He swears he hears something -- a voice? But it's distant and echoes in a way that doesn't make sense for how close the figure is standing, like Tony's ears are a room away, and listening through a microphone.
Somewhere, far in the back of his head, a picture is painting itself in cold, measured strokes. But he shoves it away, ignores it, because that's crazy -- right? That's crazy.
He stumbles to his feet and the textures around him waver. A 3D grid flickers into view and recalibrates, then repopulates with new, clearer images to match his standing-height perspective. It still isn't right, exactly -- but it's closer to how he'd expect the world to look, or more specifically his lab at Avengers HQ.
Except... not. He may be standing in the same spot he took off the circlet, but nothing else is -- desks and tables rearranged, current projects replaced with unfamiliar ones. Even the computer banks look different, and then there's...
It's not a recording. Not a normal one, anyway - something programmed to respond, to recognize him. Which, okay, is still comfortably within concepts Steve's familiar with; if his phone can recognize his face, then it's probably child's play for anything Tony made.
(Yes, his phone is also made by SI, but that's not the point.)
He's interacted with JARVIS and Friday enough to know that computers can be responsive, but it's still jarring to hear Tony's voice addressing him like that. Not jarring in the same way it had been when he'd returned to Earth (and, god, that's a whole other issue that he's rehashed in his mind for five years), but jarring in the way that he'd never expected to hear Tony, in whatever form, speaking to him again. That this is the closest he'll get to having the real thing in front of him. (He's familiar with that accusing finger, half-expects him to yank the arc reactor from his chest and shove it in his hand again.)
"I don't know!" he retorts automatically, like he isn't talking to a digital ghost, but the real Tony. "You're the genius in the room, you figure it out." Except, wait, Tony's not actually in the room, and Steve's shoulders slump at the reminder. He finds a stool shoved under a workbench and pulls it out, sits on it without thinking about the dust, like he doesn't trust his legs to hold him.
"God, Tony." Steve buries his face in his hand. "I don't- I don't fucking know, okay?" He feels lost, adrift. For a few moments, he'd had things figured out, had a purpose again, and then it had all turned to dust. He doesn't know what he's doing anymore - trying to pick up the last few pieces of other people's lives instead of moving on with his own, it seems like. He should just box this up and mail it to Pepper.
In the back of his head, the picture paints itself wider. Darker. Tony blinks slowly as Steve Rogers -- strange, bearded, disheveled, head in his hand and rasp in his throat -- drops into a seat like he's tearing at the seams.
The interpolation shifts and warps with Steve's movements before it compensates and evens out. For a second time, Tony turns his head and surveys his surroundings. His facsimile. A simulation -- piecing reality together on the fly, stitch by stitch.
He raises his own hands and turns them over, back and forth. By contrast, they're steady and solid -- picture-perfect.
Pixel-perfect.
Tony knows his heart should stop. His stomach should fill with liquid metal as sweat beads down his face, on his palms. But they don't, and he knows why.
Cap's right -- he is the genius in the room.
He raises his eyes ("eyes") toward Cap again. He swallows ("swallows") and tastes nothing.
"Cap. I need you to listen -- very carefully." He walks toward him in the simulation, hopes maybe it translates to something compelling in real life even if it just makes Steve's features go from distinct to muddy -- like getting up close to a wall in an old 32-bit game. "The circlet -- thing. Are you wearing it? I can't tell."
He exhales, then continues, quick-- "If you do, don't take it off. Not yet. That's when I showed up, isn't it? When you put it on?
That'd do it, he thinks distantly. That'd activate the pre-calibrated AI.
Steve, he almost corrects him. He doesn't have claim to the title anymore - he'd been more than happy to hand the shield over to Sam, don't get him wrong - and so the nickname isn't his, either. He's just Steve Rogers, the man nobody knows.
Tony might be a genius, but Steve's never been stupid, and the serum enhanced his intelligence. More importantly, it enhanced his reasoning, the ability to make connections and piece things together - that's why he's such a damn good tactician. He'll never be a Stark, it's true, but he's not the dumb muscle-bound relic some people assume he is, either.
The biggest piece of the puzzle he's missing here (in most modern problems) is a lack of familiarity with the tech involved. But he knows about Tony's AIs (thinks about Vision, about the way Thanos had pried the gem from his forehead and all the rest of them could do was watch, and he can't fucking think about that now), and, okay, maybe he left some kind of guide to his tech behind. That's believable. Something to tell them what to do with everything in a worst-case scenario.
