Voices in my head

So Person of Interest is my current TV show obsession. It's so very cheesy and yet so very perfect. I love it.

Anyway, one of the characters the brilliant and wealthy and secretive Harold Finch. He has a dozen aliases at least, all of them with the first name Harold and last names that are bird-related. And he's been living under various aliases for the vast majority of his life, going back at least as far as college.

So I've been thinking to myself: under what circumstances would someone that young possibly need an alias and know how to acquire one? 

My first thought:

1. He's from a wealthy/famous family and he wanted to make his own way in the world and thus had to attend school under an alias.

2. He's from a mob-type family and he needed to escape their expectations and plans for his future.

3. He's straight up paranoid, for no good reason at all. At least not at that point. (He's still paranoid now in his middle age, but he's acquired a suitable number of reasons for it.)

But then came the realization that I knew of another TV character who is brilliant and secretive and uses hundreds of aliases that all maintain the same first name: Jarod.

I think Harold is a pretender. Or, at least from the Center's pretender program. Somehow he managed to escape and he's been hiding from the Center ever since.

Given this premise, there are a variety of possible plots:

  •  The number that The Machine provides is for someone being threatened by the Center. And Harold has to decide whether to try going up against his own personal demons and thereby giving them the opportunity to find him again, or to let the number go. He can't just let the number go and so it's John Reese against the Center, with Harold trying to help him, knowing more than he should possibly be able to know, and yet trying desperately to stay distanced from the whole process.

  •  Alternately, it has nothing to do with the Machine, the Center has just been trying to find Harold for years and finally managed to track him down. Now he needs to escape them again.

  •  Jarod comes to visit Harold. Maybe it's for a case or maybe it's just to say "hi." Reese is suspicious.

"This is my..." Harold looked uncertain for a moment, before continuing, "my physical therapist, Jarod." 

Jarod smiled brightly at Reese. "It's great to meet you." Then turned towards Harold. "Before our next session, do you have some books I could review?"

He'd been a doctor, a masseuse, an acupuncturist, and a sports trainer before, but somehow never a physical therapist. Harold had just the reference manuals he needed, though, so he'd be ready to give his first session soon enough.

Reese watched him leave the room with suspicious eyes. "And is he a good physical therapist?" He spoke in his usual soft manner but it was pretty obvious he thought he was calling a bluff.

In a sense it was a bluff, but in another sense it wasn't. With Jarod, Harold could introduce him as whatever he felt like. "He's the very best."