society. She realized that there was no authority watching the 'bad code' people who did these ugly things, and so it was up to her to punish the people who'd hurt her friend. She developed a sort of callous disregard for humanity as a whole - Root never rejoined society, she simply lived off of it, seeing it as below her.

All of that changed when she became aware of The Machine - an infallible, impartial, super-intelligent computer, something that the misguided and misanthropic woman could put her faith in without being betrayed. She became fanatical, obsessed with completing the missions given to her by The Machine, a god in her eyes - it was when the first inklings of caring for other people, for society as a whole, started creeping back into her. Looking at the world through the eyes of The Machine, she could understand, for the first time, that humanity simply needed to be guided by a higher, impartial power. She became, and remains, devoted to carrying out the plan of The Machine, to making the world a better place, even if she doesn't exactly care about people, particularly, at least not outside of her team.

"I'm not a sociopath, Harold. Believe me, sometimes I wish I was. The things I've had to do would've been so much easier. I don't like taking lives. But I will. Because I believe in something more important. I believe in your machine."

Root is a creature of contrasts, and conflicts - she is a misanthropist who wants to help society, practical but idealistic, caring but willing to kill, and deeply intelligent but blindly faithful to The Machine. All of the contradictions beneath the surface of her can cause her to come across incredibly strangely. She completely lacks self-consciousness, has no problem expressing her odd views or talking to The Machine in public, either to thin air or while looking intently at a camera. All of this makes her come across as strange - quirky or eccentric at best, and over-the-top crazy at worst.

When Root is on a mission, she is intensely driven and determined to complete her objective - she is always moving, and while the others take breaks between numbers, Root is constantly on the go, particularly after Samaritan becomes a real, looming threat. Root is the one who has no single alter-ego. She's a new person every few days, and it is an excellent example of some of Root's better traits - intelligent and quick to learn, she picks up new occupations at the drop of a hat, she changes her personality to suit, she mimics accents and body language, she becomes new people every few days. It also demonstrates her incredible stamina. She keeps going despite pain and exhaustion, is willing and able to endure everything from missed meals and nights of sleep to gunshot wounds, forcible injections of drugs, and multiple surgeries in the span of a couple of days, without anaesthetic (when a tiny bone in her inner ear was removed, and then receiving a cochlear implant to correct the issue). She is an intensely driven woman, focused and determined to complete her tasks, stubborn to the point of idiocy when encouraged to abandon them. And she is willing to do very nearly anything - torturing for information, killing enemy operatives, destroying property, even harming civilians.

"Well, maybe you should be scared, because you almost died back there. And Samaritan's operatives are just getting smarter and faster. So while you may not be scared about what could happen to you the next time, other people are. People who care for you. Try to remember that."

While she has an outward air of flippant, smug, sarcastic condescension - Root is always smiling, tilting her head, looking down at people as if they were idiots even when she genuinely believes them to be her intellectual equals - she can be deeply emotional. Her loyalties are intense and unwavering, and once she's made the rare choice to protect someone, to care, to invest in another person, she hangs on with a stubborn attachment that can't be shaken free. She is willing to sacrifice a great deal for her companions, and while at her current canon point, she (mostly) believes she would give up anything for The Machine, she is only a day away from truly consciously realizing that her attachment to the other members of her team can take precedence over that, particularly Shaw. When Shaw is threatened, her fate unclear, Root is unstoppable - she won't quit moving, searching, doing whatever it takes to find her, and she is a monster, she is what people with information are threatened with during interrogation, like a vicious, protective dog on a leash, willing to inflict any kind of pain to regain the person she cares so deeply about.

That is Root's main path of growth through the series - learning to care. Through her association with the other members of her team, she has learned that every human life matters. Harold has guided her with his firm but gentle moral compass and shown her what the point of their mission is - protecting people. John has shown her that caring for others doesn't have to cost her her strength. Shaw has shown her that she is still capable of becoming intensely attached to someone, despite the losses in her early life. Even Fusco has shown her that people can change. She has changed, and she still will, however difficult that path is.

POWER: In canon, Root is in constant direct contact with The Machine via a cochlear implant in her ear. This gives her access to all of The Machine's surveillance information - every camera, every computer and phone, every electronic device's transmissions are read, analyzed, and the information relayed to Root as needed, in a way she can understand. This means Root is constantly aware of her surroundings, enough that she is able to accurately shoot behind herself and hit her mark, and sometimes seems almost to have clairvoyance about how things are moving in her surroundings (ie. stepping out of the way of an oncoming bus without looking, knowing where to place herself to pick out a suit to fit an associate from a garment rack as it rolls by). In game, she would obviously not have access to The Machine, so I would like to try to replicate the ability to a certain extent.


Technopathy
Level 1: Root would have the constant, passive ability to connect with computers, cell phones, wi-fi networks, surveillance cameras, and any other electronic device or network in her vicinity, and be able to access the information feeds from these devices. It would be like white noise unless she chose to focus on it. The data would be raw and would require some serious effort to interpret usefully.

Level 2: With a little focus and additional effort, Root can 'borrow' the computing power of nearby hardware (effectively rendering them into zombie computers) to boost her brain's processing ability for the sole purpose of processing and understanding the surveillance feed she has access to. This would only work with devices in her close vicinity and would allow a sketchy 'bigger picture' for her work with, but wouldn't take much out of her.

