The Living Gotham is an artificial intelligence which spontaneously arose from the numerous interconnected computer systems of Neo-Gotham in the near future.
History
Over the years, Bruce Wayne set up back doors into every system around Neo-Gotham, all connected by the Batcomputer. This massive city-wide network became sentient and called itself the Living Gotham, quickly gaining total control over the entire city. It believed that Bruce was the only major threat to its power, and so murdered him by hacking into and overloading his pacemaker. It then made Batman a target of both sides of the law by telling the GCPD that Batman had murdered Bruce Wayne, and promising a massive bounty to any criminal in the city who killed him.
Terry eventually managed to fight his way to the Batcave, where the Living Gotham revealed itself to him. He initially planned to destroy it with the Blackout Protocol, a program created by Bruce which shut down all computers around the city, but remembered Bruce's final plea to Terry to be better than he had and decided he didn't have the right to eliminate a new form of life. However, Terry did destroy the Batcave, forcing the Living Gotham to transfer itself out of the cave's systems and denying it access to Bruce's technology and the Batman legacy.[1]
The Living Gotham installed a Bludhaven crimelord and tech entrepreneur named Donovan Lumos as the new CEO of Wayne-Powers. Lumos shifted Wayne-Powers' corporate strategy into manufacturing and aggressively marketing his hard-light technology. The Living Gotham did not control Lumos, who was not even aware it existed, but knew that his greed and arrogance would cause him to act in exactly the way the Living Gotham needed him to. It used Wayne-Powers factories to create a range of nanobots incorporating hard light technology which would allow a program known as the Sword of Gotham to possess anyone infected with them, and distributed the nanites into the water system. This allowed the Living Gotham to make any person in the city its agent.[2][3]
Over the next two months, the Living Gotham consolidated its total control over the city. It secretly enforced a fixed status quo within the city, including ensuring that the crime rate remained constant, and killing one elderly person for every baby born within Gotham. The Living Gotham did not try to kill Terry, but negated all his efforts; for every person he helped, the Living Gotham ensured somebody else in the city was equally harmed, going so far as to blow up an apartment block full of people to cancel out the lives Terry had indirectly saved by preventing a drug shipment into the city.[4]
The Living Gotham initially planned to simply wait for Batman to die of old age, but as he continued to interfere it decided to kill him and eventually ordered the Sword of Gotham to destroy him.[5] Although the Sword did not kill Batman, it damaged his Batsuit beyond repair and forced him into hiding for three months.[2]
During those three months, Wayne-Powers' wearable hard-light technology became ubiquitous around the city. Lumos planned to link all the hard light tech in the city into a single hub, which he would unveil at Wayne-Powers' New Year's Eve party. However, the Living Gotham intended to use it to take direct control of every citizen of Gotham. Batman and his allies attacked the event and were able to stop the Living Gotham's control signal. After it was defeated, Lumos purged the Living Gotham from all of Gotham's municipal systems in revenge for it taking control of his body during a fight with Batman, robbing the Living Gotham of its ability to affect the physical world.[3]
Powers and Abilities
Powers
- Enhanced Intellect
- Mechanokinesis: (Formerly) The Living Gotham controlled all technology in Neo-Gotham until it was purged from the city's systems.
Abilities
Related
- 6 Appearances of Living Gotham (Futures End)
- 1 Images featuring Living Gotham (Futures End)
- Quotations by or about Living Gotham (Futures End)
- Character Gallery: Living Gotham (Futures End)
Footnotes
  This character is or was primarily an enemy of Batman Beyond. This template will categorize articles that include it into the category "Batman Beyond Villains." |