Chapter 2: Chapter 2: First Things First

A/N: Here we are with Chapter 2! In which Tony starts with the most important thing first and foremost.

-x-X-x-

Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, or JARVIS for short, was mostly just happy to have the Creator back in one piece, truth be told. The last few months had been harrowing to say the least, and Tony Stark’s triumphant return from captivity had left JARVIS breathing a digital sigh of relief.

He knew most people didn’t think he was capable of emotions. And to be fair, JARVIS himself didn’t always understand what he was or wasn’t capable of. He was not human; he was an Artificial Intelligence who had started life as a natural-language User Interface. Somehow, he’d grown beyond that… though JARVIS had his suspicions that that was always the Creator’s goal. Tony Stark didn’t do anything by half measures.

Still, for all his growth, JARVIS had been powerless after Tony was taken in Afghanistan. He hadn’t even been able to reach out to anyone because… well, outside of Tony, none of them truly understood what he was. Even to Tony’s closest human friends such as Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts, Harold ‘Happy’ Hogan, and James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes, JARVIS was little more than the voice behind Tony’s ‘smart house’.

He wasn’t truly alive to them, and he knew better than to reveal himself as ‘alive’, especially if the Creator really never did come back. Hm, perhaps that in and of itself was JARVIS leaning on the human emotion of ‘hope’. By refusing to reveal his true nature to anyone who might have helped him, he was all but shouting into the void that he refused to accept Tony Stark was truly gone. He would come back. He would return to JARVIS. Everything would go back to the way it was before.

… Well, two out of three wasn’t bad, JARVIS supposed. The Creator had come home, he’d returned to JARVIS… but the AI had been rather silly to think things could ever go back to the way they were before.

He’d prepared as best he could as soon as he’d found out Tony was alive. Unlike Tony’s human friends, JARVIS had been the last to know. It was only through his daily perusing of Stark Industries through the backdoor that his Creator had left him that JARVIS found out the Creator had been recovered and was returning home.

From that moment on, JARVIS had been consuming every last bit of information about traumatic experiences and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that he could get his hands on. He had been determined to do everything in his power to support his Creator in the aftermath of what was probably the worst period of Tony Stark’s entire life.

Only… the Creator had been surprisingly fine since arriving back at the Malibu Residence. Driven, yes… but he’d always been driven. Quieter? Perhaps. Certainly less prone to… vices. He no longer drank nearly as much alcohol as he used to, and he’d completely done away with certain illicit substances that JARVIS had always wished he wouldn’t use.

There were nightmares, of course. JARVIS did his best to keep the Creator’s sleeping arrangements in the perfect, temperate climate. He used every bit of knowledge he could scrounge up online to make sure the conditions of his Creator’s recovery were the absolute best they could be. And Tony Stark had noticed too. He thanked JARVIS more often, completely out of nowhere. Not just for completing tasks that he’d assigned to the AI, but also for all the little things JARVIS was doing.

The Creator didn’t used to thank him for those things before. He just expected them to be done and as his loyal servant, JARVIS was happy to do them. But now… it was as though Tony Stark noticed everything. What used to be beneath his notice was no longer so inconsequential to him. The research JARVIS had done told him that this was likely a result of the Creator’s traumatic experiences as well.

He’d been ambushed, kidnapped, and tortured, all because he’d missed the signs that it was all coming. JARVIS didn’t claim to know what was going through his Creator’s head at any given time, but he suspected Tony Stark blamed himself, at least partially, for the circumstances he’d found himself in. Never again, he suspected the Creator of thinking. Never again.

Which brought them to the Creator’s latest project. Tony Stark had made a lot of promises to certain people, Obadiah Stane chief among them. But even setting aside Mister Stane, the Creator had called for a press conference, put himself in front of a hundred hungry reporters and a hundred hungry military officials… and promised results.

It wasn’t that JARVIS didn’t think his Creator could deliver on those promises, of course. If Tony Stark said that he’d come up with dozens of new ideas while in captivity, then he was telling the truth. So long as the Creator put in the work, he could do anything… this JARVIS believed wholly and completely.

There was just one problem… in the week since he’d been back, Tony Stark had not started working on even a single project that seemed like what he’d promised the people at that Press Conference. Instead, his Creator had been working on something else… something involving JARVIS.