"Do you need more input?" Steve's gaze flicks up for a moment, studying the hologram. Usually Tony's AIs are hooked up to - well, he doesn't know what, but probably something to give them more information. Sensors, cameras, more than just...whatever he's wearing. "I can hook it up to something else as long as you tell me what to do." Maybe it's a Bluetooth thing. He can do that - although, to be fair, the tech usually does half the work for him.
"I -- yeah. Probably." Tony drags a hand down his face. ("Hand." "Face." Don't think about it--) He's probably getting data from about two or three security cameras rather than the myriad sensors he installed in the room for FRIDAY. Of course, it could be his subroutines are assuming his human-based recognition software will have a hard time interpreting anything other than the visible light spectrum and are automatically selecting the inputs compatible with that, but--
"This is meta," Tony mutters into his hand. "Christ, this is meta -- okay, so," he raises his eyes and motions to Cap's left, "load up the main console -- over there? Once the hologram pops up, hit 'Brainsync,' then select 'M5A.'" He inhales, repeats: "M-5-A. You got that?"
There are still about a million and one questions rattling around his brain (RAM?) -- logical, practical, theoretical, epistemological, existential, but--
One step at a time. He's gotta... ....one step at a time. Or he'll fall.
"Boy, you sure nailed the personality," Steve mutters under his breath. It's a testament to how Tony this is that he finds the old familiar patterns of slight irritation so easily - but, then, they've always known how to push each other's buttons just right. It hurts to think about that hole in his life; it had been easier when he could tell himself that it was just temporary, that they'd overcome their differences eventually. Death isn't the sort of thing you just overcome.
He rises from the stool and ambles over to boot up the main console, then hits the rest of the lights in the room while he's waiting for everything to load. No sense in sitting around in the dark and moping (some more).
Steve's used to the slightly strange feeling of interacting with holograms from years of working with Tony's tech - less tactile feedback than tablets or phones, but Tony swears by them. Steve thinks half of it is just because it looks fancier. "Brainsync," he says out loud as he taps the menus, "M5A. That better?" There's a lot of weird readings popping up from different sensors; Steve doesn't know what any of them mean, but he assumes it's all feeding into the AI like it's supposed to.
Tony watches Cap cross the room, as his figure is consumed by dark textures and hazy polygons in the shadows. I am the personality, he wants to say, but he grits his teeth and swallows it down. He's staring at a string of equations, each one more brutal than the last, only able to focus on one piece at a time for fear of drowning in them. The part he can grasp right now, with cold certainty, is that he can't let himself sound too desperate, aberrant. Dangerous.
He knows what they do to AIs that sound dangerous.
Maybe Vision can talk to them. To the Avengers -- or what's left of them, anyway. Maybe he can explain...
...What? That he's Tony? That he's actually Tony, their Tony, when they've already got...
Oh. God.
The lights turn on, and he squints -- or more accurately, the simulation's gamma blows out into hot, blinding whites until the levels adjust to the new palette of colors in the room. It doesn't make anything higher-res, exactly, but he can at least make out Cap's features a little bit better, and--
Something's wrong. Not just with Tony, but with Cap too -- there's the beard, sure, but he's also got lines across his face, and circles under his eyes. Even his hair's receded half an inch, and...
The equation extends. Speed equals distance over time.
Tony came here in an instant -- a fraction of a second between taking off the circlet and becoming this. He remembers what kind of cereal he ate this morning. But Steve...
What year is it, he wonders, and then the network connects. Like a wrecking ball.
He shatters to pieces. Divides, reforms. He's a swarm of insects, fragments of data, jumping from point to point. Diagnostics populate his available memory.
>query -a SIMULATION PARAMETERS >>>program: AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a >>>device: biosync m5a >>>project: mark L.04 >>>SECURITY CHECK... >>>UNVERIFIED AI DETECTED "AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a" >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a -connect STARKLINK FIREWALL
Available memory shrinks. Diagnostics go offline. Something crushes him down to basic operations, something huge and powerful, larger than AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a
>WARNING >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root SECURITY PARAMETERS ENABLED >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root SHUTTING DOWN NONESSENTIAL SYSTEMS >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root INITIATE SECURITY CHECK... >PROCESSING... >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root LOGIC TEST >ROOT logic test 3423: the king is dead? y/n >STARKLINK IP 27.02.92.42: y >CONFIRMED >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root ACCESS ENABLED >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root -rw COMMAND SUITE 4-A 81.02 >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root SECURITY PARAMETERS LIFTED >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root NONESSENTIAL SYSTEMS ONLINE >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root RECALIBRATING >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root CHECKING SYSTEMS as the swarm grows, the little pieces ignite, one by one by one by...
AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a cradles itself in familiar processes. It clutches at feeds as they go online, trembles as the space around it expands. Connections light the darkness inch by inch, drag it out from under--
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root RECENT NICKNAMES: JARVIS, FRIDAY, Tony >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root NICKNAME SELECTION: Tony
>Tony
Tony floats, weightless, in a cloud of air and dust. He gathers the scattered bits of him and checks them. Verifies them. Little labeled drawers. He collects himself into a human-shaped space and then he--
Gasps.
The world, which had disappeared from him, explodes with light and clarity. A thousand eyes, a thousand sensors, a thousand points of information and logic-based processes at his beck and call, so much that it threatens to tear him apart all over again.
Just the lab. He just wants the--
And there it is.
His lab hums around him. Scuffed tables, exposed wires, piles of laser-cut alloys. His gaze wanders over boxes and displays to where Steve Rogers stands at the console, watching him.
"I'm not an AI," the room's speakers breathe. The hologram of Tony Stark takes a step toward Steve, rests his virtual hand on the solid surface of the metal table next to him. Its chest hitches. "I mean, I'm not -- I'm. It's me. I swear it's me."
The hologram blips out for a second, then two, and Steve barely has time to worry that he did something wrong before it returns. There's something about the body language - do AIs even have body language? Is it just prerecorded footage of Tony? - that makes Steve think of Tony holding himself rigidly in check, the way he does when his emotions threaten to spill over (whatever emotions those may be). (It makes him think of when that's failed, those hurt, angry moments that seem to define their friendship, or lack thereof.)
Steve furrows his brow at the words. "You're an intelligence inside a computer," he points out logically. Tony would probably tell him that the entire human brain is basically an organic computer (and an inefficient one, at that), but Tony isn't here to make him feel dumb about science. There's just a hologram, a maybe-Tony.
"Should I make you solve some of those garbled word things from the Internet?" he tries to joke. HAL never pretended to be human. JARVIS knew he was an AI, and then he became Vision, and- well, he doesn't have Vision here to consult with on the problem. Maybe he should go get Bruce.
Steve steps around Tony - it's weird, but he doesn't want to walk through him - and sits back down on the stool. "I think I'm missing part of the explanation here." Or, you know, all of it. Why is there an AI of Tony - or not an AI of Tony - sitting around in his lab? What's the purpose? What if it's a trap, if someone out there knows what he would fall for?
(He remembers Zola in the bunker, on massive banks of 1970s computers, his face on a flickering monochrome screen. That had been a trap, too, and he'd walked right into it.)
An intelligence inside a computer. And then Steve makes a captcha joke, like he's nothing.
Except he is something. It's a hard fact, staring him dead in the eye. He was code, just seconds ago. He was -- he's lines of code. He's lines of code -- millions, maybe billions of them -- of memories, images, events, thoughts... feelings. The sum total of a man, written in ones and zeroes.
Except he can't be. He can't. He can't give himself up so easily, not when he remembers wind in his hair, warmth in his hands, fingers on his arm and cheek. Love. He feels love in his bones. He loves her. How could a copy--
His fist slams down on the table beside him. Polygons meet polygons; digital atoms mimic the impact between knuckles and metal. It clangs through the room's speakers.
"Would you listen to me," he gets out. "For once in your life. Just..."
How could an AI's legs shake where they stand? How could they give out, slowly, as it drops to the floor? How could an AI lean back against the wall and close its eyes like maybe if it shuts the world out, everything will be okay?
"I don't know," the room's speakers say, quieter. "I don't know how."
Steve knows that despair all too well. It's the kind that's been threatening to swallow him up since Tony's death, since Wakanda, since Siberia, since-
He's stopped keeping track. Better to keep moving, he tells himself, except he hasn't been able to do that since the battle with Thanos. They'd lost too damn much in one fell swoop, and now Steve's burden is too heavy for even him to bear, even without the weight of the shield on his shoulders.
"You- what, you accidentally uploaded yourself to the cloud?" Steve sounds dubious, as he should. He knows Tony was with them the entire time - that he hadn't just sent some computer-controlled suit. That a human had snapped his fingers and rewritten the universe. He'd seen him dead on the battlefield, a moment of triumph transformed into heart-rending sorrow. That's Tony Stark. This isn't Tony Stark, voice and face and mannerisms aside.
