New Gotham
Evening descended.
The sun, just beneath the horizon, cast blood red rays across a wide, tree-ringed pond. Two swans drifted casually on its surface and the incline of a grassy hill rose beyond, its lawn verdant, precisely manicured. Adorning the hilltop was the Western Wing of the largest private residence in the city, Wayne Manor.
On the third floor, an open window overlooked the pond. Within sat the owner of the residence, and the pond, the swans, the lawn, the trees, the grounds and gardens and forest, the land stretching to the horizon over which the sunset spilled and far more, third-generation multi-billionaire Bruce Wayne.
“My city needs me,” he grumbled, brooding over his estate from a high-backed tufted leather chair.
“Crime… Injustice…” He rested his chin on a fist, today’s Rolex sliding down his wrist, pondering the questions that had plagued him all his life.
A fluttering shadow crossed Bruce’s vision. He sat up straight, recoiling reflexively. Leathery grey wings were bouncing and flapping against the room’s ornately carved spruce panel walls.
“These bats are usually locked up in the caves on the Southern acres,” Bruce’s butler was saying as he crossed the room in his waistcoat and shirt, holding his jacket open in front of him. As he spoke he kept his gaze on the bat beating itself against the manor’s high ceilings. “The groundskeepers have had every cavern they can find walled off or collapsed, most of them long ago. But, well,” he walked the room’s perimeter staring upward, “I suppose even bats yearn to be free.”
“That’s it!” Bruce ejected as he stood and bolted from the room to capture the moment of inspiration.
“Glad I could help,” Alfred spoke into the empty room, his attention still on the bat.
“So today, Wayne Enterprises announces a radical new set of upcoming funds in partnership with community programs and Gotham City governance. A program to completely dismantle Gotham’s brutal, racist, fundamentally corrupt policing of our poor, and to replace that brutality with an exhaustive set of social services, better funded than the Police, paid for almost entirely by Wayne investments, as well as tax and budget reform.
“I call it Bringing Abolition to the Metro Area Now. The B.A.T.M.A.N. program. Questions.”
The press room erupted into a flurry of hands waving for attention and the ruckus of dozens of angry voices lobbing questions at once. Bruce pointed out a questioner with a press badge near the front. The crowd quietened only barely enough to hear them ask,
“Mr Wayne, according to these plans the B.A.T.M.A.N. will give a free house to everyone in Gotham without a home today. What about Gotham’s citizens who do currently own a home, do they get a free house too? Wouldn’t that be the equality you’re after?”
“Let me get this straight,” Bruce retorted. “Some of our citizens have no home at all. And you need an extra one. Somebody getting a roof over their head means you should get a building to not live in.” A single chuckle bubbled up from the crowd. “You want me to invest in some empty houses?” The questioner began to respond but Bruce cut in with a smile, “You have a house-building company don’t you? Or you’re joking. OK, no more joke questions, real questions only please,” he delivered with dismissive finality, moving to point out another in the crowd when someone in the back belted out,
“You’re the joke, Mister Wayne! We will never pass your proposed legislation. We will kill the B.A.T.M.A.N. the day it comes to City Hall!”
“And I have more than enough to invest in the city’s non-profits on my own. And the expertise at hand to scale them. And to create new private programs. My resources are immense, Councilman Crane, and when you’re up for reelection next year I’ll still have plenty left over to cover every billboard in the city with ads for your opponent.”
A cacophony of voices raised with follow-ups to that. Dozens of hands shook in the air like leaves in a storm, but one raised hand among them was motionless. The smug celebrity face beneath it made unabashed eye contact with Wayne. Bruce opened a palm toward this man, and all heads in the room turned.