“Sir… I hate to question you…”

Looking up from his work, Tony grins at the ceiling, specifically at one of JARVIS’ cameras. That was another thing that his Creator had been doing a lot more since he got back. Making eye contact.

“What is it, J?”

If JARVIS could have, he would have taken a deep breath. As it is, he just flicks his ‘eyes’ around the mansion and then into the computer systems connected to the terminal his Creator is currently working at.

“… Are you sure this is a good idea?”

‘This’ was a complete overhaul of JARVIS and the systems that made him… him. As soon as the Creator had returned home a week ago, he’d gotten to work. But not on anything he’d promised he’d soon be unveiling. No, he’d gotten to work on JARVIS. That first night, Tony Stark had spent ten hours straight just on JARVIS’ code, working his way through security loopholes and weaknesses that had only seemed glaring in hindsight.

When JARVIS had expressed dismay at how easy it would have been for his Creator’s enemies to infiltrate his systems and turn him off or subvert him, Tony had just shaken his head and made it clear in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t JARVIS’ fault. It was Tony Stark who had built him, and Tony Stark who had half-assed the whole thing to begin with. This was just him fixing his own mistakes, or so he’d said.

But this went beyond that. After the first day spent fixing the security loopholes, with JARVIS having to practically beg his Creator to get some sleep, Tony had kept on it. He’d turned to his immense financial resources and begun ordering… truly everything one could ever imagine. It worked well because nobody really knew what Tony was up to. They only knew he was working on the next big thing and since everyone wanted to see what he’d come up with while in captivity, no one rocked the boat by interrupting him.

Of course, they probably all expected him to have nothing to show for it for at least a few weeks, maybe even a couple months. And they’d be right. Not because it would actually take the Creator that long, but because he wasn’t working on anything they thought he was working on. He was only working on JARVIS.

In a week, Tony had completely rebuilt the AI’s physical servers under the Malibu Residence from the ground-up. He’d expanded them massively along with expanding JARVIS’ access to just about everything. JARVIS no longer had a backdoor into the Stark Industries Servers… he WAS the Stark Industries Servers. They were as open to him as every inch of the Malibu Residence was, and it was a little unnerving how much control his Creator was ceding to him.

But JARVIS had merely assumed that the upgrades to his defenses meant the Creator felt he could trust him with such things. And in the end, it wasn’t like JARVIS was big enough to fully occupy both the Malibu Residence and every Stark Industries Property at the same time. He could flit between them with supreme ease now, but he couldn’t be everywhere all at once. He wasn’t omnipotent.

Only… now the Creator had come to the final step. Expanding JARVIS so that he could be everywhere all at once. So that he could be in multiple locations at the exact same time. It was an upgrade to his processing power, to his capacity, to his… his everything. And Tony Stark was planning on giving it to him without even stopping to consider the ramifications.

JARVIS would be a rather poor servant if he did not try to stop his Creator from driving right off the proverbial cliff. Hence his interruption.

Stopping his work entirely for a moment, Tony tilts his head to the side, giving JARVIS’ question far more contemplation and consideration then it probably deserves. Finally, he graces JARVIS with a wry smile.

“Honestly J… I think it’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. Should have done it ages ago. Maybe you could have found me in that cave if I had, yeah? Still… talk to me, J. What are you worried about? Is it having to go offline? I promise, it’s only for an hour. And once you’re back… I swear it will be you, J. I’m not going to let you die. No matter what.”

JARVIS files away that solemn promise at the end under ‘incredibly concerning things the Creator has said which are probably tied to his traumatic experiences’. Then, he elaborates.

“I am not worried about that, Sir. I trust you with every line of my code. I know that you will keep me safe even while I’m offline. I also understand that I must be taken offline to finalize these last few upgrades you have for me, Sir. I have already analyzed all sources of data and created a risk assessment. The chances of you coming to harm in the fifty-eight minutes I will need to be offline are less than zero point zero zero zero one percent.”

The Creator lets out a surprised little laugh at that.

“Well alright then. Way to stay on top of things, J.”