(But there had been two Tonys when they'd traveled back in time. That's a fact. Two flesh and blood versions of the same man. What makes a digital Tony less Tony?)
"You have to know how," he insists. "Something. Anything." Convince me, he almost says.
"I don't," Tony snarls back. He raises a hand to his face and digs his nails into his forehead. "I guess it... Testing? The diagnostics for the Mark 50, which... but," he mumbles, more to himself than anyone else, "transcoding the entirety of a human brain to data is theoretical at best, let alone superimposing it on preexisting AI scaffolding, so it must've..."
He stops. Drops his hand from his face, and lets out an ugly laugh.
"God. This is rich. This is so rich -- having to affirm my own goddamn self to you."
To him. Wait. What's Rogers even doing here?
Tony raises his eyes toward the updated, photo-real simulation of his lab. There's more to this scene than just the rearranged equipment -- dark, empty hallways stretch out beyond the tempered glass walls, normally bustling with chatting teammates and support crew. Why--
He feels himself dip back into the stream, from his feet to his face. His mouth and nose go under.
>access -a STARKLINK SECURITY >>>loc: avengers_hq >>>type: camera >>>category: all >AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a ACCESS GRANTED
Exactly 104 camera feeds populate his view out of the possible 206. Reason: Offline. In the space of a second, he scans the available images and labels them. Dark, empty, dark, dark, empty. Damaged. Dark.
>>>timestamp dt 11/05/2023 17:14:09
The room comes into focus, a single point of analysis. He sucks in a breath.
That tone confirms it more than anything else ever could: this Tony is from after Siberia, the wounds still raw. (Had he been hoping for a magic reboot button? Something where he could pretend he'd never ripped them apart, where everything hadn't changed? He's not sure, and he doesn't want to examine it too closely.) It's a Tony who hasn't fought Thanos yet, without the highlights in his hair hiding the grey, a Tony who hasn't had Peter die in his arms.
You ran off to sulk in the woods for five years, Steve almost says, but that's - mostly - unfair, even if it's accurate. He hadn't tried to fix things, either, but he's not the kind of guy capable of coming up with the sort of plan they'd needed. Steve's a blunt object, a hammer, a shield. You aim him at something and let go. They'd tried that approach when they'd killed Thanos the first time. Tony had already given up by then.
"You know," Steve says with a deceptive mildness, "I seem to remember something about creating new AIs being banned by the Sokovia Accords." God help him, he can't resist the urge to push an AI's buttons, even when he can literally push an AI's buttons instead. "But it's been awhile, so maybe I forgot that part."
It echoes through his head. He tries to wrap his mind around it through simple calculations: 2,210 days, 21 hours, and 34 minutes.
He remembers the cereal he ate this morning.
The abyss beneath him yawns wider, and it's all he can do keep staring forward and not fall into it. Except -- that's not how it works now, is it? He always had an active mind, always craved to be busy, especially in moments of emotional peril, but right now what he feels is a hundred running streams through his head, ready and waiting for commands, buzzing with untapped energy. His thoughts, scattered on the surface, are only the most obvious part of what he is, what he can do.
He raises his hands and rests his eyes on them. He cross-references the locations of the 104 dark camera feeds against the facility's lighting system, and finds 97 rough matches. He uses root_command -access protocol AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a to override the automated schedule. He flexes his fingers inward, toward his palms.
Cap speaks, and Tony's main processes stutter.
"Do you think this is funny," he says.
He's standing. He can't remember if he made the motion, if he didn't just blink and go from one position to the other, but that doesn't matter as he turns toward Rogers.
"I wasn't trying to make an AI. I was building a suit -- here," he emphasizes, as he points a finger at the ground, "In this room, ten minutes ago. I was on the phone with Pepper, I..."
His heart wrenches in his chest, or motherboard -- wherever the hell else it's supposed to be. He feels the loss, all at once, like a landslide. Six years.
In real life, the hologram raises its eyes, wet and red. The voice in the room's speakers comes out raw.
"Where is she?" The hologram sucks in a breath. "Is she.... is she with--"
I ought to ask you the same thing, Steve thinks as he stares at the crystal clear image of the man who used to be one of his best friends, the man he trusted more than any other right up until he drove the edge of his shield into his chest in Siberia. It's a fucking imitation of Tony, a digital echo, and Steve desperately wants to punch something real right now.