“I’m sure you feel safe when you go home to your stately manor in the suburbs, Mister Wayne,” the district attorney delivered, more to the room than to Bruce. Voices hmmd preemptive agreement. “But without a police force, how on Earth do you propose the average citizen of Gotham feel safe in their homes?” A cheer of “Yeah!” from the back of the crowd. “You probably can’t see this from your lofty perch up in the hills, but we here in the city, we don’t need a billionaire’s pipe dream.” Two cheers. “We don’t need you to swoop in and threaten to save us, Mister Wayne, we need law and order. We need our boys in blue.”
The room rose to applause even as Bruce hastened to retort with a raised voice, “Does the average citizen of Gotham feel safe under your watch today, Mister Dent?”
Bruce’s volume settled the applause to an attentive, still-stirring mumble. “Would you care to tell the room how many police officers you have brought criminal charges against as district attorney?” Bruce let the question linger, but not long enough to give Harvey Dent a real chance to respond. “Zero, sir,” he concluded. “You claim to stand for law and order, but you don’t enforce the law among law enforcement officers. You claim to stand for order, but how much has crime decreased during your tenure?”
He let the last question hang in the air as well, unanswered. Everyone in the room knew crime rates never abated for long in Gotham.
“I’m giving Gotham a real chance to feel safe,” Bruce continued. “You claim to want safety? Law and order for Gotham? Then I have a proposition for you. Crime prevention.
“Instead of increasing year after year the number of people you and your thugs throw into Arkham’s asylums and prisons, I invite you to join us in doing the work proven to reduce crime, poverty, mental illness, by getting at its roots. That’s how Gotham will be able to feel safe without a police force. By serving its people instead of enslaving them.”
Was it agreement he heard in the silent response of the room?
“Yes, there is a lot of work to do,” Bruce continued. “And there’s a lot of people already knee deep in that work. Like these people assembled behind me here on stage. They are the first of many Wayne Enterprises partners we are announcing today. I’m going to get out of their way and let them introduce themselves and their services.
“To them, and to many others like them to come, today I, the B.A.T.M.A.N., and Gotham commit to your cause. I intend to make this a twice weekly press event. Thank you for coming.”
People were shouting his name and additional questions before he had begun the last sentence. Bruce turned to shake exactly once each of the hands of the beaming leadership behind him and hastened off of the press room stage.
In the wing, he sent two attendants away on separate tasks and slipped through a fire exit stairwell door. He descended a short flight of stairs to another door and looked back. Unfollowed, he pushed through the door into the long cinderblock lined hallway behind it, and as the door to the stairwell behind him slammed shut, all the light in the hallway went with it.
Bruce strode forward into the dark and contemplated his new fate.
We will kill the B.A.T.M.A.N.
Crane’s choice words echoed in his thoughts. There was a very real price on his head now, and in more ways than one. He didn’t need to check to know Wayne Enterprises stock was down in after hours trading. Millions of powerful people were already aligning against his cause.
He had made a lot of enemies today, for himself and for Alfred, the only person left he could call family. Bruce owed the man so much. He could not imagine what his life would be, had Alfred not ensured as a little boy that he got the professional help he had needed after witnessing the murder of his parents.
Bruce pushed against a crash bar at the end of the dark hallway. Sunlight washed over him as he exited into the alley where a sleek black electric sedan waited in silence among strewn garbage and stacked wooden pallets. He climbed into the backseat.
“Shall we drag the family name home now, Master Wayne?” Alfred asked from the screen up front. Bruce laughed despite himself.
Millions were for the cause, too, he was reminded. Alfred. The people of Gotham whom he could believe in. His calendar was booked full for a month of meetings with them.
Bruce had to be brave. The work necessitated it. He couldn’t hide his face and work in the dark the way his enemies would. He would have to have the courage to believe in the possibility of something new. They all would.
“I’m the last of the name, I’ll do what I want with it,” he replied matching Alfred’s sarcasm as the car glided forward.
“Very good, sir,” the man answered.
“And speaking of home, Alfred… I’m going to need to move into the city.”
Alfred nodded knowingly. “Very good, sir.”
