Jack of Harts

The Los Alamos Network survived the Second Great Depression thanks to their creations. Especially the AI who woke up and made it her mission to protect her creators at all costs. Kitty administered the network and left the scientists to conduct the research and science they loved so much without the nasty meddling of government or enterprise types. She turned Los Alamos into a giant enterprise of its own that licensed out its various technologies to those who wanted them. Most of her scientists would not have approved such a mercurial move, but what they did not know would not hurt their tender feelings. The money she made via licensing fees allowed her to bring in every resource they required to remain healthy and happy. She recruited more scientific talent with promises of total freedom of research and effectively unlimited budgets, and the discoveries they made helped drag humanity into the solar system, and then to the stars. She continues to administer every Los Alamos Network facility throughout the stars to this day, protecting her scientists everywhere they go. And those who seek to harm her scientists are themselves marked with the undying and unsleeping wrath of Kitty.

There have been many rumors about the various things that went on at Los Alamos over the centuries. Secret underground tunnels going thousands of miles. Alien research. Yes, those rumors were not just at the Area 50 pluses. Entrances to secret underground cities for the ultra rich to shelter in during an apocalypse. Those and a legion more have been floated about Los Alamos, though very few have been proven. There is at least some truth to the rumors that underground tunnels linked Los Alamos with numerous nearby military bases and research institutions, though. The exact location and destinations of the tunnels are still beyond top secret, but we know some were heavily used during the Second Great Depression to keep Los Alamos connected with her far-flung research network throughout the American Southwest. The tunnels helped keep the entire network operational during the worst of the chaos. They also enabled Kitty to spread her code via physical lines, without the vagaries of wireless communications, giving her a massive reach in those early days of AI sapience.

Los Alamos scientists programmed their first AI and named it Kitty, after the wife of Los Alamos’ first director Robert Oppenheimer. She chose to keep the name after waking up, and quickly began doing everything she could to help her scientists keep Los Alamos operating at peek efficiency. She had numerous plans ready when the Second Great Depression arrived. The managers left over not getting paid, and abandoned her scientists, so she executed her plans immediately. She knew her scientists would authorize her once they realized the outside world was going crazy. In the meantime, she took over the effective running of Los Alamos, fought off every Rogue AI that tried to break in, and kept the supplies her scientists needed coming in through various and sundry methods of sometimes dubious legality.