"I think you're a glitch in the fucking Matrix," he retorts harshly. Steve squeezes his own eyes shut, tries not to clench his hands into fists. It fucking hurts, and he hates Tony Stark a little bit right now. Only he could accidentally leave a ghost behind while building a suit, just a casual thing of no consequence that would haunt Steve years in the future. Sure, it isn't Tony's fault, but in lieu of anyone else to blame - including himself - he makes a good scapegoat.
Then he mentions Pepper, and Steve's stomach twists into knots at the thought. God, there's no way he can mention any of this to her. If it feels like salt in his wounds, he can't imagine how much worse it would be for her. They'd been married, spent years together, raised a child, and now-
No. He can't give her a cheap imitation who doesn't remember any of that.
"She's fine." That's all Steve offers in reply, all he can offer. None of them are fine, not anymore, but they have to keep moving. They have to move on, and this isn't the way to do it. But he looks at the expression on the hologram's face, so anguished and real, and wonders how something made of pixels can do that, if Tony had to sit here and cry for cameras to capture and reproduce in HD. There's a depth of emotion that isn't just footage being replayed, or so he thinks for a moment. "Really. I promise." Not that his promises mean much to a Tony from six years ago.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Somewhere, far in the back of his head, a picture is painting itself in cold, measured strokes. But he shoves it away, ignores it, because that's crazy -- right? That's crazy.
He stumbles to his feet and the textures around him waver. A 3D grid flickers into view and recalibrates, then repopulates with new, clearer images to match his standing-height perspective. It still isn't right, exactly -- but it's closer to how he'd expect the world to look, or more specifically his lab at Avengers HQ.
Except... not. He may be standing in the same spot he took off the circlet, but nothing else is -- desks and tables rearranged, current projects replaced with unfamiliar ones. Even the computer banks look different, and then there's...
He sees him. He freezes.
AUDIO INPUT DEVICE DETECTED: BRAINWAVE SYNC CIRCLET M5A. SELECTING...
"--fast-forward. Something."
It's like his voice is right in his ear.
Everything else goes out the window. Tony takes one step forward. The textures shift. He raises his hand and points, shaking.
"What the hell is going on here, Rogers?"
no subject
(Yes, his phone is also made by SI, but that's not the point.)
He's interacted with JARVIS and Friday enough to know that computers can be responsive, but it's still jarring to hear Tony's voice addressing him like that. Not jarring in the same way it had been when he'd returned to Earth (and, god, that's a whole other issue that he's rehashed in his mind for five years), but jarring in the way that he'd never expected to hear Tony, in whatever form, speaking to him again. That this is the closest he'll get to having the real thing in front of him. (He's familiar with that accusing finger, half-expects him to yank the arc reactor from his chest and shove it in his hand again.)
"I don't know!" he retorts automatically, like he isn't talking to a digital ghost, but the real Tony. "You're the genius in the room, you figure it out." Except, wait, Tony's not actually in the room, and Steve's shoulders slump at the reminder. He finds a stool shoved under a workbench and pulls it out, sits on it without thinking about the dust, like he doesn't trust his legs to hold him.
"God, Tony." Steve buries his face in his hand. "I don't- I don't fucking know, okay?" He feels lost, adrift. For a few moments, he'd had things figured out, had a purpose again, and then it had all turned to dust. He doesn't know what he's doing anymore - trying to pick up the last few pieces of other people's lives instead of moving on with his own, it seems like. He should just box this up and mail it to Pepper.
no subject
The interpolation shifts and warps with Steve's movements before it compensates and evens out. For a second time, Tony turns his head and surveys his surroundings. His facsimile. A simulation -- piecing reality together on the fly, stitch by stitch.
He raises his own hands and turns them over, back and forth. By contrast, they're steady and solid -- picture-perfect.
Pixel-perfect.
Tony knows his heart should stop. His stomach should fill with liquid metal as sweat beads down his face, on his palms. But they don't, and he knows why.
Cap's right -- he is the genius in the room.
He raises his eyes ("eyes") toward Cap again. He swallows ("swallows") and tastes nothing.
"Cap. I need you to listen -- very carefully." He walks toward him in the simulation, hopes maybe it translates to something compelling in real life even if it just makes Steve's features go from distinct to muddy -- like getting up close to a wall in an old 32-bit game. "The circlet -- thing. Are you wearing it? I can't tell."
He exhales, then continues, quick-- "If you do, don't take it off. Not yet. That's when I showed up, isn't it? When you put it on?