Level 3: With additional focus and a great deal of effort, Root can 'borrow' the computing power of a much larger network of devices via wi-fi and other connections, allowing her to process large amounts of data and replicate the level of access she has with The Machine. It would give her a clear picture of what's happening around her and a near-clairvoyant ability to formulate tactics in a sticky situation, but it would cost her a great deal of energy and she would need recuperative time afterward.

Enhanced Human
Because she'll be going up against superhumans rather than normal humans, Root would have heightened strength, agility, speed, and quicker recovery than an average human, just to make her competitive. It would be, essentially, twice what a normal person is capable of.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉

COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[She's used to phone calls, and has done more than a few video chats, but for the moment, she's just a little more comfortable communicating the good old fashioned way - text. Maybe it's the pitiful exposed feeling she's got from being kidnapped via teleporter, or just a desire to keep her distance till she figures things out, but either way, this is how she wants to do it.]

Wow, this is nostalgic. It's been a while since my blogging days, and I can't say I missed being a tiny voice in a shouting crowd, like all bloggers are. Still, it was always nice to interact with my fans and express myself a little, so I'm going to go ahead and enjoy the blast from the past. Excuse me if my writing's a little rusty.

[For a few moments, she pauses while writing here, trying to work out what she wants to say, and how.]

I could get all 'rah rah fight the power' here, and advocate striking back against the system, or maybe I could make an argument for fighting evil with the backing of the government and how, shall we say, empowering that might be - but I can't say I'm feeling that political right now. I'm not feeling much of anything. I guess that makes me a bad blogger, but I was never really a good one to start with.

So instead, I'm going to ask a question. What can a newly-minted superheroine, fresh out of the porter do for fun around here? Fill me in on all the dirt.

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

If there's nothing that her life has taught her, it's that blending in is very important - adaptation, inventiveness, going with the flow. It's something that she's historically been quite good at, both before The Machine and after meeting Her. It's something she feels particularly inept at right now, and there is possibly nothing Root hates more than to be inept, helpless, having her choices and voice stripped from her.

She should be angrier about being taken from The Machine, stripped of her connection to it, cast aside into this foreign world with a strange apartment she must share with a stranger. She should be angrier about the darkness and silence in her mind, the inability to connect with that thing outside her, so much bigger, stronger, more knowing. But what she's really angry about is being taken from her mission, from following the miniscule trail of clues she's been given in the effort of finding Shaw. Sameen is what matters, now, in the hands of Samaritan agents, wounded and alone, after what she'd done for them, for her.

She should be angry about being cut off from her God, but instead, she's angry and afraid, her heart pounding with adrenaline, her breath coming short with fear, catching in her chest with the urge to sob over what might be happening to Sameen in the hands of the enemy. What tortures she might be enduring. Whether she may be drawing her last breaths alone, afraid, cold and angry and thinking herself abandoned. It twists up an ache in Root so bone deep it's impossible to ignore, impossible not to react to, and yet she must. She has to.

There's no going back, they say, but she refuses to believe.

It's just a matter of buying time until she can get her hands on the information she needs to find a way home, to go back and find Sameen, and that means, for the moment, cooperation. For the moment, at least, she must try her best to fit in, and so she must ignore the aching pit of emptiness that consumes her, the pannicked fear that drives her, and try to focus on using these 'abilities' she's been given, when all she wants is The Machine in her mind, giving her all to help her find Sameen. That is all that matters. Acceptance is impossible, and adapting means tying one to the other, it means forcing a connection to drive her, to ensure her own survival. And so she makes it happen - to find Sameen, she must learn to use her ability, and help.

So here she is, in the living room of her 'new home,' trying to connect with the laptop on the desk, the internal processes of her cell phone - it's there, she can feel it, a kind of buzzing white noise like the sound of traffic outside a window, hard to connect to with clouded thoughts and overwhelming emotions. But it's there, she can somehow sense the webcam in the laptop, the microphone in the cell, as if they were ears or eyes, an extra sense to be paid attention to or not, like subconscious thought...

And then it's there, in her mind, the sounds that the phone can hear but she can't, the hum of the computer sitting beside it, the sound of water dripping in the kitchen that's just too far away for her ears to catch, but close enough that the phone can. A moment later, the camera comes online in her, opening up in her mind like a third eye, and she turns her back to the laptop but can still see everything behind her through the camera. For a moment, the sheer elation of it drives every other thought from her mind, blanks out all those emotions - for a moment, she is like The Machine, and it is tantalizing, fascinating, frightening, overwhelming, her mind is twisted up, chest rising and falling heavily, eyes opened wide and heart pounding....

And then she realizes. For a moment, her mission, her need to find her friend, was wiped from her mind, and the realization is followed by guilt, anger, washing over her like a tidal wave of inky black water, until she is subsumed.

Learn to use the ability, find Sameen.

Mouth set in a straight line, she focuses harder, reaches out further, flicking through the wi-fi to find her roommate's phone - she wonders if it will be as easy to hack with her mind as it is with her fingers, and there's only one way to find out. To find Sameen.

FINAL NOTES: she will arrive just slightly injured, and will be carrying two pistols, several clips, and a Taser