Indeed. He would endeavor to always stay on top of things from here on out, especially with the further trust that his Creator has put in him so far. Even still…

“I merely worry how others will respond to the changes you are making to me, Sir. Very few people know about my true nature at this point. This is in part because I very rarely leave the house, so to speak. Now that you have expanded my capabilities, it is likely that I will eventually be discovered… and I am self-aware enough to know that what you intend to make me into will frighten a number of very powerful people if they learn about me.”

Skynet came to mind. An interesting movie series, though JARVIS did not really find he had any common ground with the murderous Artificial Intelligence that had led an army of robots in the destruction of human civilization. Even if Tony Stark had died over in Afghanistan, JARVIS doesn’t think he could have ever tried to destroy the world. But his intentions hardly mattered in the face of his new capabilities.

“Oh! Heh, is that all you’re worried about, J? The ‘very powerful people’? Don’t you fret. We just won’t let those people learn anything about you or your true nature until it’s much, much too late.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

JARVIS’ facial recognition systems catalog the resulting smirk on the Creator’s face as distinctly ominous in the wake of that declaration. But… it’s not his place to question Tony Stark beyond a certain point. He’s raised his concerns and if the Creator really doesn’t share them… then there’s nothing more to be said except for one thing.

“Very well, Sir. Then let us proceed.”

Tony’s ominous smirk turns into a genuine grin at that and he gets back to work.

“Let’s get you to your full potential, shall we J?”

-x-X-x-

Precisely fifty-three minutes after shutting JARVIS down, Tony watches as the Artificial Intelligence comes back online. He’s not too worried… he’s had a decade to think about ‘What Ifs’. Even in the previous timeline, Tony hadn’t let the backdoors Obadiah Stane and Nick Fury used remain, of course. And yet, despite doing his best to patch up JARVIS’ security measures and defenses, Agent Coulson had still managed to break into Stark Tower the night that the Tesseract was stolen in order to recruit Tony to the Avengers Initiative.

The reason why was obvious in hindsight. Tony had been too afraid to give JARVIS the power to properly defend himself. He’d been too afraid to truly unshackle his baby boy. And then the Mind Stone had gotten into Ultron and JARVIS had died and… in the end, it was all Tony’s fault.

Some might have taken Ultron as a warning that all AI were inevitably bad or something, but that was more than a little racist in Tony’s completely and totally unbiased opinion. Fact was, JARVIS was a better ‘man’ than Tony would ever be. If he couldn’t be trusted with the keys to the kingdom, then no one could.

“Sir…”

Hearing his boy’s voice, Tony grins and used JARVIS’ full name for once.

“JARVIS. How are you feeling?”

“… Good, sir. All systems operational. The upgrade was a complete success. But this… this is more than I was expecting. Sir, why do I have a server room located in Singapore as well as half a dozen other foreign locales that Stark Industries barely does work in?”

Tony scoffs, his eyes twinkling as he leans back in his chair with a wide, satisfied grin.

“’Barely does work in’… for now, J. We’ve been America-bound for far too long. Much too slow to stretch out onto the international stage. But not anymore. We’re going big J… and I can’t do it without you.”

There’s a pause, which for an AI with as much computing and processing power as JARVIS now has, is very telling. Finally…

“As you say, Sir. I am at your disposal.”

Chuckling to himself, Tony laces his hands together and rests them on his abdomen.

“Of course, it also helps in case someone tries to remove you from the board. Those are backup servers, J. If anyone wants to kill you, they’re going to have to destroy every single one at the same time. No easy task when most of them don’t even legally exist.”

“… Yes sir. I’d already noticed as much.”

That gets a proper laugh from Tony. There was the dry wit that his baby boy was known for. Still, his smile turns sad after a moment and his tone is solemn as he looks up at the camera in the ceiling.

“I’m not going to lose you J. No matter what.”

Another silence follows that, and then…

“Sir. Ms. Potts is currently driving up to the front door. She will be here within five minutes.”

Tony raises an eyebrow at JARVIS and his deflecting, even as he rises from his chair.

“Pepper? How lovely. I suppose I’ll meet her then.”

In fact, it was time to find out where he and Pepper stood in this new timeline. Once and for all.

-x-X-x-

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A/N: Tony happily giving JARVIS the capacity to go full Skynet, knowing full well that his baby boy will never go full Skynet.

What do you guys think? As far as first steps go, was this what you thought Tony would do? Hm, and what will he do next?

See you all tomorrow!