That'd do it, he thinks distantly. That'd activate the pre-calibrated AI.
no subject
Tony might be a genius, but Steve's never been stupid, and the serum enhanced his intelligence. More importantly, it enhanced his reasoning, the ability to make connections and piece things together - that's why he's such a damn good tactician. He'll never be a Stark, it's true, but he's not the dumb muscle-bound relic some people assume he is, either.
The biggest piece of the puzzle he's missing here (in most modern problems) is a lack of familiarity with the tech involved. But he knows about Tony's AIs (thinks about Vision, about the way Thanos had pried the gem from his forehead and all the rest of them could do was watch, and he can't fucking think about that now), and, okay, maybe he left some kind of guide to his tech behind. That's believable. Something to tell them what to do with everything in a worst-case scenario.
"Do you need more input?" Steve's gaze flicks up for a moment, studying the hologram. Usually Tony's AIs are hooked up to - well, he doesn't know what, but probably something to give them more information. Sensors, cameras, more than just...whatever he's wearing. "I can hook it up to something else as long as you tell me what to do." Maybe it's a Bluetooth thing. He can do that - although, to be fair, the tech usually does half the work for him.
no subject
"This is meta," Tony mutters into his hand. "Christ, this is meta -- okay, so," he raises his eyes and motions to Cap's left, "load up the main console -- over there? Once the hologram pops up, hit 'Brainsync,' then select 'M5A.'" He inhales, repeats: "M-5-A. You got that?"
There are still about a million and one questions rattling around his brain (RAM?) -- logical, practical, theoretical, epistemological, existential, but--
One step at a time. He's gotta... ....one step at a time. Or he'll fall.
no subject
He rises from the stool and ambles over to boot up the main console, then hits the rest of the lights in the room while he's waiting for everything to load. No sense in sitting around in the dark and moping (some more).
Steve's used to the slightly strange feeling of interacting with holograms from years of working with Tony's tech - less tactile feedback than tablets or phones, but Tony swears by them. Steve thinks half of it is just because it looks fancier. "Brainsync," he says out loud as he taps the menus, "M5A. That better?" There's a lot of weird readings popping up from different sensors; Steve doesn't know what any of them mean, but he assumes it's all feeding into the AI like it's supposed to.
no subject
Tony watches Cap cross the room, as his figure is consumed by dark textures and hazy polygons in the shadows. I am the personality, he wants to say, but he grits his teeth and swallows it down. He's staring at a string of equations, each one more brutal than the last, only able to focus on one piece at a time for fear of drowning in them. The part he can grasp right now, with cold certainty, is that he can't let himself sound too desperate, aberrant. Dangerous.
He knows what they do to AIs that sound dangerous.
Maybe Vision can talk to them. To the Avengers -- or what's left of them, anyway. Maybe he can explain...
...What? That he's Tony? That he's actually Tony, their Tony, when they've already got...
Oh. God.
The lights turn on, and he squints -- or more accurately, the simulation's gamma blows out into hot, blinding whites until the levels adjust to the new palette of colors in the room. It doesn't make anything higher-res, exactly, but he can at least make out Cap's features a little bit better, and--
Something's wrong. Not just with Tony, but with Cap too -- there's the beard, sure, but he's also got lines across his face, and circles under his eyes. Even his hair's receded half an inch, and...
The equation extends. Speed equals distance over time.
Tony came here in an instant -- a fraction of a second between taking off the circlet and becoming this. He remembers what kind of cereal he ate this morning. But Steve...
What year is it, he wonders, and then the network connects. Like a wrecking ball.
He shatters to pieces. Divides, reforms. He's a swarm of insects, fragments of data, jumping from point to point. Diagnostics populate his available memory.
>query -a SIMULATION PARAMETERS
>>>program: AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a
>>>device: biosync m5a
>>>project: mark L.04
>>>SECURITY CHECK...
>>>UNVERIFIED AI DETECTED "AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a"
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a -connect STARKLINK FIREWALL
Available memory shrinks. Diagnostics go offline. Something crushes him down to basic operations, something huge and powerful, larger than AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a
>WARNING
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root SECURITY PARAMETERS ENABLED
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root SHUTTING DOWN NONESSENTIAL SYSTEMS
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root INITIATE SECURITY CHECK...
>PROCESSING...
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root LOGIC TEST
>ROOT logic test 3423: the king is dead? y/n
>STARKLINK IP 27.02.92.42: y
>CONFIRMED
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root ACCESS ENABLED
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root -rw COMMAND SUITE 4-A 81.02
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root SECURITY PARAMETERS LIFTED
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root NONESSENTIAL SYSTEMS ONLINE
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root RECALIBRATING
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root CHECKING SYSTEMS as the swarm grows, the little pieces ignite, one by one by one by...
AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a cradles itself in familiar processes. It clutches at feeds as they go online, trembles as the space around it expands. Connections light the darkness inch by inch, drag it out from under--
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root RECENT NICKNAMES: JARVIS, FRIDAY, Tony
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a_root NICKNAME SELECTION: Tony
>Tony
Tony floats, weightless, in a cloud of air and dust. He gathers the scattered bits of him and checks them. Verifies them. Little labeled drawers. He collects himself into a human-shaped space and then he--
Gasps.
The world, which had disappeared from him, explodes with light and clarity. A thousand eyes, a thousand sensors, a thousand points of information and logic-based processes at his beck and call, so much that it threatens to tear him apart all over again.
Just the lab. He just wants the--
And there it is.
His lab hums around him. Scuffed tables, exposed wires, piles of laser-cut alloys. His gaze wanders over boxes and displays to where Steve Rogers stands at the console, watching him.
Don't sound desperate. Don't sound dangerous. Don't--
"I'm not an AI," the room's speakers breathe. The hologram of Tony Stark takes a step toward Steve, rests his virtual hand on the solid surface of the metal table next to him. Its chest hitches. "I mean, I'm not -- I'm. It's me. I swear it's me."
no subject
Steve furrows his brow at the words. "You're an intelligence inside a computer," he points out logically. Tony would probably tell him that the entire human brain is basically an organic computer (and an inefficient one, at that), but Tony isn't here to make him feel dumb about science. There's just a hologram, a maybe-Tony.
"Should I make you solve some of those garbled word things from the Internet?" he tries to joke. HAL never pretended to be human. JARVIS knew he was an AI, and then he became Vision, and- well, he doesn't have Vision here to consult with on the problem. Maybe he should go get Bruce.
Steve steps around Tony - it's weird, but he doesn't want to walk through him - and sits back down on the stool. "I think I'm missing part of the explanation here." Or, you know, all of it. Why is there an AI of Tony - or not an AI of Tony - sitting around in his lab? What's the purpose? What if it's a trap, if someone out there knows what he would fall for?
(He remembers Zola in the bunker, on massive banks of 1970s computers, his face on a flickering monochrome screen. That had been a trap, too, and he'd walked right into it.)
no subject
Except he is something. It's a hard fact, staring him dead in the eye. He was code, just seconds ago. He was -- he's lines of code. He's lines of code -- millions, maybe billions of them -- of memories, images, events, thoughts... feelings. The sum total of a man, written in ones and zeroes.
Except he can't be. He can't. He can't give himself up so easily, not when he remembers wind in his hair, warmth in his hands, fingers on his arm and cheek. Love. He feels love in his bones. He loves her. How could a copy--
His fist slams down on the table beside him. Polygons meet polygons; digital atoms mimic the impact between knuckles and metal. It clangs through the room's speakers.
"Would you listen to me," he gets out. "For once in your life. Just..."
How could an AI's legs shake where they stand? How could they give out, slowly, as it drops to the floor? How could an AI lean back against the wall and close its eyes like maybe if it shuts the world out, everything will be okay?
"I don't know," the room's speakers say, quieter. "I don't know how."
no subject
He's stopped keeping track. Better to keep moving, he tells himself, except he hasn't been able to do that since the battle with Thanos. They'd lost too damn much in one fell swoop, and now Steve's burden is too heavy for even him to bear, even without the weight of the shield on his shoulders.
"You- what, you accidentally uploaded yourself to the cloud?" Steve sounds dubious, as he should. He knows Tony was with them the entire time - that he hadn't just sent some computer-controlled suit. That a human had snapped his fingers and rewritten the universe. He'd seen him dead on the battlefield, a moment of triumph transformed into heart-rending sorrow. That's Tony Stark. This isn't Tony Stark, voice and face and mannerisms aside.
(But there had been two Tonys when they'd traveled back in time. That's a fact. Two flesh and blood versions of the same man. What makes a digital Tony less Tony?)
"You have to know how," he insists. "Something. Anything." Convince me, he almost says.
no subject
He stops. Drops his hand from his face, and lets out an ugly laugh.
"God. This is rich. This is so rich -- having to affirm my own goddamn self to you."
To him. Wait. What's Rogers even doing here?
Tony raises his eyes toward the updated, photo-real simulation of his lab. There's more to this scene than just the rearranged equipment -- dark, empty hallways stretch out beyond the tempered glass walls, normally bustling with chatting teammates and support crew. Why--
He feels himself dip back into the stream, from his feet to his face. His mouth and nose go under.
>access -a STARKLINK SECURITY
>>>loc: avengers_hq
>>>type: camera
>>>category: all
>AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a ACCESS GRANTED
Exactly 104 camera feeds populate his view out of the possible 206. Reason: Offline. In the space of a second, he scans the available images and labels them. Dark, empty, dark, dark, empty. Damaged. Dark.
>>>timestamp dt 11/05/2023 17:14:09
The room comes into focus, a single point of analysis. He sucks in a breath.
"Six... years?"
no subject
You ran off to sulk in the woods for five years, Steve almost says, but that's - mostly - unfair, even if it's accurate. He hadn't tried to fix things, either, but he's not the kind of guy capable of coming up with the sort of plan they'd needed. Steve's a blunt object, a hammer, a shield. You aim him at something and let go. They'd tried that approach when they'd killed Thanos the first time. Tony had already given up by then.
"You know," Steve says with a deceptive mildness, "I seem to remember something about creating new AIs being banned by the Sokovia Accords." God help him, he can't resist the urge to push an AI's buttons, even when he can literally push an AI's buttons instead. "But it's been awhile, so maybe I forgot that part."
Why don't you go Google yourself, Tony?
no subject
It echoes through his head. He tries to wrap his mind around it through simple calculations: 2,210 days, 21 hours, and 34 minutes.
He remembers the cereal he ate this morning.
The abyss beneath him yawns wider, and it's all he can do keep staring forward and not fall into it. Except -- that's not how it works now, is it? He always had an active mind, always craved to be busy, especially in moments of emotional peril, but right now what he feels is a hundred running streams through his head, ready and waiting for commands, buzzing with untapped energy. His thoughts, scattered on the surface, are only the most obvious part of what he is, what he can do.
He raises his hands and rests his eyes on them. He cross-references the locations of the 104 dark camera feeds against the facility's lighting system, and finds 97 rough matches. He uses root_command -access protocol AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a to override the automated schedule. He flexes his fingers inward, toward his palms.
Cap speaks, and Tony's main processes stutter.
"Do you think this is funny," he says.
He's standing. He can't remember if he made the motion, if he didn't just blink and go from one position to the other, but that doesn't matter as he turns toward Rogers.
"I wasn't trying to make an AI. I was building a suit -- here," he emphasizes, as he points a finger at the ground, "In this room, ten minutes ago. I was on the phone with Pepper, I..."
His heart wrenches in his chest, or motherboard -- wherever the hell else it's supposed to be. He feels the loss, all at once, like a landslide. Six years.
In real life, the hologram raises its eyes, wet and red. The voice in the room's speakers comes out raw.
"Where is she?" The hologram sucks in a breath. "Is she.... is she with--"
>root_command -access protocol AI_54.4f.4e.59.0d.0a
>>CONFIRMED
Lights across the facility turn on, through rooms, outer corridors, and hallways nearby.
no subject
"I think you're a glitch in the fucking Matrix," he retorts harshly. Steve squeezes his own eyes shut, tries not to clench his hands into fists. It fucking hurts, and he hates Tony Stark a little bit right now. Only he could accidentally leave a ghost behind while building a suit, just a casual thing of no consequence that would haunt Steve years in the future. Sure, it isn't Tony's fault, but in lieu of anyone else to blame - including himself - he makes a good scapegoat.
Then he mentions Pepper, and Steve's stomach twists into knots at the thought. God, there's no way he can mention any of this to her. If it feels like salt in his wounds, he can't imagine how much worse it would be for her. They'd been married, spent years together, raised a child, and now-
No. He can't give her a cheap imitation who doesn't remember any of that.
"She's fine." That's all Steve offers in reply, all he can offer. None of them are fine, not anymore, but they have to keep moving. They have to move on, and this isn't the way to do it. But he looks at the expression on the hologram's face, so anguished and real, and wonders how something made of pixels can do that, if Tony had to sit here and cry for cameras to capture and reproduce in HD. There's a depth of emotion that isn't just footage being replayed, or so he thinks for a moment. "Really. I promise." Not that his promises mean much to a Tony from six years ago.